Amiga.org
The "Not Quite Amiga but still computer related category" => Alternative Operating Systems => Topic started by: alex on June 04, 2003, 07:45:30 PM
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Get your flame throwers ready, but I'm thinking that I realize that Hyperion has it's reasons for delaying AOS4, but in the process of the delay, Amiga, Inc is going under from the lack of much needed funds and Eyetech can't just sit on hardware forever without cash.
I would think that is Aos 4 were out even in a Mac OS X style when they did their first 1.0 release with some acceptable shortcomings but followed by a free update, this would at least get needed revenue into the hands of all involved.
Right now they are in the catch-22 death sipral. No money so development is delayed and resources are diverted to income projects, but the delay is killing the future cash from sales.
At the end of the day, it looks like Amiga, Inc. will be dead and Eyetech will be sitting on overpriced hardware unable to buy new hardware components at todays prices because they can't get rid of what they have or afford to buy new.
Add to that MOS/Pegasos is nipping at their heals and the ONLY reason I haven't just gone for their solution is because I can't get my hands on them.
This should be a lesson the the MOS crew, take advantage of the situation now as you might not have the chance later.
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And what would Hyperion gain from this ? An OS with no hardware platform ?
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@alex
dont be daft releasing incomplete software that is unstable would kill the amiga although how do you kill something that has been dead for a while. :-? :-o
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Well I will not get my flame thrower ready because you have quite a point here. Everybody needs funds and those can't be made before OS 4.0 hits the stores.
BUT there is no point in sending out a half finished OS either. Imagine what buyers (hopefully also outside the community) will think when they see a OS with a lot of errors and problems. That will not give any funds either.
So you're got a point, but I would say it's a no win situation.
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As Idea goes.. Not a new one..
I thought this some time ago but IMHO it's not woth of hassle to Hyperion because it would result too much uncertanity. Ainc is total loss but killing it for good would cause them more problems than keeping them 'alive' as a facade..
And for being late.. Well... It's way too easy to underestimate work required, especially if you have not done simnilar things before. And they have not, but they have learned a lot since last summer.. We'll see when they are ready to deliver.
(edit.. some typos fixed.. and new added) :-D
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Hyperion aren't delaying OS4, IMO. They just totally underestimated the task that it would be, and totally underestimated the problems in coding in 68k and recompiling for PPC. "Just change some flags and recompile." It didn't ever work that way. Ever.
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Hyperion killing Amiga? IMO it's the opposite - while A inc and others have certainly not helped, Hyperion seem to have been steadily developing away on the new OS. Fast? Certainly not - but I cannot see how they could speed it up (to get more developers, they'd have to have people doing other things like porting games).
A half-baked AmigaOS would be terrible. For one thing, it would immidiately convince many people to go over to other solutions. And can you imagine the headlines on OSNews etc? "After ten years the new Amiga is out. And it sucks". Since it's taken them so long, it's far better to wait a little more and have a brilliant OS.
Anyway, I cannot see what they could do to cut corners. AFAIK the main work now is to port the modules to PPC and bug check. If they aren't ported then it'll be slow. If they are buggy, then it'll be slow and unreliable - not something that AmigaOS is known for.
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Maybe it would have been faster to program if they had had hartge and partners source code to os 3.9? :-? :-D
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If you ask me, then they have put to many new things to OS4.0. Looking at the feature list clearly shows that many new features have come.
Instead, they should only have converted existing code to PPC and released, but thats not the way things go...
Hopefully, OS4.0 will soon be out - allthough not for my BPPC :(
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Is Hyperion really killing Amiga?
:roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao:
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I seriously doubt that any harm that may be caused by the delay would be intentional.
Way to spread XXX :-)
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XXX? What happened to Fear Uncertianty and Doubt? :-)
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The reason why OS 4 has taken so long has nothing to do with moving 68K to PPC.
The fact that you can simpy recompile 68K code for PPC still stands.
The fact of the matter is that our design and especially the emulation concept is by far superior to other solutions currently available on the market which use some kind of sandbox approach.
In fact, quite a few MorphOS adepts went on record to state that it couldn't even be done.
Well, it has been done although it has taken us far longer that we would have liked.
During the OS 4 development period, Hyperion has only needed to generate sufficient revenue from other projects to keep development going.
In fact, we ported 2 Mac titles, 1 Amiga title and did the firmware for the AmigaOne hardware.
We have also been confronted with companies defaulting on their contractually agreed payments and royalties to us which have further added to the problem.
Still, if you consider how long MorphOS has been in development, we're still doing very well.
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And in the words of David Essex....
[color=FF0000]Rock On[/color][/b][/i]
Hyperion !!
:-D
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@EditChick
What anime series or game did you get your avatar from? :-)
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@alex
Why on earth would Hyperion want to delay the release of OS4? They are/have been funding the work themselves, on a limited budget. Any delays have been pretty much out of their control, with the exception of the BIOS work, which was pretty much a must-have anyway (and of course, speeded up delivery of the A1's).
If you scout around the Amiga news sites, you'd have seen that the OS is not quite in a releaseable state, to the point of not really even being a proper 'Beta' release. However, the OS4 roadshow will be able to display for all to see that work has been done (both on the surface and under the skin). This will also give people a chance to see that Hyperions way of implementing their 68k emulator does work.
I'm sure anyone involved in the Amiga market today is neither blind or stupid enough to think that the streets of Amigaland are paved in gold. Those that are around now know it's along, hard slog to earn a few crumbs and Amiga sales alone cannot support even the most tightly run business's.
You can bet your bottom dollar that both Alan at Eyetech and Ben at Hyperion could both easily be certified insane at what many would call 'Suicidal' business decisions in getting involved in this project.
Don't think that any royalties received from Amigaone/OS4 sales will make a huge difference to where Amiga Inc stand today; they will stand or fall on their AmigaDE alone, as OS4 was never ever mentioned when they were touting for investors. Eyetech have a long term view as to what is possible and anyone with an iota of common sense woud know the the current phase is to suit existing Amiga users only. As and when a more feature rich (OS4.1) OS is available, along with alternative hardware, more mainstream consumers will be targeted.
If you want to compare OS4 to OSX consider this (from a release stand point only, NOT from a technical or feature list angle):
OS4 will be a .0 release (ie OS4.0), which will have certain aspects of it either not implemented, or not as functional as some would like. This compares to the state of OSX that you mentioned. To release OS4 now would be total madness in it's incomplete state.
The whole idea is to get all the features working that were listed by Hyperion. Docs will then become available to support the programming community and enable a new wave of applications to support the new hardware and OS features.
Until this happens, Eyetech will sell amigaones with Linux to run on, to those who want them . Hyperion have always stated that OS4 will be released 'When It's Ready' (tm) and not before.
It's your choice if you want to go down the MOS route. It's a free world (etc, etc) so your choice is your own and no one has any right to tell you anything else.
But those of us that are patient enough to wait some more, will wait for OS4.
-john
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@ alex
Add to that MOS/Pegasos is nipping at their heals and the ONLY reason I haven't just gone for their solution is because I can't get my hands on them.
If you want a Pegasos, drop a mail to GGS Data. They still seem to have some in stock. This will also qualify you for the €200 Pegasos2 G4 upgrade! :-)
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Well done HyperionMP we will kick the oposition in touch they dont have the features or anything other than a beta . :-o :-) :-D
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Maybe I am being overly paranoid, but why is whenever a major event is about to occur on the ¨red side¨, one begins to see these sorts of threads starting to popup. :-?
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The fact that you can simpy recompile 68K code for PPC still stands.
Well, I wouldn't have thought so (and many others say the same), but since I'm not in your shoes I can't really comment on it. But anyway, the best of luck and I hope it works out well and quickly.
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Ohhhh Gawd! There's that avatar again!!! Rock Awwnnnnn!
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@HyperionMP
I think the guys that coded PPCBoot/uBoot would be quite shocked that you're claiming credit for their hard work.
In fact, looking at the sourcecode (where are those changes you've done, which you're to return to the archive under the terms of the GPL) the Friedens only ported it to the Teron motherboard. While sure, porting is good work, call it what it is: You ported a BIOS that was freely availible elsewhere.
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@downix
In fact, we ported 2 Mac titles, 1 Amiga title and did the firmware for the AmigaOne hardware
maybe I'm blind, but I don't see anything here that reads in any way as a likely intentional misrepresentation of coding versus porting. HyperionMP never said 'we developed the firmware internally from scratch', and the active verb in the sentence is "ported"
It seems a bit too jumpy to immediately run to the idea that by saying 'did' Hyperion is somehow implying that anything other than porting was done. Give the man a break why don't you? He's writing a response off the top of his head on a discussion board, and on top of that his response is in English, which is one of the most naturally ambiguous languages in existence.
The more I look at this site the more I think everybody just needs to calm WAY down.
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@Downix you have been replyed to that already in the past but you seem to have forgotten
what the reply was & you then said there after.
http://amiga.org/modules/news/article.php?item_id=1877&comment_id=14414&mode=thread&order=0
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HyperionMP: thanks for your reply!
I dont agree with the Hyperion killing Amiga. They're doing their best..and I sure as heck am excited to see the new beta OS pictures. (RUNNING June 7th, THIS SATURDAY! WOO HOO!!)
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They just totally underestimated the task that it would be, and totally underestimated the problems in coding in 68k and recompiling for PPC. "Just change some flags and recompile." It didn't ever work that way. Ever.
Um, doesn't Hyperion specialize in porting apps from other platforms to the Amiga? I think they would have a pretty good idea of the work involved in porting 68K to PPC.
As for the work in porting a whole 68K operating system to PPC, well, that's a different story. :-)
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Oh, uh, I just read Hyperion's post. Duh. :crazy:
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Did anybody read Olaf's article on the Filesystem revamp?
You honestly believe projects like that don't take TIME?
relax... take a deep breath.. count to 10... go to your happy place. :-D (btw, *my* happy place has fine scotch, a PPC amiga, and Natasha Henstridge. Maybe not in that particular order, though ;-) )
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Nate, as somebody already pointed out, "asked and answered".
I never claimed we did the firmware from scratch.
We did substantially extend it with the menu system we introduced but I never claimed we wrote it from scratch.
I don't go around announcing to everybody that substantial bits of MorphOS are based on AROS either.
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I think the guys that coded PPCBoot/uBoot would be quite shocked that you're claiming credit for their hard work.
Playing a game of word twister again. A really stupid comment.
I remember saying "we did Heretic II for the Amiga" and "we did Shogo for the Amiga". We never claimed doing anything but porting. We didn't claim we started the firmward from scratch.
where are those changes you've done, which you're to return to the archive under the terms of the GPL)
We are in full compliance to the GPL. If you look at the sourcecode in the board/MAI directory, you will find the changes. Look at drivers/pci.c to find a comment that even carries my name.
Inform yourself before you post, please.
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In fact, looking at the sourcecode (where are those changes you've done, which you're to return to the archive under the terms of the GPL) the Friedens only ported it to the Teron motherboard
Actually Hyperion have no obligation to return any code to Sourceforge.
Apparently Ben Hermans found a quirk of the GPL which only requires MAIL ORDER.
So, if you send a blank CD and cost of return postage to Hyperion, and ask them to burn you a copy of their UBoot port source code ( just diffs, even) then they are obliged to give it to you under the terms of the GPL.
Nothing, anywhere, ever, said that you had to commit your source code back into the main tree, since enforcing that particular act would actually be AGAINST the GPL - it removes the right for people to fork the codebase.
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If you have proof that you have a version of their Uboot port binary that is.
( GPL to the letter )
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Um, doesn't Hyperion specialize in porting apps from other platforms to the Amiga? I think they would have a pretty good idea of the work involved in porting 68K to PPC.
Hyperion are world reknowned for doing absolutely ####ty jobs of porting apps from one platform or another. Just ask MacPlay, check some other Mac gaming forums about user complaints. See how they had a game port taken from them for stalling for 2 years and producing incredibly badly performing code.
Hyperion blamed it on "crap Mac hardware", but the other company managed to port the game perfectly fine and get it performing excellently.
What you have basically is Hyperion, which are supposedly good at porting DirectX code to OpenGL, and "optimising" parts of that code into PPC assembler - which does not qualify any of them to do an operating system - and quite frankly they would not be first choice for most companies to port their game to Mac or Amiga or Linux or whatever.. :)
In their defence, what probably does qualify some of the team is their academic acheivements (degrees, diplomas)..
.. but that does not mean they can do it, just that they spent some time 20 years ago in the dark ages coding on some VAX cluster.
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@Neko,
With respect, what the **** do you, yourself personally, know about their developer abilities?
Have you worked with any of their code?
If not, then your'e not in a position to judge
So OS4 is behind schedule. Show me any other (propriety) OS producer that has hit a target on time.
Windows hasn't *ever* hit an original release date and Mac are hardly any better. How long were they pimping OSX before it was actually available? I first read about it when OS8 was out.
Youd think if any user base had learned patience it would be us :-)
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>Hyperion are world reknowned for doing absolutely ####ty >jobs of porting apps from one platform or another.
Yeah sure Matt. Pure hearsay.
Shogo for Mac was ported by MorphOS heroes Titan and I'll agree that the port was crap.
Gorky 17 was ported by us to Mac for Epic and they still owe us more than 40% of the contractually agreed upon fee which is why we are not doing any further updates of it.
>Just ask MacPlay, check some other Mac gaming forums >about user complaints. See how they had a game port taken >from them for stalling for 2 years and producing incredibly >badly performing code.
Fact of the matter is that we complied fully with our contractual obligations towards MacPlay.
For the pittance that we were offered, we didn't sign on to rewrite the LithTech engine from scratch.
They brought in another coding team for AVP2.
That was more than 1 year ago despite the fact that they had full access to our codebase and we got the game to the first milestone already.
And it still isn't released.
It seems we weren't so bad after all.
You should stay away from those MorphOS sessions.
Reality tends to get twisted there quite badly.
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Neko wrote:
Um, doesn't Hyperion specialize in porting apps from other platforms to the Amiga? I think they would have a pretty good idea of the work involved in porting 68K to PPC.
Hyperion are world reknowned for doing absolutely ####ty jobs of porting apps from one platform or another. Just ask MacPlay, check some other Mac gaming forums about user complaints. See how they had a game port taken from them for stalling for 2 years and producing incredibly badly performing code.
Hyperion blamed it on "crap Mac hardware", but the other company managed to port the game perfectly fine and get it performing excellently.
What you have basically is Hyperion, which are supposedly good at porting DirectX code to OpenGL, and "optimising" parts of that code into PPC assembler - which does not qualify any of them to do an operating system - and quite frankly they would not be first choice for most companies to port their game to Mac or Amiga or Linux or whatever.. :)
In their defence, what probably does qualify some of the team is their academic acheivements (degrees, diplomas)..
.. but that does not mean they can do it, just that they spent some time 20 years ago in the dark ages coding on some VAX cluster.
I expect Hyperion have probably bitten off a little more than they can chew with Their AOS4... but It's a bit harsh to say they are crap at porting stuff.
I am really interested to see their solution for AOS4, I personally think they should have used at least some AROS code so as to speed up development, in much the same way MOS have done and AOS3.9 did...
They really do need to get AOS4 out as soon as possible!!!
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@Neko
In their defence, what probably does qualify some of the team is their academic acheivements (degrees, diplomas)..
.. but that does not mean they can do it, just that they spent some time 20 years ago in the dark ages coding on some VAX cluster.
And your qualifications are......
Education
1994 - 1996 Rawlins Community College, Quorn
Qualifications Obtained - GCSE
English B
Maths B
Science (Double Award) BB
Art (3D Design) B
Art (Drawing & Painting) C
Design Technology B
French C
Humanities C
National Curriculum Coursework
Computer Literacy B
1996 - 1998 A-Levels
Statistics C
Physics D
Computing D
Speaks volumes eh? :-P
-john
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Yes, it does indeed speak volumes.
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The link explains the chip on the shoulder and the "amiable" is stretching it a bit far from the truth sometimes but is it really fair to link direct to something with Matts personal details and address on?
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@DaveP
OK, fair enough. Now edited just to show the relevant 'qualifications' that Matt has to back up the "know-it-all" angle he uses, when putting the boot in on any subject he considers himself an expert on.
-john
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DaveP wrote:
The link explains the chip on the shoulder and the "amiable" is stretching it a bit far from the truth sometimes but is it really fair to link direct to something with Matts personal details and address on?
Yeah, that's not a good idea... but then that CV is publicly viewable...
One point though... Matt claims to work for "Genesi UK Ltd." but I can find no Company of that name registered in England or Wales. :-?
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I pretty much agree with Neko on all points... I think he makes alot of sense... as to the education stuff... it dosent matter so long as you get a job and know your stuff... anyone could have gotten a comp sci degree in the 80's just by knowing a little basic or fortran... and goofing around... actually bieng able to apply it and 'walk the walk' so to speak is very differant...in the end the true test is the real world...
as long as I've seen Neko he's been a prick(not a personal attack I think Neko will agree this is the truth)...but I've yet to see him disproven when he states a fact...from what I've seen he keeps his mouth rightfully shut when its something he dosent know about...and condescends angrily when he does... I actually get a kick out of watching Neko pop off...its like that oscar puke from sesame street always getting mad...but in a good natured sort of way
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@Neko: I'd like to know (honestly!) what are the qualifications of MOS team? Have these guys worked with operating systems before?
Linus was a beginner also when he started doing Linux. A geek who has just learnt 'C' and read some Tanenbaum. Of course, some years have passed since then and the coder base is a lot larger.
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How is this Neko?
Never heard of him before.
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Bodie wrote:
How is this Neko?
Never heard of him before.
Lucky you.
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Is this a flame party?
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> and quite frankly they would not be first choice for most
> companies to port their game to Mac or Amiga or Linux or
> whatever.. :)
Ah, that must be the reason why Monlith said about Shogo for Linux: "During all our beta tests, Shogo never ever crashed. We are so proud!"
Oh well... :-D
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ikir wrote:
Is this a flame party?
It looks that way, and getting very personal. Therefore locky locky time. :-x