Who's getting the Tabor?

[JimmiG]

I'm still undecided. I was quite excited when it was announced back in 2015, but the long wait has definitely killed most of my enthusiasm, as I've moved on to other things. A release over 2 years after the announcement is just too long.

[JimmiG]

didnt realise it has already been 2 years ?  I just recently learnt about it, and got pretty excited.   but October seems like a long way off.     waiting waiting..

It was announced in October 2015, so if it comes out in October this year, it will have been 2 years.

The actual hardware has been available to beta testers for almost as long and runs Linux just fine:
http://amigax1000.blogspot.se/2016/01/my-a1222-has-arrived.html

The delay, as always, was caused by Hyperion/AmigaOS.

[JimmiG]

Well, it's not the cheapest way to get a new computer running Amiga OS, but on the other hand, it does go very fast with a dirty great PCI-e port to delight any one of selection of fine graphics cards.

I guess at the other end of the scale, you have things like Pi emulators, which can let you play Amiga games pretty well. They won't do as well as Steam boxes, which I guess might be one of the Tabor's selling points?

It's not like the architecture is that different, Arm Cortext 7 against Tabor isn't so different, but faster memory, better connectivity, 3d hardware graphic rendering, etc.

I guess if you got a souped up Pi variant to run an emulator on, like a Beagle bone, you'd get faster Amiga emulation too - but how fast do you really need? How much do you want to pay to run Amiga software? Cortex Arm 8 is expensive, but has a huge host of hardware options (and licenses to pay for).

Main reason would be to run AmigaOS 4 natively, without the limitations and frustrations of emulation. My desktop computer, laptop, phone, and probably my microwave oven (with a few modifications) can already emulate classic 68k Amigas.

[JimmiG]

I wanted one, but if the price I recently read of 400euro is correct then my interest has significantly dwindled.
Pretty much rhetorical, and voiced out of frustration, but why is it every man and his dog, unless the word "Amiga" is involved seem to be able to produce obscure, and cheap machines, even when in small runs?

€400 is actually not bad at all for a small batch of a custom designed motherboard. I don't know of any "obscure", but cheap boards with similar power. The Raspberry Pi has sold 10 million units, so I wouldn't call that obscure.

People blame the PowerPC CPU, but the real cost is not the CPU (especially with Tabor), its the custom-designed board. There are cheap credit-card sized ARM SoC boards, but if you want a custom design with PCI-E slots, expandable memory etc., it's going to cost:
https://www.heise.de/preisvergleich/gigabyte-mp30-ar0-9mp30ar0mr-00-a1297380.html

x86 would of course be the cheapest option, even if they had to limit it to certain chipsets and CPUs. However with Hyperion taking until October to get AmigaOS running on just another PPC board, I wouldn't expect an x86 port within our lifetimes...If they started now, the "pre-release" Preview version would come out some time around the year 2085...

[JimmiG]

And...a lot less capable, which is why I prefer the latter.

The thing is, most people already have powerful x86 boxes (more powerful than the X5000 in fact) for demanding tasks such as gaming, rendering, scientific calculations or whatever, and only want an AmigaOS system as a secondary box. The small size and equally tiny power consumption are actually advantages then, and performance isn't crucial as long as it runs AmigaOS apps at decent speed and can display most standard websites.

Indeed, until AmigaOS gains 64-bit and multi core support, the additional power is mostly wasted (you can run Linux, but then again, you can run Linux on your cheap 5 GHz overclocked quad-core x86 CPU with that GTX 1080 and 32 GB of RAM, too).

[JimmiG]

@RobertB

Trevor has just such a setup which you may have seen in his blog last October.

Something like this would be nice too but it's not practical to build in small quantities like the X500 case

[youtube]r85S48zsqTM[/youtube]

Well there are those new A1200 cases being made... :idea:
However fitting a video card in that without using some kind of PCI-E raiser and doing some custom work is going to be tricky.

But that's one reason I like the A1222. It's so small that you can do some creative stuff with it. I already have a Define XL R2 case for my x86 system, so I don't need another gigantic computer.

[JimmiG]

@Iggy

I respect your opinion but from my corner I see this differently I buy Tabor now (I already have it in fact) because it is suited for present functionality of AmigaOS. Tabor has 32-bit CPU and AOS4 is also 32-bit. Performance of Tabor is roughly 50% of X5000 which is OK for 400 EUR price tag. I do not think that 64-bit implementation of AOS4 will arrive anytime soon, the same goes for multi core support.

Tabor can accept 8 GB of RAM and it is a dual core system because P1022 is e500V2 dual core. So even Tabor as it is right now cannot explore its full performance under AOS4 which is designed for. Other things like PCIe slot and 800 MHz DDR3 RAM will make it fast enough.

So in my opinion....enjoy A1222 now, buy next thing when available and when AOS4 support it properly. Tabor is not expensive now so I can buy that next affordable thing again when available.

-Dooz

I'm feeling the same regarding AmigaOS 4.1 not keeping up with the new hardware. This makes it seem a bit risky and unnecessary to spend so much on new hardware, hoping it will get used "one day".

The Tabor, as you say, should be able to run AOS4 perfectly *today*. If there ever comes a time in the future when 64-bit is required, "Tabor 2" might be available for €400 (€800 spent in total), or you could find a used X5000 for much less than today. That day might never come though - maybe OS4 development will stop, or everyone moves to AROS or MorphOS, or Hyperion switches to x86-64 or ARM for AOS4. At this point, any of those scenarios seem just as likely as Hyperion suddenly adding 64-bit, multi core etc. and making Tabor obsolete overnight.

If you're absolutely decided to go "fully" AmigaOS 4 (no Linux or Windows PCs in your home), then obviously get the X5000 for that extra CPU power. But as a secondary system or "just for fun", while doing other tasks like rendering, video transcoding, gaming etc. on an Intel/AMD system, the Tabor seems like a more reasonable choice.