AOS4 & Amigaone

[Tigger]

wonea wrote:
Hello,

I've been looking at AOS4 and I want it.  Feed up with my slow Mac.  Is it going to be released this christmas?  If so, I need a cheap AmigaONE.  >£600 is WAY too much for a casual layman.

OS4 is not done, AmigaOnes are not available and there is a good chance they won't be available again, so I think AmigaOne with its hardware flaws is a bad idea.  Troika is supposed to be coming, it gets away from MAI's flawed part, so it should run better then the AmigaOnes, however the OS is still not done, why buy a computer to run an incomplete unfinished OS thats 3 years late at the moment.   If it gets done and Troika's are running well, look at it then.   WinUAE outruns them all if you need to run your old software faster, ImageFX is really fast and would have been even faster if AI hadnt killed Amithlon.   MorphOS computers are cheaper, better and the OS runs more older programs then OS4 at this point, so if its a compatibility issue, OS4 is the low one on the totem pole.
     -Tig

[Tigger]

Thomas wrote:
Regarding trolls like Tigger, they always tell that MorphOS is done and AmigaOS4 is not. Well, from my subjective opinion AmigaOS 4 pre 3 feels much more "done" than MorphOS 1.4.5.

I'm sorry Thomas, but I am fairly sure calling me a Troll is against the policies of the website.  I didnt say MorphOS is done did I.  Ben & company keep preaching that there product is not done yet.  I dont think anyone should buy an OS that is described by those selling it as "not done yet".   It doesnt really matter because at this point there is no new hardware available that runs OS4.  I really dont care about MorphOS, if he wants a PPC solution however he can buy one now unlike the current AmigaOne solution.  And Genesi's hardware is better then the Teron boards, sorry but MAI's chip is busted thats why everyone except Eyetech dumped them.  We didnt do it because it was fun, Rockwell didnt do it because it was fun, the Barbie folks didnt do it because it was fun, the part has flaws, lots of companies had to drop them because of it.  When/If new hardware is available (Troika as I mentioned), it won't have the flaws and hopefully will have better prices and OS4 may be an alternative, but right now if he wants to run his current amiga software, one of the UAE clients will run it fastest (on a cheap x86), followed by Pegasos boards (which are available at faster speeds then the currently non-shipping A1's) followed by used A1 because new ones are not available.  Thats not trolling, thats the facts in the current situation.    
    -Tig

[Tigger]

HammerD wrote:
@Tigger

Your facts surrounding the flaws of the A1 are out-dated.  

No there not, but thanks for playing.

Sure, there were problems and there _are_ problems with some of the earlier AmigaONE XE and SE's.  But since a year now when the MicroA1 "C" version of the AmigaONE started shipping, there are no hardware problems that prevent the advertised operation of the board.

Sure there are, now drivers have been written to get around the hardware problems in the MicroA1, but it is still using a flawed Articia bridge which prevents the hardware from running as it should and requires the system to perform in a substandard manner.  Before you go into a big rant about no it doesnt, have you worked with the MAI part in question, have you worked with people that have, explain exactly how you think the drivers are getting around the articia's problem without slowing the system down??

Every motherboard, chipset, and cpu have errata.  Most of these are worked around in firmware or software.  That is exactly the case with the MicroA1 "C" version.  It works as advertised with USB/DMA/IDE/Video, etc.  

Works like advertised in what way??  DMA has been slowed down, drops TCP/IP packets for fun, is that part of the advertisement I missed??  Every system has errata is pretty much true, however most systems dont have a fatally flawed chip on them.  In fact I believe the Terons/A1's are the only product who shipped with the Articia, though lots of us were designing with it at one time.

So, update your facts.  Since the last year the only shipping AmigaONE's (new ones) have been MicroA1 "C" versions, which, as far as the end user is concerned, work without [hardware] problems of the earlier (might I add: developer pre-release) boards.  

I'm sorry the early boards were not sold as developer pre-releases, I can't take any of your comments seriously if you actually believe that.  Eyetech and Hyperion sold them to anyone with money and told them OS4 was coming soon, 3 years later its still not done according to them, there is no more hardware and we have people explaining that they were developer pre-releases, thats why there were problems.  Funny Alan nor Benji brought that up at any of the shows I saw them at hawking there wares.  

The fact that no new boards are available and the price is rather high is a separate issue.

No its actually the same issue.  MAI's parts are unavailable because the people at Rockwell and others who used there faulty parts dealt with them.   Telling people buy OS4 because you think its great but not pointing out that the hardware currently in use will likely never be available again is pretty silly dont you think.  Hopefully Troika comes around, runs great and is a new home for OS4, but right now OS4 is an unfinished OS running on unavailable hardware.
     -Tig

[Tigger]

reflect wrote:
As with the original Amiga, the price of the operating system is embedded into the package. Consider that before you state it is overpriced.

ITS OVERPRICED, which part do you not understand.  Unless you believe that OS4, is a $300 OS, then its overpriced, and even then its really overpriced.  MacMini with OSX and lots of bundled software goes for $499, its faster, its more powerful, it has more features, it'll edit High Definition Video for gods sake.  Plug in you monitor, keyboard and mouse and go.  For $499, Dell will sell me a laptop that runs WinUAE faster then an A1, again AmigaOne is overpriced, its not currently available and Hyperion says the OS to run on it isnt done yet.  
   -Tig

[Tigger]

jkirk wrote:

and how many thousands of dells and macs are produced at a single production run? without a large production run the cost is high. eyetech could not produce a high enough quantity to allow a lower price. as for genesi they can skirt around that issue with bplan(since they are a manufacturer) eyetech has to pay someone else to produce for them.

Guys understand AmigaOne is not as high priced as it is because its made in small quantities, I know your heroes Alan and Benji tell you that, but its not true.  Alans stuff is made at made at a major contract manufacturer (not as big as us, but not a small company) and the reason for the cost is who Alan has to pay, not how much Alan has to pay for production.  Production on the Micro is sub 250, thats parts, thats labor, thats finished tested boards.  I'm sorry but at $800+ there is alot of fluff.  The Yellow Dog Linux guys were going to sell the board for $449 and make money on it till they found out it wouldnt run Linux, how could they do that, if the production costs are super high as you guys keep saying??
    -Tig
 

[Tigger]

HammerD wrote:
@ Tigger

Sorry, I have owned a microA1 "C" now for a year and don't have any of these problems you are describing.  I think you should get your facts straight before continuing to make yourself look like someone who doesn't really know what they are talking about.

Sure you do, to get rid of the cache coherancy issue (and other issues with the Articia) Hyperion hacked the drivers, slowing the entire DMA system down, its great you don't see a problem it doesnt mean the systems DMA isn't dog slow because of the hack.  As for the TCP/IP issue, thats directly from the Roadshow/Eth3com.device guys, if you think you know more then them and I about TCP/IP, hey thats great, I got a job for you.   Please send me your resume.

I'm not saying there aren't problems with chips.  The MAI chip does work a bit differently than one would expect but this does not mean it is "flawed".  This is how it was designed.  

No, its not how it was designed, if it was how it was designed then when I or the Rockwell guys or the Barbie guys call them up telling them it doesnt work according to their spec, and telling them what it really does, they dont argue with you, they dont blame other equipment, they dont suggest ESD damage, you get the idea.   I've got a dozen of the chips in my lab, if you have fewer than that, and have never hooked a scope to one, please stop arguing that the parts work correctly.

You can argue whether or not that was a poor design decision or not, but the bottom line for the end user is that if they purchase a microA1 "C" production version all advertised features will work for OS4.  That includes onboard graphics, sound, UDMA-100, DMA Ethernet, USB, etc etc.

As I have pointed out, and as others have, DMA was crippled by fixing the hardware problem in the drivers, the Ethernet port has problems according to the folks doing your ethernet driver and TCP/IP stack, who exactly are you to be telling them they are wrong??

@thread
Don't let Tigger scare you.  The microA1 "C" hardware features _do_ indeed work with OS4. USB/DMA/IDE/Ethernet/on-board graphics/sound, etc...

@thread

Don't let someone who knows nothing about how something works vs how its supposed to work convince you that the broken board is not broken.   Its not an real issue anymore, because the broken board is also not going to be manufactured anymore.
   -Tig

[Tigger]

Seehund wrote:

Mangar wrote:
Why are the developers of AOS4 tying the OS to specific hardware.

The developers (Hyperion) aren't the ones behind the tying. Reading between the lines when they post on forums, they don't give the impression of being overly enthusiastic about it either.

The ones behind the tying are a computer shop (Eyetech) and the company controlling the trademark and IP behind the OS (Amiga, Inc.).

I would agree with you except for one thing, Ben works/worked for Hyperion, and Ben bragged about writing the contract.  If one of your directors writes you a bad contract, and you sign it, saying its not your companies fault is an incorrect premise in my belief system.  I'm sorry OS4 is tied to shoddy unavailable hardware, before they had shipping hardware, we were talking why dont you make it run on G3 Imacs, but there hardware was better, etc then Apple, and going to be cheaper too.  None of that actually happened and we have no hardware available for OS4 at the moment.
     -Tig

[Tigger]

spirantho wrote:
Funny how these arguments always break out when someone mentions Pegasos and AmigaOne in the same sentence.

I have two points for you:
1) I'm posting this on an AmigaOne (A1XE-G4@800, latest AWeb, AOS4 PR3)
2) I'm not selling it.

I think both of those points are a pretty good way of refuting the "A1 is broken" argument, myself.

This arguement surely didnt start because of mention of Pegasos, I for one, and most of the people on here could care less about Pegasos, as for you points.

1) Proves absolutely nothing, what do you think it proves.

2) Again proves nothing, what do you think it proves.

The A1 is broken is a hardware fact.  I can mess with the OS until the hardware bugs aren't apparent to most is also a fact, however it doesnt change the first fact.   We fixed the Dpaint bug by fixing the AmigaDos 2.0 rom with a fix we called clickity split, it doesnt mean that Dpaint didnt have a bug in it, we masked it to help out the customer.  Hyperion is continuing to add software fixes to there OS to cover the broken parts of the hardware, if that doesnt effect you and what you do, thats fine, but that doesnt mean the hardware doesnt have a problem or that when you start trying something new with your computer it might not work because of the hardware bugs.
     -Tig

[Tigger]

Paul wrote:

Everything you so conveniently blame on the Articia isn't even because of the Articia. THe sound has been traced to a problem in the Via southbridge and is now fixed in AHI.

Sorry Paul, I'm not wrong, as has been pointed out by me, and half a dozen others who actually design hardware for a living half of the things that Eyetech blame the Via chip for, don't even go through the southbridge.  It would be more correct to blame Paula for a blitting problem on a classic Amiga then it would be to blame the southbridge for most of the issues on an AmigaOne, we finally even have Ben fessing up to that, so lets get out of the backpedal to blaming Via again.

On the other hand, you're claim that there will be no more manufactured is rumour and conjecture, like so much else that you write.

Chips are EOL, what exactly do you think they are going to do about that??  Alan basically said he wasnt going to make more in his interview months ago.  What exactly do you think is going to happen in this situation.
 

But I do know this: As a complet Linux newbie, I had my A1 up and running and taking care of my email and web surfing from day one. I played around a litle with GIMP and Abiword. I think it took about four months from delivery before OS4 pre1 was released. I didn't know I was suposed to turn off DMA until about the last three weeks of Linux use. I didn't have any trouble even with DMA on. . .  Not even while I was online.

Which means you didnt use anything that used DMA, or you didnt really have DMA on, because the DMA problem is there, thats not my opinion, thats the opinion of everyone who uses the chips, that even Hyperion's opinion now, thats why they fixed there driver to cover the problem, thats why the Terrasoft people didnt sell the board, thats why all the Linux builds abandoned the board, you think they are all wrong and you are right??

So, after all this long rambling, I can only say that Tigger is taking some known flaws and making mountains out of molehills. Tkae his rant with a grain of salt.

No Tigger is pointing out that the current OS4 hardware has flaws and isnt currently being manufactured, thats all true.
    -Tig

[Tigger]

MskoDestny wrote:
Done seems to be a rather arbitrary metric at the moment. It seems that OS4 is complete enough that Hyperion can declare it done whenever they feel like it. Besides more 3D drivers, I don't particularly see what's not done at the moment.

Its not my metric though, its Hyperions.  Hyperion constantly says they are not done yet.  I personally believe thats a business decision, because once they are done, they have lots of checks to write, as long as its "not done yet", they dont have to, and plus if something isnt working they can go on that its not done yet, and its unfair to compare us to xxx, because we arent dont yet.  Right now, completing OS4 would be a huge financial burden to Hyperion, they can't sell anymore because there is no hardware, but they owe CDs to 1000 users (I believe final CDs are going to be shipped right), plus money to all the developers, and may owe money to AI and/or Eyetech.   So we aren't going to see OS4 done, until they can make money selling it, and I unfortunately think that means new hardware, not already available hardware (ie Macs).
    -Tig

[Tigger]

reflect wrote:
Now, have you ever considered the other costs, apart from manufacturing?

As in, licensing/buying the schematics for the design you're going to use? Paying someone to make changes to that design .. cause, no matter what some people say, the original Teron and the A1 aren't exactly the same. They have evolved over time, and that's not cause someone was nice enough to just update them for free.

I realize you dont know alot about this stuff, but now you are just getting silly.  The production Teron boards and the Production A1's are the same hardware, built from the same raw PWB, with the same parts list, Eyetech just reflashes the ROM so OS4 will run on it, something monkeys or even Alan can be trained to do.   Eyetech didnt pay to have the board redesigned, get real.  As for your 50K, thats pretty good pay for 2 or 3 weeks work, really know companies that pay like that for board designers, if so let me know, I need to send them some resumes.  A complete board design gets done here in 2 months tops, a redesign (as you are claiming happened) gets done in a few weeks, virutally noone pays 50K for 3 weeks work.  They would be better of hiring a guy for a year at 50K, and get half a dozen boards out of him.  But then you wouldnt have your 50K example of how much it cost Eyetech to do a redesign they didn't do.   Eyetech is recovering money from their failed design that never worked, you might not have a problem with that, but I do.  I dont think the Amiga community should be paying for Alans failed attempt at making his own PPC board.
    -Tig  

[Tigger]

I think this idea that "new boards will be out when AOS4 arrives" is incorrect. I've never heard that the HW is waiting on the software. In fact from what I've seen the continuing development of HW is not connected to the software at all. I mean, the beta testers for OS4 continue to make improvements on a daily basis. Which is why the OS is basically "done" at this point. I wouldn't be waiting for anything if you wanted a Micro. The only issue seems to be finding a board from a dealer. dealers have to order a certain number at a time (prepayed). and they have to order the exact same number of OS4 copies. It's a bit clumsy, but that's the way it is. It's not like anyone asked MY opinion on how to do this. :roll:

Cecilia,

There are no more Micro boards, we've had dealers for weeks talking about getting some in RSN, and that time has really come and gone.  Due to the chip situation, I dont' think there will be any more boards (or in actuality a significant number of new boards) available ever.  That means we are waiting for new hardware (likely Troika) or a port to another PPC platform (Apple, Genesi) to see a significant increase in OS4 sales.  Otherwise we have what a jokingly refer to as the holy 1000, which will fade into oblivion over the next couple of years.  
     -Tig

[Tigger]

reflect wrote:

Eyetech, afaik, licensed the design.

No thats not what they did.

That means they bought the design, produced some prototypes and then revised them as problems cropped up. Look at the Micro Mk2 for example (I have one here). Put an Mk2 and an Mk3 (aka -C) next to eachother and you see alot of differences, and I mean ALOT. So saying they're just "reflashing the rom" just makes you look ignorant.

No its not, finished boards get sent to Eyetech these are the same boards as the Terons, all that happens to the board after the manufacturer makes them and ships them to Eyetech is they flash the Rom.   Eyetech is not tweaking the boards, thats not there job, and as they have proven in the past, its not something they are capable of doing.
   

Next you say that the Amiga community shouldn't pay for someone's failed attempts.

Again you don't understand the story.  Before deciding to buy the Terons, Alan spent alot of money failing to design his own PPC.  I dont think the Amiga Community should have to pay more for the Teron, because Alan spent lots of money making boards that didnt work when power was applied to them.
    -Tig

[Tigger]

Waccoon wrote:
I believe you're right that a redesign wasn't used for the AmigaOne, but it's not strictly a stock Teron board.  People did just have an argument recently about whether the AmigaOne's on-board audio works or not, and found that some AmigaOnes have the audio chip, while others do not.  Or, did that only apply to the AmigaOne Micro?

Maybe the audio chips just fell off in transit, and Eyetech decided to sell the boards, anyway.

Originally the sound chip didnt work, it was believed to be a hardware problem in the PWB, so on subsequent builds of the board, the part was deleted from the partlist, thats why on the majority of A1's there are pads for the part, but no part.   In recent weeks, a sound driver for the chip has been written, which seems to be working fine, of course now the majority of the A1's dont have the chip the driver is trying to support, however if you have the chip, the on board sound is now working.   Part deletion saved a dollar or two I would guess on parts cost, if someone tells me the actual chip number, I could give you a more definitive cost.
    -Tig

[Tigger]

FrankBrana wrote:
@Tiger

If everybody use UAE, wont be evolution at all in amiga land.Buy machines, AMiGA or PEGASOS, but support real machines. Yes these machines we dreamt for years, and now that are developed, everyone finds "flaws" on it.

C´mon. Support OS4, support MOS. Whatever option you choose, support real and modern hardware.

Amithlon would have allowed revolution on x86 hardware, it was done years ago, and we would have had 2 or 3 major updates since then. AROS will eventually supass that effort and will be open source.  We don't need to build our own hardware (AmigaOne) to update the OS to PPC (or x86 for that matter).  Macs are plentiful, at this point Pegasos' are available as well.  AmigaOne aren't being manufactured now, and when they were, were more expensive then either of those alternatives, weren't as powerful and weren't being repaired under warranty (the biggest complaint of them all).  Plus the AmigaOne has the hardware problems brought on by the Articia.  I'm all for updating the OS, I'm against tying it to a faulty albatross called AmigaOne.   1 days production of the Mac Mini would more then double those using OS4.  At $100 (or even $150) a pop, there is literally 100's of 1000's of dollars worth of sales available on a Mac port.  Less for a Pegasos port, but even then lots of money, right now, OS4 has been sold to every AmigaOne owner, until it there is new hardware, there is no new OS4 sales.  Thats not good for Hyperion, and not good for the OS4 community.  The Troika folks have picked good parts for there design, but honestly I doubt they will have shipping hardware for Christmas, so we have no sales of OS4, till January or later, how is that better then doing a Mac port and selling the hell out of it??
   -Tig