Very hard to understand

[Lionheart]

I have also donated over $300 usd in total for different projects and will spend over $1000 more during 2015. I will also spend money on just about everything on amistore that comes out. I am a big supporter of A-Eon and have over $5000 in my X1000 project and will also buy a X5000 when it comes out.

Lets get a modern full blown top shelf email client and go from there.

PS this is a problem for Morph and AROS as well. Does anyone want to make money out there? my checkbook is ready to pay you!!

You'd be better off throwing your money at MorphOS or AROS.  AmigaOS is a lost cause.  But if you want to throw your money away supporting a bankrupt OS that runs on outdated and expensive hardware, go for it.  Just don't expect a lot of software support for a system few people can afford and that no one outside the Amiga community would really want.

[Lionheart]

Ooh, once more unto the breach

of my ignore list.

Keep your blinders on if you want.  If the $3000 apsturk already spent on the X1000 went towards software development rather than an overpriced computer with 10+ year old technology, he might have already had the e-mail program he wanted.  And we need more users, not more under-performing overpriced hardware.  If you actually think a lot of developers are looking to write software for a system few people are using, than you're delusional.

[Lionheart]

Come on pal. I am happy with my X1000 and I know what I was getting into and have no regrets. This all starts with people like me and others spending money and maybe just maybe if there is enough of us things will grow. After 2 years Acube is selling another batch of the sam460 and there was a big demand. Others like me are still buying the X1000 and more will buy the X5000 and X3500. That = more users and this is good thing. With the new developer kit and debugging software and LibreOffice and all the other software and hardware stuff A-Eon is working on I think things are looking better that they have in a long time. That is why I jumped in with both feet!!

At best, all you'll do is delay the inevitable.   Buying all the outdated and expensive stuff A-Eon and ACube dish out isn't going to save them.  They're catering to a group of people who will already buy anything they stick the name Amiga to.   That doesn't expand the userbase, it just gives the existing base something to collect.  What about the person who has never heard of Amiga?  Do you really think they're impressed by an expensive computer with 10+ year old technology and nothing going for it except a name?  No, they look at us like we're crazy for supporting a system running a processor with a dead end road map, a high-end price tag, and an operating system that isn't worth the price you pay to run it.

[Lionheart]

@ Lionheart

Thing is, though, the email client situation is exactly the same on MorphOS and AROS...

Thing is, I already know that.  However, if the community would gather under fewer umbrellas, it could change that.

[Lionheart]

Providing it's not the OS4 umbrella as you clearly don't like that one. Well, nothing like a nice bit of exclusivity to bring us all together right.

OS4 has no future.  It's tied to expensive hardware, which it can barely support.  It makes no sense to spend $3000 just to run Hyperion's OS4 as it's not that impressive to begin with.   Once again, try to convince someone outside the Amiga cult-like mentality to buy a $3000 computer with 10+ year old technology to run an operating system like OS4 when they can buy a more useful and more powerful computer running Windows or MacOS for less than half that price.

[Lionheart]

You are of course entitled to your opinion. I don't give a fug what that opinion is of course as I'm op[en to all Amiga flavors. My point was you just can't say that we should all work together and then choose who to include like that. That's just a hypocrisy.

Speaking of hypocrisy, how open were you to CUSA?  

CUSA to me is just some shoddy company that rapes the Amiga name for profit and does nothing to advance real Amiga's at all.

Source: http://amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?p=669446

Funny you could say the same thing about A-Eon, ACube, and Hyperion, whose only real accomplishment has been giving the community a proprietary platform running a PowerPC processor with a dead end road map.  And how many developers do you think are willing to invest $3,000 to develop software for a system few people own let alone can afford?  

Oh, and as for making no sense to spend $3000 on a computer etc... Does it make sense to buy an IDE controller for $70 or a 50MHz CPU for hundreds? Certainly not to anyone outside the Amiga community you speak of. If you don't like OS4 or the X1000 just don't buy them. Just as you have a choice so does everyone else. Excluding sub-groups within the Amiga community does not help anyone, not MOS users, not AROS users, not OS4 users.

Spending $70 on a hobby is one thing.  Spending $3000 on a computer, which is suppose to be more than a collector's item, is another.  If A-Eon and Acube's sole reason for existing is to provide expensive computers with outdated technology to satisfy the fanatics in the community, they'll eventually cease to exist.

[Lionheart]

That's no hypocrisy as CUSA never made any real Amiga products.

Neither did A-Eon.  

CUSA's Amiga Mini was a quad-core 3.5 GHz Intel Core i7-2700K with 16 GB of DDR3 RAM, running a Linux operating system capable of emulating Amiga for $2,495 (lowered to $1,995 shortly after).  

But I guess it's not a real Amiga to you unless it has an out of production 1.8Ghz dual core PA6T-1682M PowerPC processor, 4GB(Max) of DDR2 ram,  with Hyperion's OS4, a 32-bit OS running on a 64-bit system that can't even use the second core and that is about as real an Amiga as AROS, MorphOS, or anything else capable of emulating Amiga, for $3,000.

Well that's not really your problem now is it? If you are not interested in the products they make why does this even concern you? Now before you dig a big hole for yourself, some of those "fanatics in the community" are the very people who are doing real work developing Amiga software. All Amiga flavors benefit from porting between themselves. Without OS4 you will have less, not more.

It's a problem for the community in general.  Amiga users would be better off supporting AROS than to set themselves up for failure and disappointment supporting another failed company using the Amiga trademark. And when I say 'fanatics' I'm referring to brand worshipers who are the equivalent of the cult members that support Apple.

If, as I suspect, you think we would achieve more by all getting behind one flavor in particular and maybe get some kind of mass appeal again then you are of course quite deluded. I've no doubt that we would all love to see any Amiga OS on top but it's not going to happen. Perhaps if someone had several hundred million and decided to build an FPGA memristor (mrFPGA) based home computer that used an Amigalike OS then perhaps that could happen but frankly I don't see any other tech out there that is radical enough to cut into the market place and re-establish the Amiga as a popular home platform oozing power and elegance other than that, so don't get your hopes up.

Do you think there would be a Haiku if BeOS was still around?  I don't expect any 'Amiga' OS to be on top.  I expect us to be better than we currently are. If you don't have a radical technology you need an innovative solution.  You want Amiga back in the home?  With the right operating system and a single-board computer running an ARM processor (think Raspberry Pi only better), you could create a multimedia set-top-box that could function as both a game console and a video streaming device and that could even be built by the user or sold for less than $100.

[Lionheart]

Yup, overpriced and I can build the same model for less..... your point exactly?

It's overpriced, emulates Amiga, and yet is still more powerful and cheaper than the X1000.  And unlike the X1000 it isn't running a processor with a dead end road map.  

Oh, I see... so you don't consider AROS or MorphOS as Amiga's either. :/

I said OS4 is about as much an Amiga as AROS and MorphOS.   They're derivatives of Amiga, just like OS4, that have been around longer but don't get the same respect from some people in the community because they're not carrying the Amiga name and currently being sold with $3,000 computers running off of 10+ year old technology.

Oh you mean like CUSA.

I said Amiga users would be better off not setting themselves  up for failure and disappointment supporting another failed company  using the Amiga trademark.  Yes, that would include CUSA.  However, CUSA never had much support from the community and just like A-Eon, ACube, and Hyperion ...Amiga, Inc. and Bill McEwen still profited off of them through licensing fees.

No no no no no... NO! Don't even start that rubbish with me. Just ask  around the OS4 community, I doubt that you will find many who are OS4  only.  That myth is an invention of those who are deluded enough into thinking that lumping an amigalike OS on top of existing mainstream hardware will somehow get Amigas back into homes without thinking through whether that device will really be an Amiga at all. People like CUSA.

So does that make AROS running on an x86 or MorphOS running on a Power Mac less Amiga for not running on an expensive $3,000 computer using an out-of-production PowerPC processor?   What makes a computer using an ATX motherboard, PC power supply, and a PowerPC processor an Amiga device when Commodore never produced a single PowerPC based Amiga?

I got a few already, as for the mass market I couldn't give a flying...

Of course you don't.  You just expect a company to put money into research and development to design a computer using a processor with a dead end road map that they can't mass-produce all so you can feel like you own the latest Amiga device.

.......yeesss....It's called a Steam box. What was your innovative solution again?

No, it's a video game console for homebrew development.  A Steam Box is a line of computers being made by Valve that will include either their Stream client or StreamOS, and be released sometime around the end of 2015.

[Lionheart]

We have experienced 68k programmers and enthusiasts not ARM programmers. The 68k is better. Look at RiscOS which has major ARM incompatibility problems due to 26 bit to 32 bit PC on the ARM, at least 3 modes of operation (original, Thumb 1, Thumb 2, and now ARMv8) and hundreds of different variations and configurations of ARM processors. 68000 programs which are 32 bit clean (minus M$ AmigaBasic and a handful of other programs) still work everywhere because the 68k had 32 bit address registers, a 32 bit PC and 32 bit capable addressing modes from the beginning. We have less baggage, much better code density (RiscOS ROMs are 4MB vs the largest 1MB Roms for a 68k Amiga which holds a lot) and the 68k is strong in single core and memory performance. The RiscOS has splits also with the original Acorn, RISCOS Ltd. and RISC OS OPEN. Only RISC OS OPEN has been able to advance far enough to run on the Rasberry Pi. They are struggling to add preemptive multitasking in a compatible way let alone multi-threading or SMP support. The AmigaOS is in much better shape than the RiscOS but they have tons of new cheap harware which means they probably will add more users than the AmigaOS despite the AmigaOS being significantly superior, even in 68k form. All we need is more modern cheap 68k hardware.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC_OS

Linux, Raspbmc, RetroPie, Firefox OS, and even Plan 9 can run on Raspberry Pi.  Raspbian is probably the most advanced though.

As for 68k, it would have to be emulated through software as it would be too expensive to design a system using hardware emulation. Someone has already made a Full Speed Amiga 500 Emulator with DispmanX for the Raspberry Pi and even Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton has said he'd like to see Amiga emulation on the Raspberry Pi 2:

He told TechRadar: "I really want to see Amiga emulation on this  thing - they were beautiful machines. The original Pi is almost good  enough to run some Amiga 500 games if you turn the hardware fidelity  down, but you can't get the later ones that rely heavily on the exact  cycle timings.


"I think this [Raspberry Pi 2] will do a good Amiga 500 job, and there's a chance it could run Amiga 1200 games too."

Source: http://www.techradar.com/us/news/computing-components/peripherals/raspberry-pi-ceo-i-really-want-to-see-amiga-emulation-on-raspberry-pi-2-1283093

[Lionheart]

I see no reason at all why a video game console for homebrew would really make a difference. There are plenty of homebrew kits for existing consoles already, what is your unique selling point?

Try to run homebrew on a PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PS2, Gamecube, Xbox,...etc without hacking it.  They're closed devices that don't support homebrew out of the box.  

The Amiga emulation on the Pi is relatively weak because even the Pi 2 has lackluster single core and memory performance (due to the low electrical power RISC CPU design). The Pi and Pi 2 are pretty efficient for web browsing and other tasks where multiple cores can be used but an old Pentium III CPU is likely to outperform it with a quick compile of older single core games. Games and programs can sometimes be optimized and fixed up but this takes a lot of time. It would be possible to make a Pi like 68k CPU based board with competive performance and more convenience features (wi-fi, SATA, FPGA, RTC?) but costing probably in the $75-$150 U.S. price range. An enhanced 68k would have strong single core and memory performance like the x86/x86_64 but could have a much smaller memory footprint, even smaller than the Pi's Thumb2. The 2nd generation of FPGA Amiga hardware is already faster than most 68k original Amiga hardware. A 3rd generation could be clocked up and the cost reduced if produced in quantity. I believe it could become competitive in performance to hardware like the Pi. IMO, the AmigaOS would have a much better chance trying to sell in quantity on 68k hardware than trying to play catchup with OSs where developers have years of experience optimizing for the host CPU.

There are alternatives to the Raspberry Pi, such as the pcDuino3 nano which is more powerful for around $30.  I prefer software emulation but for those who want hardware emulation there are FPGA add-ons for the Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone, such as the LOGi, and the pcDuino3 nano also features a Arduino-style expansion so it can use an FPGA shield.  There's also the Parallella, an ARM+FPGA SBC for $99 and the most expensive of the ones I've mentioned.  Having both ARM and 68k would at least make it future proof and backwards compatible.

[Lionheart]

Errrr... you don't know me too well do you? LMAO. ALL my consoles (NGC, Original XBox and WII) are hacked. Viper Chip, X-Ecutor 3, Letterbomb respectively. My Dreamcast has a boot disk for homebrew and even my N64 that I sold had an V64 Doctor. I've hacked, modded or Jailbroken everthing I own. The only exception is the PS3 as it's actually my daughters and they (I have twins) just don't use it anymore since they started playing Skyrim on the PC.

...hmm, come to think of it I've not done my Kindle yet, I've been rather busy lately.

But OK, I take your point. So I ask you this instead. Why would I buy your design over OUYA , Uzebox, Caanoo, Pandora, nD or even Minimig, FPGA Arcade or Raspberry Pi?

I've installed modchips in various consoles (PS2, Wii, XBox, Gamecube, PS,...etc) and have hacked a few hard drives for the Xbox 360.  However, newer consoles prevent the use of modchips and exploits through firmware updates.

You forgot the Dingoo. :p  And the last time I checked the nD was vaporware.  Most of those systems are also running Linux, not AROS. The OUYA has the best specifications but is really just an Android with a controller that plugs into your TV.  

  I'm not asking you to buy anything and I have no intention of selling a custom made board.  What I suggest is an open standard for creating a console/computer running AROS.  Using a Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone,HummingBoard, Orange Pi, pcDuino3 nano...etc, it would even be possible to add an FPGA expansion that would also allow it to function as a Minimig.  The benefit of doing this would give AROS a standard to run on and increase development and interest in the OS.  Even Linux has trouble supporting all the hardware available on the PC, which is another reason why MorphOS sticks with Power Macs and OS4 sticks to their expensive custom boards.  It would be easier for AROS to get one open standard single-board computer working well than a thousand different PCs.  It's a better starting point.  The console aspect and homebrew community development could set them apart from their competitors, as Amiga has a better reputation when it comes to gaming than Linux.

@ Lionheart

man what's going on with the a.org nowadays?? it took 49 posts...49 posts!

dammit TMHTG I miss ya bro;)

O_o What's TMHTG?

[Lionheart]

There's already a standard system for running AROS.  It's an x86 system.  Or if you cling to 68K, then run 68K AROS on classic hardware, one of the UAE variants, or on a MiniMig.  No one in their right mind wants to run any Amigoid OS on a console.  What would be the point of dedicating a console to a dead OS?  To play 25 yr old side-scrollers?  Why would anyone complicate a Pi by adding an FPGA like you suggest?  It isn't needed.  The MiniMig already does what you're suggesting without the overhead and cost of a Pi.  This is getting absurd.

Once again, another thread hijacked by someone who believes that an Amigoid OS would take the world by storm "if".

Once again, another thread hijacked by someone who can't read.  I never said that an Amigoid OS would take the world by storm.  My idea would at least make the Minimig cheaper and not just a custom made board replicating an A500.

[Lionheart]

OK.  Then please explain your lack of math skills.  How does adding an FPGA extension to a dev board or a Pi make for a cheaper system than a standalone Minimig that already does everything you've outlined?

Raspberry Pi = $20 to $35  FPGA = $25 to $89  Total cost = $45 to $125

Parallella (ARM+FPGA) = $99

Minimig = $150 to $200

And I read what you wrote quite clearly and even quoted it in my response and now you're trying to say something different.  You suggested that a console created from a dev board with an FPGA extension to run AROS is a good idea.  It isn't.  There are already better options for that, and cheaper too.

I never said that the FPGA extension was for running AROS.  That I agree would be stupid and pointless.  My idea was to have them running in parallel.  That way you would have the benefit of two systems in one: A NG using an ARM processor and running AROS and a hardware emulated 68k Amiga using the FPGA extension.   The concept is kinda similar to the first PS3s with PS2 backwards compatibility except with an FPGA.