(Im)Patient Amigas

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What makes you think you will be able to buy AOS4 with the AmigaOne? Have we even seen an alpha of anything non-Linux running on the AmigaOne?

As for the PPC 970 it uses a new bus protocol so you will have to wait until MAI or whomever develops a new chip set before you can use it. In the meantime the Pegasos will be able to use G4 processors which use the same bus as the G3.

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Both AmigaOS4 and MorphOS claim to be "Amiga compatible" or more specifically have backwards compatibility for running Amiga 3.x software.

The question really is, which OS will be MORE compatible.

We have no idea how compatible AmigaOS 4 will be since the only thing shown t the public is Amiga OS 3.x with some 4.x elements. I expect the compatibility to be good since they will simply use the same 3.x libraries. However these libraries will still be 68k and will run under emulation. I would be shocked (but pleasantly so) if they released a fully native AmigaOS 4.

MorphOS wrote all their 3.x compatible libraries as PowerPC native from the very beginning so I would expect it to run old software much faster.

As for the interface both OSs will have interfaces which are different than AmigaOS 3.x. Until we sit down and compare 3.x, 4.x, and MOS I don't see how anybody can pass judgement.

The only thing I know is AOS4 isn't going to be running on new hardware any time soon. I would expect no earlier than 2004 at this rate. MOS, to Amiga Inc.'s shame, is far farther along despite the fact they had to write a lot of the OS from scratch instead of rewriting an old OS.

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Several reasons:

1) They don't even have an OS to port.

All they have is some AOS4.x technologies running on 3.x on a A4000. They beagged not long ago that exec was native.

2) Even if they did, it would take a long time

Even assuming there is a new kernel running on the A4000 which is ready to be ported, this process isn't easy! The architectures are completely different and would require a hell of a lot of debugging just to get the shell up and running. Nobody at Amiga Inc. or anybody else has claimed to find the silver bullet to bypass this process. Consider that the host processor has a different interrupt protocol to begin with and a different ABI and a different north bridge and a different memory protocol and a different firmware logic and a different set of chips for the south bridge and a different friggin EVERYTHING!

It took a long time for the Quark kernel to be ported as well. BPlan is just ahead of the game, that's all. No short-cuts were taken.

I leave it to the Amiga partnership to show me the money. Demonstrate SOMETHING running on the AmigaOne other than Linux. Demonstrate a new AmigaOS running on a A4000 with new features like mmeory protection.

I mean something, ANYTHING!

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Well why don't we try to use some logic then.

If you had AmigaOS 4 in working order on a A4000 why would you instead demonstrate an extremely buggy Amiga 3.x with some AOS4 elements?

Which is it, is the Amiga partnership insane or behind?

We KNOW that AOS4 isn't even stable to demonstrate on the A4000. We KNOW that whatever they have can't be any better than the really buggy 3/4 hybrid they demonstrated. We KNOW that they recently bragged about finishing exec.

How can the above be true and AOS4 for AmigaOne be just around the corner? HA! 2004 if you're lucky.