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Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Topic started by: SysAdmin on December 15, 2013, 05:24:57 AM
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News from m3x
On the eve of Pianeta Amiga 2013, ACube Systems srl and A-EON Technology Ltd are pleased to announce that they have concluded a joint co-operation agreement to promote the continued development of hardware and software for the benefit of the Classic and Next-Generation Amiga communities.
A-EON's Matthew Leaman commented on concluding the agreement, “This is a new chapter for the Amiga community and we look forward to many years of close co-operation with our Italian partners”.
ACube's Max Tretene replied, “With our joint technical and financial resources we hope to fast track developments for the benefit of the whole Amiga community”. His business partner, Enrico Vidale added, “We are pleased to be working with like-minded Amiga enthusiasts and together we will work to support and expand the Amiga user base”. Trevor Dickinson, A-EON co-founder added, “ACube helped keep the Next-Generation Amiga dream alive during its darkest days, paving the way with new AmigaOS hardware. I am delighted we have concluded this Agreement.”
Plans are already in motion for the first collaboration and details will be released when the time is right. For future information and updates please visit the A-EON Technology and ACube websites.
About ACube Systems srl: ACube Systems srl is the designer and developer of the Sam440, Sam460 and AmigaOne 500 computer systems, as well as the Minimig and now the Minimig Plus.
ACube Systems website (http://www.acube-systems.biz/)
About A-EON Technology Ltd: A-EON is the developer of the AmigaONE X1000 computer and now the Cyrus Plus motherboard built around Freescale's P3 & P5 QorIQ multi-core PowerPC processors, as well several products for the Classic Amiga market.
A-EON Technology website (http://www.a-eon.com/)
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a joint co-operation agreement to promote the continued development of hardware and software
Yet they haven't contributed that much to the Odyssey bounty which would make their platforms more desirable should it be open-sourced and ported.
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Nicholas both myself and Trevor have contributed to this bounty personally.
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great news, lets hope community expands and follows.. we need new Amiga Owners.
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Nicholas both myself and Trevor have contributed to this bounty personally.
That (and this) doesn't surprise me.
Trevor has admitted candidly in the past that he did not want to cater to Acube's lower end market.
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ACube designed and developed Minimig ?
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ACube designed and developed Minimig ?
Intentionally obfuscate much?
No, Acube just sells the Minimig.
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great news! united we stand, separated ...well you know the rest;)
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Acube were showing their Minimig+ board.
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Acube were showing their Minimig+ board.
Any details on that? Extra RAM and a built in ARM Controller would be ideal.
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Lots of photos on Pianeta Amiga's Facebook page. ;)
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Wait a sec... is Minimig+ the File no.3 thing Acube have had on their front page of their site for the last 3 months?
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@Everblue
yep.
-- eliyahu
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Lots of photos on Pianeta Amiga's Facebook page. ;)
Damn, I'm at work and can't access Facebook.
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No info, just this:
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No info, just this:
Cheers for that!
I see the real CPU is still there, there's the standard PIC socket, a battery for a RTC... Is that a place for a 3rd RAM chip to the left of the traditional two?
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Separated at birth?
(https://scontent-a-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/1475778_337310536411728_728088954_n.jpg)
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/86/Bob%27s_big_boy_statue_burbank_2013.jpg/450px-Bob%27s_big_boy_statue_burbank_2013.jpg)
Seriously! Trevor, where can we buy the Boing apparel? ESPECIALLY the "Breezin" shoes?
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That is a pretty darn impressive outfit. :banana::banana::banana:
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(https://scontent-a-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/1475778_337310536411728_728088954_n.jpg)
Is that uniform only for the High Priests of AmigaOS or can the laymen wear it too? ;)
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I guess I was not aware of a new Minimig. So is there any word on these? Specs, release date, price, etc?
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I guess I was not aware of a new Minimig. So is there any word on these? Specs, release date, price, etc?
Just put all the ports at the back, speed it up, double the Ram and halve the price ;-) Thats all I want!
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A brief minimig+ summary from AlchemieX
http://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2013-11-00021-EN.html
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The Minimig+ "Will not be finished in the near future" A bit dissapointed, it sounds like a nice system, if they can push it out the door for the same money as the current Minimig that'd be great :)
Robert.
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What does the ARM CPU on the Minimig+ do?
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What does the ARM CPU on the Minimig+ do?
Probably the same features as the Arm board on the standard Minimig.
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Probably the same features as the Arm board on the standard Minimig.
and what does the ARM CPU on the standard Minimig do?
I thought it was all done in the FPGA but it seems not. :)
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Separated at birth?
(https://scontent-a-ord.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/1475778_337310536411728_728088954_n.jpg)
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/86/Bob%27s_big_boy_statue_burbank_2013.jpg/450px-Bob%27s_big_boy_statue_burbank_2013.jpg)
Seriously! Trevor, where can we buy the Boing apparel? ESPECIALLY the "Breezin" shoes?
He has got some serious competition.
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and what does the ARM CPU on the standard Minimig do?
I thought it was all done in the FPGA but it seems not. :)
The ARM controller fits in place of the PIC that loads the Minimig BIN file into the FPGA. I think there may be a few feature's not listed below.
From Acube's site;
The ARM controller will enhance your Amiga hardware emulation experience! It gives your Minimig all these new features:
- emulates four floppy drives
- adds write support to harddrive and floppy disks
- allow increase of the CPU speed from 7.09 to 49.63 MHz with a 4kb zero waitstate cpu cache
- allows usage of long floppy file names
- allows usage of directories on the SD card
- allows unlimited number of files by directory
- support for 2 HDF files
- fast firmware boot
https://acube-systemsbiz.serversicuro.it/shop/en/82-arm-controller.html
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Well news, and I hope that we are enjoy from this union good Amiga machines a good prices.
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Cheers Rob. :)
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Well news, and I hope that we are enjoy from this union good Amiga machines a good prices.
Good prices are usually the result of increased competition rather than reduced competition.
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Acube and A-Eon were never competing anyway, and Trevor has more than demonstrated that he's not profiteering off his machines with his X1000 release (which has a very high price tag for the user, but also a very high price tag for Trevor - he's definitely not getting rich off that - if he were profiteering production would have stopped after the first run when the price of the PA6T CPUs rocketed.)
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Acube and A-Eon were never competing anyway, and Trevor has more than demonstrated that he's not profiteering off his machines with his X1000 release (which has a very high price tag for the user, but also a very high price tag for Trevor - he's definitely not getting rich off that - if he were profiteering production would have stopped after the first run when the price of the PA6T CPUs rocketed.)
Either way prices are still going to be high as usual.
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Either way prices are still going to be high as usual.
That's just the nature of designing and building new hardware, unfortunately....
Luckily we have MorphOS as well so that people content with lower-priced and older but still powerful hardware can still get their fix. Everybody wins, really :)
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Those are some really red and white pants..
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The Minimig+ "Will not be finished in the near future" A bit dissapointed, it sounds like a nice system, if they can push it out the door for the same money as the current Minimig that'd be great :)
Robert.
That's the sad part. Guess I'll pick up the current Mid (with all the expensive expansions) and settle for less for a while.
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Be glad that there are developments, whether expensive or slow.
We represent a very small market and those that catering to it are doing so solely out of their own interest in it.
We still bath in the afterglow of a good experience.
Anybody got a cigarette?
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Be glad that there are developments, whether expensive or slow.
We represent a very small market and those that catering to it are doing so solely out of their own interest in it.
We still bath in the afterglow of a good experience.
Anybody got a cigarette?
Very true, I understand the cost, it's just I'd rather throw that money on something with more RAM than 4Mb, but then again, it's hard to keep an old Amiga stable, and it's hard to find people to repair it and harder to find people to repair it within a resonable time frame.
I waited about 3 years to get my A600 back. Then when I got it back, I plugged in my IDE, cable but could not get my 600 to see the HD. I pulled it out and out came two of the pins with it, so alas I get to ship the damn thing off again and Lord knows when I'll get it back. In fact all my Amigas need re-capped or something at this point. Annoying!
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It is good to see the Minimig getting a makeover as the design is more or less what Dennis rolled out all those years ago.
I look at my board with the soldered RAM chips and patch wire, the cut solder joint to boost the HDF speed and the ARM board and think back to my first days with it when it couldn't even write to an ADF, there was no HDF file, no turbo mode, no detailed on-screen configuration and having to use a serial link to a PC to reflash it. It has come a long way, but what are "optional extras" really need to be "standard" now.
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Either way prices are still going to be high as usual.
The only answer to price is porting to standard hardware. And unlike Apple they didn't make the code portable, so it would cost too much upfront.
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The only answer to price is porting to standard hardware. And unlike Apple they didn't make the code portable, so it would cost too much upfront.
Actually, a cheaper PPC processor would not hurt either.
The PA6T used in the X1000 is really pricey and the communications oriented Qorlq chips he intends to use in its successor are only a little less costly.
The AMCC chips Acube uses are much cheaper, but the performance is not that great.
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Sounds like good news.
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And unlike Apple they didn't make the code portable, so it would cost too much upfront.
Have you seen the code?
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Price is matter of quantities. Hope with aeon support could help with that, producing low end PPC mobos in china would cost about 30€ per mobo.
But would 10 000 OS4 capable mobos sell?
I would like to see threads like this without x86 fantasies and whining
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producing low end PPC mobos in china would cost about 30€ per mobo
Not in my experience. Only if you produce 100,000s of units.
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I belive 10k would be enough.
But to to even consider that it would require OS to be mature enough ie. OS4.2
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I belive 10k would be enough.
But to to even consider that it would require OS to be mature enough ie. OS4.2
Please give me the manufacturer details and I will get on with the job!
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Because of my work, I know some, but price depends a shematics and parts.
About a year ago we calculated theoretical price to Sam 440ep flex type board, without extra parts and connectors. But surely you know that this is not a problem, even 10 000 can be too much. Maybe today it could be 460 type board?
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Price is matter of quantities. Hope with aeon support could help with that, producing low end PPC mobos in china would cost about 30€ per mobo.
They'd be very poor quality, though, at that price, and they'd need to be in massive quantities. Also the PPC used would have to be very low end as the SOC PPCs are quite unusual (embedded PPCs aren't, but ones with all the buses that we need are).
And that's even before you think about design costs.
30 Euros per mobo I'm afraid is way below the costs of anything usable.... otherwise Acube or somebody would have done that already.
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Price is matter of quantities. Hope with aeon support could help with that, producing low end PPC mobos in china would cost about 30€ per mobo.
But would 10 000 OS4 capable mobos sell?
I would like to see threads like this without x86 fantasies and whining
If you have something produced in large quantities you don't have to go to China for low prices. Raspberrry Pi production took place about 15 miles away from AmigaKit.
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Price is matter of quantities. Hope with aeon support could help with that, producing low end PPC mobos in china would cost about 30€ per mobo.
But would 10 000 OS4 capable mobos sell?
I would like to see threads like this without x86 fantasies and whining
YES! Damn another fellow spirit that is tired of hearing calls for what would be a massive re-write of two operating systems.
Now, as to pricing, A-eon isn't interested in lower end models.
I've exchanged messages with Trevor on this.
Now, while we don't have volume, there are two PPC processors that can be had at about a third of the one Trevor is using.
They use the same core as well.
The down side to this is that their max operating speed is only 1.4 GHz (not the 2.2 GHz of the units Trevor is using).
This would make them quite a bit better than Acube's Applied Micro based boards, but not as good as A-eon's boards.
And while MorphOS ports just require funding, there is no guarantee that Hyperion would consider supporting such a board.
Final note - Yes Chinese production is cheap.
I have some contacts there.
But these boards would require several layers and very fine traces, so the costs go up.
Still, a board should be producible in 50 lot quantities for around $500 (maybe slightly more) cost.
That is certainly an improvement on the over $2500 a Nemo motherboard costs.
Again, we are not really making a fair comparison since these would be better compared to a Sam460.
And at retail, would likely have to be sold at SAM460 prices (unless someone producing them was doing so with a zero profit orientation).
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If you have something produced in large quantities you don't have to go to China for low prices. Raspberrry Pi production took place about 15 miles away from AmigaKit.
Which Raspberry Pi?
I know of several Chinese versions.
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Which Raspberry Pi?
I know of several Chinese versions.
The ones manufactured by Sony UK in Pencoed.
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They'd be very poor quality, though, at that price, and they'd need to be in massive quantities. Also the PPC used would have to be very low end as the SOC PPCs are quite unusual (embedded PPCs aren't, but ones with all the buses that we need are).
And that's even before you think about design costs.
30 Euros per mobo I'm afraid is way below the costs of anything usable.... otherwise Acube or somebody would have done that already.
Pretty much every electronical vehicle you use, is made in china. Almost every x86 mobo you can found is made in china. Talking about quality is relative.
ACube already did this, but they manufactured mobos in Italy and ordered very low quantities with quite lot extra features, wich are not useable with us. I must admit that quality is super good.
What I think, is that when OS4.2 comes out there is a good change to get new users wich OS4 needs, so getting some low cost mobos would be important. Could be good idee to sell mobos for very low profit, just to make future more brightening. Maximize volume etc.
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@ (http://www.amiga.org/forums/member.php?u=929)utri007 (http://www.amiga.org/forums/member.php?u=929)
I tend to agree with you, there is no inherent advantage to making a board in Italy versus making one in China.
Increasingly, I find myself relying on Chinese vendors.
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The ones manufactured by Sony UK in Pencoed.
So while they are the one that signed the agreement with the MCU vendor, you're dismissing all the knock offs?
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@ (http://www.amiga.org/forums/member.php?u=929)utri007 (http://www.amiga.org/forums/member.php?u=929)
I tend to agree with you, there is no inherent advantage to making a board in Italy versus making one in China.
Increasingly, I find myself relying on Chinese vendors.
Most likely factory in Italy is able to produce small numbers of mobos, when chinesse factories requires bigger orders. Minium is about 10 000
Nobody hasn't wanted to pay for 10 000 mobos, for several reasons. Hardware must be ready, it is a different thing to order 50 mobos and if there is a problem fix it to next order, than order 10 000 mobos and found a problem.
Best solutin would be produce 50 mobos in Italy, test them with users and then order rest of them from china.
Ofcourse this would cost more than 30€ per mobo, but calculation costs is sometimes relative to marketing strategy.
Another problem is that OS4 is not mature enough, there is no sense to produce 10 000 mobos without Radeon HD drivers, Office suite, etc. Five years ago it would have more sense, Sam 440ep Flex level mobo WITHOUT fpga, extra connectors, second land, it would had been cost that 30€ per mobo. In that time there was a Radeon 9250 drivers wich was OK
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When the Pegasos 2 G4 was introduced a decade ago, its introduction price for end-users was €499 EUR (~$680 USD in todays rate) including VAT (was it Luxembourg's 15% rate?). Genesi's price strategy was to set an initial high price and then lower it over time (a "skimming" price strategy). Back then I do recall that I thought it was kind of expensive for a motherboard/CPU combo, especially by the value of the money back then, but it was a small volume product for a narrow market, so high prices are to be expected, right? And when I say "high prices", I mean compared to x86 (not to PPC Mac's). It was neither designed nor manufactured in China, it was all European. After a while the price came down a bit, in *at least* 2 price drops IIRC. And when the Pegasos 2 was finally discontinued, the remaining stock was sold out at $399 USD, brand new.
At one time, some people in the Amiga community begged Genesi/bPlan (who was then completely focused on development based on ARM CPU's) to make another PPC motherboard. They thought this would be a bad idea themselves since they didn't see any business incentives for it (it would be an "impossible" product), but they finally agreed to do it provided that the community would cover the development cost.
The computer would be based on the Freescale 8610, one of the most potent and cost effective e600 CPU's at that time, and it would have the following specs:
- Flex form factor - MPC8610@1Ghz (or faster if it is economically feasable)
- 4x SATA 2 connectors
- 4x USB2 ports
- 2x Gigabit Ethernet ports
- Sound ports (Audio Out, Mic In)
- 1 PCI slot
- 1 PCI-e slot 1x
- 1 PCI-e slot 8x
This would be realized through a six (?) step bounty scheme, that in the end would add up to $60,000 (IIRC, or was it EUR, can't remember, doesn't really matter anyway). The total cost would have been about 20 A1 X1000 systems, give or take some. And since it would have been a community founded project, the entire HW would be completely open source and free for grab for anyone who wanted to make a production run, like A-cube did with the Mini Mig.
Just wanted to put things into perspective.
:)
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When the Pegasos 2 G4 was introduced a decade ago, its introduction price for end-users was €499 EUR (~$680 USD in todays rate) including VAT (was it Luxembourg's 15% rate?). Genesi's price strategy was to set an initial high price and then lower it over time (a "skimming" price strategy).
Considering the cost of development and production, the pricing of the Pegasos mainboards was very aggressive and chosen to help grow the market more quickly. If the product had been positioned as a niche product with small growth potential instead, the price would have had to be considerably higher than it was.
Back then I do recall that I thought it was kind of expensive for a motherboard/CPU combo, especially by the value of the money back then, but it was a small volume product for a narrow market, so high prices are to be expected, right? And when I say "high prices", I mean compared to x86 (not to PPC Mac's).
Everything is relative. If you compare the cost of a passively cooled Pegasos mainboard / processor combination to a passively cooled x86 solution from back then, it was not expensive at all. Even today, "silent computing" afficionados are willing to pay quite a premium.
It was neither designed nor manufactured in China, it was all European. After a while the price came down a bit, in *at least* 2 price drops IIRC. And when the Pegasos 2 was finally discontinued, the remaining stock was sold out at $399 USD, brand new.
This was via direct sales to consumers á la DELL, however. There were retailers that were not too happy about the price drops because their profit margins were rather slim to begin with and some of them still had mainboards in stock that they had bought at prices that did not allow them to match Genesi's lower pricing.
As happens often with startup companies, the distribution strategy for the Pegasos changed frequently from a traditional retail-focused approach, to an elaborate affiliate program, and direct sales.
At one time, some people in the Amiga community begged Genesi/bPlan (who was then completely focused on development based on ARM CPU's) to make another PPC motherboard. They thought this would be a bad idea themselves since they didn't see any business incentives for it (it would be an "impossible" product), but they finally agreed to do it provided that the community would cover the development cost.
A former Genesi contractor had an idea for a new PowerPC mainboard and asked bplan for a price quote. After a careful review and discussions on websites such as MorphZone, he concluded that it was too risky to proceed. This was the starting point for the bounty project.
This would be realized through a six (?) step bounty scheme, that in the end would add up to $60,000 (IIRC, or was it EUR, can't remember, doesn't really matter anyway).
The cost would have been about 100.000 US dollars.
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@Andre.Siegel
Well, I still have a hard time believing that you would have to manufacture the motherboards in China in volumes of tens of thousands per batch in order to build a PPC motherboard that *doesn't* cost €1,950 EUR (incl the UK VAT) in a Christmas Sale special price, especially so if you're only looking to break even (as has been said about Trevor's ambitions about the X1000). The new motherboard has been said to be a bit cheaper, but not a lot. I don't buy it (in double meaning). I think something is terribly wrong with this picture. Either design decisions, management, or the fees of Varisys for doing the work.
"Trevor said that it cost over US$400,000 to develop the X1000. (http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=36690&forum=2&start=80#685861)"
"A-EON Technology & Ultra Varisys sign $1.2M agreement for new PowerPC hardware. (http://a-eon.com/18-10-2013-3.pdf)"
This can only lead to the price tags we have seen from them, especially if only a few hundreds of OS4 users are supposed to pay the bill. Maybe Trevor should have asked around some more before settling with Varisys, asked for quotations from more than one design company? That's a management thing. And maybe the design should have been a bit simpler? Did anyone even ask for a "Xorro"/"Xena" in the first place? And after having done the $3,000 X1000 systems with this crazy design from Varisys, why do it all over again for a new computer?
I mean, *this* is totally crazy:
http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/mac-pro
It's a whopping $2,999!!!
But that's a completely unique custom design with...
3.7GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon E5 processor
12GB 1866MHz DDR3 ECC memory
Dual AMD FirePro D300 with 2GB GDDR5 VRAM each
256GB PCIe-based flash storage
...and it *includes* the Apple brand tax!
Again, something is severely wrong with the "AmigaOne" picture...
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I wonder why Trevor didn't keep the money in the community and ask bPlan or even Acube to design and build the X1000 or the new board either? I'm sure either company would have loved the business and they certainly know a tad more about Amigas than Varisys. Probably would have been cheaper too.
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I mean, *this* is totally crazy:
http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/mac-pro
One of these two (http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/trash-can-that-looks-like-new-mac-pro-causes-a-stir-in-japan/) I will likely be buying before the other. I'll let you guess which one.
Hint: I'm a tightwad. :D
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Well, I still have a hard time believing that you would have to manufacture the motherboards in China in volumes of tens of thousands per batch in order to build a PPC motherboard that *doesn't* cost €1,950 EUR (incl the UK VAT) in a Christmas Sale special price
The cost for the PA6T is said to have floated between 600 USD and 1000 USD (http://obligement.free.fr/articles_traduction/itwdickinson2_en.php). If someone would have told them in advance how volatile the pricing would be, I am certain that A-Eon would have picked a different processor.
"Trevor said that it cost over US$400,000 to develop the X1000. (http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=36690&forum=2&start=80#685861)"
Trevor himself stated that the engineering costs were about 200.000 USD (http://obligement.free.fr/articles_traduction/itwdickinson2_en.php), so around half of the amount you referenced. Considering the complexity of the mainboard and in comparison to the proposed MPC8610 mainboard to be designed by bplan, this number does not appear to be out of the ordinary at all.
"A-EON Technology & Ultra Varisys sign $1.2M agreement for new PowerPC hardware. (http://a-eon.com/18-10-2013-3.pdf)"
I would like to emphasize that the 1.2M figure refers to manufacturing / production as well.
This can only lead to the price tags we have seen from them, especially if only a few hundreds of OS4 users are supposed to pay the bill. Maybe Trevor should have asked around some more before settling with Varisys, asked for quotations from more than one design company?
If you take the 100.000 USD quote from bplan and assume you can sell 200 mainboards, each board would have to cost an additional 500 USD just to cover the engineering fees. I do not think the Varisys quote was excessively high, especially since the company is known to be capable and trustworthy, which also has to be considered (potential financial risk vs. potential savings).
And maybe the design should have been a bit simpler? Did anyone even ask for a "Xorro"/"Xena" in the first place? And after having done the $3,000 X1000 systems with this crazy design from Varisys, why do it all over again for a new computer?
I assume the management made a deliberate decision to not directly compete with ACube.
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Actually, if it had been up to Paul Gentle at Varisys, the X1000 would have had a Qorlq processor (like its sucessor will).
The choice of processors seems heavily influenced by Hyperion and the previous annoucements of Ack Systems and Amiga Incorporated.
But we all benefit by the delay in moving to this line as it has matured and now has features that rival (and in some cases, surpass) the PA6T.
This will still not be a cheap board.
Even if we were to move to a completely zero profit, community driven model we would not bring the price of a similar design down significantly.
That is just how it is.
AND...that being said, I personally have always wanted an X1000, I will try to budget to afford its sucessor, and I wish Trevor and Paul all the luck in the world with this venture.
Expensive? Yes, but isn't it cool?
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Expensive? Yes, but isn't it cool?
Finally, someone speaks the way I think. :)
If you want something out of the ordinary, you have to pay out of the ordinary prices.
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Actually, if it had been up to Paul Gentle at Varisys, the X1000 would have had a Qorlq processor (like its sucessor will).
The choice of processors seems heavily influenced by Hyperion and the previous annoucements of Ack Systems and Amiga Incorporated.
But we all benefit by the delay in moving to this line as it has matured and now has features that rival (and in some cases, surpass) the PA6T.
This will still not be a cheap board.
Even if we were to move to a completely zero profit, community driven model we would not bring the price of a similar design down significantly.
That is just how it is.
AND...that being said, I personally have always wanted an X1000, I will try to budget to afford its sucessor, and I wish Trevor and Paul all the luck in the world with this venture.
Expensive? Yes, but isn't it cool?
Cool? In what sense? Because of PPC?
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Finally, someone speaks the way I think. :)
If you want something out of the ordinary, you have to pay out of the ordinary prices.
I will propably never understand why PPC is so cool...
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I will propably never understand why PPC is so cool...
You're obviously not an assembler programmer!
It's more to do with the whole thing, though. The boards that we have now are all really good quality - certainly my Sam440ep is a lovely little machine, and it's obviously different to your standard PC board. My currently-unused X1000 looks to be similar in that respect (not tried it yet as I can't afford the case, PSU and RAM!). I wouldn't get excited about a bog-standard PC mobo, even if it were running AmigaOS. No idea why, just the way it is!
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No i only program in high-level languages and am not programming in assembler (and no intention to either).
I respect it that some people think that way even if I personal do not understand it. My last "real" Amiga had a 68030, every other processor is the same to me. You program Assembler on your PPC?
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You're obviously not an assembler programmer!
It's more to do with the whole thing, though. The boards that we have now are all really good quality - certainly my Sam440ep is a lovely little machine, and it's obviously different to your standard PC board. My currently-unused X1000 looks to be similar in that respect (not tried it yet as I can't afford the case, PSU and RAM!). I wouldn't get excited about a bog-standard PC mobo, even if it were running AmigaOS. No idea why, just the way it is!
I'm as assembly guy and I think the PPC is a horrid ISA... A quick look at MIPS and ARM show you how an instruction set is supposed to be done :)
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I'm as assembly guy and I think the PPC is a horrid ISA... A quick look at MIPS and ARM show you how an instruction set is supposed to be done :)
I presume you havent tried TI C64x instruction set... it is easy to understand but difficult to optimize. But who is coding in machine language anymore? C compilers generate better code than an average machine language coder ever could.
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I'm as assembly guy and I think the PPC is a horrid ISA... A quick look at MIPS and ARM show you how an instruction set is supposed to be done :)
Heresy! :)
ISA's were perfected when Motorola designed the 68000.
I think it was you Matt that once said that AMD should have "Athlonized" the 68k and not the 386.
I couldn't agree more with that statement.
Now where did I put my pipe and slippers?
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that being said, I personally have always wanted an X1000, I will try to budget to afford its sucessor, and I wish Trevor and Paul all the luck in the world with this venture.
True story! I saw one last night for the first time, it was pretty amazing, if I had a few $ grand blowing a hole in my pocket I'd love to have one! :D
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To be honest, I know that even if mobo production would cost 30€ / mobo, it would still be quite expensive, after taxes, design costs, profit to resellers, OS4 etc.
I was hoping that after investment to OS4 hardware, Aeon & aCube could see it as a feasible move to sell some low-end economy priced mobos, just to get bigger userbase to OS4
As I said when OS4.2 is ready it could have some sense to do it.
10 000 mobos with OS4, price of 250€ would make some economic loss. When we compare it to X1000 wich has bring joy to several hundred users, could this bring joy to several thousands with similar change to economic loss. Trevor has already done similar move.
If we thing this in bigger scale, it could be smart move to sell that mobo as a complete computer. 50€ more and it would be a complete computer, wich wouldn't sound that expensive. Lets say AmigaOne X600 could cost 300€ wit OS4.2 that is not expensive. Complete computer could also attract people outside of our community, those who still have some nostalgic feelings to Amiga. Who would bought A500 if it would sold only as a mobo?
But this is only my 5 cents, I'm not investing to Amiga OS development, so all the honor them who do so.
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True story! I saw one last night for the first time, it was pretty amazing, if I had a few $ grand blowing a hole in my pocket I'd love to have one! :D
I'd love one just for the nerd factor but I've got too many kids to justify spending that amount on a computer.
OS4.1 on my Pegasos II is enough for me.
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Expensive? Yes, but isn't it cool?
Yes, but only if you have a choice. The problem of OS4 is there is only überexpensive hardware, problem of MorphOS is there is only used rig (don't count he last Efikas though and am glad the Sam460 port is proceeding again).
The other thing is that I indeed have a faible for some exotic hardware, but an even stronger faible for a fast Amigaish System. In theory I would love an Amiga on Power(n) (with n most current). But in reality given the choice between an "Amiga" for 3000 US$ running an a semi fast processor that even is not fully supported or run an Amiga on a "boring" pc/Apple that just flies and dosn't drain my wallet completely dry I knew which one I'd chose...
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The cost for the PA6T is said to have floated between 600 USD and 1000 USD (http://obligement.free.fr/articles_traduction/itwdickinson2_en.php). If someone would have told them in advance how volatile the pricing would be
AFAIK, the PA6T was never truly on the open market before the Apple takeover, at least not at the time of X1000, hence there was no real market functions (supply/demand) for setting the price, right? Apple bought and effectively closed PA-Semi in April 2008. The first "Nemo" motherboard prototype was built mid-2009. By August 2011 the first production run of revision 2.1 for "the AmigaOne X1000 beta test team" was made, more than three years after the CPU's fate was sealed.
"If someone would have told them in advance how volatile the pricing would be, I am certain that A-Eon would have picked a different processor"
:confused:
IIRC Varisys had a rather limited stack of CPU's from the 2007 shipment, the price they asked for them was IMHO very high (considering what the CPU offered in terms of performance and obvious longevity), and it was probably the only source (which I suppose is a kind of "market function" after all, it's called "monopoly"). At some point (or more than one) it seems Varisys simply decided to raise the price, probably as the limited stock decreased (since it would never, ever increase again). A-eon paid more money for a *PA6T CPU alone*, than an end user would pay for an entire Pegasos 2 motherboard including 7447 G4 CPU at its introduction price in *2004* (including VAT), and this was the *cheapest* price they got. *Then* it almost *doubled*.
I mean...
:crazy:
I am certain that A-Eon would have picked a different processor
I am actually kind of certain that the CPU choice was more of a "hype" thing (the new "Amiga" should have the most talked-about PPC CPU of the time), as well as the "Xorro"/"Xena" was a "hype" thing (Amiga Classic -> "Zorro", AmigaOne -> "Xorro"). It's just a feeling I have. Maybe because I simply can't identify any other logical reasons whatsoever.
Trevor himself stated that the engineering costs were about 200.000 USD (http://obligement.free.fr/articles_traduction/itwdickinson2_en.php), so around half of the amount you referenced. Considering the complexity of the mainboard and in comparison to the proposed MPC8610 mainboard to be designed by bplan, this number does not appear to be out of the ordinary at all.
OK, if that's true I stand corrected about the engineering costs, but it's still all "wrong", I mean, you can't spend $200,000 on engineering alone for a motherboard that can only sell in a hundred or so units (there was always an upper limit on available CPU's, even if they would reach out beyond the OS4 community)! And *then* another $600-$,1000 for the CPU alone. And *then* everything else on top of that! The thought is absurd, and it's certainly nothing to applaud IMHO, someone should have hit the emergency breaks at the first price quote from Varisys, long before the development even started! And the complexity is hardly anything positive here either, why is a complex design with features that nobody asked for or even can figure out a purpose for better than a simpler but cheaper design like the 8610 concept? Especially when the latter will probably outperform or at least about break even with the former, and cost *a lot* less?
I would like to emphasize that the 1.2M figure refers to manufacturing / production as well.
OK, since you emphasized that, how big is that production run? A hundred units? Two hundreds? Three hundred? More?
Or perhaps just the mentioned handful of prototype boards/SW development boards?
:confused:
If you take the 100.000 USD quote from bplan and assume you can sell 200 mainboards, each board would have to cost an additional 500 USD just to cover the engineering fees
But had bPlan developed the motherboard "in-house" for "themselves" (read: their own business), they would probably have "priced" the development costs differently, right? Then the *monetary costs* wouldn't have been $100.000 USD any more, it would be more a matter of unpaid work hours and materials. Like Jens Schönfeld probably also does, or Fab when developing Odyssey. Had Fab put a market price tag on all the work hours of his time (mostly evenings and weekends probably, making them even more "expensive") he spent on Odyssey based on the hourly salary of a senior western SW developer, it would hardly be open sourced at just a mere €7,500 EUR. And MorphOS would cost a lot more than the current €50-€111 EUR for the same reason. I have built my own house "myself". Granted, I paid some carpenters, electricians, plummer's, etc to do some (quite a lot) of the work, but I did a very much of the work myself. I did never put a price on my own "development", I invested my own time into the project. Had I paid craftsmen to do every single thing, it would have been a lot more expensive, and even if I could have afforded it myself, the price I would have to ask at a sale in order to not make a loss when/if I sell it would probably have been *way out* of consumer's reach in my area, hence the house would have ended up unsalable. But if I'd sell my house at the current going prices in the area, I would probably make a nice little "profit", since I didn't price my own work/time, or priced it very low, compared to a "commercial carpenter". Whatever I get between what I paid for the fixed costs of having craftsmen doing some of the work, and the final end-user price the new house owner pays me, will be my "profit", the cost of labor isn't there, it was never priced. Or rather, it would have become priced by that "profit", *that's* what my labor turned out to be worth. I actually think most small/independent HW/SW entrepreneurs reason a bit the same way, and are happy with that...?
I assume the management made a deliberate decision to not directly compete with ACube.
Ah, a "price ring" cartel, you mean?
;)
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Here is where having talked to Paul Gentle (@ Varisys) before their connection to A-eon was announced, and since then having exchanged a few messages with Trevor helps.
AFAIK, the PA6T was never truly on the open market before the Apple takeover, at least not at the time of X1000, hence there was no real market functions (supply/demand) for setting the price, right? Apple bought and effectively closed PA-Semi in April 2008. The first "Nemo" motherboard prototype was built mid-2009. By August 2011 the first production run of revision 2.1 for "the AmigaOne X1000 beta test team" was made, more than three years after the CPU's fate was sealed.
"If someone would have told them in advance how volatile the pricing would be, I am certain that A-Eon would have picked a different processor"
:confused:IIRC Varisys had a rather limited stack of CPU's from the 2007 shipment, the price they asked for them was IMHO very high...
Wow! Who have YOU been talking to? Nope, wrong!
PA Semi announced after the Apple buyout that it would only take orders from established customers. And that at a later date a final order date would be announced.
A-eon's 'purchase' was actually made by Varisys as they had worked with this processor before and were therefore...wait for it...established customers.
I won't delve into your little sermon on market economics, but the last PA6Ts were bought on the open market by Trevors firm because they had exhusted Varisys' supply. And they paid more for these than the original units (as no more were being manufacturer the price went up).
A cost, I might add, that Trevor bore on himself rather than pass it on to X1000 buyers.
I am actually kind of certain that the CPU choice was more of a "hype" thing (the new "Amiga" should have the most talked-about PPC CPU of the time), as well as the "Xorro"/"Xena" was a "hype" thing (Amiga Classic -> "Zorro", AmigaOne -> "Xorro"). It's just a feeling I have. Maybe because I simply can't identify any other logical reasons whatsoever.
Did you even read my post?
The PA6T was Hyperion's preference.
And, at the time, it was the best choice.
OK, if that's true I stand corrected about the engineering costs, but it's still all "wrong", I mean, you can't spend $200,000 on engineering alone for a motherboard that can only sell in a hundred or so units (there was always an upper limit on available CPU's, even if they would reach out beyond the OS4 community)! And *then* another $600-$,1000 for the CPU alone. And *then* everything else on top of that! The thought is absurd, and it's certainly nothing to applaud IMHO, someone should have hit the emergency breaks at the first price quote from Varisys, long before the development even started! And the complexity is hardly anything positive here either, why is a complex design with features that nobody asked for or even can figure out a purpose for better than a simpler but cheaper design like the 8610 concept? Especially when the latter will probably outperform or at least about break even with the former, and cost *a lot* less?
Um, just how much do you think it takes to keep a handful of engineers gainfully employed?
And, have you ever worked for a firm that built custom motherboards (because I did).
These figures are actually rather low.
But had bPlan developed the motherboard "in-house" for "themselves" (read: their own business), they would probably have "priced" the development costs differently, right? Then the *monetary costs* wouldn't have been $100.000 USD any more, it would be more a matter of unpaid work hours and materials. Like Jens Schönfeld probably also does, or Fab when developing Odyssey. Had Fab put a market price tag on all the work hours of his time (mostly evenings and weekends probably, making them even more "expensive") he spent on Odyssey based on the hourly salary of a senior western SW developer, it would hardly be open sourced at just a mere €7,500 EUR. And MorphOS would cost a lot more than the current €50-€111 EUR for the same reason. I have built my own house "myself". Granted, I paid some carpenters, electricians, plummer's, etc to do some (quite a lot) of the work, but I did a very much of the work myself. I did never put a price on my own "development", I invested my own time into the project. Had I paid craftsmen to do every single thing, it would have been a lot more expensive, and even if I could have afforded it myself, the price I would have to ask at a sale in order to not make a loss when/if I sell it would probably have been *way out* of consumer's reach in my area, hence the house would have ended up unsalable. But if I'd sell my house at the current going prices in the area, I would probably make a nice little "profit", since I didn't price my own work/time, or priced it very low, compared to a "commercial carpenter". Whatever I get between what I paid for the fixed costs of having craftsmen doing some of the work, and the final end-user price the new house owner pays me, will be my "profit", the cost of labor isn't there, it was never priced. Or rather, it would have become priced by that "profit", *that's* what my labor turned out to be worth. I actually think most small/independent HW/SW entrepreneurs reason a bit the same way, and are happy with that...?
Stated simply, you appear to have no concept how a business works, how costs are accounted for and handled, or the factors related to pricing a product.
And I assure you that you don't need the 16 credits of Economics I had to understand it (some people understand economics intuitively).
All costs have to be paid for.
You have very limited production.
AND a high cost for materials.
No conspiracy.
If you don't like it, don't buy it.
There is always Acube (on a value per dollar basis just as expensive, but a lower end cost).
Jim
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Heresy! :)
ISA's were perfected when Motorola designed the 68000.
I think it was you Matt that once said that AMD should have "Athlonized" the 68k and not the 386.
I couldn't agree more with that statement.
Now where did I put my pipe and slippers?
Definitely sounds like something I would have said, a search on this forum will provide evidence :)
I think Athlonising the 68k would have been amazing, but it would have lead to similar problems that both intel and AMD have now... Lovely computing performance but at a terrible thermal and electrical cost :(
Though it would have given us a solid platform for development... Look at the new ARM v8 ISA, it's actually a bit nasty compared to the ARM v7, but it was developed after analyzing real code output from compilers and seeing how to get serious performance in a low energy budget :)
-edit- Forgot to mention that I have an ARM v8 chip here, and it is something else in performance... In a phone too!!! :-D
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PA Semi announced after the Apple buyout that it would only take orders from established customers. And that at a later date a final order date would be announced.
Yeah, that's really a good sign of a solid and trustworthy longevity...
:insane: :crazy:
they paid more for these than the original units (as no more were being manufacturer the price went up).
Well, that's what happens when there isn't a properly functioning market in place. And this was *no* surprize, everyone (well, many of us at least, go back in time in the forum archives and look yourself) knew this would happen and warned about it (or "trolled" about it, depending on who you ask I guess).
The PA6T was Hyperion's preference. And, at the time, it was the best choice.
It was an obvious stillborn. It was dead, Jim! Old G4 Macs beats it in single core performance (which is the only thing that counts in an Amiga context) and the *cheapest* initial price was $600. And it was the best choice?
Um, just how much do you think it takes to keep a handful of engineers gainfully employed?
And, have you ever worked for a firm that built custom motherboards (because I did).
These figures are actually rather low.
Stated simply, you appear to have no concept how a business works, how costs are accounted for and handled, or the factors related to pricing a product.
And I assure you that you don't need the 16 credits of Economics I had to understand it (some people understand economics intuitively).
All costs have to be paid for.
Wow, I completely failed to get through to you above, didn't I? OK, I'll try again. My whole point above was that it simply isn't possible to think that way in a context of really heavy R&D efforts when there isn't even a market in place to actually carry the costs. And you certainly shouldn't need your 16 credits of Economics to understand that.
If the MorphOS team had properly priced all their work hours from 1999 up until v3.4 according to a proper salary of the senior level, western SW developers they are, and put that cost on the 2000+ MorphOS licenses that has been sold in grand total, what do you think the price of one MorphOS license key would have been? Certainly *not* 50-111 EUR at least, I can assure you that.
And had Fab priced all his work he put into Oddysey in a similar, proper manner, what do you think the price for selling the sources would have been? Certainly not 7500 EUR at least, that's a ridiculous sum if you think that way.
And had bPlan completely outsourced all their Pegasos 2 development to some external company with a work force to provide for, a lot of other over-head costs to cover, and a profit goal on top of that, instead of doing it *themselves*, do you think it would have been possible to introduce the Peg2 at ~$680 incl 15% VAT ("agressively priced" or not)? I'd dare to say: no way!
And had Jens Schönfeld turned to Varisys or whoever and said: "I have this idea of a custom Amiga/C64 floppy controller card, with a PCI interface in one end, and an old Zorro interface in the other so that you could just flip it depending on the computer, or even use the third interface that is an A1200 clock port, and it should have a C64 SID chip on board, and two old C64/Amiga digital joystick connectors, and an Amiga keyboard connector as well, and it should manage 1100 floppy disk formats, can you do that for me?", after all the work requied for that poor Varisys developer who got that on his table to even research what the hell a "Zorro" is, or an "A1200 clock port" is in the first place, then the actual design work on top of that, what do you think the end user price of a single Catweasel of a batch of a few hundred would have been? $1000? $2000? $3000? Would it be worthwhile? And the same with all the other individual computer's stuff. Like the "Commodore One", the C64 gear, the accellerators, etc?
And the stuff from DCE? The Mini Mig? OS4?
It's all the same, *everything* you see around you in this community, all HW, all SW, the OS's, even the forums and other web sites, follows the same laws and principles; the only reason to why it's here, why it's even possible at all, is because everyone behind those things have done the very opposite of what A-eon did, they created the stuff themselves. They built their own houses so to say. There is no market present here, so the very second you introduce market thinking into the equation with your 16 credits of economics, then is when the whole thing collapses with a big bang. Like mixing materia with anti-materia; they can't co-exist together, and the result of mixing them may not be very pleasant. Just like the X1000.
Acube makes their own HW AFAIK. That's the way to go. If you lack that ability, you could perhaps have found other ways. Like refurbishing second hand Macs, put the HW in a new case with your own sticker on it, and offer that machine for $500 or whatever. Entrepreneurship and management. In a non-existing market. Paying $1,200,000 for a second round of anti-materia will just create another bang, another abomination that will take the platform exactly nowhere (except perhaps backwards because of people leaving when they see no hope of a future anyway). And maybe the "market" for $3,000 OS4 systems is a bit saturated now? Maybe those who actually has the possibility to pay that kind of money for something like the X1000/OS4 has already done it?
Ask "vox", maybe he is up for a second run?
;)
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Definitely sounds like something I would have said, a search on this forum will provide evidence :)
I think Athlonising the 68k would have been amazing, but it would have lead to similar problems that both intel and AMD have now... Lovely computing performance but at a terrible thermal and electrical cost :(
Though it would have given us a solid platform for development... Look at the new ARM v8 ISA, it's actually a bit nasty compared to the ARM v7, but it was developed after analyzing real code output from compilers and seeing how to get serious performance in a low energy budget :)
-edit- Forgot to mention that I have an ARM v8 chip here, and it is something else in performance... In a phone too!!! :-D
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=478005&postcount=10 :)
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OK, if that's true I stand corrected about the engineering costs, but it's still all "wrong", I mean, you can't spend $200,000 on engineering alone for a motherboard that can only sell in a hundred or so units (there was always an upper limit on available CPU's, even if they would reach out beyond the OS4 community)! And *then* another $600-$,1000 for the CPU alone. And *then* everything else on top of that!
If enough people bought the product to justify the release of a newer model, perhaps it was not so absurd afterall.
Either the initial investment was completely recouped or the investors did not mind spending money on a project that they enjoy. If someone is so successful in his or her primary career that he or she could run a non-profitable computer hardware business "just for fun", who are we to tell this person to not do it?
But had bPlan developed the motherboard "in-house" for "themselves" (read: their own business), they would probably have "priced" the development costs differently, right? Then the *monetary costs* wouldn't have been $100.000 USD any more, it would be more a matter of unpaid work hours and materials. Like Jens Schönfeld probably also does, or Fab when developing Odyssey. Had Fab put a market price tag on all the work hours of his time (mostly evenings and weekends probably, making them even more "expensive") he spent on Odyssey based on the hourly salary of a senior western SW developer, it would hardly be open sourced at just a mere €7,500 EUR. And MorphOS would cost a lot more than the current €50-€111 EUR for the same reason. I have built my own house "myself". Granted, I paid some carpenters, electricians, plummer's, etc to do some (quite a lot) of the work, but I did a very much of the work myself. I did never put a price on my own "development", I invested my own time into the project. Had I paid craftsmen to do every single thing, it would have been a lot more expensive, and even if I could have afforded it myself, the price I would have to ask at a sale in order to not make a loss when/if I sell it would probably have been *way out* of consumer's reach in my area, hence the house would have ended up unsalable. But if I'd sell my house at the current going prices in the area, I would probably make a nice little "profit", since I didn't price my own work/time, or priced it very low, compared to a "commercial carpenter". Whatever I get between what I paid for the fixed costs of having craftsmen doing some of the work, and the final end-user price the new house owner pays me, will be my "profit", the cost of labor isn't there, it was never priced. Or rather, it would have become priced by that "profit", *that's* what my labor turned out to be worth. I actually think most small/independent HW/SW entrepreneurs reason a bit the same way, and are happy with that...?
I find your entire argumentation to be deeply inconsistent. A few posts back you accused A-Eon of being too incompetent on the management level to ask more than one design house for price quotes, and now you accuse them of not treating it like a hobby and finding people willing to slave away for nothing so they can have a product to sell...
You completely underestimate the complexities of the hardware business. If someone finds a severe bug in the X1000 board design that causes data loss, Varisys are fully liable and they are big enough that A-Eon would have a good chance of receiving funds from them. If you have somebody design something for free, then you are fully liable for any issues with the design. If your hobby hardware designer made a mistake, "free" can turn into "extremely costly". Personally, I would feel very uneasy to pay a six figure sum for a production run of a hardware design that was done by some guy on a shoestring budget. When you are selling custom computer hardware, the designing phase is absolutely crucial and should receive sufficient attention and resources. (Even very experienced engineers can run into expensive hardware problems as the Articia S fiasco showed.)
As far as I can tell, ACube operate more or less the way you outlined. Yet, you are unhappy with their lower pricing as well. I think you have simply unrealistic expectations.
Ah, a "price ring" cartel, you mean?;)
Just regular product positioning based on internal market segmentation analysis.
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I find your entire argumentation to be deeply inconsistent..
You completely underestimate the complexities of the hardware business...
I think you have simply unrealistic expectations...
Thanks Andre,
Sorry for the partial quotes.
Good retort.
And I don't need to make an overly worded response as your "You completely underestimate the complexities of the hardware business" is enough.
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What TMHG propably means it is simply crazy to build custom hardware based on PPC in 2013. It was perhaps a good choice in the nighties but today it is completely unrealistic. Propably (from my point of view despite the efforts needed) MorphOS team will change to ARM or X86/X64 too. AROS is already there. Hyperion and e-on will stick on PPC forever because expecially Hyperion has no resources for the needed change and they would expect someone else to pay for the port (what nobody will do, propably not even Trevor). What the choice of processor... I am self-employed and have to do with small to medium companies, for a company it is critical to easily replace broken hardware, one reason why this hobby system would have no chance to be sold to professionals (besides of price, missing software and so on).
Hardware creation (including needed drivers) is expensive and complex, one reason why custom hardware is not competitive today. Custom hardware only makes sense if it offers real customer value, X1000 or similar does not offer that (at least for the vast majority of potential buyers) and is much too expensive (and "much" is here the polite phrase). I had contact to a number of former amiga-developers (mostly former AmigaOS users) who gave up after the old hardware broke and were not very happy about the strategy and direction. It is a pity that people leave the platform completely instead of changing to MorphOS or AROS.
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It is a pity that people leave the platform completely instead of changing to MorphOS or AROS.
I think everyone that is likely to leave fled long ago.
And the problem marketing new solutions to the diehards is that its never going to have hardware compatibility.
Even the directions the Amiga would have taken had it survived would not have preserved that.
So, a few of us have moved to MorphOS, and eventually that will morph again shedding its compatibility.
Amiga OS4 users can straggle on pretending they are still using an Amiga.
And AROS users can live comfortably acknowledging what many deny, that your best Amiga platform is a PC.
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I think everyone that is likely to leave fled long ago.
And the problem marketing new solutions to the diehards is that its never going to have hardware compatibility.
Even the directions the Amiga would have taken had it survived would not have preserved that.
So, a few of us have moved to MorphOS, and eventually that will morph again shedding its compatibility.
Amiga OS4 users can straggle on pretending they are still using an Amiga.
And AROS users can live comfortably acknowledging what many deny, that your best Amiga platform is a PC.
I'd add that the best Amiga platform is a PC with Amithlon Jim.
Hopefully ARIX can fill the same shoes and more.
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What TMHG propably means it is simply crazy to build custom hardware based on PPC in 2013.
In this particular discussion thread, this was not his argument. In response to people discussing manufacturing in Italy, he specifically referenced the Pegasos 2 mainboard and implicitly put its pricing in relation to Acube and A-EON's offerings.
However, he mistakenly assumed that the Pegasos 2 price included VAT which was not accurate. The order page at pegasosppc.com specifically stated that taxes were not included: Web Archive (http://web.archive.org/web/20031207163810/http://www.pegasosppc.com/store.php)
Also, if you care to compare 2003 prices to 2013 prices in a meaningful way, you actually have to adjust for inflation. 680 USD in 2003 equals 861 USD in 2013 (26.7% cumulative rate of inflation). That would be 630 EUR which is just a mere 50 EUR less than the most expensive mainboard listed in Acube's webshop where prices range between 270 and 679 EUR (excluding taxes).
I am self-employed and have to do with small to medium companies, for a company it is critical to easily replace broken hardware, one reason why this hobby system would have no chance to be sold to professionals (besides of price, missing software and so on).
Frankly, general professional use is out of the scrope for the discussed operating systems in any case. These are technical solutions for hobby use or, as I like to say, "Recreational Computing". They are the computer equivalent of quad bikes. Highly impractical for daily commuting in many areas, but some people greatly enjoy to ride one on weekends nevertheless.
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What TMHG propably means it is simply crazy to build custom hardware based on PPC in 2013.
Why?
Acube and A-Eon seem to be doing ok. Business is about finding a niche where demand exists. They have both proven that demand does exist by their continued development of new boards.
I for one would rather pay more for something special than be tied to commodity hardware. My Amiga to me is a hobby - a hobby is not always about being cost-efficient.
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...These are technical solutions for hobby use or, as I like to say, "Recreational Computing". They are the computer equivalent of quad bikes. Highly impractical for daily commuting in many areas, but some people greatly enjoy to ride one on weekends nevertheless.
Fabulous way of putting it.
"They are the computer equivalent of quad bikes"
Yes, it would be silly to compare an X1000 or a SAM to a mainstream computer and it will only torture the thinker to try.
This is supposed to be fun.
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If enough people bought the product to justify the release of a newer model, perhaps it was not so absurd afterall.
Depends on the perspective and POV I suppose; if you like Trevor are satisfied with sales in the range of 200-300 units in the products entire life span, then I guess you're right. If you on the other hand expected it to be an evolution of the platform, a stepping stone towards re-establishing the "Amiga" as something more than a very tiny and constantly diminishing group of people that are counted in the hundreds in total (and split in several fractions on top of that), then I think it's very absurd. Trevor took on the role of providing a HW future for the platform, and his answer to the problem was the X1000. And it has meant nothing at all to the platforms evolution. It probably scared more people away from the platform than a complete absence of new HW would, because then there can at least be hope and dreams of a future, but when this was touted to be the next step in the platforms evolution it effectively crushed all hope of a realistic, sustainable future in many peoples minds, I'm sure of that. We are talking about a 2005 performance level computer that essentially is more expensive than Apple's latest power horse (with rather extreme specs, that also has the substantial Apple brand tax included), it was from the beginning designed on a dead-end CPU and it has specs that nobody (not even Trevor) knows the purpose of. How is this not absurd?
Either the initial investment was completely recouped or the investors did not mind spending money on a project that they enjoy. If someone is so successful in his or her primary career that he or she could run a non-profitable computer hardware business "just for fun", who are we to tell this person to not do it?
Trevor could commission Varisys to design a red/white ball-shaped PCB with pink propellers in titan all over it and other pointless features, performance from the last decade and sell it for $5000 to boing-ball loyals (who would definitely buy it, at least a hundred or so, as long as it's "the real", drivers be damned), it's a free world. But it would be very absurd, as would it be if these things wouldn't be allowed for discussion, when it's a matter of the direction of the platform evolution. Sure, you may be of the opinion that insanely priced PPC HW with unneeded features is the way forward for the platform, and of course you can advocate that all over the Internet. But I'm of a different opinion, and I reserve the rights to express my opinions as well.
I find your entire argumentation to be deeply inconsistent. A few posts back you accused A-Eon of being too incompetent on the management level to ask more than one design house for price quotes, and now you accuse them of not treating it like a hobby and finding people willing to slave away for nothing so they can have a product to sell...
What, people with skills doing their own product development work in-house, instead of paying other companies to do it for them, automatically equals to "hobby" or "slavery" now? This is how it's done in small firms in every industry, everywhere!
You completely underestimate the complexities of the hardware business.
No I don't think so, i'm actually quite certain it's indeed extremely complex, but that wasn't even the point.
If someone finds a severe bug in the X1000 board design that causes data loss, Varisys are fully liable and they are big enough that A-Eon would have a good chance of receiving funds from them. If you have somebody design something for free, then you are fully liable for any issues with the design. If your hobby hardware designer made a mistake, "free" can turn into "extremely costly".
Take an insurance policy like everyone else, if you are worried about these things...?
Other than that, from a consumer perspective, I think Genesi/bPlan (who had their HW competence in-house) managed the Articia-S catastrophe *a lot* better than Eyetech did (who didn't have any in-house HW competence, and chose to buy everything (like development and manufacturing) from external entities).
The difference was significant.
Personally, I would feel very uneasy to pay a six figure sum for a production run of a hardware design that was done by some guy on a shoestring budget. When you are selling custom computer hardware, the designing phase is absolutely crucial and should receive sufficient attention and resources. (Even very experienced engineers can run into expensive hardware problems as the Articia S fiasco showed.)
As the Articia-S thing showed, a HW development company that actually have competence in HW development, isn't perhaps all that bad? Maybe even preferable, yes?
And again, this is the only way of developing R&D heavy products for a practically non-existent micro markets. I'm not talking about hobby or slavery. But paying $1,200,000 for developing a product for a few hundred potential customers can only end one way.
---
Look, of course anyone is free to waste his money in any way he/she likes (as long as it's legal and preferrably ethical), but here we are talking about someone who (in the absence of official platform dvelopment/management) has taken on the role of managing the future evolution of the platform, at least HW wise. This concerns everyone that has any kind of emotional attachment to the platform, and everyone should be allowed to speak their views on this.
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What TMHG propably means it is simply crazy to build custom hardware based on PPC in 2013.
You are absolutely right.
I don't have any objections to PPC per se, it's not like I'm against it for the sake of it. But if you can't produce a realistic product based on it (affordable to regular people without the need to sell your first born child and your left kidney, *and* performance/capabilities that at least is worthy the current decade), then there is no point, and other options should be considered. IMHO of course.
:)
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You are absolutely right.
I don't have any objections to PPC per se, it's not like I'm against it for the sake of it. But if you can't produce a realistic product based on it (affordable to regular people without the need to sell your first born child and your left kidney, *and* performance/capabilities that at least is worthy the current decade), then there is no point, and other options should be considered. IMHO of course.
:)
And when were Amiga users ever realistic?
You ought to be satisfied that the MorphOS team has announced an eventual shift to a 64bit platform on either X64 or ARM.
But the PPC version is not going away, and we really do not need a repetition of this every time a new announcement is made.
Get used to it.
These are not our decisions.
And I, for one, would buy the new machine if funds allowed.
And as to performance, the G5 does not have enough for you?
To me it seems like over kill.
Edit - On realistic - How realistic was it when the MorphOS developers got together with this thought "Hey, let's re-create the entire operating system, but base it on PPC instructions with just in time interpretation to run 68K program. And we can add new features and support for things like OpenGL"
Sounds pretty crazy to me.
Like it?
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The high cost and slow development keeps it a hobby. Having cheap hardware and slow development, you've got potential.
Also if you want something cheaper, the FPGA arcade suits me better. How about OS 4.1 in 68k?
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The high cost and slow development keeps it a hobby. Having cheap hardware and slow development, you've got potential.
Also if you want something cheaper, the FPGA arcade suits me better. How about OS 4.1 in 68k?
How about AROS68K on a 200 to 266 MHz V4 Coldfire?
That would be really cheap.
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It has got to the point now, that it actually makes more sense investing in the FPGA Amiga clones, and trying to develop a faster 68k FPGA core than it does wasting money on any future PPC system.
Neither the 68k or the PPC have a real future... But at least with an FPGA 68k core we can ensure future development and progressively better performance as FPGAs get better (and the community is able to advance the core design), and obviously the 68k has more interesting software :)
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I guess we dont have mods here to keep things on topic? Also to stop situations where posters SIGS are longer than their posts - no names ;-)
Interesting discussion - maybe. Related to thread title? Not really. Now I know why I come here less and less... :-(
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And I, for one, would buy the new machine if funds allowed.
I really think you should stop and meditate a bit over the full meaning and all the implications of what you just wrote! ;)
And as to performance, the G5 does not have enough for you?
To me it seems like over kill.
Not really, no. And the G5 is hot, bulky and noisy, and not something I would bet on for the future. I can't see myself buying a G5 under any circumstances.
As a side note - the current ARM chips and those just around the corner, is on par or surpasses the G5 (the G4 was surpassed by the previous generations). And those are cool running, low watt chips that certainly *does not* cost $600-$1000 a piece. And then of course we have the x86, that is in entire different dimension.
Edit - On realistic - How realistic was it when the MorphOS developers got together with this thought "Hey, let's re-create the entire operating system, but base it on PPC instructions with just in time interpretation to run 68K program. And we can add new features and support for things like OpenGL"
Sounds pretty crazy to me.
Like it?
Yes I like it. But had the MorphOS team, instead of developing it themselves, just drawn up the specs and then hired an OS developing firm (like Microsoft, Apple, QNX, Debian or whoever) and paid monthly invoices from them to support their developers, over head costs and profit margins etc, from 1999 until today, how much do you think a single copy of MorphOS would have costed (the entire cost split on 2100 users)?
*That* sounds pretty crazy to me.
Would you have liked it?
And even if every single member of the Amiga community would have reasoned just like you did above - "And I, for one, would buy the new machine if funds allowed" - do you think the MorphOS user base would have been very large? Would it have been a winning strategy for growing the platform, to attract new users and developers?
There you have some food for thought!
;)
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This always happens, though, whenever AmigaOS 4, Hyperion or A-Eon is mentioned.
It's almost as if people *want* to go back to the days of the Great Drought when there was no hardware. Now we have so much hardware (AOS4 has the bespoke systems like the very-reasonably-priced Sam440ep (yes - it is useful, I use mine a lot) and the Rolls Royce system of the X1000, with more new hardware coming soon, MOS has new G5 support added and improved all the time, AROS has plenty of hardware :) )... we've never had it so good.
We're absolutely spoiled, really. We've got people like Trevor who must definitely SHOULD be applauded for seeing their projects through to the end, despite personal cost, just so that OS4 users can have really posh new hardware and a platform to build multi-processing on. We've got MorphOS devs continually updating and enhancing their OS to work on the most powerful system available to them. We've got AROS not only being developed on x86 but also 68K and ARM!
We have it SO good at the moment.
And yet still we hear about how people are "Crazy" and how it's "madness", and people "should" do this and "should" do that and "shouldn't" do the other.
Like them or loathe them, people like Trevor, the MorphOS team, Hyperion, AmigaKit, Acube, the multitude of AROS devs... they keep us going out of their love for the system. They're not getting rich - none of them. They give us the opportunity to keep enjoying our hobby - whatever flavour of "Amiga" it is - and for this they should ALL be applauded.
We are not the ones to tell Trevor or Acube or AEon or anyone else how to run their business, not even out of any emotional attachment to the platform. The Amiga 68K as a platform died a long time ago - but that doesn't stop the old machines working and being enjoyable - but it did stop the advancement of AmigaOS 3.x. If you don't like the path that AmigaOS 4 has taken, just ignore it - because if it hadn't taken this path, it wouldn't exist at all. Its existence is not stopping A1200s from working, and nor does it stop G5 Macs from running MorphOS.
We have it so good, we really do.
Now because it's Chrimbo I'm going to end by saying Happy Non-Denominational Holiday Greetings to all Amigans everywhere, whatever their colour (red or blue or... AROS :) ) or creed.
Rant/Preaching over. :)
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I guess we dont have mods here to keep things on topic? Interesting discussion - maybe. Related to thread title? Not really.
What, discussions about A-eon and its HW and strategies for the future of the Amiga platform would be off topic in a thread about the current HW companies strategies on future Amiga?! :lol:
OK, then you go ahead and make a couple of "on topic" posts here to put the thread back on the right track again...
:)
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We are not the ones to tell Trevor or Acube or AEon or anyone else how to run their business, not even out of any emotional attachment to the platform.
What an absolute nonsense! "Their" business is concerning/affecting the whole platform, and with that, everyone who is interested in it. The thought that everyone should be obliged to only applaud and cheer about what they do to the platform is ridiculous. It would be like north koreans forced to parade to salute their beloved leaders in public, and then go home to their huts without heating and wondering if they should serve their children hot or cold water as dinner as a result of their beloved leaders policies.
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What an absolute nonsense! "Their" business is concerning/affecting the whole platform, and with that, everyone who is interested in it.
How does their business affect MorphOS or 68K Amiga?
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I guess we dont have mods here to keep things on topic? Also to stop situations where posters SIGS are longer than their posts - no names ;-)
Interesting discussion - maybe. Related to thread title? Not really. Now I know why I come here less and less... :-(
We seem to be very much on topic as the topic is about our two sources of PPC motherboards and a few posters are questioning the merits of such boards.
@takemehomegrandma
I can not include all that you wrote - but are we attracting new users?
Well, I didn't use an Amiga when it was still supported, and I'm a relatively new user (I picked up MorphOS when PowerMac support was started).
So...YES.
Also, I have both G4 and G5 Pmacs.
The MDD is considerably noisier than the G5.
@bloodline
We already know you prefer ARM, but since you are not involved in my OS of choice, that is irrelevant.
Hopefully when MorphoS mutates into 64 bit it will be on ARM.
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How does their business affect MorphOS or 68K Amiga?
I believe the X1000 punctured the hopes some people might have had about a growing or sustainable future for the OS4 platform, with more users and more developers coming in. The X1000 communicated that there is no hope of this anymore, it was simply an impossible machine to build any kind of future on. Some people have been finding a new home in MorphOS (lots of new MorphOS users has been spotted on MorphZone and other Amiga related web sites the last year(s)) which of course is good, but a great deal silently left altogether instead, which is bad. Even if the "Amiga NG" community is kind of divided into three factions (plus a "68k retro"), I don't think it's as divided as you try to make it sound, that each faction would be isolated from the others. Most MorphOS users are Amigans since long, and care for the entire platform. And a diminishing OS4 faction will mean that the total possible consumers of cross-ported Amiga SW decreases, affecting those developers who is kind enough to care for all factions when they develop/port their SW, like Airsoftsoftwair/Hollywood, effectively meaning that it gets less and less attractive to develop for Amiga as a whole. I'm also thinking of bigger projects that would really benefit of being cross-faction within this tiny "NG" community, like web browsers, office suits, Dopus Magellan, etc. IMHO it would probably have been easier to raise the Odyssey bounty three years ago (had Odyssey been equally mature back then as it is today of course) and you could probably have raised more money as well. In three years from now, it will be even more difficult than it is today. A decreasing total size of "Amiga NG" can never be good. And this is what A-eon (together with Hyperion's no-sign-of-life development pace) does, IMHO.
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are we attracting new users?
Well, I didn't use an Amiga when it was still supported, and I'm a relatively new user (I picked up MorphOS when PowerMac support was started).
So...YES.
You just told us how *the MorphOS strategy* attracted you as a new user, and *not* how A-eon's X1000 did it (in fact, earlier you said that the X1000 is out of your reach, which is probably true to 99% of us). The meaning of this is that MorphOS/Mac HW did it right, the X1000/OS4 did it wrong. And this is what I have been saying all along. Maybe we should collectively open our eyes, look around, and *learn* something from what we have seen during the last four years, draw some conclusions and change strategies as necessary?
:)
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I believe the X1000 punctured the hopes some people might have had about a growing or sustainable future for the OS4 platform, with more users and more developers coming in. The X1000 communicated that there is no hope of this anymore, it was simply an impossible machine to build any kind of future on. Some people have been finding a new home in MorphOS (lots of new MorphOS users has been spotted on MorphZone and other Amiga related web sites the last year(s)) which of course is good, but a great deal silently left altogether instead, which is bad. Even if the "Amiga NG" community is kind of divided into three factions (plus a "68k retro"), I don't think it's as divided as you try to make it sound, that each faction would be isolated from the others. Most MorphOS users are Amigans since long, and care for the entire platform. And a diminishing OS4 faction will mean that the total possible consumers of cross-ported Amiga SW decreases, affecting those developers who is kind enough to care for all factions when they develop/port their SW, like Airsoftsoftwair/Hollywood, effectively meaning that it gets less and less attractive to develop for Amiga as a whole. I'm also thinking of bigger projects that would really benefit of being cross-faction within this tiny "NG" community, like web browsers, office suits, Dopus Magellan, etc. IMHO it would probably have been easier to raise the Odyssey bounty three years ago (had Odyssey been equally mature back then as it is today of course) and you could probably have raised more money as well. In three years from now, it will be even more difficult than it is today. A decreasing total size of "Amiga NG" can never be good. And this is what A-eon (together with Hyperion's no-sign-of-life development pace) does, IMHO.
In the last few years I've seen quite a few people buy OS4 systems including the X1000 who had either never owned an Amiga before, had been away from the scene for a long time or had simply been holding off for some time. That's just the people who choose to announce.
I think that the Odyssey bounty would have happened a lot quicker if there hadn't already been the Timberwolf bounty. I guess a lot of people who donated to that maybe don't want to pay again for another browser and are hoping for something better from now with talk of Steve Solie taking over the project and getting more people involved.
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Ofcourse there is a future in PPC based motherboards.
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In the last few years I've seen quite a few people buy OS4 systems including the X1000 who had either never owned an Amiga before, had been away from the scene for a long time or had simply been holding off for some time. That's just the people who choose to announce.
Yeah I know there are a few people who was new to both the X1000 and OS4 when they bought one, like AmigaDave, AmigaNG, clusteruk, darkon_turas, gerograph, Haranguer, ggw, klx300r, musa, otakui, sam, Tuxxl, VingtTrois, Zenzizenzizenzic. Probably a few more, right (feel free to add the others you know about)?
And then of course we have VOX, who (according to his friend djnick (http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=6927#91773)) paid €3600/$4850 (which equals to 10 months full time salary in Serbia (almost a full year's worth of payment(!))) for his X1000, and to manage the purchase he put himself in debt until 2018 (which is still kind of an aggressive payment plan for 10 months of full time salary IMHO, when you still have a life to live with all those day-to-day expenses like food and rent and the usual bills), and then he got banned from Hyperion's support for asking too many questions about the X1000 driver situation, he seems to be banned from all other sites as well, but on moobunny he talks about class action lawsuits now.
And even if you manage to double the list above, we are still counting in the range of tens of people. That's virtually nothing. And it still isn't a sign of platform growth at all, you would have to count those who left as well! And you don't have to do any counting at all to understand how HW this expensive (with that performance) can't create any real platform growth whatsoever, it's just a matter of common sense.
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Ofcourse there is a future in PPC based motherboards.
Obviously, they are planning new one.
So the future is assured.
And I'll probably buy one.
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And I'll probably buy one.
Soon you would *have to* in order to save your face - put your money where your mouth is!
:lol: ;)
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@takemehomegrandma
in the range of tens of people
In reality, there are hundreds of new X1000 users, I am sure you do not think three consumer production batches constitute a few dozen boards?
The AmigaOne X1000 is still current, still on sale and has kept us very busy the last 18 months with assembly.
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Yeah I know there are a few people who was new to both the X1000 and OS4 when they bought one, like AmigaDave, AmigaNG, clusteruk, darkon_turas, gerograph, Haranguer, ggw, klx300r, musa, otakui, sam, Tuxxl, VingtTrois, Zenzizenzizenzic. Probably a few more, right (feel free to add the others you know about)?
And then of course we have VOX, who (according to his friend djnick (http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=6927#91773)) paid €3600/$4850 (which equals to 10 months full time salary in Serbia (almost a full year's worth of payment(!))) for his X1000, and to manage the purchase he put himself in debt until 2018 (which is still kind of an aggressive payment plan for 10 months of full time salary IMHO, when you still have a life to live with all those day-to-day expenses like food and rent and the usual bills), and then he got banned from Hyperion's support for asking too many questions about the X1000 driver situation, he seems to be banned from all other sites as well, but on moobunny he talks about class action lawsuits now.
And even if you manage to double the list above, we are still counting in the range of tens of people. That's virtually nothing. And it still isn't a sign of platform growth at all, you would have to count those who left as well! And you don't have to do any counting at all to understand how HW this expensive (with that performance) can't create any real platform growth whatsoever, it's just a matter of common sense.
I think personally think Vox was crazy to get into such a debt to get an X1000. I don't think Vox was banned for simply asking questions but the manner in which he was making complaints. Whether it was right or wrong to ban him I will not be the judge of but regarding complaints, he was aware of the pace of OS4 development and like someone else said, he can't expect the pace to suddenly increase just because he spent a small fortune to get one.
Counting people who have a system is irrelevant since many people simply don't make it known.
As for growth I guess it is a case of wait and see what happens. There were people that were saying that X1000 wouldn't make it out of the door, that it only ship with Linux and Trevor would cut and run etc etc but by all account it has sold very well considering the seemingly small market and high price. Acube are still around too and the Sam460 is there third product aimed at OS4. All this is years after Bill Buck said that the Amiga PPC market was saturated.
I think there is still a lot to be positive about in the Amiga scene whether 68k or NG with plenty going on. It's just some people prefer to focus on the negative.
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@takemehomegrandma
In reality, there are hundreds of new X1000 users, I am sure you do not think three consumer production batches constitute a few dozen boards?
The AmigaOne X1000 is still current, still on sale and has kept us very busy the last 18 months with assembly.
I can confirm that on the 4 or 5 times I have visited AmigaKit since X1000 production began that there has always been a number of X1000 systems being built and others ready to ship. It's certainly been keeping Chris busy with all the system builds. I guess there is a reason why other dealers now have the X1000 on sale.
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What's refreshing about Trevor Dickinson is that he's a CEO who seems to have integrity, follows through on what he promises, doesn't promise what he can't deliver, and is pursuing Amiga development based on a personal passion rather than a drive to make a lot of money.
Isn't this what we were all begging for during the Bill McEwen years?
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What's refreshing about Trevor Dickinson is that he's a CEO who seems to have integrity, follows through on what he promises, doesn't promise what he can't deliver, and is pursuing Amiga development based on a personal passion rather than a drive to make a lot of money.
Isn't this what we were all begging for during the Bill McEwen years?
You can count on Amigans to complain whether they get what they want or not.
OK, TMHGM, I WILL purchase an X2000 (or whatever it is called).
Where do I sign?
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You can count on Amigans to complain whether they get what they want or not.
OK, TMHGM, I WILL purchase an X2000 (or whatever it is called).
Where do I sign?
Maybe if you contact Trevor you can get on the list for the beta program if it isn't already oversubscribed.
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In reality, there are hundreds of new X1000 users, I am sure you do not think three consumer production batches constitute a few dozen boards?
Of course not, but if you pay attention and follow the discussion in this thread to which you responded, the point was what the X1000 did to *grow the platform*, meaning attracting people *from outside* the Amiga community, or at least outside the OS4 community. In this context, people already using OS4 doesn't count. And in this context, the question is also how many *left* because of the fact that the "Amiga future" was positioned way out of their reach, and they felt that there is no hope of a future (or that the risk is way too high) when the future builds on $3,000+ machines with ancient (in computer evolution terms) performance? Surely not even you can think that this *hasn't* taken its toll?
OK, TMHGM, I WILL purchase an X2000 (or whatever it is called).
Where do I sign?
That would surely put more weight to your words in this thread. After all, first you are advocating a future for the platform based on $3,000+ machines, and then you tell us that what you *actually purchased* was a Power Mac with MorphOS that you bought for $19.95 (which was a good catch BTW, even if the previous owner thought it was broken).
I mean, either you put your money where your mouth is and chip up those $3,000 to support Your/Aeon's/Hyperion's vision, *OR* you do like the rest of us; put your mouth where your money is and hope that those in charge changes their minds and goes for a different kind of future instead.
You don't have to wait for the "X2000" (or A3000 or A5000 or whatever they will call it) in order to prove your point either, the X1000 is available and it's *on sale* now, and it features a unique CPU that surely will interest a CPU guy like you, that was "was the best choice" (your words) for a Amiga NG machine. So you can support Trevor, Hyperion and their ideas of a future *now* already, just go here (http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1071) and get it!
:)
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No, I considered the X1000, but it is not the machine Paul Gentle wanted to build.
When the MorphOS community was still exploring the MPC8610 and I was looking at the MPC8640/8641, Paul suggest to me that the Qorlq line would be a better basis for a board.
And that is what this new board is based on.
If I really wanted to "put my money where my mouth is", I'd discontinue my 68040 and Coldfire projects and focus on the Qorlq line.
Specifically the soon to be released 1.4 GHz dual and quad core T1022 and T1042.
They could probably be brought to market at about Acube's price range with better performance (they use the same e5500 core that the processors Trevor is going to use do - but only at about 2/3 the clock speed and with fewer PCI-E lanes).
So, just in case you didn't know, PPC is not entirely dead (nor is it "restin after a long swauk").
But I do, and always have, concede this point to you, ARM makes better economic sense.
So hopefully MorphOS will split, 64 bit adopting the ARM or X64 ISA, and the 32 bit version still focusing on legacy compatibility on PPC devices.
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So, just in case you didn't know, PPC is not entirely dead (nor is it "restin after a long swauk").
Not discounting the fact you like the PPC ISA, though I'm not sure what makes it attractive to you, I'm keen to know how you draw the conclusion that te PPC isn't dead? No new designs use it. No major manufacturer supports it for mainstream usage and there are no road maps for the future. I can't even find any opensource FPGA implementations :(
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Not discounting the fact you like the PPC ISA, though I'm not sure what makes it attractive to you, I'm keen to know how you draw the conclusion that te PPC isn't dead? No new designs use it. No major manufacturer supports it for mainstream usage and there are no road maps for the future. I can't even find any opensource FPGA implementations :(
There are other companies developing PPC, but the company to pay attention to is the source of the line I mentioned (Qorlq), Freescale.
And, yes, they have published timelines for all recent cores.
As to major manufacturers, no business or home computer manufacturer uses these anymore, thus the shift to communications applications.
But they can be used for computer applications.
In fact the 24 thread e6500 cored products look ideal for server applications.
What do I see in the PPC, well its already 64bit.
Its available at speeds in excess of those that ARM operates at.
We already have two OS' coded for it.
Unlike ARM, I can get processors with built-in PCI and PCI-E support.
LIKE ARM, its RISC.
LIKE ARM, its not X64/Intel IP.
Lots of reasons.
While you are slowly coaxing me toward a more tolerant attitude toward Linux, I still prefer more compact OS'.
And micro kernel, so...PPCs and MorphOS.
Anything else you want explained?
A change in ISAs would/will take years.
Its going to happen (its not a maybe).
But right now, I have a solution I like available to me immediately.
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Of course not, but if you pay attention and follow the discussion in this thread to which you responded, the point was what the X1000 did to *grow the platform*, meaning attracting people *from outside* the Amiga community, or at least outside the OS4 community. In this context, people already using OS4 doesn't count. And in this context, the question is also how many *left* because of the fact that the "Amiga future" was positioned way out of their reach, and they felt that there is no hope of a future (or that the risk is way too high) when the future builds on $3,000+ machines with ancient (in computer evolution terms) performance? Surely not even you can think that this *hasn't* taken its toll?
After I bought my X1000 somebody got a complete AmigaONE XE G4 1GHz system with 1GB ram 2 video cards, 320GB HD and a DVD rewriter for just over£400 IIRC. Does the guy who bought it count as a new user?
Remember while some people might horde their old systems others sell their old system putting cheaper hardware onto the market and thus growing the users base.
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After I bought my X1000 somebody got a complete AmigaONE XE G4 1GHz system with 1GB ram 2 video cards, 320GB HD and a DVD rewriter for just over£400 IIRC. Does the guy who bought it count as a new user?
Remember while some people might horde their old systems others sell their old system putting cheaper hardware onto the market and thus growing the users base.
THAT is actually a really good buy.
FASTER than the SAM440 or SAM460.
I'd love to try that with dual video cards (like a Radeon 9250 and a Voodoo4 or 5).
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A used PC wouldn't be worth that amount in the second market after 10 years.
I expect your AmigaOne X1000 to hold its value in a similar way too.
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A used PC wouldn't be worth that amount in the second market after 10 years.
I expect your AmigaOne X1000 to hold its value in a similar way too.
Good point in favor of PPCs guys.
I don't think PegIIs have depreciated at all.