Market research for new PowerPC system

[persia]

What is it that prevents OS4 from loading on any PPC board?  Intel and Apple with their tens of thousands of employees couldn't stop OS X from loading on a generic board, how come a company with a total number of employees you could count on your toes  can keep OS4 from loading on any PPC board?

[markos]

I guess there is no interest/technical expertise that is needed. In the case of MacOS X there are literally hundreds of thousands of users/developers that run it on plain x86 hardware. How many Amiga users/developers know AmigaOS AND ppc hardware so well AND have so much time in their hands to do that? Sure it's possible, but what's the point?

[kolla]

Don't worry - it's been added to the tags now so that no one will be in any doubt!

It's not working! :hammer:

[markos]

Update:

http://www.codex.gr/index.php?pageID=&blogItem=62

[persia]

It's too bad PearPC died, had development continued we could have run Amiga OS 4 on standard affordable equipment.

[tonyyeb]

It's too bad PearPC died, had development continued we could have run Amiga OS 4 on standard affordable equipment.

Indeed! I wish PearPC was still being developed. This would open up a lot of software to lots of cheap hardware and existing users.

Who wants to spend $600+ on a system without even trying it out then to find it is limited as to what can be run on it.

[markos]

Who wants to spend $600+ on a system without even trying it out then to find it is limited as to what can be run on it.

I don't remember myseflf asking for preorders. When it's out, I'll send a few boards to reviewers, you can make your decision afterwards.

@tonyyeb:
EDIT: I wrote by mistake "paying without trying". No, I guess I didn't want to write that. But I will offer a full refund -minus shipping costs of course- to anyone that feels the board doesn't do what he wants. But it *is* too early for this talk.

[tonyyeb]

I don't remember myseflf asking for preorders or paying without trying. When it's out, I'll send a few boards to reviewers, you can make your decision afterwards.

Can I try before I buy?

[zylesea]

@ persia
First you complain aboit the sense of a ppc board and then you complaina bout the lack of a ppc  emulator for generic x86 pcs to run OS4 or MorphOS on. Somehow kind of schizophenic...
Listen: MorphOS and AOS4 are ppc only due to endian incompatibility on x86. Thus we are bound to ppc (okay, ARM offer also big endian). Like it or dislike it, but if you wnat to run said OSes you need a ppc board. Therefor it makes  some pretty sense to have ppc hardware available. And c'mon, about 500 EUR for a hobbysytem that has convenient computing power for this niche OSes isn't really an issue i'd say. You probably buy an Amigaish system once in 5 yrs (my Pegasos is from 2002, 7 years old now), that's less than 10EUR per month.
And my Peg does things my Mac or PC don't do and vice versa. All systems have their place and not every place needs maximum power. And one thing is for sure: neither my Mac, nor my PC, nor my netbook provide the fun my Peg actually does.
And btw.: the 8610 has some nice power, not as an i7, but don't underestimate it.

[persia]

I probably will never try OS4 or Morphos becuase of the rediculous pricing of PPC boards.  They're both unknowns,  if they ran on affordable or standard hardware I'd be more inclined to try them.  Realistically in 2009 you shouldn't have to buy hardware to try something anyway, Haiku runs beatifully in Fusion on my Mac.

[tonyyeb]

I probably will never try OS4 or Morphos becuase of the rediculous pricing of PPC boards.  They're both unknowns,  if they ran on affordable or standard hardware I'd be more inclined to try them.  Realistically in 2009 you shouldn't have to buy hardware to try something anyway, Haiku runs beatifully in Fusion on my Mac.

Totally agree. Computers are a bit of a hobby for me whilst software development is my job. I don't spend a lot on computers and when I do they last me a fair bit of time. A PPC board would be nice to 'play' with but I don't think I can afford to be playing with something.

If people want PPC stuff to be taken seriously again then it needs to be mainstream with mainstream pricing. Otherwise it will be a 500 run of that board and a 1000 run of that board making it harder for developers to support varying platforms.

[markos]

More updates here:

http://www.codex.gr/index.php?pageID=&blogItem=64

[pault1]

....
 
Amigans just might be the Amish of computing, except with poorer manners.

EXCELLENT!  This is the quote of the quarter at least.  That ranks right up there with,
"Amiga is like a Zombie," said one poster in response. "Commodore killed it, Escom killed it ... and Gateway killed it. Still, it shambles on." (Usenet posting)  To which I might add, "...and Amiga Inc. is standing on its chest."

[sgrddy]

How about the Cell?  Surely, especially the newer ones, must be fast enough to handle most desktop work.

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/24180.wss

The Cell excels are certain tasks.

[markos]

Final results about the market research here:

http://www.codex.gr/index.php?pageID=&blogItem=100

Quote from the blog -the interesting part-:

... Actually, I just thought of an idea, there is another way that we might build a nice ppc board, but I think it will find even less interest: open-source hardware, donation based. Say, we do a bounty -or what even its legal term is- and each of us, donates an amount, until we reach the desirable amount. If we could get 500 people to donate 100e each -or more in some cases- we might reach the goal to design the board. Since the board design would be open, anyone could then produce it. If the goal is not reached in a specific amount of time, everyone gets their money back -or we leave it open until the money is raised. So, what say you all? It's the last thing that can be done I think. So, if you are really interested in the idea, please say so, if enough people second this, I'm sure something could be arranged.

COMMENT: The nice thing with that approach, is that the end design will be open. If the amount of people does not reach critical mass for a mass production -eg. 500- there might still be a few (100 or even less) people that may go for a small production scale and get the board of their dreams, albeit a bit more expensive! And if I would decide to drop out of the project for whatever reason, the design would be open for anyone to continue development on it. Actually, I wonder why didn't I think of that scheme before...

[Amiga_Nut]

I don't think PPC is dead at all... IBM made a lot of money selling PPC based servers, and it still make money with that... Power 7 is around the bend, and it will catch up with Intel and AMD again. PPC's are cheaper to produce than any X86 architecture...

EVEN, XBOX360, Wii and PS3 do use PPC, and that's nothing new. I bet they will be using PPC still on their next gen consoles. So PPC is not dead at all. If you don't like "fresh air" on the PPC scene, just stick up with windoze and the X86 shit.

PS3 uses the Cell processor which is highly unsuitable for an OS, it's really not going to excel in  that environment. The 360s CPU is a good choice though,  as obviously there is a huge volume being produced...however when the 360 is canned in 2010/11 what then? Back to expensive CPU costs for us all.

End of the day it would be nice to have something else to run OS4 on, but even then it's not a real Amiga with custom chips with ladies names lol.

One thing to remember is...Windows <> x86 ....the fact Windows runs on 95% of x86 machines AND IS A PoS is not the fault of x86. A top end i7 based PC is a very powerful piece of technology....until you put Vista or worse still that amateur hour looking Win7 crap on there that is...THEN it becomes a PoS holistically speaking

PS There is nothing stopping Amiga Inc porting OS4 to x86....apart from their own  lack of vision and incompetence that is haha