Two New Full Systems Based on Sam440ep-Flex

[spirantho]

If nobody wanted them, why would they make another batch?
I'm sure they know what they're doing otherwise they wouldn't still be in business.

[spirantho]

@Jorkany

It doesn't say that - but I think it unlikely we're still on the first batch of Sam motherboards, especially as the first batch used different processors! If they hadn't sold them, they would have run out long ago.

I think ACube get most of their money from the OS4 community and the embedded systems combined. I don't know - or pretend to know - what they're doing, but I do know that if the 440 hadn't been a success, there wouldn't be the current run of 440s, let alone the 460.

For all the claims of people who say the price is "insane" or whatever, the fact that Acube are succeeding and still developing new hardware speaks volumes.

[spirantho]

Exactly. My Sam 440ep is a lovely little machine. It's slow running Timberwolf, but that isn't finished yet and it's well known there's no speed-up optimisations in it, so of course it's slow. You can have a lot of fun with it.
What gets me is the irony... in the past I always had to convince PC users that you didn't need a lot of megahertz to have fun and get things done, and they didn't understand. Now it seems like many Amiga users are the same as PC users, despite the fact many of them have classic machines up to 50MHz that they still enjoy. The main reason for buying super powerful PCs is to play games ... but we don't have those games anyway so we don't need the power. Yes the power is nice, but it's far from necessary.

You don't need a ton of power to enjoy computing- the Sam range is good evidence of this.

[spirantho]

For Amiga software, the Sam isn't too underpowered at all. If it was, it'd be useless. However, the only people who say it's useless are the ones who haven't even used one.... the ones who do get by just fine.
We don't need multi-ghz machines to run our software. Comparing it to development of the next Playstation is absurd: the next consoles need more power because of the games that will be written. If we made a 64  core 3GHz powerhouse with the latest graphics card, the amount of new games developers would still be zero.

The Amiga is no more suited to games now than the PC was in 1988, the market has changed. Games are now multi-million dollar products written for machines with tons of CPU power, and that's not the Amiga's strength - it never was. Heck, even the Atari ST ran a faster CPU than the A500. If you make a super Amiga the publisher will still ask
"how many units do we expect to sell?"
and the answer will be very small, and the publisher will go back to the consoles.

The research and development cost of an Amiga to keep up with a PC or Playstation or whatever is SO huge - probably billions of dollars, a) who's got that much money to spend and b) would anybody buy it? Even if you find someone rich enough to develop it, still no-one will buy it because there's no software for it. There's no software for it because nobody's bought it. It's a vicious circle.

What I don't understand is why people are screaming about how it's way underpowered, yet most Sam owners are happy with their machines. If it was that underpowered, it would be useless and wouldn't sell. It does sell (they still make them, so it must be selling - Acube are not a charity), people are happy using them so they can't be underpowered for the tasks the users are running on them.

"Underpowered" is such a subjective term anyway. If you want to run render apps, yes it's unsuitable (it's not designed for CPU intensive tasks). If you want to run other stuff, it can be just fine.

You can tell the Sam users how underpowered it is all you like, but it doesn't change the fact that it's not.

[spirantho]

I kind of agree and disagree.
It is underpowered for quite a lot of tasks, but only those it's not meant for - i.e. CPU heavy ones. If you buy any Amigaoid system for stuff like rendering these days, you must be a bit crazy as we just don't have (or in AROS's case can't harness) the power needed. PC's have oodles of power and have done for a long time now, but that doesn`t mean that we have to do the same things as them.
It just annoys me rather that people who've never used a Sam come on and tell everyone how underpowered they are, when I know that they're perfectly capable doing a lot. I know this because I actually use one.
For instance, on my Sam:
I'm writing this now using OWB.
I develop software such as Catweasel drivers. Heck, I even ported SDLMAME using the Sam! I used the A1 for the final optimised compilation, but for the porting I used the Sam.
I emulate other machines.
I play the occasional game.

I don't:
try to render stuff
try to play HTML5 YouTube videos (MUCH more CPU intensive than people realise. It's only because things like phones and PCs have dedicated hardware and things that make people think it's not - we don't have those drivers so it's all down to CPU grunt for us, not for them).
try to run MAME (It's very CPU intensive). Having said that, it can run some games quite well.
try to run Timberwolf (it's not finished and there's no optimisation, so it's too slow - but that's not the Sam's fault).

Stick to what it's good at and it's a beautiful machine.  Forget PC's - they're a different beast. Don't try and keep up with PCs because you won't win - they have a massive userbase and masses of technological evolution, we don't. Take the Amiga (and the Sam) on its merits rather than looking at your neighbour's PC, and you'll be happy. If you want PC power - you need to buy a PC, there's no way round that.

As for the price... seriously, these guys have to eat. They have families to feed. How can they be expected to produce low volume hardware at much cheaper prices?  There's a lot of work gone into the R&D of the boards, of the production of the boards, of the investment risk in the first place. These guys deserve money, and really 550 Euros for a complete system is a bargain when you factor in all the costs. We're not talking about big companies with huge economies of scale here.

However, I completely agree that hobbies are expensive and they don't need to be sane. I know this because I own a CS-PPC.
We're very lucky that we're part of a hobby that still has commercial companies doing anything for us at all. It's not like we're a huge market. And then when they actually want some financial reward for their work and risk, people complain as though they should be doing everything for free.

Acube with their products aren't trying to build machines for power users - just use a PC for that. They're building hobbyist products for a hobbyist audience.  I hate to say it but the only way the brand "Amiga" is ever going to be big again is if C=USA make it big and just stuff the label on a standard PC (and that makes me sad *sniff*).  The Amiga as we know it cannot possibly compete with the technological advancement rate and the huge multi-billion dollar budgets of the PC world.

[spirantho]

Except that the price ISN'T 550 euros when you add taxes and the cost of the OS. And I know WHY the price is high, but it doesn't make it any less crazy high though for me as a potential buyer. I might actually consider buying the machine if it was 500e for a complete system, with OS and taxes included. But paying nearly 1000e for it just isn't an option, and it most likely won't attract anyone not already using AOS4 to buy one.

I understand that, but the problem is that that is the price. The people behind it are probably not much more than breaking even at that price. To sell it at 500 euros would be a large loss, including the OS developers. Small volume design and production is expensive, it's a fact of life.

These people aren't driving Ferraris here, they're just trying to make a living.

[spirantho]

ok lets look at it from another angle.

Assuming developers are interested in programming games on a SAM system, they tend to use a game engine they are familiar with EG, Unreal Engine.

The Unreal Development Kit (UDK) has 2 million+ lines of code and takes just under 3 mins to compile on a blazing fast 8 core / 16 thread system.

Assuming we have Unreal working, how long would it take to compile just the UDK, (just compile the developer kit without game at this stage).

For a decent game to get on Amiga, we need the same Game engines that developers use, or they wont even look in our direction.

Once we have Unreal 3 engine working, find the simplest commercial game (oldest) and try compile - see how long a developer need to waste time for it to compile.

Any guesses ?

hardware needs to match the 'norm hardware' - this is the first stage or obstacle.

First match hardware, then price, match developer tools, then increase userbase.

These days Game developers are using 100+ distributed network systems to compile their games.

Compilation time is irrelevant. They'd use a cross-compiler.

I can tell you now that even if the Amiga was twice as fast as a PC, it wouldn't succeed. The hardware is irrelevant. The fact is that there's no software = no userbase = no software. The only way to break that cycle is with a big (and I mean millions and millions of dollars) marketing push, and a massive "contribution" to developers.

We are seriously talking in the billions of dollars here - that's not an overstatement.

I am a games developer. I would love to develop games for the Amiga, but it's financial suicide, simple as that - and publishers know this. Developing a fantastic uber-Amiga isn't going to change that - it's about money, and in the Amiga market, there's hardly any. You don't spend $2m on developing a new game when you know total sales are going to be measured in the hundreds.

We should be very grateful we have anybody left at all giving us software and hardware.

[spirantho]

That's the problem, it's not economically viable product anymore while the alternatives costs are significantly less.  The bad calls Hyperion has made over the past ten or so years has them painted in a corner leaving them no where to go.  Time will tell, but I believe this is check-mate.

I think you've been saying it's Game Over for quite a while now.

Whether we understand it or not, the fact is that people DO pay 700 or more.
I do it because I really like AmigaOS 4 - I'm not ashamed of that. I know I could run things much faster and more cheaply using a Linux box, but I don't enjoy Linux. I do enjoy AmigaOS. Plus with AmigaOS I can develop things which don't exist - developing for Linux is a nightmare, and even when you do do something, someone else has already done it. It's just no fun.

Hyperion have painted themselves into a corner, I agree - but it's a hobbyist corner, where they are a big fish in a tiny pond. As long as there are people who are willing to pay for their hobby, they will succeed. The alternative is that everybody gives up, goes home, and starts following Barry or something - I think I prefer where I am with my expensive toy which I enjoy.

All I ask myself is a simple question: for €700, would I get better value for money with a slower machine running AmigaOS, or a faster machine running Linux/Windows/whateverOS - and the answer is always the slower machine with AmigaOS. It's not about benchmarks or figures or numbers or whatever, it's about enjoyment.

That question about the "enjoyment per buck" ratio is all that matters to me - am I really in the minority?

[spirantho]

@spirantho, @Duce, @et al,

Glad to see you guys finally admit OS4 is just a hobby OS. Too bad so many people were denigrated and banned over on boards like AWN for saying as much a few years ago, but I guess even the "old guard" can see OS4 isn't really going anywhere.

I've never said anything else. OS4 is most definitely a Hobby OS - Amigas have all been a hobby since 1994, I figure (and I'm not being revisionist here - feel free to check my older posts).

What I've always said is I'm glad it's a hobbyist OS. Because of that, we can keep a low profile and not have to worry about all the crazy ideas and DRM nonsense and commercial craziness that infects the "big guys". The downside is we don't get the modern CPU-demanding software, but the upside is that we get to enjoy our computer, and that's a worth sacrifice - at least for me.

Long live the hobbyist OSes - all of them, be they AmigaOS, MorphOS, AROS, or even OS-9 and things - it's the people keeping the hobbyist OSes alive that are keeping the enjoyment of computers alive. Without them we'd be forced to use Windows and things all the time.

All hail the AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS and AROS for keeping our Amiga platform - in whatever flavour - alive.

(I think that was my most vitriolic post ever. Do I get a prize? )

[spirantho]

As I see it, anybody who uses a Wintel or Mac computer to just check their email, surf the web, or anything else that could be done using their cell phone is using a hobby OS on a hobby computer. Most "desktop computer" are not being used for real productivity beyond what a Smart Phone can do and hence are no more than needed than the OS they use.

That's probably where some of the disagreement lies.
To me those people are exactly those who are not hobbyists.

Someone who uses their computer as a tool is just a user. No more, no less. They don't care what OS they use, they just want to write a letter to Auntie Mary in Australia and have it get there on time.
A hobbyist (for me) is someone who uses their computer because they enjoy using it. They enjoy tinkering with the OS - trying to get the most out of it. Seeing what boundaries they can push. Or - in my case - seeing what code they can create on it to make it do funky new stuff that no-one else has done before. That is what makes it a hobby.

From my perspective, to say that people using a Windows PC to write an email is a hobbyist is like saying that someone writing a traditional letter has caligraphy as a hobby.

[spirantho]

I see what you mean. I'm not sure if you're "in" or "out" either.

I really can't see that someone using a PC to write an email or browse the web can count as a hobbyist, though - that'd make my Mum a computer hobbyist, and that just can't be right.

[spirantho]

As nobody has figures for Amiga users, obviously it's impossible to say that. Hyperion aren't in control of the World Economy, though, and nor are they in charge of basic economics. You can't blame Hyperion for the fact that a low-volume Amiga costs more than a high-volume PC.

How can it be check-mate while there are still companies making hardware (ACube, A-Eon) and software (Hyperion)? Check-mate means game over, end of story, kaput; yet quite clearly this isn't the case.

I agree that there's a point of no return, yes - but we're clearly not past that point because there still are new things coming out, so by definition it can't be.

[spirantho]

Trevor has already said he's working on future models with Varisys.
The gestation period for a new machine when you're a small team is in the region of 2-3 years, further complicated by things like the Xena - so I'd class having two machines released in the last two years as being current. If we were using ARM chips we'd still have the same development time more or less - we don't all want portables, after all; some of us still want desktops and that's mostly unexplored territory for ARM.

You have to admit that compared to the Dark Ages (i.e. between the end of the AmigaOne XE line and the arrival of the Sam), it's positively thriving. Nothing happened in those years hardware-wise. Now we only have two companies making new hardware, but that's still two more than we used to.

I don't count the netbook because we don't know anything except it's probably not new hardware.... this thread is about hardware.

[spirantho]

What happened when you played the same video on a similar specced PC using the same software?
You really can't compare open source software on an 800MHZ machine against a dedicated h264 hardware decoder (which phones have).

Decoding modern video compression is a MUCH harder process than people realise, you just don't notice because PCs have so much CPU speed and phones have dedicated hardware.

If your friend bought a Sam expecting it to run videos he would have been disappointed with an 800Mhz anything.

[spirantho]

Yes, and it's all true. It has to be if it's on the internet. The internet does not lie.