Ease off bashing AmigaONE X1000?

[takemehomegrandma]

A) Price.
B) PowerPC vs other.
C) Drivers.

I think it's the above that turns people off, rather than discussions. People who hoped for some kind of future involving expansion of the user base, easily realize when looking at contents of the above quote that there can't be no future; that with this chosen route there is no hope, no possible chance of expansion. This is what driving people away, the fact that it's nothing but a waste of time, better do something else. Wanting to discuss it is only natural, you want to express your views to others with the hope of the people in charge will change their ways, start thinking differently and going in the opposite direction (Of course it's just another let-down when those people instead of changing their strategy, just continues the spiral downwards by giving more of exactly the same instead of something different, but that's another matter). Discussions is what a discussion board like this is for, but all people don't like all discussions, all people doesn't always agree, that's only natural in a pluralistic, open and free world, there is nothing bad in that, and if there is a thread or post you don't like, simply jump past the post or leave the thread altogether. It's really as simple as that.

Starting meta-discussions like this thread is not a solution and it's rather an ugly thing to do because the sole purpose is to try to narrow down "allowed" views, "allowed" subjects, and "allowed" opinions. Who are YOU to tell others what to think, what to feel, and what to say? Why should YOU (or ANYONE for that matter) dictate what opinions and subjects should be allowed, and what not? This is the only purpose this thread has. And this is bad IMO. Not being able to talk freely in a discussion forum will only drive people away to a place where this freedom is allowed.

[takemehomegrandma]

free from abuse.

OMG! "Abuse"?!

[takemehomegrandma]

Apart from cheaper hardware, situation with MorphOS is similar.

Of course MorphOS is also a niche OS developed at a Hobby basis with a tiny user base, but MorphOS is still being actively developed and AFAIK there is actually a plan to migrate to a better platform/ISA and to introduce modern OS features, etc.

Action to change situation is way better then moaning, and that is what Trevor does.

The X1000 probably pushed away more people than anything else in modern Amiga times (because of the points outlined in the OP). It was supposed to be the future of OS4, but when it turned out to be nothing but a poorly supported $3,000+ machine with 2005 level performance that never even was released in a proper way, then it suddenly became obvious to everyone that the plan had failed, that any hope of a future is gone. Had Trevor simply been sitting on his ass doing nothing, there would indeed have been one less motherboard for OS4 users to choose from, but there would probably have been more people hanging around now and at least still dreaming of a future. The X1000 was a dreamkiller, an eyeopener, it cracked open the protective little Amiga bubble and let in the cold breeze of 2013 realism into the red/white checkered fuzzy dreamworld. This caused many to wake up, look around, and say to themselves "what the hell am I still doing here"?

The problem isn't discussions or "negativity", the problem is:

   A) Price.
B) PowerPC vs other.
C) Drivers.

(I suppose you could add a D) Modern OS Features to this as well...?)

IMHO of course!

[takemehomegrandma]

I think it did push some people away, I was one of them

I was waiting to see what would be announced after Hyperion won their long running legal battle with Amiga Inc and was at that point considering buying into OS4.   When Hyperion's big plan turned out to be the X1000 launch, I lost interest in OS4 and decided to stick with classics instead.

Indeed!

But at least you are still around!

[takemehomegrandma]

Oh spare me the crap about how hard and expensive it is. I work at intel and see other engineers doing things here all the time for nearly nothing on hardware they just toss together to test ideas. As mentioned if the Raspberry-PI guys can build a machine as cheap as they do I dont want to hear how hard it is to get it done. I see it every single day I go to work.

Good. We are all eager to see someone (you) producing competition, a PPC board of any kind that will be supported by MorphOS/AmigaOS 4, including software support afterwards. Its always easy to say something someone else is suppose to do is easy.

"PPC boards" is a problem, not a solution!

[takemehomegrandma]

So it goes back to my original argument which is if Individual computers are able to deliver products at a reasonable price why is that not possible when it comes to the X1000?

It's quite simple really. As impressive as Individual Computers' products are, their accelerators have a fraction of the complexity of the A1-X1000. They run at lower frequencies which makes design easier; the components are simpler, and they have fewer components. There is no way that you can compare an accelerator for a "classic Amiga" to a full ATX motherboard with a >1GHz CPU.

Hans

"the A1-X1000 complexity" is a problem, not a solution!



Seriously, Jens Schönfeld makes his own HW, he has the competence and doesn't need to invoice the time spent to anyone, he sets his own price on the time spent. Trevor Dickinson doesn't have this in-house competence, hence he paid an enormous price for the X1000 development (can't remember the sum, but it was huge IIRC).

The Xena/Xorro probably didn't help. It definitely increased "the A1-X1000 complexity" (bigger PCB, possibly more PCB layers, more components, longer development time (all paid for!), more time for testing (also paid for!), etc, etc). And for what exactly? Nobody knows, not even Trevor as it seems. It was just a "cool thing" (really?) that nobody has found any use for.

Less is more when it comes to complexity!

[takemehomegrandma]

Seriously, even if Jens designed something like the A1-X1000, it would still cost a heap more than one of his accelerators sub-100 MHz accelerators.

What you call "an enormous price" is what you can expect designing a modern motherboard to cost.

The Pegasos and the Pegasos 2 was dead-cheap compared to the X1000, heck, if memory doesn't serve me wrong it was even cheaper than the Sam (while being more powerful, and several years earlier). Those designs were complex and full-blown motherboards.

Just like Jens/Individual Computers, Genesi/bPlan also has in-house competence. But the thing is - not that many years ago, Genesi offered the community to actually *pay for development* of a new PPC motherboard!

The end product would have been:

   - Flex form factor - MPC8610@1Ghz (or faster if it is economically feasable)
- 4x SATA 2 connectors
- 4x USB2 ports
- 2x Gigabit Ethernet ports
- Sound ports (Audio Out, Mic In)
- 1 PCI slot
- 1 PCI-e slot 1x
- 1 PCI-e slot 8x

The financing of the development would take place through bounties over at power2people.org, it would be 6 phases (IIRC), the result would be completely open sourced and community owned. The final cost of all stages would be $60.000 IIRC (or was it EUR? Doesn't really matter for the sake of the discussion), and this would also include a Freescale sponsored developer program with free boards donated to interesting development projects (like Genesi/Freescale has done on several occasions before).

IIRC the general opinion in the community was that this was way to expensive, few people chipped in. Yet it would only have taken ~20 people paying the X1000 end-user price to finance the entire development cost. This wasn't a charity project, it was something Genesi would "invoice" the community, because they didn't want to invest anymore in PPC themselves.

And the X1000? Well, "Trevor said that it cost over US$400,000 to develop the X1000."
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=36690&forum=2&start=80#685861

I see a difference!

And frankly, I am astonished that the plug wasn't pulled on this!

:confused:

(But I'm perhaps even more astonished that the Xorro/Xena is being done all over again!)

[takemehomegrandma]

Personally, I think 270 Euros for a Sam 440 Flex (the current price) is a good one

I agree that this price is acceptable, but the 667MHz "G2" CPU is *way* too weak and not worth it.

When the Pegasos 2 reached its EOL (7 years ago, time flies) its price was similar ($399 /~EUR €300), but with a 1GHz G4 that runs circles around that Sam. And most people consider the Peg2 to be a bit weak; the old G4 Mac's we use with MorphOS today is almost 2x the speed of the Peg2 G4, and this is where heavy web browsing and media playback starts becoming enjoyable. I have no personal experience of the G5's, but the situation improves even more of course.

I would actually consider paying up to €500 for a new PPC motherboard for MorphOS even today (a bit more for a system of course), but then it would have to show some improvement to what I already have, I'd expect a step up instead of a step down. I would at least expect it to play x.264 bitstreams in software/CPU in full HD (1080p) without any problems, and with the silence of a G4. Can it do that, then I'd be interested, even though €500 is a bit expensive, because then the performance would at least cover many of my non-professional everyday areas of use (casual Internet and media consumption), even if it's obviously still going to be severely under-powered compared to real 2013 desktop HW. If not, I'd rather stick with the much cheaper G4 Mac HW that at least plays most 720p bitstreams (not really interested in those hot and bulky G5's).

Those "G2" class CPU's struggle with DVD resolution MPEG-2 streams, and I see no reason to buy something like that at all in 2013, no matter the price. It wouldn't just be a step back, it would be *several* steps back (or far more than a decade back in time, in performance comparison). In that class you can still get a $99/€75 Efika 5k2 brand new from Directron.com. It's a little slower than the Sam (400MHz instead of 667MHz), it has some oddities, quirks and limitations, and it's not as expandable, but at $99 the question is if it's not a better buy? I mean, those slow "G2's" aren't really useful anyway, so...