Ease off bashing AmigaONE X1000?

[OlafS3]

This is supposed to be a forum for helping users of old computers.  The "bashing" in general was old as of day one, and has driven away many great members.  Good job, y'all.  

I talked to a number of former amiga developers (one even warned me to start with it at all). That they "were driven away" was only partly because of red vs. blue (or any other colour) but because many disliked the strategy and the route was chosen (many were former AmigaOS developer and dropped it (and all other platforms) when their hardware died). So life is not that easy...

[OlafS3]

Eliyahu, I think you have your work cut out for you before this forum can be called truly welcoming for all AmigaOS users.

It's unbelievable... the thing that draws the most criticism on an Amiga forum, is when somebody releases a new top end AmigaOS machine.

It is the strategy that is critisized. And censoring everything will not solve anything. You cannot censor what people think and you cannot censor what people outside think. As soon as "Amigians" (AmigaOS user) get out and try to "sell" it they will get the same questions and wondering. And if they have no persuasive answers they will fail to win any new users. Or are the AmigaOS people happy with the situation?

What I "bashed" (I did not do that) was building new high-end (or better high-price) machines. I understood to a certain degree why Trevor created the X1000 (even though I personal think that "custom" systems have no chance in todays world) but why these two new machines? One as a replacement for X1000 (from comments it seems similar priced) and a new even more expensive. It would have made sense to offer a more advanced system in the midrange and a new better entry system and of course something for mobile but two new high-price systems? Amiga was a affordable good system at its time but now it is almost unpayable for most users. I think it is the completely wrong direction. To critisize that is valid. And as I said I talked to a number of ex-amiga developers (mostly former AmigaOS developers) and there was the red vs. blue bashing and similar only one reason, more important was that they lost trust in the future.

[OlafS3]

To not further derail X1000 threads (or similar) I have created this thread for general discussions:
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=65503

[OlafS3]

NovaCoder, and it a shame it pushed you away. The classic does benefit a lot from your work though

But as Trevor said, the x1000 sold more than 200 but less than 2000, one can only speculate on the numbers actually sold, but it does confirm that the user base is a lot bigger than the handfull of users here on amiga.org

a couple of hundred propably (what is much for the limited AmigaOS community and the high price)

[OlafS3]

"AOS 4.2 would come faster then x86 MorphOS."

Assuming that it will need years for MorphOS to make the shift to a new platform it is a easy bet :-)

The disappointment was because people expected Hyperion to drop PPC and go to new and more powerful hardware (X86/X64), instead the X1000 was announced who is again years behind competition (except price-wise). So it was clear that there will be no (or at least only few) new users and that thicks in the niche it is in. Perhaps people had more expectations and thought after the court settling that all what was hindering Hyperion is out of the way and they announce a new great strategy. And when this not happened they dropped the platform. Most stayed till their hardware died.

[OlafS3]

They could at least have SAM. So its not X1000 to be blamed per se, but Hyperions choice.

OK. But seeing that x86 transition might take years, I take staying PPC and developing OS also as a valid choice. And don`t feel bad about since I am used to having dedicated Amiga machine. Being second or third OS on an x86 machine will not bring a world conquest - look at AROS. I could really bitch about the price (because with it goes a bank debt that increases it even more) but I take it as consciouss choice that SAMs are quirky and limited in many ways and that is what I wanted as platform for current AmigaOS 4.1 and its development.

If you take x86 AmigaOS4 dream as quite an illusion (based on what?) I do feel much progress. I didn`t even expect support for high end RadeonsHD and port of Libre Office - but I do understand that as way to modernity.

Surely, Hyperion judges what is possible on their current resources, as well as MorphOS and AROS teams.

My own dream of AmigaOS 5 that would be (kind of as Amiga Inc TAO promised) CPU independent running on both PPC and x86 and ARM, while being based on look and feel of OS4, MOS and AROS, is just my dream. But it doesn`t mean I will not support what is on the table.

I had the idea that MorphOS and AROS would have a common infrastructure (API, USB, PCI and so on) and tried to discuss it with MorphOS developers and do not think there is interest. With Ben H. it is not even possible to discuss (partly because threads fast derail and get into a big bashing). And in the last months I had sneak peak into some of the differences. If you only dig a little you immdediately see lots of differences how things are implemented, parameters and how it all behaves. To have a common "API" (or similar) it would mean all parties would have to make a lot of compromises, drop own ideas and so on. I do not see any realistic chance for it (even it would be good in economic sense). It would have been good if all camps would have sit on a table and agreed on common standards and APIs (with exact definitions). But that was not the case.

[OlafS3]

Wow. What would you think of C=USA and Roberto if you judge TW bounty, DJ Nick and A-EON A1 X1000 harshly.

Better do not ask :laugh1:

[OlafS3]

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.

thanks for nice words (even for the "messy" part :-) ). Your part testing AROS 68k on real hardware is very important too. Thanx for that.

the lack of interest is because most 68k fans do not realize how important AROS 68k will be in future. It is a standardized, extensible and opensource 68k platform. It will run not only on classic hardware and emulation (including AROS distributions) but also on new FPGA based hardware. So you can write a 68k software and it runs on all supported platforms. You miss functionality, it can be added. Most 68k fans only see it is it 100% compatible, answer No. Is it running as fast as AmigaOS, answer No. Then they say no interest. That is shortsighted from my point of view but it is how many people think. That will not change before software will exist for AROS 68k that is not available for any other 68k platform.

[OlafS3]

I read from Tony that part of the problem is that GCC 68k is less optimized nowadays what makes AROS slower.

Yes Assembler would make it faster (a lot) but who does that. At the moment only two people with limited time are involved on system level (Toni Kickstart Replacement and Jason AROS 68k).

[OlafS3]

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.

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.

I think he not meant to rewrite whole Aros in Assembler (only critical parts)

[OlafS3]

I do understand it is AROS for all as it can be run via UAE. Could you do some version that can be fast and hosted inside MorphOS/AmigaOS 4 68k emulation? I am not keen of running emulated AROS inside QEMU on Linux on X1000 ... So I see point here if possible, too ... AROS for MorphOS and OS4 users.

Sadly, Natami is unlikelly to hapen, but its good to see FPGA Arcade and others for Classic lovers. If there was no AROS 68k, there would be no point in further 68k development.

And hope we are done with X1000 bashing :-)

X1000 is there and all was bashed what could be bashed :-)

You can only run AROS 68k in UAE. QEMU is very slow from my experience. I think someone run AROS in QEMU on a X1000 (I think I saw a screenshot). But when I tested AROS X86 running with QEMU it was too slow. I installed it in VMWare. "Hosted" is also very fast.

[OlafS3]

I've got you beat on that one.
My 1.42 GHz iBook only set me back $70.
And it works quite well.
Its just painful that the OS key is in the highest tier (meaning I almost have to spend twice as much for the license).



Trevor's little vanity project is pretty impressive.
He took the ACK Systems/Ainc. specs and ran with them finding a partner that could actually obtain the CPUs and build the systems.
I was exchanging e-mail with Paul Gentle (@ Varisys) for months before it was commonly known who A-eon's partner was.
Trevor picked the perfect guys to lead this.



I try not to bash OS4.
And I still get comments like "we're only developing for 'real' AmigaOS".
What everyone seems to forget is that all the MorphOS developers are former AmigaOS developers.
Some of the best, as a matter of fact.

This fiction that pride in your creation has led to a "red vs. blue war" is ridiculous.

All it done is chase the knowledgeable MorphOS supporters off this site.

Anyone notice that Piru doesn't post here anymore?

Nobody doubts that some of the MorphOS developer belong to the best developers on the platform. And someone likes to mention "MorphOS is Amiga done right" what is propably not wrong :-)

The problem I have with the MorphOS developers (at least to a certain degree) is their "closed" attitude. They made some of the best technologies and software packages but failed to see the chance to create standards. Examples are MUI, CybergraphX, OWB. All closed source. What I have read is that key components of OWB are now closed source too (in external components) so even if someone would port it important features would not be there. If I understood it right is HTML5 support in a closed source component. That makes new versions of OWB useless on other platforms. They think it gives them a advantage but I think it is wrong and shortsighted to act this way.

[OlafS3]

as you certainly know my main interest is AROS and it is open. I do not know if there is any support regarding Zune but I am not involved there so I cannot say.

I know that there were a lot of bashings and negativ emotions between expecially devlopers of AmigaOS and MorphOS. But whatever the reasons are and who has caused it and is to blame the result is that all 3 platforms are similar but in details very different so that most developers are only supporting one platform in the end. Examples are differences in GUI (MUI4, Zune, MUI3.9/Reaction), RTG (Cybergraphics3, Cybergraphics5, P96). The list is endless and if you dig a little and compare even similar things are solved different and of course incompatible. At the end it forces developers to decide for one platform.

[OlafS3]

Stefan Stuntz still lives? I tried to register MUI last year, the payment worked but I did not get any answer. I also sent a email and got no answer too. Hardly creating trust at me...

A basic question. MUI4 is property of Stuntz and licensed to MorphOS-Team and still in development by him?

I know of developers who maintain different sourcecodes what is not very efficient. And the problem are not the "big" differences but the small ones (f.e. CybergraphX related). I experienced that a couple of times when testing 68k applications and games on AROS 68k. It can be non-implemented AROS routines or different behavior/parameters. Often small differences can causes crashes (or at least non-working software) and are difficult to find if you do not know the different OSs. New developers from outside (who we will hopefully win in future) will not be willing to invest lots of time testing their software on different platforms and decide for one platform (they see the most potential in). Alternativ there are multi-platforms tools too who hide the differences but these tools are mostly not suited for every task. So by forcing developers to decide for MorphOS or against it could strike back on them depending on the situation.

[OlafS3]

bashing "X1000" is a old hat, we need new targets now :-)