Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: DrFrantic on March 12, 2008, 01:43:07 PM
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Hello,
there is an man, who had spoken to bplan (phase 5), to develop an new amiga ppc card. bplan says, it cost 50.000 euros and in 6 month is the card ready.
take a look to the thread.
http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?t=9614
i know its in german, but you can use some translat services,
have a nice day
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You'd never make €50,000 profit on a new Amiga PPC and so never recoup your NRE
I wonder what the price per unit would have been on 1000 units?
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read the thread, no one will make profit, he will an card for os 4, for classic amiga. 50.000 Euro is only for devoloping.
reguard
doc
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bplan won't do this unless if there's profit to be made, and quite frankly I'd be amazed if anyone would.
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@ Piru
Well, if they're paid the 50,000 Euros up front I can't imagine them *not* doing it.
Unless that's a price quote for design-but-don't-build, in which case, yeah, it'll probably never get to production.
Either way, the odds of a magical investor appearing to commission that sort of work are virtually nil.
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since there is no millionaire that have the amiga as a hobby and don't mint spending some money on it. this will never happen.
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read the thread, no one will make profit, he will an card for os 4, for classic amiga. 50.000 Euro is only for devoloping.
So, somebody, maybe you, is going to pay 50000 euros to develop new PPC card. And once that 50k is spent and design it starts raining new PPC cards from the sky? Sounds good.
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I don't think it's that much, 50 000€ is 50€ x 1000 amiga users. Frankly going by eBay prices and Classic/ppc amiga (OS4/MOS) users on forums I'd say there would be plenty people willing to give those 50€ as even donation! The problem would be the production, how much would it be ?
And by the way, how many AOS4 for classic CD's have been sold ?
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But where's the price point? There are 10's of people willing to drop an insane amount of money for a PPC card, but what's the price that would hook a thousand users, if it had a real PPC chip (G$/G5) at some GHz speed and not a junk 603/4? Would a 1000 Amiga users pay €400 for a G4 or G5 card? Assuming you want a profit as well as recouping your cost could you produce 1000 cards at €300?
If the whole project could be done in a year (from concept to sale of the final board) the developer would then have €100,000 in their pocket, a reasonable amount of money for an IT person though probably less than they could get consulting. But my orin
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Open a bounty, we will see ...
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I don't think it's that much, 50 000€ is 50€ x 1000 amiga users. Frankly going by eBay prices and Classic/ppc amiga (OS4/MOS) users on forums I'd say there would be plenty people willing to give those 50€ as even donation!
You never raise 50000€ from donations. There probably arent even one thousand Amiga users left...
And of course, when that board goes to the production you pay all expenses in advance. Which means you must get funding somewhere, maybe from a bank.
And this is just to get some PPC card for old 15 years old Amigas. It makes no sense. Spend 50k only to run OS4 or MorphOS on old Amigas... most Amiga users dont even use AGA which makes me wonder why they need real Amiga at all in these days... maybe nostalgia and retro feeling but I dont see OS4 or MorphOS in that context. They need new hardware, not some old G2 technology derivate from 1993.
And again you need 68k cpu or it is useless to most users. You cant run old games and demos in OS4 or MorphOS due to memory protection and other changes.
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If someone said he would develop an A500 clone all by himself on a popular Amiga forum back in 2005 he would have gotten flamed and almost kicked out by the veterans because it would not have been worth it.
With a positive mind everything is possible.
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A G3/G4 A1200 PPC card makes absolutely no sense. It makes "slightly" better sense for a big-box Amiga, even then I highly doubt there are even 1000 A4k owners who would be interested. (Actually, it sounds like a slow, expensive, hacked-up architectural mess.)
Best option for OS4/MOS/AROS users = modern or semi-modern PPC/X86
Best option(s) for "classic" 68k Amiga users = emulation, MiniMig, "Real" HW or possibly NatAmi
The only type of card that *might* sell OK IMHO would be something like an '030 A1200 card. I'd bet there are far more people out there who would spring a buck-fifty to run WHDLoad comfortably on their old A1200s, as opposed to those willing to spend $1000 to run OS4 on their _old as hellz_ A3000, especially at the expense of games/demos/WHDLoad/etc.
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Having been only recently able to run OS4 for the first time it seems obvious to me (IMHO) that both the 4000/CSPPC and the 1200/Blizzard are really inadequate for this OS. OS4 really seems to need considerably more ram and cpu power than is available on either of these systems. To tell the truth I am amazed that the developers made OS4 run as well as it does on the old classic systems. I guess it just shows how talented they are as programmers! I really runs surprisingly well for how old these computers are.
It would run MUCH better on my old G4 Digital Audio Mac with a gig of ram. Don't get me wrong, it's fun to play with and I appreciate being able to run it a all! I just wish the hardware wasn't so old, fragile, and expensive.
-Jeff
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All that money spent on design work would be wasted because by the time these cards would be available all the lawsuits will be settled and we will have AmigaOS4 running on every PPC machine available like the SAM, PS3, PPC Mac's, etc :crazy: .
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There's nothing that says how small we are than looking at the sad situation around OS4. It wouldn't be that hard to run it on old PPC Mac equipment. It wouldn't be that hard to adopt PearPC. But we lack the resources and without equipment the numbers continue to shrink.
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I find my self useing less and less advanced amigas lately.They are in their original casing and with no ppc card anymore as i dont see my use for it. There is nothing like a A1260D with scsi IV and exsternal scsi box + os 3.1 = my demo and whdloadbox "060 for hard demoes" ...
Honestly i dont need OS4 i have my extremly fast vista box waiting for aros to advance ... My amiga is only used for mod music, games, demos, With other words all the old stuff that os4 or ppc does not do well as i am talking about hardwarebashing 68k apps....
For me that kind of card makes a interesting thought but i am not sure i would buy it. I have a BPPC used to have more than one but PPC and amiga is not my fix ...
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@dRfRANTIC
Are you, brand new user, that "man"?
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Eerrr.... What about a cheap and good Microcontroller ? MPC5200 or AMCC440EPx...
Have you seen MPC5121e ? Looks really nice :-D
I would not go for a G5 monster attached in an old Amiga, but a 20 bucks microcontroller at 760MIPS would give me a lot of fun.
Going for a bigger PPC would be nice to a brand new machine, in a tower, etc...
May I dream, at least ?
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sounds interesting, but there is also need for PPC graphics card. OS4 on AGA is just too slow. (and we all know the price of bvision et al)
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If there is really enough demand and new PPC turboboards for the AGA Amigas would be produced, I'd consider this really a nice project, making lots of users happy and bplan earning a few bucks extra.
But personally I really wonder if it would be worth it to spend maybe 1000 Euro (100 for r&d, several hundreds for parts & production) for a pure expansion board that will be rendered useless once the 16 years old "main" board dies.
Thus I wonder if it wouldn't be better to let the development be based on one of the SOC designs bplan is working on for Genesi anyway, with a fat FPGA interconnected containing Dennis van Weeren's custom chip emulation for compatibility.
Of course this would require some software development as well to merge these two worlds, but in the year 2008, where the Minimig Amiga-reimplementation is available, AROS becoming more and more mature and with the Kickstart replacement bounty being at 2000 USD already, I wonder if the financial resources wouldn't be better spent on a complete mainboard and the beforementioned bounties to become finally independent of the old hardware and Amiga Inc.
And given the huge amount of years since Commodore became bankrupt, I also wonder if it would really matter to wait a few monthes more to mix something interesting out of bplan's current SOC designs, the Minimig and/or the Natami.
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orange wrote:
sounds interesting, but there is also need for PPC graphics card. OS4 on AGA is just too slow. (and we all know the price of bvision et al)
The MPC5121e has built in graphics and sound :-D
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I Fully agree with you !
You will have some other advantages also, like the possibility of getting faster video/audio/IDE than a physical AGA using FPGAs
But an accelerator is a good start point and an easy migration path (well, not for 1000 bucks...)
Starting with an accelerator is good to make it work without having to care about AGA. Just make the PPC work first. Then you could join the rest on the other side and redo the chipset on the FPGA.
I´m just drooling about it... :-D
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Just get OS4 to work on old PPC based Macs, that will sustain the Amiga community until AROS becomes a real, functional OS.
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I'd like to know why the dev cost would be so high when phase5 already has a PPC card design done. They would need to revamp for RoSH compliance, but it's not like they're starting from scratch. I guess I'll have to have a look at the thread and translate best I can.
Plaz
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I don't think it's that much, 50 000€ is 50€ x 1000 amiga users
I still need to read the details, but remember... so far that amount is said to be the development cost. Then you have to add in the production cost. The final price tag would be higher.
Plaz
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Thus I wonder if it wouldn't be better to let the development be based on one of the SOC designs bplan is working on for Genesi anyway, with a fat FPGA interconnected containing Dennis van Weeren's custom chip emulation for compatibility.
As far as PPC Amigas are concerned I dont see point in AGA (as in emulated by FPGA). Neither OS4 or MorphOS (or AROS) can run old HW banging demos and games (those which take over computer). It is mostly that Paula and CIA support that matters rather than gfx.
If AGA compatibility is mandatory it is better continue 68k support in way or another than switch CPU.'
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@Plaz
I'd like to know why the dev cost would be so high when phase5 already has a PPC card design done.
I'd say the reason is that it'd require pretty much full redesign, as many of the components haven't been available for years, and/or are not available as RoHS. Also, you'd need to write the software for the card, this is quite tedious and time consuming work, too.
Sure having done previous designs helps, so probably doing it all from scratch would cost even more.
Also that figure of 50keur is probably derived using some highly "scientific" method such as Stetson-Harrison, the actual cost could be very much different.
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Jeff wrote:
Having been only recently able to run OS4 for the first time it seems obvious to me (IMHO) that both the 4000/CSPPC and the 1200/Blizzard are really inadequate for this OS. OS4 really seems to need considerably more ram and cpu power than is available on either of these systems.
what rubbish l run a amiga blizzard ppc 240mhz and bvsion
and os4 runs smooth and fast, very stable as well complete crap.
:-)
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If AGA compatibility is mandatory it is better continue 68k support in way or another than switch CPU.
Well, the planned approach of "just" a new turboboard for existing Amigas is without doubt the quickest and most compatible solution.
Just for me personally I considered that much money better invested in a chimera of PPC-SOC, Minimig, AGA+ from Natami and the 68k-reimplementation by Tobiflex, because it would probably be more long-living than the ancient Amiga mainboards and would in addition offer nice possibilities to play around, expand and update due to the FPGA.
But, obviously, interconnecting these two worlds would require a hell of development work on the software side as well, so simply book this idea as "just arsing around". :-)
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Senex wrote:
Just for me personally I considered that much money better invested in a chimera of PPC-SOC, Minimig, AGA+ from Natami and the 68k-reimplementation by Tobiflex,
I just think the same way :-) But instead of using 68k in FPGA (which by the way is a GREAT job) I would do software emulation on the PPC. It proved to be efficient in old Macs
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It won't give you the deterministic latency of a HDL-coded soft cpu.
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@Piru
I'd say the reason is that it'd require pretty much full redesign, as many of the components haven't been available for years, and/or are not available as RoHS. Also, you'd need to write the software for the card, this is quite tedious and time consuming work, too.
I've done some reading of that thread and if I'm correct, this person was not part of Phase5 as I first thought. He seems to have resources that would be interested in doing the work if they are paid. So without phase5 documentation, it would be a total redesign. If however one had the hardware/software documentation of phase5 it would be a good head start. Even though some parts are discontinued, I've always been able to find suitable substitutes for IC's far older than this. I agree completely though that software source rewrites would be as much work or more than the hardware.
I've started translating the german thread to english. If anyone's really interested, I can post the translation so far. Proper english phrasing is included, but is it 100% accurate? :-)
Plaz
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@plaz
I would like to read it.
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There's an article in Dr. Dobb's this month about optimizing string searches on Cell processors (particularly for network threat assessment systems, in terms of Gbps). With production of the PS3 driving down the cost of the Cell and the PS3 itself being a mainstream, mass market system, it seems ridiculous not to have OS4 running on it.
EDIT: Sorry, that was slightly off-topic. How about a classic emulation with a PowerUP/WarpOS layer running natively on Cell? There you go.
EDIT2: Interesting slides: http://cag.csail.mit.edu/ps3
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@Jeff
Sorry Jeff, got busy and forgot about the thread. I was going to try to translate more, but the postings by amiga4000t turned out to be very tough to translate and I couldn't get though fast enough with the spare time I have. Here's what I have so far and please forgive me for the errors all of you native German speakers :-)
amiga4000t
I want a ppc card for the Amiga developed and want to know who esle has interest in a ppc card?? This is not a joke, the development will be expensive and it will take time contacting available companies to decide what is possible and what is not.
teufel66
I say it comes down to how much one would cost and for which amiga models
tommysammy
I would be interested if this card had more than 256mb memory and 1GHZ or better because I already have a Blizzard 603e/240mhz.
@teufel66
Exactly.
In addition, the thing must be 100% compatible with OS4. Where can you get get documents that exactly describes how something like that functions? A PPC card is, as everybody knows, more than just a CPU and RAM.
Lichking
I would be interested, in any case, in a new PPC
AndreasFFM
Wasn't this the reason why phase5 went in to bankruptcy after 10 years of very successful Amiga hardware production?!?
aPEX
Yes and no, they simply wasted too much money on products like the CV64/3D, enormous sums in money... They simply wanted too much...
amiga4000t
For the 1200 and 4000
AMike
@amiga4000t
How much money do you have on hand? Without advance financing no company will lift a finger. We need to separatate fantasy from reality. Good Luck.
aPEX
This is not a bad idea and others agree here in the forum. Also the community would be pleased to have a new fast PPC card. But there are many hurdles. Begining on the financial side, then the time to develope (1-2 years), there are missing documents covering the Amiga. There must also be someone onboard that understands the Amiga, etc. etc... Some Amiga companies with money tried and unfortunately still failed. AmiJoe(Metabox), Escena, Phase5 and there were more companies that promised but never delivered. The best example is probably Adam with his PowerVixxen(A1200 PPC + GFX card) where only the user manual was printed more than 2 years ago. Such a project is not one which is simply shaken from the sleeve if you are not a millionaire that also has the finances. Please do not misunderstand, WE would definitely support something like that, but it must be more than than just a pure idea.
amiga4000t
@ apex
I have spoken with many people about it and I think I agree, therfore I will on some time Monday make a few telephone calls and then I can say whether it's possible or not, however it depends on the demand. Perhaps it's a silly idea, but it should be possible.
aPEX
Keep us up-to-date! There are no silly ideas, from a silly idea came the phoenix, then www.a1k.org etc. One must stick firmly to such an idea and it will grow
Plaz
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I think that there is no "need" for a G4 PPC for A1200/AGA, but we have the worst owner of Amiga ever called Amiga Inc. which is not allowing to sell Sam440 (even Efika...) WITH OS4.0.
My point is that development of PPC card FOR A1200 (plus GFX card) allows us to "leave" little bit longer and have fun with OS4.0, which is "nice" and maybe Amiga Inc. will finally understand :hahahaha: :crazy:
Personally for classics BlizardPPC is totally enough (either with OS3.9 plus PPC programs/libraries or OS4.0) Basically you can do very similar thinks (yes, I see difference between OS3.9 and OS4.0, but to enjoy OS4.0 you really need "power" ;) )
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This reminds me of the CyberstormG4 prototypes from Phase5, how far did they go with the development of those ? There were some old threads on this but I really can't remember if that was known. Could be a good place to start.
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Personally for classics BlizardPPC is totally enough
Maybe, but there doesn't seem to be enough to go around and I can't afford a used one at the latest prices.
Plaz
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BTW, what I translated was only most of the first page of that thread. There are several more pages continuing up to the present. Takes to long to translate, but maybe I can read more and give a quick update later.
Plaz
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Well put me down for one. The cppc has been declared 75% dead by jjb. The 060 still works, but it refuses to see memory, the scsi chip is toast, and the ppc refuses to boot, probably because of the memory.
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OK, here's my "ultra short report" on the a1k.org thread.
50,000 Euro for bplan to develope and build 500 PPC cards from scratch. Minimum specs discussed... 600mhz with AGP slot for video and tentative name of StormFire. Lots of discussion, no action that I can detect yet.
Of course my German tranlation is crude, so I may have missed plenty.
Plaz
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And what's the return for someone willing to make such an investment? At 100 Euro each, 200% profit would be a breeze--probably more based on what people are willing to pay for used PPC cards. Cut that a bit after finding someone to insure the deal, and you've still made a nice little profit for such a small investment.
Or was bplan just looking for donations?
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Any news on this one ? PPC card prices on eBay have gone real F* crazy 8-)
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So how do we get motion? 100 for each card to be manufactured is not a bad price point, if it's real. Can anyone get 50,000 pre-orders though? I know, depending on the markup, I want one. If they keep it real close to the manufacturer cost, I'll take two.
-Nyle
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Nlandas wrote:
Can anyone get 50,000 pre-orders though?
-Nyle
(http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/images/smilies/hysterical.gif)
-Edit- I'm not sure if I got my message across... hang on...
(http://www.tugbbs.com/forums/images/smilies/hysterical.gif)
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Well, only 49,998 more to go...
Hey I'm a glass is 0.004% full rather than a glass is 99.996% empty guy!
(http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/8972/art/impossible5.gif)
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Sticking with PPC, wouldn't you want something along the lines of a Pegasos/etc rather than an expensive custom card which requires interfacing with a 25 year old A3K motherboard?? What's the difference between porting OS4 to run on a new board for classic HW, and porting it to run on something more modern/standalone? Wouldn't the latter be more desireable?
You'd still have to disable the thing on bootup to run old chip-bangning software, anyway. :P
If the point is just to have a sweet vintage setup w/PPC (novelty factor), it might make more sense. (I'm ready to dump $$$ for an A2K turbocard, as soon as I find one... some would call that ridiculous). But 50,000? Between 1 and 2 thousand _at best_ is probably a better estimate... all IMHO.
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There is a personal computer available right now, cheap and in abundant supply that would provide enough machines for everyone to have an OS4 machine in every room of their house, including bathrooms and toilets, and not affect the price one euro.
(http://images.techtree.com/ttimages/story/Apple_Mac_Mini_inhand.jpg)
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persia wrote:
Well, only 49,998 more to go...
Hey I'm a glass is 0.004% full rather than a glass is 99.996% empty guy!
Actually, it was 500 boards, so that is quite a reachable target imho.
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Setting up a bounty on this would be an idea ;-). That way you can test how much cards could be sold. If the €50.000,-- is not reached, tha actual collected amount of money could be re-distributed into other projects that could make live on the Amiga a tad easier again ;-).
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Nlandas wrote:
So how do we get motion? 100 for each card to be manufactured is not a bad price point, if it's real. Can anyone get 50,000 pre-orders though? I know, depending on the markup, I want one. If they keep it real close to the manufacturer cost, I'll take two.
-Nyle
are you joking!
Do you really think thats a new PPC card will costs 100 Eur each? (to the "customers")
My estimate price for a small batch would be around 1000Eur each (if we are lucky)
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Nlandas wrote:
So how do we get motion? 100 for each card to be manufactured is not a bad price point, if it's real. Can anyone get 50,000 pre-orders though? I know, depending on the markup, I want one. If they keep it real close to the manufacturer cost, I'll take two.
-Nyle
Very funny guys. You got me. I meant $50,000 in pre-orders. I was rushed and didn't type what the old cranium was thinking.
I would think that 500 units would be doable. I want two so that's 498 left for you.
Yes, I'd rather have a new board to run OS4 but for now, I'm happy with an A4000 with PPC and a mode promoting, video card. I'm short the PPC and the video card.
-Nyle
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Framiga wrote:
Nlandas wrote:
So how do we get motion? 100 for each card to be manufactured is not a bad price point, if it's real. Can anyone get 50,000 pre-orders though? I know, depending on the markup, I want one. If they keep it real close to the manufacturer cost, I'll take two.
-Nyle
are you joking!
Do you really think thats a new PPC card will costs 100 Eur each? (to the "customers")
My estimate price for a small batch would be around 1000Eur each (if we are lucky)
Now come on - I didn't say they'd cost 100 Eur to the customers. I said it was 100 for each card to be manufactured and depending on the markup, I'd take two.
The guy who translated it, if he got it right, said that they wanted $50,000 Eur for 500 boards. When I plug that into Calc it's 100 Eur to manufacture. If they even make it up to 250 Eur that's over double the profit and a price that I could afford.
Now there hasn't been any movement on it but I was just curious how many of us would buy a new PPC board for say 250 EUR? If it's 500 between us and other sites and if the original discussion is valid, that's more impetus for them to build the boards.
-Nyle
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I would think the 50keur would be just to design and produce a working product.
That'd still be quite cheap IMO.
Considering the probably low production runs the final product target price would be high, too. And this before even considering issues such as profit to make the effort worthwhile in the first place.
This is the reason why there are no new ppc accelerators.
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Nlandas wrote:
Framiga wrote:
Nlandas wrote:
So how do we get motion? 100 for each card to be manufactured is not a bad price point, if it's real. Can anyone get 50,000 pre-orders though? I know, depending on the markup, I want one. If they keep it real close to the manufacturer cost, I'll take two.
-Nyle
are you joking!
Do you really think thats a new PPC card will costs 100 Eur each? (to the "customers")
My estimate price for a small batch would be around 1000Eur each (if we are lucky)
Now come on - I didn't say they'd cost 100 Eur to the customers. I said it was 100 for each card to be manufactured and depending on the markup, I'd take two.
The guy who translated it, if he got it right, said that they wanted $50,000 Eur for 500 boards. When I plug that into Calc it's 100 Eur to manufacture. If they even make it up to 250 Eur that's over double the profit and a price that I could afford.
Now there hasn't been any movement on it but I was just curious how many of us would buy a new PPC board for say 250 EUR? If it's 500 between us and other sites and if the original discussion is valid, that's more impetus for them to build the boards.
-Nyle
As -D- has stated, it's a lot of money for a card that has to interface with 15 to 20 year old hardware... just to run an OS which doesn't actually need the old hardware and in fact would be better off without it...
A much better idea is pick up a ready made PPC platform and spend the money either porting the aforementioned OS to the ready made platform... or writing a VM to run the OS hosted in a more modern OS...
That €50000 would be much better spent on adding BlizzPPC emulation to UAE (with a nice fast PPC JIT for x86 hardware, and a nice VM on PPC hardware).
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Piru wrote:
I would think the 50keur would be just to design and produce a working product.
That'd still be quite cheap IMO.
Considering the probably low production runs the final product traget price would be high, too.
This is the reason why there are no new ppc accelerators.
if i got it right .... 50KEur is to design and to product a working prototype ... am i right?
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Who knows. I don't speak german. But I have serious doubts anyone could do it for less. Also, since I've watched couple of these hw projects from the sidelines I have some idea of the effort and money involved.
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anyway about 1000 Eur was the price of the last batch of CSPPC with 060 produced by DCE so, hardly it would be less than that.
"Also, since I've watched couple of these hw projects from the sidelines I have some idea of the effort and money involved."
absolutely! the whole PowerUP project is (IMHO) unique in its genre and deserves it.
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€ 50.000,-- is quite a steal. It means you can have one person working at it for maximum 6 months. That's what he/she will cost in wages and other work-taxes. If you want something of a prototype thrown in as well, the design should be done within a month or four... by a single person!
So, that seems only doable if:
a) The person has done Amiga PPC boards in the past.
or
b) They have been working on it in their spare-time allready and are looking for a quick buck ;-).
or
c) Developing a PPC board for classic Amiga is extremely simple ;-)
Pick your option, or add to it :-D
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I read a good chunk of this thread, but not particularly thoroughly, so I appologize if these questions are answered somewhere within it. Firstly, what exactly is the point of this "product" ? OS4 is a no-no as there would be no license. Also Im not sure wos (another contributing factor to lack of OS4 for classics) or pup are doable either in regards to new amiga ppc cards, although theyre probably a little more likely than the alternatives. MOS also seems off limits due to the fact that pup seems unlikely. Near as I can tell the best these cards could offer is yet *another* split, with a new ppc based systems for classic amigas/os3.x. I really dont see the point. Again, sorry if Ive missed something, but unless I did it appears to be just another of the increasingly common fantasy scenarios (which I admit I do understand why they appear).
In my opinion (and thats all it is) some sort of 68k card seems more practical (and doable) for classics for now. Maybe with onboard gfx and sound. 68030 or '040 based with some sort of sdram slot or 2. Some sort of modest little upgrade that wouldnt cost the earth that would make nice additions to a whdload machine, or whatever uses classics still have for people. I didnt really give this idea a great deal of thought, but something to this effect seems a better idea to me (and actually useful, as there's no license, etc. required for os3.x hardware and it could also be useful for an eventual AROS port to 680x0).
Anyway, just a few of my thoughts, reject or not, I dont care too much :-)
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Natami and Minimig are the hopes for Classic Amiga fans, what needs to be done is for there to be some way to actually run OS4. I don't know if there are enough Amiga fans left for it to make a difference but right now the limiting factor is currently machines. A functional OS4 on PPC Mac Minis would eliminate that restriction.
Do I think that Amiga OS4 will become mainstream? No, it's far too late for that, but perhaps it can reverse the haemorrhage of remaining users. All Amiga needs is a few thousand users to survive into the future.
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no! and once again a big NO! to anything that carries an a**le (or so*y for that matter) logo on it. run osx on mac if u will, but i will run aos on amiga related hardware or on nothing. and as i am close to comlete a really smoothly and stable running 3.9 os with all that last minute 3party enchancements on my a4ks the only thing i long for is computing speed. i suppose to assemble some sort of 68k compatible accel for a4k cpu slot might be still simpler and better off task today than reverse engineering of csppc, but as i know not much about the technics i will back off here..
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I can get a 4 or so year old 1.42 GHz G4 Mac Mini for USD 250 to 350 (€160 to 225), you'll need more than that in research seed alone to produce a card that will go into a 25 year old machine. I don't give a flying fig if the box has got little faeries with pink wings on it. All I want to do is run OS4. I can have 4 bleeding Mac Minis for the price of one A1, if they exist at all (there's been fewer sightings of A1s than there have been of Drop bears).
Apple hardware is new, top of the line stuff.
(http://elvistributeartist.com/epflashing.gif)
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There are obvious advantages to it:
1- There simply is demand for it! As insane as it might seemm
2- You can run old apps and old games alongside with newer stuff
3- You can actually get around the licenses and just get the OS4 classic version running, assuming the card comes out soon (which is probably impossible...:)) but still, judging by how things are going with the court battle and Amiga Inc.'s complete incompetence in everything so far, chances are this is as far you'll get.
4- You'll probably be able to also run MOS on it :)
5- Design could build up somehow on the CyberstormPPC, assuming those are the some people that worked on it, so faster design. They also had the CyberstormG4/BlizzardG3 prototypes some time ago, but it's not known how far did those go.
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OS4 is a no-no as there would be no license.
Origianlly OS4 was licenced for classics with a PPC card. This thread started over discussing a new PPC addon card, not a new motherboard which is not covered by the license. However, the current lawsuit between Hyperion and Amiga Inc is an attempt by Amiga Inc to nullify that license and other legal issues with Hyperion. So get your copy classic copy of OS4 while you can if you have a PPC card to use in your Amiga.
Plaz