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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: scannercf on October 15, 2003, 04:10:21 PM
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I tried to understand what is exactly an AmiONE.
I understand that is a Mac with other processor, it is true ?
Still having the Amiga´s custom chips (Agnus, etc.) ?
I work with a Mac G4 800 and runs great (I love the machine, and I love it more when I compare it to a peeceee).
Is the AmiONE better than my Mac in OS/Hardware ?
And compared with a Silicon Graphics machine?
If someone can give me the light to my mind ... I will be very thanked !!!
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No, it's a PPC motherboard with a G3/G4 processor (depending on which one you buy)
So it's basically like a PC, only with PPC.. You need to give it an ATX case, a display adapter, some RAM, a hard drive and then you can start waiting for OS4.
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Sometime next year the AmigaOne Lite is expected to be released so if you're in a budget crunch relief is on the way.
BTW, there are no longer Amiga custom chips in production so the AmigaOne Lite will use ordinary PC-style graphics chips. Likewise AmigaOS 4 will no longer use Amiga custom chips.
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So what makes an AmigaONE an Amiga? Is it just the OS (when it's released)?
I've never taken much of an interest in anything beyond 68k Amigas, mainly because AmigaONE and Pegasos just sound like expensive custom motherboards with Mac CPU's and standard PC parts attached to them.
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scannercf wrote:
I tried to understand what is exactly an AmiONE.
I understand that is a Mac with other processor, it is true ?
"AmigaOne" is a trademark used by Eyetech (http://www.eyetech.co.uk/amigaone/) when they sell Mai Logic's Teron motherboards (http://mai.com/products/Mainboard.htm).
Still having the Amiga´s custom chips (Agnus, etc.) ?
No. There is no more "Amiga" hardware, as in custom hardware, or hardware designed for AmigaOS or with AmigaOS in mind.
Beginning with version 4, AmigaOS will finally run on third party hardware, like computers built with those Teron/"AmigaOne" motherboards.
I work with a Mac G4 800 and runs great (I love the machine, and I love it more when I compare it to a peeceee).
Is the AmiONE better than my Mac in OS/Hardware ?
And compared with a Silicon Graphics machine?
The performance of a Teron PX ("AmigaOne XE"), when equipped with a 800MHz G4 CPU, should be comparable to the Mac you use today. See the specs on Mai's or Eyetech's sites, linked to above.
It can't be compared to currently produced Apple or SGI hardware.
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SamuraiCrow wrote:
Sometime next year the AmigaOne Lite is expected to be released so if you're in a budget crunch relief is on the way.
I didn't know that any information regarding the price of the A1 Lite was known yet?
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The general assumption is that they will be cheaper. $800 is still in the sortof-acceptable range for a full ATX board, but it's too much to pay for a mini-ITX with a fixed graphics chipset and only one PCI slot. Not to mention that it's supposed to be the "new A500", not the "new A4000" :-P
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So what makes an AmigaONE an Amiga? Is it just the OS (when it's released)?
Mostly the name i guess... But also the OS!
Personally i liked Amiga mostly because of the genius OS :-)
WiIl be nice to see AmigaOS run on fast hardware.
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$800 "acceptble" ????
And me thought 299/499 was alleady insane ;-)
I think reality shows (or will show) that (allmost) noone outside the
"community" will even think of spending that cash on what is allready
yesterdays mid-class. Even if someone insist on having a PPC, have
you lately had a look at what prices Apples sell the last G4-Power-Macs ?
And that are full systems,with better spec, a name which still holds some
value, and a real-dealer network (about 10min per foot for me).
Ahmmm..... where was I heading?
Oh, yes, Eyetech HAVE to drasticly cut their prices, if they just want to make
a dent into any market outside "our market".
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@Kronos
I fear you are right about the prices.
Unless/until the cost of the A1 systems is brought down to current pc market levels, I believe it will remain forever a fringe platform.
As with all things in this game, prices should fall. I hope Eyetech and their partners will sell enough A1s into the 'community' to allow them to make some price adjustments, so enabling them to tackle the broader pc/Mac market.
Maybe their plans to coaxe the Chinese to adopt the Amiga system rather than (the apparently despised) Microsoft's, is the way they (Eyetech) plan to achieve this goal?
Cheers,
JaX
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@Seehund:
Here's a suggestion:
He's a newbie. Give him a chance to make up his mind if he's interested at all.
If he is, you can still cut'n paste your usual rant about AmigaOnes not being Amigas, users being raped by greedy capitalists and Hyperion/Eyetech being shortsighted and destroying any chance AmigaOS might have.
Immediately being dragged into "Seehund's great campaign to turn every AmigaOne thread into mud-slinging" might not be encouraging for the newbie to come back.
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Guys, this thread is turning into yet another repeat of a subject that has been bludgeoned to death several times in a very tedious fashion. Keep off the path of your usual rants or I'll lock the thread.
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@StevenJGore
an amiga 68k is much more expensive than an AmigaOne/Pegasos.
Just try to build a new Amiga4000T with 060, graphic card, sound card, ethernet, ide card to have fast ide, etc...
you will invest much more than on a classic miggy. I only keep my Amiga because I love demos and that's all.
I prefer 1000 times any graphic card (even a picasso2) than using the crappy and slow AGA chipset. And I prefer 1000 times using a g3 than a 030...
Pegasos2 G3/600 costs 300€... how much costs a 060 with a fast ide card, pcis, a tower, a keyboard adapter etc?
@to the others:
yeah I know x86 are far cheaper but they don't run OS4/MorphOS. They run AROS but it's not enough advanced for me.
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@cgutjahr,
"Seehund's great campaign to turn every AmigaOne thread into mud-slinging"
Sorry, what are you talking about?
I replied to scannercf's questions with facts and links. There's no subjective opinion of mine or anybody else in my reply. Maybe the single word "finally" is subjective, but I didn't expect to be flamed for expressing something positive for once. :)
If there's something that's incorrect in my reply, I'm sure scannercf would appreciate if you corrected it.
To me it looks like you're reading something that's not there, but you expect it to be there, just because you're used to see me ranting... ;)
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Macs, PCs, and AmigaOnes all share similar commodity components; graphics cards, sound chips, network chipsets, etc. As has been argued time and again, companies like NVidia, ATI, Creative Labs are the "Amigas" of current industry (doing the expensive "custom chip design" work); if you squint the right way, they're just a heck of a lot better at marketing their technology than Amiga or Commodore ever were, ensuring their designs land in just about every machine on the planet.
Apple does custom work when it has to, but only when it can't get by otherwise. What it wants is to sell you a "closed box" with their OS and not tell you much about it. (If you knew your RAM, Airport card, or Bluetooth dongle was just a commodity part from someone like these guys (http://www.smartm.com/main/index.cfm), would you be so eager to pay a premium?)
"PowerPC" wasn't intended to be limited to the Apple platform, but Apple convinced every PowerPC maker to get into the "Mac clone" business in the '90s, promising their OS would always be licensable. Then they dove close to bankruptcy, switched CEOs, and reneged on the contracts, hosing all those third parties - Power Computing, UMAX, Pios - who didn't have plan Bs, and leaving the PowerPC consortium - Motorola and IBM - chagrined in the process.
Today, Linux is popular and something Apple can't take away (and if SCO takes it away against all logic, the BSD family of free *NIX is ready to take its place), so IBM is ready to start ramping those "G5s." Motorola is spinning off its processor division, so those guys are going to have to start living on their own merits as well.
In contrast to Apple, Eyetech and Genesi are at least trying to be "open." They'll tell you who makes their components (Mai or Marvell, Via, and ATI), and at least make best-efforts to help third parties get OSes on the hardware. (And, as a more noticable convenience, support commodity hardware, even when it's *not* convenient. See the hoops jumped through to make x86-BIOS'd graphics cards work, saving us from a lifetime of expensive "Mac Edition" hardware.)
"Scene" rivalries obfuscate it, but both companies want to afford every paying customer the same degree of support. The arguments (OS4 on Pegasos, MOS on AmigaOne) occur because the OS guys see no benefit in buying competing hardware just to "give sales away" to it, not because anyone's playing Apple levels of coy with necessary specs. :-)
The price/performance isn't perfect right now; these are startups, and PowerPC's just getting on its feet again. If you can respect the goals - getting that price/performance down somewhere reasonable, enjoying PowerPC's "cleanliness" in comparison to the x86 legacy, and higher efficiency in power consumption and heat thrown off - then maybe it's worth supporting; if you want 4 or MorphOS, then obviously you'll need the hardware anyway; if you can't see the point of either, then sure, stick with the Mac or "Wintel" until you find a reason to change your mind.
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Oh, and Silicon Graphics these days is either 'legacy' MIPS stuff running IRIX with expensive graphics cards (stuff that was killer in 'raw power' 5-10 years ago, but is being rapidly trounced by commodity x86 and AMD64 taking the same approach), or servers and supercomputers based on Intel hardware running Linux anyway.
The new Intel stuff ("Itanium," IA-64) has some serious problems (expensive, buggy, complex, not particularly fast for normal workloads, poor backwards-compatibility with anything), but floating-point performance is its one strong point, so it makes vague sense in a rendering farm before you calculate the price/performance and TCO* versus using a few extra Opterons (AMD64/"x86-64") or G5s to achieve the same speeds.
More importantly, the Itanium stuff is nothing you can't get from HP, Dell, IBM, or any other vendor following Intel's crazy schemes. SGI ran out of hardware magic a few years ago; today, they're really just selling support and software integration on Intel's new commodity platform.
*Total Cost of Ownership: Including things like electric bills, air conditioning/cooling, cost of maintenance contracts/expected failure rates of hardware and replacement costs... Right now, one Itanium 2 costs something like $3,000, and performs maybe a dozen percent better than a commodity Athlon you can pick up in a $1,500 system.
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Lets stay on topic here ....