Ease off bashing AmigaONE X1000?

[wawrzon]

@vox
the critic at x1000 and the attempted aone xxx hardware line may be, say, "constructive" even from those who are not interested or not intending to buy one. a valid critic point is that it fragments the community even more at times where all attempt should be directed at consolidating it. producing expensive hardware, many cannot afford, drives people away if they are told they are not true amigans as long as they dont invest into it. introducing unique features on expensive systems that may lead to lack of compatibility with lower end systems is another dangerous move (think of xena as example) accidentally it has not got into effect until now, just because it has not taken off at all.

variety is a good thing and i applaud the idea of having more choice of hardware for whomever desires it (also x1k and the like). however there has to be some common denominator for the whole scene or at least notion towards it, instead of separatist tendencies to be observed now. the alternative being forced into something or excluded will not work out for the common good i fear.

[wawrzon]

Again, no one is saying someone using SAM 440 is NOT an Amigan - what a fake change of thesis.

...

I don`t see how X1000 makes further separation. Its like saying G5 support in MorphOS is further separation and not advancement.

...

So I don`t see these as "valid criticism"

you dont grasp the nuance or i am perhaps not deliberate about it. and please don mix morphos into it, they are actually (same as aros) providing a support for wide choice of mostly affordable hardware and i have never heard of morphos user or developer leaving the scene because he could not afford or justify the expenses to stay involved. on os4 this is definitely the case, it really takes dedication to stay with the platform. and this singling out only most dedicated and wealthiest as worthy members of the community instead to trying to spread the interest, gain young blood, seek to attract talented contributors not just some reach collectors is the mistake i talk about.

beyond that supporting multiple platforms with a single common effort (like aros does) is the actual contribution to variety of the community, instead of singling out just one of them, referring to it as only true superlative, and portraying the investment into it as only essential way to support the "amiga". and this is the other critic point.

[wawrzon]

All of that was prior to the importance of branding being stressed.
After your examples they rebranded Sam460 as "Amigaone 500".

pretty late awakening.. must be someone poked at their back and asked why "amigaos" isnt running on "amigas". alas, as that nick was taken..

[wawrzon]

@fats:
hmm, maybe im recalling wrong, but werent you once playing with an idea of getting an x1k?

[wawrzon]

Not that I remember but I may be getting old...
It currently is not in my plans but never say never. I have an A1G3SE though with OS4.0, Mac with MorphOS 2.7 thanks to some MOS enthousiasts and developing AROS on my x86_64 Linux machine.

i meant to recall that at least one of key aros devs was intending to buy into x1k, maybe it was someone else. not that i d consider it a bad thing if there was aros port for x1k;)

[wawrzon]

IMO Trevor is a saint who believes in the Amiga and although I now don't have an intention of buying an X1K at least he's off his spotty behind doing something about the Amiga world rather than postulating precipitously about nothing while picking both blackheads and nose hairs complaining about reality. Get over it. move on!  
I'm ranting, sorry need a good nights sleep.

not to dimnish trevors achievements, but olaf is doing his share for the community as well, namely an aros68k distribution. and he was supporting many projects especially taking care of open sourcing essential software to preserve it for us, may sound not like much in comparison, within his abilities he is doing a lot and without any financial return.

we might open another thread about how bad aros(68) is and how messy olafs distribution is but funny enough none cares either way, even though almost all they want amiga on x86 and so on. i would welcome some criticism, because it means interest.

edit: ah, and ive seen critical threads on aros on several occasions, some aros fans may have been offended, but honestly, for me as aros supporter it was always an opportunity to find out problems and initiate improvements.

[wawrzon]

Olaf may be doing things (his something) over on AROS.
I may have brought up the 'port it to another architecture' a few years early.
But in a few years there may be no more PowerPC chips being made. Are you just going finish there?
Why not take advantage of all the things you can do with ARM based systems?

I will wait the 'few years' quietly. I don't need an ARM based Amiga now, but if you get around to doing it, I would buy it.

how often do you want to hear it yet? if you want the above go for aros. it is heading in the very direction you want. if you are not satisfied with aros as is, get involved with it. help out. program. port stuff. report bugs. you are free to do all that, unlike on os4 where you will never be let into the castle. get active instead.

[wawrzon]

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

it isnt necessary nor possible to rewrite whole aros in asm to gain speed. aros needs to be platform independent and portable and therefore source needs to be kept in a high language for the most part. but critical parts are in assembly already, or may be yet replaced by such where it is necessary.

also there are initiatives to rewrite and optimize essential libraries in asm, consult eab for that. (f.i. peters keunecke icon.library:
http://aminet.net/util/libs/IconLib_46.4.lha)

however toni wilen confirms that this work on details is mostly of minimal influence for the whole especially in comparison to effort. i can confirm it from own experience when testing and helping alain thellier to improve storm mesa (68k). i dont remember which compiler exactly he has used, i guess it was gcc3.4.0 (which is particularly bad, current 4.6.x versions, used for aros, are better again). alain let out the genuine asm inlines, because they were not compatible with gcc, but it had no negative influence on overall speed afair.

[wawrzon]

Could you do some version that can be fast and hosted inside MorphOS/AmigaOS 4 68k emulation?

i fear its not up to olaf to make aros68k any faster. however the quest is ongiong. how fast is uae on ppc systems available for you?

[wawrzon]

Bluetooth is great thing when sharing stuff with phone

pita. i prefer to connect my phone to the pc via usb any time..

[wawrzon]

yet again there is two major points surfacing to justify high proce of "amiga" hardware:
1. development costs, especially drivers. supporting further "amiga" develoment.
2. comparison to somehow interpreted prices of genuine amiga in its greatest age

ad.1:the development costs for such a board are considerable, no doubt, therefore it should be avoided. and in case it must be developed it should be best developed by genuine amiga-related companies like individual computers or perhaps acube (although it seems acube designs are based on reference designs anyway, correct me if im wrong). as someone else pointed out, "supporting further development" argument is not valid in this case. paing high prices we support uk military companies, not "amiga". thats where money goes (as example: the rediculous price of remaining stock of pasemi cpu).

as for driver support. sure i trust, it is a lot of work. but its surely less work to support particular narrowly chosen chipsets like those of sam series and x1k than the whole variety of them (it has been even used as genuine argument against x86 switch). yet there is aros support for a wide choice of devices and aros developers also support os4 and other alternatives with their development. instead hyperion has problems to deliver driver support for its own dedicated hardware and this task has been taken over by hardware vendors (trevor admits it). in all due respect to hans readeon drivers, i cant believe driver development is so much harder for os4 devs than for aros team, lat alone morphos.

ad2: amigas may have been expensive, still not so expensive in comparison to other systems of its age, considering their possibilities, others have told that. as soon as commodore amiga has lost its price/performance advantage and has been left behind the wide audience left, and even hardcore fans left one by one. trying to justify current prices by this failed politics that has lead to the decline of genuine amiga must be taken as a cruel joke, sorry. it only suggests it all being a dead end anyway.

i hate to repeat this over and over, but since others repeat their mantra too im left with no choice, sorry.

[wawrzon]

@hans
jens, judging by his posts on a1k, considers ppc cpu as not reliable and therefore not worth to base designs on. it might be suspected an excuse to cover his lack of development skills in the more complex and higher frequency area, but i dont think that it is.

jens has lately proposed (quite obvious) a concept of hybrid fpga/foreign cpu (in his case mips soc) accelerator/amiga. fpga taking care of amiga chipset legacy core, the foreign cpu running 68k emu/jit (?). his estimation at parts costs were 20 eur.

eh, edit: and observing jens development threads on a1k he is for one very responsive to public, his politics of disclosure and information is very convenient, there is almost never any flaw in it, and where it is it is being discussed openly. secondly one can see he is very reasonable about every single resource, he is considering every aspect of design, every development cost and every necessary and unnecessary part to keep his expenses as well as the retail price of the product down.

[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.

[wawrzon]

Stefan is still alive and programming, but, sadly, his A3000 isn't, so he's having a little trouble generating personalised licences for MUI.  I emailed him and he provided a workaround.

isnt uae enough for the task, how about donating a replacement to him in exchange for open sourcing mui?

btw one could even donate him an x1k or some bike, although a bike might be too expensive;) i speaking from aros supporter perspective, since the genuine part of mui stunz is responsible for is still unmatched by zune and might be taken as fast reference. on the other hand im not sure if os4 users need anything like that, given 3.9 is already incorporated in their system.

[wawrzon]

I don't think Stefan is going to open source MUI.

perhaps, but if not, why not? if he isnt active anymore greater one time refund might be more satisfying than selling one mui license in two months at remaining interested or even bothering to amintain/delete the email traffic on the subject. would be a gain for both sides.

Actually, come to think of it a dual core PowerMac might serve as well.

fine. tell me when to chip in.