Ease off bashing AmigaONE X1000?

[vox]

I happily invested in AROS because it was affordable for the amount of use I'd get out of it. I did the same for MorphOS for exactly the same reason. If that mythical AmigaOS netbook for around 300 smackers had showed had shown up, I would have gladly invested in it.
But 1k to 3k just so I can call myself a "true Amigan?" Sorry, it's not only a bad business strategy, it's just plain stupid and bashing it is perfectly valid.
Two cents...

No, its at least 250 euros for SAM 440 board to be able to use it.
Would love if it would be different, but it isn`t. Off course, if you wish
better hardware, cost goes higher.

Well, considering performance on Classics and  lowest SAM 440s of 500-600Mhz net book would be of limited use, even it would be affordable.

But we do hope for better lower end system. My vote goes for building a next Acube board and lowering price of SAM 460 Lite.

A-EON will remain in high end high cost region, kind like MacPros.

[vox]

thanks for nice words (even for the "messy" part :-) ). Your part testing AROS 68k on real hardware is very important too. Thanx for that.

the lack of interest is because most 68k fans do not realize how important AROS 68k will be in future. It is a standardized, extensible and opensource 68k platform. It will run not only on classic hardware and emulation (including AROS distributions) but also on new FPGA based hardware. So you can write a 68k software and it runs on all supported platforms. You miss functionality, it can be added. Most 68k fans only see it is it 100% compatible, answer No. Is it running as fast as AmigaOS, answer No. Then they say no interest. That is shortsighted from my point of view but it is how many people think. That will not change before software will exist for AROS 68k that is not available for any other 68k platform.

I do understand it is AROS for all as it can be run via UAE. Could you do some version that can be fast and hosted inside MorphOS/AmigaOS 4 68k emulation? I am not keen of running emulated AROS inside QEMU on Linux on X1000 ... So I see point here if possible, too ... AROS for MorphOS and OS4 users.

Sadly, Natami is unlikelly to hapen, but its good to see FPGA Arcade and others for Classic lovers. If there was no AROS 68k, there would be no point in further 68k development.

And hope we are done with X1000 bashing :-)

[vox]

X1000 is there and all was bashed what could be bashed :-)

You can only run AROS 68k in UAE. QEMU is very slow from my experience. I think someone run AROS in QEMU on a X1000 (I think I saw a screenshot). But when I tested AROS X86 running with QEMU it was too slow. I installed it in VMWare. "Hosted" is also very fast.

Yes, and since AOS4 (and MorphOS) have 68k CPU JIT, is it possible to make some faster box then having to use UAE (or QUEMU/UAE on Linux) to run it? I know you don`t maintain the PPC release - but it does it run hosted on PPC Linux too? (natively only on SAMs?)

[vox]

I still stand firm on my feelings that this is a ridiculously priced machine for what you get out of it. You cant compare how MOS runs on the G5 to it at all, sure it only uses one core, but it does that on the G4 too and not because they cant get it working with both, but because they chose to maintain compatibility.

As for the 1GB of RAM, thats still a hell of a lot better over what your getting from the X1000 hardware being used on AOS. All the hardware that came with a G5 is used and working on MOS, if it shipped with the models that are supported, the hardware has a driver. This was all done with a bounty for less than a single X1000 machines cost.

The point goes back to the original gripe I had and getting back on topic, selling a machine for a premium price that doesnt even have full support of the hardware stinks of "give me your money" and isnt in the spirit of "Amiga" at all. This is what killed the damn Amiga in the first place!.

Well Trevor could hold back and wait for OS 4.2 (as machine was announced) and we wouldn`t have all the shame and blame, but instead I do believe quite a lot was gained even by premature, expensive and blah blah system: path to develop more advanced features, experience to correct mistakes such as PA Semi, and possibility for users to have high end system.

All the hardware in X1000 is usable with limitations of 2D driver, no second core and 2GB RAM limit - which stands for all AOS 4.1.6 users.

As of G5 and MorphOS bluetooth and firewire I believe are not (yet) support.

I on my own have calculated what I get with SAM 460 and X1000 and decided to go for X1000 - just because it will offer way more once oS 4.2 is out. Not that I am happy with pricing - but I am aware that it is future of AmigaOS 4 and that I will see better days with dual core, 4GB RAM and nice RadeonHD 7000. Even there will be a better X2000 system about time of OS 4.2, I would take it now, and show appreciate for Trevors effort to provide a path for AmigaOS to grow mature - where I do count RadeonHD 3D driver and OpenOffice ports. So I count my money went to both OS 4.1, OS 4.2, and Trevors efforts.

I was nearly buying Mac G5 for about fraction of what I will give in the end for X1000 - but sadly was beaten in bidding, Even higher price I will pay then people in EU (when I count in import taxes, postage and packing and enormous interest I will in the end pay to the bank loan) but I do believe its path towards seeing AmigaOS coming to quite usable state. Meanwhile I will have to use Linux for daily work.

If there was no Trevors effort, I would never dare to do that. And I believe everyone that buys X1000 (or later on X2000) knows what he is buying it.

They should be building a machine that is better priced, fully supported  and easily purchased by the average user to sell more copies of OS4  thus increasing the number of users and making some money at the same  time.       

I agree that is "not Amiga spirit of old" (even Commodore did nice profits on high end models and they were never acessable to all)
but SAM 460 looks like new low end. If ACube brings new board, SAM 460 Lite should become new low end.
There I see it fitting with AmigaOne 500 model.

If it was such an easy task to get new cheap but good PPC board, why there is none for MorphOS (Efika being even lower
end then SAM 440)

Once MorphOS gets either ported to X1000 or x86 I have no doubts I will buy it. As some SAM 460 users will.

With support of boards, I do hope OS 4.2 will bring order and support, and that X2000 and beyond will come
fully supported breaking the ugly tradition of selling hardware before fully supported with software, as it
started with original AmigaOne coming with no AmigaOS at all.

So, my hope is that I have partialy invested in brighter future, as if anything gave a hope to OS4
users, it truly is A-EON as Genesi once did for MorphOS.

[vox]

@vox

MorphOS drives firewire stuff correctly with Helios on my Mac Mini, I don't see why it wouldn't work on G5s. As for Bluetooth I don't think I ever used it on Windows/OSX machines.

I stand corrected. Bluetooth is great thing when sharing stuff with phone or even making a wireless network, and one thing I praise Apple for is including most modern standards and quality input/outpout devices.

My point was not to bash MorphOS back - MOS usualy really supported its hardware, unlike AmigaOS 4 - but to show that breaking OS barriers with high end hardware is not an easy task.

Problem is I don`t see what will be current MorphOS plan (beside announced ISA change) will be: no dual core plan, no more graphics card to support as PCI-E gfx is out of reach and so on. So that is the place where A-EON/Hyperion strategy currently works better for the future, and at least gives some promising expectations to AmigaOS 4.

Now its to Hyperion and community developers to live up to it. And with things they have started to set up after court case (Blog,Support forum, OS4 website, frequent updates, 2D driver for RadeonHD) things started to look better, really. I kind of newer expected it to come this far back in the days when SAM 440 was only and most powerful hardware avail aside used Terron boards.

[vox]

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.

Again, Pi is total low end, powerful like a smartphone, with software  was developed by 3rd parties and produced in at least 10 000 bacthes to  get as low price as possible.

So spare us the crap. I see it every single day on TV - fluffy promises of what could be done.

[vox]

I agree with you prices is everything. Even with my prepaid card I can  only fit $2,500.00 on it.  I dont have enough credit to even buy that.   C=USA was very over priced on everything.

Points you displayed as quote are filled  and agreed with sarcasm and bashing. There is a civil way to see the same. But yet even at A.org majority of voters says bashing is undeserved or that it should stop.

Would I love to buy Amiga computer? Yes if it was reasonable price. The  biggest concern is how many people will buy overpriced hobby.  

You can get better credit card, or reach for classic bank loan. Or take cheaper model, you know its not the only one.
A lot of people wish to have high end Mac but often can buy just basic one. In time, patience and saving, you can reach a goal.
Not just everything instantly.

Operation system that works with hardware is a must.

You are right about the OS, but sometimes is required to go first with  hardware. If we see AOS 4.2 2014, should Trevor wait so long with X1000?  In reality we got AOS 4.1.6 as it is for X1000, and X2000 developed  meanwhile. I don`t see failure in both.

When I build my computers I try to stay under 600.00 USA dollars.

You have SAM 440 in your league.

a) Who would spend $3,000+ on a Linux machine?

Who would buy $3000 Linux machine you say?

Answer is provided within - a true Linux (and AmigaOS) geek.

b) A-EON should discount the x1000 until fully operational under OS 4.x

You mean Hyperion should step up from its 115 euros? Well, even unplanned, they have made 4.1.6 work and I express gratitude for that

`c) A license to 4.2 is not worth thousands of dollars

No, but at least I will not pay for OS once its done. Its worth about 115 euros.

I find parallel with C-USA very offending. Yes AmigaOne has Amiga name and logo, but for true reason as it runs AmigaOS, and not licensed to resell common x86 hardware with their themed Linux. Its design that never existed before, to whom AmigaOS was ported and deserves credit.

AmigaOS survival doesn`t stand on X1000 - there are SAMs.

But path forward obviously has something to do with it.

Parallel would be most of MorphOS users crying because they just can`t find enough used G5 Macs, or finding them not fully used or terribly overpriced, and add to bonus with Mac logo ...

@Duce

So much time is wasted driving wedges between the "camps" - wouldn't it  be just great if we could simply agree that we're all Amigans and maybe  use our time better to get more up to date programs like Open Office,  modern printer drivers or modern, capable web browsers on *ALL* these  "modern" Amiga's?       

Agreed, my parallels use MorphOS just because that is OS in state most similar to AOS4 (PPC, RAM limits, similarly small community ...)

[vox]

I find your abc arguments stupid and insulting. But your right.
 

Back to the Raspberry Pi argument. You could buy 90+ (model b) or 125+ (model a) for the same cost as one X1000.

Good luck with 125 Pi`s of your choice.

So where does this put Individual computers? Should Jens start selling  his ACA cards @ $600+ each, his Indivision @ $1,000 because of the  limited market. There is a lot that can be learned from Individual  Computers such as reasonable pricing and innovative products. As far as  those bitching about modifying their Amiga 1200s to get ACA cards to  work - buy a X1000 if you can't be bothered.

Please, ACA cards are 030 and offered for Classics. OS4 equivalent of middle or next to lowest solution would be some of SAM 440 models on different frequencies, that cost less then some of Classic expansions on net. Used. Today.

[vox]

Truly you have more money than sense if you believe that a X1000 is worth the equivalent of 125 Pi's. What is the wholesale cost of producing a X1000?
 
You really don't get it. My point is that innovation does not have to come with a huge price tag. Jens could have gone for a 040, 060 or PPC card instead of the 020/030 but the cost would have priced most users out.

Truly, ACA is well placed as 030 offers enough but way more then 020. But that was the idea. Also even ACA is a new hardware, it copies exactly what existed before, so isn`t that much of a innovation as replication in modern standards for fair price.

With X1000 they have tried to do high end, what would be beyond 060 in Classic league.

So again, apples and bannanas.

And when you look to price of high end used Classics, they often surpass
prices of new SAM 440/460.

Who is expensive then?

[vox]

Ferraris are worth their prestige as their quality is high. Comparing the X1000 to a Ferrari is like comparing chalk to cheese - one is refined the other is a work in progress.
 
Out of curiosity have the manufacturers of the X1000 guaranteed that all features will be implemented in full on future Amiga OS 4 releases or will they just ignore the X1000 once it is discontinued in favour of the X2000?

It is Ferrari of OS4 World.

Yes, AOS 4.2 should support X1000 fully and X2000 is replacement board based on foundation of experience with X1000, basically kind of same board designed around more avail CPU.

It would be possible to wait for AOS 4.2 before X1000 launch, but then yet we would not have what to critisise

Truly you have more money than sense if you believe that a X1000 is  worth the equivalent of 125 Pi's. What is the wholesale cost of  producing a X1000?

I find Pi nice project for those needing first computer in less developed countries, but no interest at it all other then that.
Its not all in quantities.

[vox]

"We need to build computers for the masses, not the classes". Jack Tramiel.

If it was Atari I would agree.

That motto was true just for lower end Amigas like A500,A600 and A1200 but they were always crippled for pro use unless heavily expanded, and prices of expansion and high end models were for the classes.

Not that I wouldn`t like to see mass produced Amigas again, what A-EON and ACube do is what is currently possible on a very small market. Comparing it to Amiga glory of 90s is like comparing early days of IBM PC XT when it was unknown so they paid Dirty DOS for it, with its today glory. Just in our case its other way around. Our glory days are past.

[vox]

No I don't think they are that much different ...
Motherboards based on say Sis 745 chipset or on Intel 945GZ chipset
are all the same even if they are produced by Asus,MSI,Epox,IBM or
anyone else ... PPC Chipsets in those old Macs are almost the same
thing as chipset used in AmigaOne x1000 ...

No, they aren`t. In simple words Macs are mostly using IDE, DDR, AGP while X1000 uses SATA2, DDR2, PCI-E x16, in PC terms its about 2 generations ahead. Same goes for SOCCs Acube used. They might be "G2-G3 CPU class" (after all its embbeded sys) but at least I/O is faster. That gives quite better overall experience then with older boards, and tests prove that. In pure CPU only benchmarks both AMCC SOCs used by Acube and PA Semi perform poor. But old Macs kind of remind me of old PCs logic where CPU would be "muscles" on high frequency but rest of I/O components and RAM would be decreasing the performance, crippling overall experience.

Off course, this is from today point of view, at time those Macs were new, that were the high end standards.

[vox]

G5 from 2005 (codename "Cypher") had Dual core , up to 16 Gb of DDR2 ,
PCI-E x16 (_not so sure_ too lazy to check) and USB 2.0 ...

And you can get it for extra cheap price right now ...

True for CPU, but I don`t see Mac G5 or MacPro PPC with such a CPU and bus. So I don`t see how you could get it and what would you do with it in MOS that doesn`t support PCI-E cards at all.

[vox]

ad.1:the development costs for such a board are considerable, no doubt, therefore it should be avoided. and in case it must be developed it should be best developed by genuine amiga-related companies like individual computers or perhaps acube (although it seems acube designs are based on reference designs anyway, correct me if im wrong). as someone else pointed out, "supporting further development" argument is not valid in this case. paing high prices we support uk military companies, not "amiga". thats where money goes (as example: the rediculous price of remaining stock of pasemi cpu).

Individual computers, to best of my knowledge, never developed any PPC board. Acube did, but its a reference design around SOCC, so Varisys was a good and maybe only choice. We pay all the steps to the end price, but I am glad to see Acube and A-EON use their profits to develop newer and better models (SAM 460/X2000) so I see "further development" valid. Profit margin may be higher due to many risks (small quantities, their own investment in production) but I like to see profit used to keep it running.

 instead hyperion has problems to deliver driver support for its own  dedicated hardware and this task has been taken over by hardware vendors  (trevor admits it). in all due respect to hans readeon drivers, i cant  believe driver development is so much harder for os4 devs than for aros  team, lat alone morphos.

I suppose driver model isn`t the same, and quite well known people like Hans and Layle took considerable time to get the job done. Its different when support comes from vendor and when people have to get everything on their own. In MOS Case, OS development team do the support and Hyperion has made that (bad!) policy of hw manufacturer being responsible, which agains narrows possible partners.

as soon as commodore amiga has lost its price/performance advantage and  has been left behind the wide audience left, and even hardcore fans left  one by one. trying to justify current prices by this failed politics  that has lead to the decline of genuine amiga must be taken as a cruel  joke, sorry. it only suggests it all being a dead end anyway.

.[/QUOTE]

No, people used to buy expensive PPC cards quite a lot, but when all software companies abandoned shrinking market, that was a complete end for most of. I will here remind people that Commodore also planed to ditch Amiga (68k, AGA, AmigaOS) completely with AAA project anyway and go for ... Windows NT if I recall it good. So death of Commodore was kind of good thing, even it meant further struggle, that has brought OS 3.5-OS 4.1

[vox]

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 8xThe 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.

Looks nice. But seems it never went even to development board
http://www.power2people.org/projects/profile/43

If it was presented to OS4 as viable platform, could saved the day.
But its still vapor.

If you could ensure both MOS team and OS4 team agreement to do OS ports and pushed the bounty more to both camps, it could succeed, hence would be no X1000. But now there is no this board, and there is X1000.

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

Xena is 50$ chip and Xorro is modified PCI-E. It might yet prove useful, and open some interesting space to do something no board has done before. But I dislike propaganda it`s a transputer slot etc. that existed in early days.

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

Well, A1-X1000 is a solution to a problem of no high end Amiga.
Detailed analysis of this discussion would show:

a) There are people that hate they can`t get X1000 but would not get any other OS4 model (e.g SAMs or used Peg2/Old A1). Message to them is: I have been preparing 2 years financial and still will take loan of 5 years to complete it, paying higher import taxes and interests then you while I doubt you have lower wage then me. So it is possible, if you really want it.

b) There are people that want cheaper entry system, but they don`t find SAM 440 good offer for 250 euros. If we could enmass them to 600 personas, we could get lower price. Waiting for way better system for that money might not materialize soon - 100 euros is just OS4 license. Efika does cost 99$ but add 90 euros for MorphOS on top of it and you get less efficient system unexpandable at all for almost the same amounth.

c) There are people that bash X1000 just because they can, since they anyway have cheap and fast PPC Mac. Good for them, but again, I will ask the gents why they haven`t payed that PPC Mac when it was new and costed similarly? One day when X1000 becomes what PPC Macs are now it might be affordable too ...

[vox]

+1

While we are on the subject, can someone remind me who wrote OS4 and what they did for the Amiga scene before that?

Then we can list the MorphOS developers and what they did previously for the Amiga scene.

It should make for interesting reading no?

AmigaOS is direct continuation of AmigaOS no shame and no lie in that.
MorphOS and AROS are quite based from their own code, much pride in that.
Hyperion did just few game ports prior to OS4, but great ones that no one has done in Amiga world.

I have no doubts in MOS coders skills, wish we were one team, really.

Volim te BiH

You are originating from Bosnia? Nice :-)