Haynie's Garage Sale

[hazydave]

I remember when I was in College, there a news bit somewhere that listed highest paid technology business types, and I remember at least Mehdi being there in the list above people from like IBM and Compaq..  At the time, I was thinking that was just crazy...
I mean, I loved my Amiga, but higher paid than the big guys??
Of course, I didn't realize that they were gutting engineering at the same time.

Two sides of the same coin, really... there's only so much money to go around. Commodore was spending a very low percentage of income on Engineering, compared other similar tech companies, and a crazy amount on upper level executive salaries. That is not a sustainable business, run that way.

[hazydave]

I'm always down on the AGA chipset due to the fact that it was nothing more than an ECS bug fix... But in '92, for the price nothing came close to the A1200... But with the £100 more Falcon available at the same time, it was clear something needed to change

AA was bit more than ECS with a bug fix... it did run a 32-bit, burst mode bus for video fetch. That's not to say it was enough. We were lobbying very hard for a CMOS replacement for Alice, which could at least use burst mode and add new features. In fact, the 2M/8M jumper on the A4000 was designed to allow a version of that, if it had ever been made. But again, no budget for it.

[guest7657]

My friends, if it were ONLY a cost issue. No, it was a stupidity issue.

-Dave

Mehdi Ali and Bill Sydnes look like egghead CEO and PHB from Dilbert Universe, so sad.

[Crom00]

Dave I teach at an engineering school we have an electronics program, mostly avionics and mechatronics stuff. They are doing some FPGA stuff so I brought in the MiniMIG fully loaded with WHLOAD, deluxe paint, ImageFX, basically a copy of the hard drive image I had from back in the day from my A2000

The students were impressed with what the system could do compared to what else was around at the time. They still remember windows 95 lol...They liked the speed and stability of the Amiga OS mutitasking the pull down screens, etc. The multitasking was the miost impressive stuff when the realizes how much ram was involved. Even the prof was impressed and he does a lot of NASA work.

There is interest in doing a video game cosole dev course because of this demo so the Amiga continues to inspire.

[Digiman]

The other machine we had in the worked was Joe Augenbraun's Amiga 1000+. This was probably the machine that would have really boosted the Amiga's profile. It sat squarely between the A500/A1200 and the A3000/A4000... detached keyboard, two Zorro slots, a new CPU socket, etc. The intent was to ship at around $800 in 1992, with AA chips and a 25MHz CPU (probably an EC020 or EC030, but still).

Sounds like the A1400 machine C= UK was planning to fill the A1200/A4000 gap. This would have sold like hotcakes in 1992 for £600ish in the EU as PCs were so cumbersome (Win 3.1+DOS) and expensive (386 16/25mhz with soundblaster about £800-900 for unbranded/cheapo brands)

But as you point out not enough profit went back into R&D AND management was clueless so it would only delay the inevitable.

Now a question I have is....was there ever a Sega Genesis/Super Famicon rivaling Amiga Incompatible machine ever thought about around 91/92? Seems half the complexity was OCS compatibility and hence costs.

Say for example the 256 color C65 chipset?

[babsimov]

The other machine we had in the worked was Joe Augenbraun's Amiga 1000+. This was probably the machine that would have really boosted the Amiga's profile. It sat squarely between the A500/A1200 and the A3000/A4000... detached keyboard, two Zorro slots, a new CPU socket, etc. The intent was to ship at around $800 in 1992, with AA chips and a 25MHz CPU (probably an EC020 or EC030, but still).

I have some questions :

- Is the 1000+ is planned with an harddrive as standard ?
- How many chip RAM and fast RAM would have been included as standard ?
- Is the 1000+ included  an AT&T 3210 DSP ?
If i understand correctly, it don't have a DSP. I think that would have been a mistake. If the 3000+ have a DSP and the 1000+ not, the DSP would not have been used by common softwares and, of course, by games.
- how many a 1000+ with a DSP would have cost ? 1000 $ or more ? Maybe a 25 mhz DSP, not a 50 mhz.
- A CPU socket ? Is it mean the cpu would have been on a daughter board ?

[billt]

You're not just a PC with a PowerPC CPU and some VGA chip trying to make the claim of being an Amiga.

I understand that PowerPC has become very popular in networking infrastructures, at least partially because network data is big-endian and x86 would spend a lot of time byteswapping rather than processing and moving data along.

I understand some reasons that PowerPC is no longer ideal for a desktop or other personal computer general purpose machine, such as the price we'll pay for such unique and small market boards.

But I'd like to know some reasons why it is technically insufficient. I can't find the right post to quote, but I remember seeing Dave saying this somewhere. It's been over a decade since my undergrad intro to computer architecture courses, and I've not yet got to them in my Masters program, to have a really good understanding of what is good about x86 (and maybe ARM now too) that is lacking in PowerPC, particularly with QorIQ AMP e6500 cores out now.

The things many of us end users look at is speed (e6500 claims 2.5GHz, below some current, soon to come dekstop x86_64 things nearing 4GHz), memory (AMP has DDR3 controllers like AMD Bulldozer/FX does), e6500 virtual cores sound similar to my understanding of Bulldozer/FX "module", PowerPC is now multicore like x86. Altivec has returned for comparison to SIMD, though I don't know how the "update" compares to latest SIMD or what that comparison means to us. We should be able to use an AMD SB950 southbridge (which as I understand is an SB850 with different writing on the lid), as it should not be any different than hooking up an SB600 as seen on X1000. We should be able to add USB3 using the same PCI-Express chips as the PCs currently use, until it's added to southbridges.

Yes, this is comparing the not available yet AMP series to x86, at least somewhat to also not yet or just very recently released Bulldozer chips, and perhaps this is different than comparing PA Semi's chip, or the 8641/8640 or other PowerQuicc chips to x86.

Ignoring that we have to spread engineering etc. NRE costs over a thousand or so boards compared to x86 spreading same costs over hundreds of thousands of units, and other market size details tha make it difficult to get a PowerPC board onto our desks (I wish onto our laps!) What are technical things we should hope for in PowerPC if we must be restricted to that? Ignoring the market size benefit to x86, what technical features there are superior to our equivalents, which ones to we lack completely, etc.

I don't disagree that x86_64 should be considered by the AmigaOS powers that be today, I just would like to have a very technical understanding of why that is, aside from the marketing issues that are more obvious.

[commodorejohn]

I understand some reasons that PowerPC is no longer ideal for a desktop or other personal computer general purpose machine, such as the price we'll pay for such unique and small market boards.

But I'd like to know some reasons why it is technically insufficient.

I think the biggest problem with PPC right now is the lack of support. IBM doesn't really give a damn about desktops anymore, most PPC licensees are interested solely in the embedded market, and even P.A. Semiconductor is no longer doing active development on it (thank you so ******* much, Apple.) Everybody's infatuated with ARM at the moment.

I've not yet got to them in my Masters program, to have a really good understanding of what is good about x86 (and maybe ARM now too) that is lacking in PowerPC

There is nothing good about x86. It's ugly under the hood and the only reason it's got all the horsepower right now is because the entire might of the PC industry is behind it, covering the R&D costs.

PowerPC is now multicore like x86.

PowerPC's been multicore since the 970MP (G5) in 2005, almost as long as x86 has.

[rebraist]

I don't disagree that x86_64 should be considered by the AmigaOS powers that be today, I just would like to have a very technical understanding of why that is, aside from the marketing issues that are more obvious.

Technical reason i don't know, but surely the real reason is that market has been made by twenty years of wintel domination. But things are changing and in the next years we could see something new as pdas, smartphone, tablets and other stuff taking the place of desktop. Many people in the last years bought a pc to surf on the internet, watch videos (or download them) and listen music. Now tablets, netbooks and similia are on the right way to give those people what they want. I think at samsung and others with their arm cpu and why not ppc. But laptop, netbook and tablets are something you can't make in an hobbyst market. Such technology would be truly expensive. And even if you want make only os the majority of those things are written in fware. The market laws.:afro: