A-EON Interview about Amiga's future - Distrita

[Thorham]

I don't think its people dismissing Amiga NG, it is the cost.

In many cases it's lack of interest. You could sell X1000s for a 100 bucks, and many Amiga people still won't buy one just because they don't want one. A sizable part of the Amiga community is not a market for these machines.

[Thorham]

I don't think that is the case, I would jump at new hardware. I especially like the idea of putting a motherboard in a retail box and sell through some local stores.

Yes, you would, but many don't. I wouldn't, because NG doesn't provide me with what I want.

Many people in the Amiga community are only interested in Classic and new hardware for Classic. Underestimating this when creating new non-classic hardware can bite you in the butt.

For many it's nostalgia, and NG doesn't deliver this. For many others it's the original Amiga games, and NG doesn't offer any advantages for that. In both cases the original hardware and Uae give you the best experience. Then there are people like me who like the original hardware as a cool retro platform. NG doesn't do that either, which is fine, because it's not what it's for anyway.

When you want to produce new hardware that's not related to the original hardware at all, you really have to keep this is mind.

[Thorham]

A future based on AmigaOS? An OS stuck in the past? Why? What's the point? Even my A1200 with 68030 can do better than cruddy old AmigaOS.

Anyone who thinks AOS is going to go anywhere is dreaming and needs to start seeing things from a realistic viewpoint.

Basically it's replace AOS by something that's MUCH better, or no chance in hell.

[Thorham]

You ARE living in a fantasy, aren't you?
Your '030 is pathetic compared to any cpu used in a NG system.

What on earth do NG systems have to do with the fact that a 68030 can run something better than AOS? I wasn't talking about HARDWARE, I was talking about SOFTWARE. S-O-F-T-W-A-R-E. Get it?

Why, in the name of all that's good and wholesome, would I say that a 68030 can run better things than NG? NG can run something better than AOS, too. In both cases it's only impossible because nothing better has been written yet.

68030 -> Can do better than AOS.
NG -> Can do MUCH better than AOS.

Understand now?

[Thorham]

Sorry, I knew it was snide when I posted it.
My apologies for what was probably my deliberate misinterpretation.

Cool, thanks

And...I'll have to admit, if a decent re-implementation of the 68K is done, I'll probably follow that really closely.

That's probably very hard, because a reimplementation implies backward compatibility with existing software. If that's the case, then you're still stuck with a sizable portion of AOS crud. What I'd rather see is something completely new that has absolutely no ties to AOS at all, so that you could implement whatever you wanted, in whatever way that you wanted. Classic and NG would have to go their own separate ways, of course.

The big problem is that you'd end up with a cool OS with no software For NG it would also mean that there would be no ties to Amiga anymore.

[Thorham]

So... I'll cede this one to you guys.

I'm still gonna add something

Since, in the case of Amiga OS, a task CAN seize all available resources, cooperation between tasks is necessary to assure that other processes will receive their share of system resources.

How? Only if a Forbid() Permit() pair is ever truly needed for certain things is there some kind of cooperativeness in the OS.

Which leads me to a question: Why is there Forbid() and Permit() in the first place? Apart from shutting the OS down I see no reason for those functions to be there at all.

With the qualifier that it is a piss poor implementation of preemptive multi-tasking.

Indeed. Not useless, but crappy non the less. Strange seeing how easy it is to write something better. One of these days I'm going to sit down and just do it... maybe... perhaps...

[Thorham]

If you kept all the major components including being able to rename any file. I wouldn't care if it was re-done.
You should do a poll now on which parts of the OS can be modified. It would be nice if the users were able to have a vote.

With 'writing something better' I mean a completely new OS that's entirely incompatible with AOS. Not a single part would be kept. It would be more of a proof of concept than anything else, because there would be no software to run on it, of course.

I would also do it in 68k assembly language. Completely. Some people will probably tell you that that's a very bad idea

[Thorham]

Resources need to be shared with a multitasking AmigaOS and the 68k and locking CPU instructions (CAS, CAS2, TAS) didn't work correctly because of the way the memory bus was accessed with the custom chips (cache coherency issues between the CPU and custom chips).

You don't need those, because you can use bset and bclr. These instructions test the bit they set or clear before writing to the bit. With this you have test then set and test then clear. Perfectly fine for such mechanisms. Aren't CAS. CAS2 and TAS for multiple CPUs anyway?

The Amiga will never be as secure as BSD

Unless you run BSD on it

Coding directly with an assembler makes sense.
Yes, its more painful, but it would also result in more compact, faster code.

It's more fun! 68k assembly language is a hobby of mine. C is nice, but I use it for utilities like Lua5.3 with some added libraries, or some other miscellaneous things.

Should you ever seriously decide to do this, I'm in.

Don't wait for it.

[Thorham]

When you are programming in higher level languages you dont have those assembler instructions available.

For an OS it doesn't seem a problem to have some handwritten code here and there. User programs should use OS facilities for locking mechanisms.

Forbid()/Permit() pair is also fundamental part of AmigaOS design. When you are scanning certain system lists you must arbitrate access with these. When Workbench launched program is returning it must call Forbid() before exit. If you are sending a message to public message port you must use Forbid() for protection. Many functions in the OS are serialized and are executed in Forbid() like memory handlers and library init/expunge functions.

Semaphores in AmigaOS are internally using Forbid(). AllocMem() is using Forbid() and it is very slow function what hampers multitasking very badly if called repeatedly.

I didn't expect that. What a steaming pile

To develop a new OS just as "proof of concept" with  no software for it instead of f.e. helping on Aros 68k to improve it  sounds rather weird to me but go for it if you want

Is it so weird to want something new that's not hampered by cruddy design? Anyway, if they want 68k assembly language optimizations for 68k Aros, then that meight be interesting for me.

For that, or at least, for systems with  multiple bus masters.

Good, I want to try some things, and don't want to be stuck with instructions that may or may not work properly.