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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Skyraker on November 21, 2003, 02:41:33 PM

Title: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: Skyraker on November 21, 2003, 02:41:33 PM
Amigaworld have done a QA with Alan... can be found HERE (http://amigaworld.net/modules/features/index.php?op=r&cat_id=3&rev_id=41&sort_by)

I'm sure the usual suspects will rip it to pieces.... especially 'The Slug'

Regards
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: bloodline on November 21, 2003, 02:52:03 PM
I think he was unnecessarily harsh about AROS...
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: amigamad on November 21, 2003, 03:30:42 PM
Quote
We are also working with Hyperion to try to make a hard-disk installable version of OS4 beta available to all existing A1 Earlybird customers and developers, hopefully before this Christmas.


I hope so i might get to use it then .
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: DaveP on November 21, 2003, 03:53:43 PM
@bloodline

Where? I did a string search on AROS and found no matches?
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: jd997uk on November 21, 2003, 04:04:49 PM
@DaveP
Quote
Where? I did a string search on AROS and found no matches?

That's Bloodlines (irrelevant) point: AROS weren't mentioned.

-john
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: ikir on November 21, 2003, 04:31:15 PM
A great interview!!!! A very good work!!!!
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: DaveP on November 21, 2003, 04:32:22 PM
Maybe the Queen will mention it in her speech come reopening
parliament. If she doesn't, I guess Matt will mention it on here no?
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: bloodline on November 21, 2003, 04:55:05 PM
Quote

jd997uk wrote:
@DaveP
Quote
Where? I did a string search on AROS and found no matches?

That's Bloodlines (irrelevant) point: AROS weren't mentioned.

-john


:-D and it's not irrelevant. So far Alan has not offered the AROS team an AmgiaONE...
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: bloodline on November 21, 2003, 04:56:37 PM
Quote

DaveP wrote:
Maybe the Queen will mention it in her speech come reopening
parliament. If she doesn't, I guess Matt will mention it on here no?


If the Queen started a line of PPC (or any other interesting architecture) computers, sure, I'd Email here and ask her if the AROS team could have sone to port AROS to it.
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: DaveP on November 21, 2003, 05:26:49 PM
"I think he was unnecessarily harsh about AROS..."

@Matt

How is not giving you a board being harsh about AROS?

I think you didnt even read the interview before you wrote
that. ;-) Admit it! ;-)

Dave.
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: bloodline on November 21, 2003, 05:30:09 PM
Quote

DaveP wrote:
"I think he was unnecessarily harsh about AROS..."

@Matt

How is not giving you a board being harsh about AROS?

I think you didnt even read the interview before you wrote
that. ;-) Admit it! ;-)

Dave.


:-) actually I did read the interview. but you are right that, I'm a little sensitive about he's lack of interest in AROS :-)
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: DaveP on November 21, 2003, 05:43:36 PM
If you set up a paypal account specifically for donations
to help AROS get an A1 board, then I will donate, /if/ you
gaurantee that it will go towards an A1. :-)

Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: dammy on November 21, 2003, 05:49:43 PM
by bloodline on 2003/11/21 12:30:09

Quote
actually I did read the interview. but you are right that, I'm a little sensitive about he's lack of interest in AROS


But is that a bad thing ?

Dammy
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: Karlos on November 21, 2003, 06:17:43 PM
@matt

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch...Why dont you band together and buy one for your developer needs, y' great big bunch o' scavs :-P ;-)
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: SlimJim on November 21, 2003, 07:14:22 PM
@bloodline
 
Well, have you ASKED Alan about getting a developer
machine? What did he say?
.
SlimJim
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: bloodline on November 21, 2003, 07:37:26 PM
Quote

SlimJim wrote:
@bloodline
 
Well, have you ASKED Alan about getting a developer
machine? What did he say?
.
SlimJim


I sent him an Email asking him iif he would like to donate a board to the Team for the specific purpose of getting AROS running on it.
I also asked if he would provide full technical support for our task of porting the OS.

I recieved no reply :-(
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: lempkee on November 21, 2003, 07:46:39 PM
bloodline:where is that link to 68k aros ? , i lost track of the thread where u was supposed to have info about it + aros for non x86 machines.

Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: bloodline on November 21, 2003, 07:54:50 PM
Quote

lempkee wrote:
bloodline:where is that link to 68k aros ? , i lost track of the thread where u was supposed to have info about it + aros for non x86 machines.



There should be an old Build on Aminet somewhere, but idealy you should build a freah one from the sources. You have a linux machine so it should not be too hard. If you have any problems just ask on our mailing list or IRC :-)

-Edit- Currently there are three 68k builds, One for the Palm, One for 68K Linux (running on an Amiga) and One for the Amiga to replace parts of the OS. AFAIK all three are binary compatible with AmigaOS programs.
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: DaveP on November 22, 2003, 09:28:38 AM
Come on Matt, I have made a generous genuine offer to help you
get an A1 for AROS and all we get is silence.

An answer would be great, otherwise I might start to think
that you don't really want an A1, it's just another excuse
to try and show the "triarchy" in a poor light ;-)
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: Hammer on November 22, 2003, 11:20:52 AM
@Mr A . Redhouse. Just a minor point.

Quote

In addition the AmigaOne has a major inbuilt bandwidth benefit compared to normal PC architecture. This is because the transparent synchronous design of the Articia S allows direct memory-AGP transfers without suspending cpu-memory operations as is required in the x86 world. Just ask any user who has installed the same version of, say, PPC Linux on an 800 MHz AmigaOne and a PC of 3x that clock speed as to which is the most responsive. The A1 wins every time.
- Mr A . Redhouse, Nov 2003.

To quote nVidia's IGP TwinBank Memory Architecture for the AMD K7(X86-32) platform.

III. The TwinBank Architecture
Crossbar Memory Controller
TwinBank consists of two independent 64-bit DDR-266 memory controllers (MC0 and MC1) to deliver a
whopping 4.2GB/s peak memory bandwidth**. This is four times the memory bandwidth of PC133 SDR
memory and over two-and-a-half times of single RAC 800MHz DRDRAM. The radical crossbar memory
controller enables CPU and GPU to concurrently access the two 64-bit memory banks and is optimized for
64-bit CPU and GPU accesses to ensure near perfect bandwidth utilization. The two memory controllers
are interleaved so that consecutive CPU memory requests can be started before the previous one is
completed, reducing CPU read latency. The TwinBank architecture allows the two independent 64-bit
memory controllers to access 128-bits of data on each clock cycle using DDR memory, effectively fetching
256-bits of data total on each clock cycle. Since the high-performance CPU and GPU data types are
optimized for 64-bit access, both can access the two memory banks simultaneously and independently,
fully utilizing available memory bandwidth. The average read latency of the CPU is now greatly reduced,
which increases both graphics and system performance. Without this type of architecture, there would be
tremendous bottlenecks in the system with the high-performance CPU and GPU both struggling for
access to valuable system memory bandwidth.
 - (1)


the end-user has the option of using an even more powerful
external AGP GPU, such as NVIDIA’s GeForce3, which also takes full advantage of the TwinBank dual
independent 64-bit memory controller architecture for dramatic increases in performance.
- (1)

This optimization is on top of NVIDIA's "dynamic adaptive speculative pre-processor" (DASP)(2).

Applying generalization in relation X86 markets is not recommended in the light of intense competition in the X86 market.

Reference.
1.
NVIDIA nForce IGP TwinBank Memory Architecture, Pages 5,7.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/LO_20010528_5545.html
2. http://www.nvidia.com/object/dasp_tech_brief.html

**Minor updates; Corresponding bandwidth increases with PC3200.

Can one realistically apply "The A1 wins every time" (in regards latency) for the Opteron/AthlonFX/Athlon64 X86 based systems?

Quote

This is because the transparent synchronous design of the Articia S allows direct memory-AGP transfers without suspending cpu-memory operations as is required in the x86 world.

I don’t think one could fit both CPU’s bandwidth (e.g. 3.2GB/s) and AGP’s bandwidth (e.g. 2.1GB/s for AGPX8) on a single channel 64bit bandwidth (e.g. 3.2GB/s). The Northbridge’s bandwidth must at least equal the aggregate bandwidth of CPU and AGP for concurrent access. NVIDIA's dual channel controller enables this for AMD K7’s case. Bad luck for VIA K7 KTxxx users.

Intel Pentium VI’s QDR800 (6.4GB/s) pretty much consumes the dual channel DDR400 bandwidths (e.g. 6.4GB/s).
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: bloodline on November 22, 2003, 12:09:23 PM
Quote

DaveP wrote:
Come on Matt, I have made a generous genuine offer to help you
get an A1 for AROS and all we get is silence.

An answer would be great, otherwise I might start to think
that you don't really want an A1, it's just another excuse
to try and show the "triarchy" in a poor light ;-)


The reason why I would have to turn down your offer is the same as why we had to turn down a similar offer from Genesi.

AROS has to remain Platform independant. If you work on the porting AROS to the A1, 99% of the code would be the same as all the other version of AROS, only the boot code and lowlevel drivers (we use AmigaOS style resources as a sort of HAL) would need to be A1 specific (and probably almost identical to the Pegasos port).

I would be very happy to start a bounty for porting to the A1 that you would be welcome to work on though. :-)
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: DaveP on November 22, 2003, 01:09:49 PM
Quote

The reason why I would have to turn down your offer is the same as why we had to turn down a similar offer from Genesi.

ROS has to remain Platform independant. If you work on the porting AROS to the A1, 99% of the code would be the same as all the other version of AROS, only the boot code and lowlevel drivers (we use AmigaOS style resources as a sort of HAL) would need to be A1 specific (and probably almost identical to the Pegasos port).

Right. I don't see how my offer breaks this.

Quote

I would be very happy to start a bounty for porting to the A1 that you would be welcome to work on though.


Im confused. Seriously, not teasing. You wanted an A1 to
port AROS ( a fine thing ), and indeed were quite unhappy that
it didn't happen. I offer to donate towards getting you an
A1 ( and Im sure the donations would have piled up quick ) to
port AROS, and now you don't want one - you would rather
I did the port for you?

--- getting a bit lost.

Dave.
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: bloodline on November 22, 2003, 01:21:42 PM
Quote

DaveP wrote:
Quote

The reason why I would have to turn down your offer is the same as why we had to turn down a similar offer from Genesi.

ROS has to remain Platform independant. If you work on the porting AROS to the A1, 99% of the code would be the same as all the other version of AROS, only the boot code and lowlevel drivers (we use AmigaOS style resources as a sort of HAL) would need to be A1 specific (and probably almost identical to the Pegasos port).

Right. I don't see how my offer breaks this.

Quote

I would be very happy to start a bounty for porting to the A1 that you would be welcome to work on though.


Im confused. Seriously, not teasing. You wanted an A1 to
port AROS ( a fine thing ), and indeed were quite unhappy that
it didn't happen. I offer to donate towards getting you an
A1 ( and Im sure the donations would have piled up quick ) to
port AROS, and now you don't want one - you would rather
I did the port for you?

--- getting a bit lost.

Dave.


I am probably missunderstanding what you want to do.

Ok, If we start a Bounty for the porting of AROS to the A1, then you will be happy to work on it?

or

You would be happy to put money into a bounty for an A1 port?

or

you want to create a separate organisation to port AROS to the A1...

What ever way you would be happiest, you would have to work very closely with the Pegasos and LinuxPPC people.
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: Panthro on November 22, 2003, 01:53:01 PM
no he just wants to throw money at you so you can get an A1 for you own efforts as in the AROS related ones you Emailed Alan about!!
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: bloodline on November 22, 2003, 02:00:38 PM
Quote

Panthro wrote:
no he just wants to throw money at you so you can get an A1 for you own efforts as in the AROS related ones you Emailed Alan about!!


An A1 isn't enough though... Genesi are providing technical support for the Pegasos port, Eyetech would need to provied the same (or we wold need a dev who already knows the A1 system).
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: takemehomegrandma on November 22, 2003, 03:17:23 PM
Perhaps a dumb question, but would you need a some kind of license from Amiga Inc to get the detailed technical support and information needed to port an OS to the A1 hardware? Is there some kind of EULA or some other kind of obstacle preventing this? I know that these questions might be dumb, but while there has been a lot of discussions about all the obstacles in getting the OS4 to run on different HW platforms, I have not seen any discussions about the "other way around". Would it be possible to port and sell, say, MorphOS for A1 motherboards today, before even OS4 is out? I know that the A1 has some special ROM, and Amiga Inc's love for EULA's, protection, dongles etc is kind of notorious. So would be possible to get all info needed to port AROS or MorphOS to the A1 without any hazzle?
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: dammy on November 22, 2003, 03:26:14 PM
by DaveP on 2003/11/22 4:28:38

Quote
ome on Matt, I have made a generous genuine offer to help you
get an A1 for AROS and all we get is silence.

An answer would be great, otherwise I might start to think
that you don't really want an A1, it's just another excuse
to try and show the "triarchy" in a poor light


Dave, goto the TeamAROS (http://www.thenostromo.com/teamaros/) site, donate and send me email on how you want the bounty to read.

Dammy
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: Iggy_Drougge on November 24, 2003, 01:24:47 PM
Quote

If the Queen started a line of PPC (or any other interesting architecture) computers, sure, I'd Email here and ask her if the AROS team could have sone to port AROS to it.


You know, the king (of Sweden, that is) is reported to have bought several Atari ST machines. Why not port AROS to that one in the meantime?
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: bloodline on November 24, 2003, 01:38:59 PM
Quote
You know, the king (of Sweden, that is) is reported to have bought several Atari ST machines. Why not port AROS to that one in the meantime?


I'd love to see AROS on an ST... (actually I'd rather see it on a Falcon) but are there any developers left who know anything about it anymore?
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: JurassicCamper on November 24, 2003, 01:52:52 PM
Quote

bloodline wrote:


:-) actually I did read the interview. but you are right that, I'm a little sensitive about he's lack of interest in AROS :-)


I don't thinks it just Alan.
I'm not interested in AROS or MORPHOS and I'm not going to pretend I am. I'm sure you doing a great job and your a great person. Nothing personal I'm just not interested either.

Edit .... mis read a post
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: bloodline on November 24, 2003, 02:01:23 PM
Quote

JurassicCamper wrote:
Quote

bloodline wrote:


:-) actually I did read the interview. but you are right that, I'm a little sensitive about his lack of interest in AROS :-)


I don't thinks it just Alan.
I'm not interested in AROS or MORPHOS and I'm not going to pretend I am. I'm sure you doing a great job and your a great person. Nothing personal I'm just not interested either.

Edit .... mis read a post


THat's fair enought, but may I ask what it is about AROS that doesn't interest you?

Without being funny, but most (yes/no?) people who want OS4 have at least a passing interest in AROS... if for no other reason than it's free and makes PC's work and look nice :-)
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: Martyn on November 24, 2003, 02:03:05 PM
I don't believe it!  He's done it again!
Turned a thread into a complete AROS-fest!

Matt, you are becoming a master at this!! :-)
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: JurassicCamper on November 24, 2003, 02:22:25 PM
Quote

bloodline wrote:

Without being funny, but most (yes/no?) people who want OS4 have at least a passing interest in AROS... if for no other reason than it's free and makes PC's work and look nice :-)


Yes I am interested in OS4, However, Matt I must fall into the minority category that doesn't have an interest.
Why ? I guess for the same reasons why i'm not interested in watching paint dry or reading about chelsea football club or ...... if you see what i mean.
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: bloodline on November 24, 2003, 02:31:42 PM
Quote

Martyn wrote:
I don't believe it!  He's done it again!
Turned a thread into a complete AROS-fest!

Matt, you are becoming a master at this!! :-)


I must say, I'm losing my touch ;-) I used to turn every thread into one... I've been tired recently :lol:

Anyway, this IS a legitimate thread topic, since it's about the AmigaONE, which is a machine that I want AROS to run on. :-)
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: bloodline on November 24, 2003, 02:37:25 PM
Quote

JurassicCamper wrote:
Quote

bloodline wrote:

Without being funny, but most (yes/no?) people who want OS4 have at least a passing interest in AROS... if for no other reason than it's free and makes PC's work and look nice :-)


Yes I am interested in OS4, However, Matt I must fall into the minority category that doesn't have an interest.
Why ? I guess for the same reasons why i'm not interested in watching paint dry or reading about chelsea football club or ...... if you see what i mean.


Hmm, but those things are unrelated to the Amiga community (well Chelsea FC was sponsored by Commodore-Amiga and waiting for new Amiga hardwre has been like watching paint dry) but AROS is an interesting part of this community...

Still you have your reasons and that's fine. But I would like to understand your view point.
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: JurassicCamper on November 24, 2003, 02:52:28 PM
Quote

bloodline wrote:
 But I would like to understand your view point.


Q. Its is official.....
A. No.

Q. Does it look like Amiga OS.....
A. Yes but I've got that already with my 1200 / 4000

Q. Is it Binary Compatible....
A. No.

Q. Am I going to learn anything new like I am doing with Linux and my A1 ?
A. No I dont beleive so. I know how the BIOS works in my PC and I know how to navigate AmigaOS.

Q. Its it going to allow me to run my old Amiga software and new OS4 software ? ....
A. No.

Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: bloodline on November 24, 2003, 03:09:19 PM
Quote

JurassicCamper wrote:
Quote

bloodline wrote:
 But I would like to understand your view point.


Q. Its is official.....
A. No.

Q. Does it look like Amiga OS.....
A. Yes but I've got that already with my 1200 / 4000

Q. Is it Binary Compatible....
A. No.

Q. Am I going to learn anything new like I am doing with Linux and my A1 ?
A. No I dont beleive so. I know how the BIOS works in my PC and I know how to navigate AmigaOS.

Q. Its it going to allow me to run my old Amiga software and new OS4 software ? ....
A. No.



ok, :-)

I'm going to have to be honest here, but I don't AROS is for you... I suggest you look at OS4 and MorphOS .
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: Seehund on November 24, 2003, 07:21:57 PM
Quote

Hammer wrote:
@Mr A . Redhouse. Just a minor point.

Quote

In addition the AmigaOne has a major inbuilt bandwidth benefit compared to normal PC architecture. This is because the transparent synchronous design of the Articia S allows direct memory-AGP transfers without suspending cpu-memory operations as is required in the x86 world. Just ask any user who has installed the same version of, say, PPC Linux on an 800 MHz AmigaOne and a PC of 3x that clock speed as to which is the most responsive. The A1 wins every time.
- Mr A . Redhouse, Nov 2003.


This would be much funnier if it didn't come from a hardware dealer. Now it's just... bizarre.
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: Warface on November 24, 2003, 07:35:38 PM
Quote
Q. Am I going to learn anything new like I am doing with Linux and my A1 ?
A. No I dont beleive so. I know how the BIOS works in my PC and I know how to navigate AmigaOS.


Sorry, but I just can't resist...

There are a thousand operating systems out there. Making a positive spin on a non Amiga like OS (Linux) is beyond me... What good is in converting Amiga users into Linux users for the community?
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: JoannaK on November 24, 2003, 08:21:18 PM
Well. he's Salesman.. Used cards, Shampoo, vacum cleaners Door to door. Same stuff, different buzzwords.

Pitty though that on computers .. Many potential clients do understand enough of technology that they can see trough this fluff and realize he's having no hard evidence to support these great-sounding arguments.

Even Apple could not sell their All New G5 as 'fastest' in europe. They had to cancel (or face penalties) TV ads cause they coudl not prove their goodie is the best. What chances you's give that this product is even close to those comparably priced Macs ???

(edit) note.. This ain't Alan's fault alone.. he's just reading sales material feed to him by Mai.  IMHO he should realize that not all of it is based on facts and measurable comparision.  
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: Fats on November 24, 2003, 08:46:04 PM
A1 users and MAI people are cooperating and sharing information to get the bugs in linux and UBoot solved. I don't think there is any secrecy involved in the hardware spec to get another OS working.
Title: Re: QA with Alan Redhouse
Post by: Hammer on November 24, 2003, 09:48:10 PM
Quote
Even Apple could not sell their All New G5 as 'fastest' in europe. They had to cancel (or face penalties) TV ads cause they coudl not prove their goodie is the best. What chances you's give that this product is even close to those comparably priced Macs ???

In the MacWorld review (1), a dual G5 @2.0Ghz PowerPC (Apple's PowerMac) was beaten by a single Athlon FX-51 @2.2Ghz (Alienware's Aurora). This review only corroborate the said decision.    

Reference
1. http://www.alienware.com/review_pages/review_template.aspx?FileName=review_macworld_1203.asp