Ease off bashing AmigaONE X1000?

[vox]

Just like Jens/Individual Computers, Genesi/bPlan also has in-house competence. But the thing is - not that many years ago, Genesi offered the community to actually *pay for development* of a new PPC motherboard!

The end product would have been:
   - 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 8xThe financing of the development would take place through bounties over at power2people.org, it would be 6 phases (IIRC), the result would be completely open sourced and community owned. The final cost of all stages would be $60.000 IIRC (or was it EUR? Doesn't really matter for the sake of the discussion), and this would also include a Freescale sponsored developer program with free boards donated to interesting development projects (like Genesi/Freescale has done on several occasions before).

IIRC the general opinion in the community was that this was way to expensive, few people chipped in. Yet it would only have taken ~20 people paying the X1000 end-user price to finance the entire development cost. This wasn't a charity project, it was something Genesi would "invoice" the community, because they didn't want to invest anymore in PPC themselves.

Looks nice. But seems it never went even to development board
http://www.power2people.org/projects/profile/43

If it was presented to OS4 as viable platform, could saved the day.
But its still vapor.

If you could ensure both MOS team and OS4 team agreement to do OS ports and pushed the bounty more to both camps, it could succeed, hence would be no X1000. But now there is no this board, and there is X1000.

(But I'm perhaps even more astonished that the Xorro/Xena is being done all over again!)

Xena is 50$ chip and Xorro is modified PCI-E. It might yet prove useful, and open some interesting space to do something no board has done before. But I dislike propaganda it`s a transputer slot etc. that existed in early days.

"the A1-X1000 complexity" is a problem, not a solution!

Well, A1-X1000 is a solution to a problem of no high end Amiga.
Detailed analysis of this discussion would show:

a) There are people that hate they can`t get X1000 but would not get any other OS4 model (e.g SAMs or used Peg2/Old A1). Message to them is: I have been preparing 2 years financial and still will take loan of 5 years to complete it, paying higher import taxes and interests then you while I doubt you have lower wage then me. So it is possible, if you really want it.

b) There are people that want cheaper entry system, but they don`t find SAM 440 good offer for 250 euros. If we could enmass them to 600 personas, we could get lower price. Waiting for way better system for that money might not materialize soon - 100 euros is just OS4 license. Efika does cost 99$ but add 90 euros for MorphOS on top of it and you get less efficient system unexpandable at all for almost the same amounth.

c) There are people that bash X1000 just because they can, since they anyway have cheap and fast PPC Mac. Good for them, but again, I will ask the gents why they haven`t payed that PPC Mac when it was new and costed similarly? One day when X1000 becomes what PPC Macs are now it might be affordable too ...

[vox]

+1

While we are on the subject, can someone remind me who wrote OS4 and what they did for the Amiga scene before that?

Then we can list the MorphOS developers and what they did previously for the Amiga scene.

It should make for interesting reading no?

AmigaOS is direct continuation of AmigaOS no shame and no lie in that.
MorphOS and AROS are quite based from their own code, much pride in that.
Hyperion did just few game ports prior to OS4, but great ones that no one has done in Amiga world.

I have no doubts in MOS coders skills, wish we were one team, really.

Volim te BiH

You are originating from Bosnia? Nice :-)

[kickstart]

@vox

d) Many people think that this ng machines has nothing to do with amiga.

Dont be elitist with the price, i cant understand why some people give reasons for implying that x1000 is an amiga.

[vox]

@vox

d) Many people think that this ng machines has nothing to do with amiga.

Dont be elitist with the price, i cant understand why some people give reasons for implying that x1000 is an amiga.

a) If we agree Amiga is only and only 68k/OCS-AGA then OS4/MOS/AROS are all unrelated. But that is way too die hard look as last CBM Amigas were PPC expanded often with RTG,MUI and AHI

b) If we do know Amiga history, we do know AmigaOS 4 is related to Amiga, as continuation of AmigaOS. I do not denie MorphOS and AROS of this heritage. Due to its past with Amiga Inc, AmigaOS owners own AmigaOne licence for hardware use.
c) We can agree, its not CBM Amiga. Its AmigaOne, as always intended to be PPC board that runs AmigaOS 4

AmigaOne is just what it is.PPC motherboard capable of running AOS 4.
I hope it could be cheaper, and draw more interest, but that task is up to A-EON. I am sure Trevor would be happy
if they could be cheaper and more attractive = selling in larger quantities and other way around :-)

Instead, I advise a positive way:
tell us what you believe could be better and included in next systems. Faster and cheaper CPU is already there. You wish Acube to do cheaper and faster entry system. I am to it. I am also looking eager to see MorphOS on DJ Nicks SAM 460 as PPC Macs are rare beast around here.Better driver support? Should be done deal with AOS 4.2

Price is simply not a thing any one of us holds hands on, especially in capitalism.

[itix]

...Expansion boards for Amiga 2000 were not that common and in practice it was on par with Amiga 500....

Wha?

Yep. Harddisks, memory expansions, accelerator boards, cd roms, expansion cartridges... and they were quite affordable.

[Iggy]

Looks nice. But seems it never went even to development board
http://www.power2people.org/projects/profile/43

If it was presented to OS4 as viable platform, could saved the day.
But its still vapor.

If you could ensure both MOS team and OS4 team agreement to do OS ports and pushed the bounty more to both camps, it could succeed, hence would be no X1000. But now there is no this board, and there is X1000.

That is a dead issue and there are better processors than the 8610.

Efika does cost 99$ but add 90 euros for MorphOS on top of it and you get less efficient system unexpandable at all for almost the same amounth.

License cost for the Efika is 49 EUR.

[vox]

] That is a dead issue and there are better processors than the 8610.

Sorry to hear that, it would be nice to see if Genesi would be open for other such bounty again, with any modern PPC board. I fear transition will not be a quick job, and sea of PPC Macs isn`t that endless.

License cost for the Efika is 49 EUR

Twice cheaper as any other? Nice. Sorry, I didn`t know that.

[nicholas]

AmigaOS is direct continuation of AmigaOS no shame and no lie in that.

It's mostly a complete rewrite from scratch. Why do you think it took them so long to release the first version?

Even the Frieden brothers stated this on Ann.lu many years ago.

MorphOS and AROS are quite based from their own code, much pride in that.
Hyperion did just few game ports prior to OS4, but great ones that no one has done in Amiga world.

I was asking for names of coders. Let me start it off with a few, Ralph Schmidt, Frank Mariak, Harry Sintonen, Stefan Stuntz.

Your turn.

I have no doubts in MOS coders skills, wish we were one team, really.

Benji boy put paid to any chance of that a long time ago.

You are originating from Bosnia? Nice :-)

No but I have Bosnian family members.

[vox]

It's mostly a complete rewrite from scratch. Why do you think it took them so long to release the first version?

Even the Frieden brothers stated this on Ann.lu many years ago.

Surely now, but it started with OS 3.0 source ....

I was asking for names of coders. Let me start it off with a few, Ralph Schmidt, Frank Mariak, Harry Sintonen, Stefan Stuntz.

Your turn.

http://www.morphos.de/team

As you do know, we poor bastards stand just with Frieden brothers and few other good men :-)

However, if you do take AmigaOS as continuation of AmigaOS, list looks good. And have some similar names.

Sadly its not the case today.

Benji boy put paid to any chance of that a long time ago.

Well, there is always hope of small market for example making people working together.

No but I have Bosnian family members.

Soon I ll start thinking everyone has a Bosnian family  :-)

[Iggy]

I was asking for names of coders. Let me start it off with a few, Ralph Schmidt, Frank Mariak, Harry Sintonen, Stefan Stuntz.

And Fabien Coeurjoly, Mark Olsen, and André Siegel (and a lot of other people).

VS a couple of angry German's.

Not much of a challenge.

[Fats]

That problem can be solved by hand optimizing the compiler output, so that's not necessarily an issue. It can also be solved by reimplementing AROS in assembly language (probably the best way). Yes, quite a chore, I know

What I understood is that the gfx chipset driver are also a big contributor to the slowness of AROS m68k ATM.

[OlafS3]

I've got you beat on that one.
My 1.42 GHz iBook only set me back $70.
And it works quite well.
Its just painful that the OS key is in the highest tier (meaning I almost have to spend twice as much for the license).



Trevor's little vanity project is pretty impressive.
He took the ACK Systems/Ainc. specs and ran with them finding a partner that could actually obtain the CPUs and build the systems.
I was exchanging e-mail with Paul Gentle (@ Varisys) for months before it was commonly known who A-eon's partner was.
Trevor picked the perfect guys to lead this.



I try not to bash OS4.
And I still get comments like "we're only developing for 'real' AmigaOS".
What everyone seems to forget is that all the MorphOS developers are former AmigaOS developers.
Some of the best, as a matter of fact.

This fiction that pride in your creation has led to a "red vs. blue war" is ridiculous.

All it done is chase the knowledgeable MorphOS supporters off this site.

Anyone notice that Piru doesn't post here anymore?

Nobody doubts that some of the MorphOS developer belong to the best developers on the platform. And someone likes to mention "MorphOS is Amiga done right" what is propably not wrong :-)

The problem I have with the MorphOS developers (at least to a certain degree) is their "closed" attitude. They made some of the best technologies and software packages but failed to see the chance to create standards. Examples are MUI, CybergraphX, OWB. All closed source. What I have read is that key components of OWB are now closed source too (in external components) so even if someone would port it important features would not be there. If I understood it right is HTML5 support in a closed source component. That makes new versions of OWB useless on other platforms. They think it gives them a advantage but I think it is wrong and shortsighted to act this way.

[wawrzon]

What I understood is that the gfx chipset driver are also a big contributor to the slowness of AROS m68k ATM.

you mean amiga chipset driver? because rtg on 68k is driven via p96 wrapper, which of course may also introduce some lag, but it isnt that slow in general. rather there are some situations when intuition or layers seems busy looping or something like that. would be good to know how nail down the cause. may be that x86 version has similar issues but masked by overall speed of hardware.

[Iggy]

Nobody doubts that some of the MorphOS developer belong to the best developers on the platform. And someone likes to mention "MorphOS is Amiga done right" what is propably not wrong :-)

The problem I have with the MorphOS developers (at least to a certain degree) is their "closed" attitude. They made some of the best technologies and software packages but failed to see the chance to create standards. Examples are MUI, CybergraphX, OWB. All closed source. What I have read is that key components of OWB are now closed source too (in external components) so even if someone would port it important features would not be there. If I understood it right is HTML5 support in a closed source component. That makes new versions of OWB useless on other platforms. They think it gives them a advantage but I think it is wrong and shortsighted to act this way.

I will cede that part of the argument to you.
Although, since MUI4 comes from an  outside developer, nothing stops OS4 from adopting a version of it.
Sharing the CybergraphX libraries also would have been helpful.

But you must remember no other Amiga related OS except AROS is open.
If the Frieden's had asked for help earlier, then this huge delay in releases might have been reduced.

Also, MorphOS is a commercial product. You wouldn't want your source code copied. That was a unjustified charge Dave Haynie made about Ralph Schmidt's work years ago. That and Ben's comments haven't fostered any great sense of community.

[OlafS3]

as you certainly know my main interest is AROS and it is open. I do not know if there is any support regarding Zune but I am not involved there so I cannot say.

I know that there were a lot of bashings and negativ emotions between expecially devlopers of AmigaOS and MorphOS. But whatever the reasons are and who has caused it and is to blame the result is that all 3 platforms are similar but in details very different so that most developers are only supporting one platform in the end. Examples are differences in GUI (MUI4, Zune, MUI3.9/Reaction), RTG (Cybergraphics3, Cybergraphics5, P96). The list is endless and if you dig a little and compare even similar things are solved different and of course incompatible. At the end it forces developers to decide for one platform.

[Iggy]

as you certainly know my main interest is AROS and it is open. I do not know if there is any support regarding Zune but I am not involved there so I cannot say.

I know that there were a lot of bashings and negativ emotions between expecially devlopers of AmigaOS and MorphOS. But whatever the reasons are and who has caused it and is to blame the result is that all 3 platforms are similar but in details very different so that most developers are only supporting one platform in the end. Examples are differences in GUI (MUI4, Zune, MUI3.9/Reaction), RTG (Cybergraphics3, Cybergraphics5, P96). The list is endless and if you dig a little and compare even similar things are solved different and of course incompatible. At the end it forces developers to decide for one platform.

True, although Zune is pretty close.
Reaction seems a bit cruder, but like said I'm sure Stefan Stuntz wouldn't mind being paid for another MUI4 port.
We all use a similar USB stack.
All three OS' are 3.1 API compatible.
There isn't that much difference.