mdwh2: The original claim was that there is nothing on AmigaOS that takes advantage of fast CPUs.
So, it's perfectly acceptable to put in slow CPUs?
Just because AmigaOS has snappy screen refreshes doesn't mean consumers will tolerate low performance. The reason why I mentioned codecs is because they are VERY CPU intensive and will not get a huge boost in performance due to the simplistic and unstable design of AmigaOS. If you want to spend forever copying files from folder A to folder B, moving a web browser across the screen, or playing cheezy 2D puzzle games in a window, then that's fine. But, most people living in the modern era want music, videos, multimedia, games... and that stuff needs lots of raw power that the current Amigas don't offer.
Nobody NEEDS a high performance CPU and graphics card, but if some other company does offer it, and Amiga doesn't, then it should be obvious what people will buy. If people have a craving for underpowered hardware and vertical monopolization, they don't need Amiga... they already have Apple.
At some point, people thought the Atari Jaguar was fine because it had great 2D graphics, a superbly elegant architecture, was built by IBM, and had a budget price. It didn't "need" a high performance CGI board and 3D graphics...
...of course, it was completely trampled by the PlayStation. Sega's haphazard Saturn was, too, and the N64 wasn't exactly a super machine, either.
You could easily argue that game consoles don't "need" the capacity of a CD-ROM when you can write more intelligent code and use a cart, instead. That certainly didn't work in Nintendo's favor, now did it?
Architecture is irrelevant. It all boils down to value.
Bloodline: I rather like the transputer idea, but it was a miserable failure for lots of reasons.
Namely, good compilers didn't exist, OSes didn't support multithreading, and doing it yourself was a huge pain. The world just wasn't ready for super-computer type code on a home computer.
It really all has to do more with coding practices than hardware. I sure hope Sony's dev tools for the PS3 don't suck anywhere near as bad as they did on the PS2.
terminator: Just how long do you think it would survive in the MS sandbox?
Or anywhere else? People need to stop kidding themselves. Whether Amiga uses x86, PPC, or something else, Microsoft isn't just going to disappear. We're in Microsoft's sandbox no matter what hardware we use.
Of course, if we use PPC, we're in Microsoft's sandbox, with Apple ready to take away our pail and shovel.
terminator: People who keep whining on about this x86 issue just don't see the big picture.
Namely, that you obviously can't build an x86 system just for AmigaOS that
won't run Windows. The CPU is, of course, the
only thing that matters in a computer. The Mac is a completely original architecture that has
nothing in common with those PCs and their evil, evil open standards. Anyone who disagrees obviously has no idea what a brilliant idea it is to sell underpowered hardware for huge sums of money.
Many, many companies use the hard-a**ed business model Amiga uses, and they regularly go out of business. People just don't learn.
terminator: So an A1 costs more than a low end PC. Well, that's the price of admission. Don't like the price? Well, you are not obligated to buy a ticket.
Good point, but it seems a lot of Amiga users don't like the price of admission, either. It wouldn't be so high if Amiga's business model involved branching out into new markets and focusing on software and killer apps, instead of trying to resell buggy, expensive hardware to die-hards just so they can run software that already runs on everything else: Linux.
stefcep: I have an A4000 with a CV64 and a Prelude and a zorro serial and parallel port and a Zorro IDE interface and a cyberstorm 060: i use none of the original custom chips including the 3.1 ROM and i would never go back to a vanilla A1200 except to play games.
Yup. Isn't it ironic that the Amiga was based on the idea of coprocessors, but most post-Commodore software does everything on the CPU because the classic Amiga architecture is too damn old and slow?
And what is it with people complaining that an ATI GPU and an nVidia southbridge is not good enough? This is the height of technology. If you've got a bone to pick, try going after the insanely simplistic BIOS, ill-designed bootloaders, and Windows. Of those three issues, the AmigaOne only solves one. Oh yeah, and they're
all software issues, too, so the hardware doesn't matter.
Think about it. Whatever happened to the Early Startup Screen, and being able to boot off any device -- even RAM? That's one thing I really miss about my A1200 that I wish my PC could handle.
But, no, screw the software. PPC alone will obviously solve all our problems.
