The Next-Gen Amiga hardware

[amiga_boy]

In a previous post in the gaming forum I made a comment about the the Amiga hardware being underspecced and overpriced. Oddly for this site, there was no argument against this comment. Do the rest of you feel this way?

I think that a mobo with AGPx2, no FireWire, USB 1.1 etc. simply has to at least try and compete with the latest PC mobo's offering AGPx8, 2 x LAN, RAID, USB 2.0 and the rest. Especially within the A1 price range.

I know the laws of supply and demand are at the thin end of the wedge for the entire Amiga community but surely this was the main reason for the failure of the Boxer.

It started with ISA slots, then, as the supply of ISA cards dried up they changed the spec to PCI. They were always changing the specs to meet the capacity of the current PC market. Surely the next model of Zico spec mobo should at least try to embrace the most up to date, fastest selling (and theoretically cheapest) hardware standards: PC??? RAM, whatever ATA harddrives, the fastest GFX cards etc from the start?

Otherwise we will constantly be playing a catch up game, no matter how lean and efficient our OS is.

I also said the Amiga is already dead if you look at the situation realistically. This is the last thing I want. I love the Amiga. There is nothing else available to replace it (MorphOS is not Amiga in my view).

What we need is a real alternative to the nForce2 mobos and others that will make the Amiga look competitive on the store shelves and online store web pages. Only then can we begin to imagine a comeback.

If you have real suggestions for this, post a response. If you want to moan, FOAD.

[Psy]

I also said the Amiga is already dead if you look at the situation realistically. This is the last thing I want. I love the Amiga. There is nothing else available to replace it (MorphOS is not Amiga in my view).

Got to love hypocrisy .  Sure the PCs users are stupid for following labels like IBM and Microsoft and only caring about the name.

But here you are saying the Amiga One with OS4 is a Amiga while Peagsos with MorphOS is not and OS4 is not even out yet.

Yes Amiga One and OS4 has the name, so what you bought your first Amiga becouse of the name?

MorphOS and Peagos was born form the Amiga industry, runs older Amiga software while getting close to what Amiga OS was.

As far I can see MorphOS is a great clone and just like a Dell is an IBM a Peagos/MorphOS is a Amiga.

[Lando]

Of course the AmigaOne is out of date, slow and expensive. Eyetech don't have money, skills or experience to develop anything for themselves, so they're stuck selling Mai's board.  Theyre a shop, not a hardware manufacturer.  Nobody is going to design a new Amiga board.

New Macs have firewire 800, USB 2.0. gigabit ethernet, bluetooth, airport wireless networking, etc etc.  Expensive, but you're getting a lot for your money.  Teron boards - also expensive, but you're getting something from the stone age (in computing terms).

If you want "real suggestions" then here's one: forget the A1 - it's going nowhere (from what I heard, its sold barely half the number of Peg1's, even though it has "the name") its old, its buggy and its lacking features.  Look forward to Pegasos II and pray for certain people to see sense and port AmigaOS4 to it.  At least the specs and, importantly, the price, of the Pegasos II mean it has a chance of competing.

[Bodie]

And we're off and running :-D .

[iCreate]

No doubt a "real" hardware alternative is what most people want.  I think in the end it's just going to be the OS that will have to draw users back in all the while running on x86 hardware.  This is the only way to get power and expansion cheaply and immediately into the hands of old and new users.
Will the OS alone be good enough to do just that?  It'll have to be because developing, maintaining and evolving a plarform over time takes a lot of money.  And all alternative Amiga hardware platforms have either died or had a tough time even getting started.
I think long-term we won't see any surviving hardware solutions for the Amiga but the x86 option.  These PPC mobos will eventually dry up unless there is a huge PPC Linux  market just waiting on these boards.  I doubt that.  Linux is already well established in the x86 platform.
Support for Linux PPC just isn't a priority for any developers.  Software or hardware, there's not a big enough market to sustain either an Amiga or Pegasos PPC  platform over time.

[ShadesOfGrey]

Putting aside the A1/AOS vs. Peg/MOS bull that keeps any intelligent discussion from taking place...

The fact is that both the AmigaOne and Pegasos are downright anemic when compared to the 'modern' features of todays 'PCs'.  But both camps have to start somewhere.  Otherwise, like with the BoXeR, you end up with an utterly vaporware product.  

Another fact is that the PPC market will always play catch-up with the 'PC' world.  That is unless VIA, SiS, IBM, nVidia, etc. start producing OEM N/S bridge chips for the PPC platform.  Which may actually happen, if the PPC alternative niche grows beyond just Macs.  But for now, we're going to be stuck with 'small' players like MAI who are more interested in embedded computing than the desktop.

[ Yes, I'm aware that both camps are using VIA southbridges, but I'm sure it would make things a great deal easier if both the N/S bridge where targeted at the PPC platform.]

[amiga_boy]

Psy wrote:
But here you are saying the Amiga One with OS4 is a Amiga while Peagsos with MorphOS is not and OS4 is not even out yet.

Yes Amiga One and OS4 has the name, so what you bought your first Amiga becouse of the name?

So what if OS4 is not publicly available. Linux with UAE is available, that does not make it Amiga you idiot. MorphOS and Pegasos are 100% NOT Amiga. Forwards compatiblity could be considered Amiga, not backwards compatibility.

No, I bought ALL my Amigas because of the technology, NEVER the name alone (unless you count the fact that the name was not Atari or Amstrad or IBM).

Of course the OS and H/W platform sponsored by the copyright holders is a genuine Amiga. What else could be? Stick an Amiga badge on a PS2 and it's still a PS2, never an Amiga unless it gets integrated into the roadmap for the platforms future, which is decided by the parent company, not the users and certainly not the competitors.

Please try to think a little more before you type. It may also be a good idea to preview each post before you submit. Experience has taught me that the first idea is usually the worst.

[Kurt]

True But unless you want to design a Chipset or pay the big bucks for the developement of a chipset
you are stuck with the current specs.  If you think the MAI chipset is obsolete
check out the specs on the Marvell chipset to be used in the PEG2.
It does not even have AGP! Not many companies are willing to make a PPC chipset for a MOBO
so we are currently stuck with what we have.
The  lack of USB 2.0 not much of a biggie as you can get a PCI card for that along with firewire the big difference is the Ram speed and the AGP speed.
but for many cases that won't make much of a difference becuase your average Amiga owners are cheap!  They would never spend $400 plus dollars on a graphics card or money to buy decent speed DIMMS they would just buy the slowest bargain DDR running at CAS 5 rather than the good stuff at CAS 222
Just look at how many AmigaOne buyers are running thier Amigaones at 100FSB
because they are too cheap to buy the SDRAM from thier dealers because the Amiga Dealer charges $10 dollars more for DIMMS that work properly.

Kurt

[amiga_boy]

Amiga owners are cheap? Are you insane?

My A1200 PPC tower and A4000 PPC tower both cost well over a thousand pound sterling each. You can get a PC of equal power for a tenth of that price!

And have you seen the prices for the A1 deals?

If that's cheap to you throw your excess cash in my direction friend.

[Rodney]

Got to love hypocrisy . Sure the PCs users are stupid for following labels like IBM and Microsoft and only caring about the name.

What? When i switched from Amiga to PC it was 95ish? or less 92ish?

I switched because Windows had better support for printers etc... and Software... Office, Browser, email etc...

I switched because in my opinion, the harware was cheaper, the software was everywhere and far more powerful. I was only about 15-16 though so that had somethign to do with it...

Believe it or not people, MS Windows far outpaced Amiga in terms of development and functionality even back to Windows 95...

[amiga_boy]

Psy wrote:
As far I can see MorphOS is a great clone and just like a Dell is an IBM a Peagos/MorphOS is a Amiga.

Yeah, like BeOs is Windows!

Seriously, the best thing about starting an opinion driven thread on an Amiga board is the idiotic replies you get. I start these things just to get something (someone) to laugh at.

And there is always at least one ;-)

The above is sarcasm. Often said to be the lowest form of wit but definately beyond the grasp of some readers I see.

[olegil]

Ehm, I don't get it.

Releasing what you have now, even if it isn't top-of-the-range is BAD (AmigaOne), but pulling back and redesigning is BAD (Boxer). Basically, there's no pleasing you people, is there?

So what we have is that anyone who can't release tomorrows technology yesterday working flawlessly for free shouldn't even try?

Come on. We just went from A1200 with 68060 and kludge galore to a clean implementation of ppc + pci + sdram + usb + ata100.

Surely you don't expect Eyetech to find out that "ooh, the PC world is using S-ATA, PCI-X, DDR and USB 2, we must fall back and redesign immediately" and become another Boxer AND EVERYONE BEING HAPPY ABOUT IT?

I myself would say a working AmigaOne last year makes me more happy than a non-existent Boxer ever will... But that's just me, I guess. Stupid enough to buy an underspecced board to replace my lean, mean (not so green) A1200. Yep, the A1200 beats any known computer, for sure. There's no end to what you can't do with all that CPU power.

And everyone knows you need at least a dual Xeon to write letters to your grandmother.

[Bodie]

olegil wrote:

And everyone knows you need at least a dual Xeon to write letters to your grandmother.

 :lol:  :lol:

You also forgot the need for the Geforce FX 5800 AGP x8 necessary to run Incredimail :-P .

[Ohno]

Well.. the AmigaOne is only the first step. It is about bringing the current Amiga-users a faster platform. OS4 can now easily be ported to new hardware with that hardware-abstraction layer they built in.

So once it is completed it should be very easy to port the OS to new kick-ass hardware as soon as someone decides to produce a truely new machine.... at least.. that's what I think  :-)

[CodeSmith]

@olegil:

Ignore the guy, he's just a troll.  First he says he's just back from saying the AOne is overpriced (that battle was fought LONG ago in the flamefields of the land of ann), then there's this priceless quote:

I start these things just to get something (someone) to laugh at.