One unified OS for the future?

[amigadave]

Genesi used to sponsor developers with free hardware but many just took free hardware, sold it and then quit. Some developers did develop something and then quit. Only few lasted longer so personally I dont see it viable option. Even when developers have good intentions it gets easily wasted, like with Spotify.

Bounties work better but someone must get committed to update software regularly.

Bounties are a good solution for funding some software projects, but as you pointed out, they don't guarantee that the software created will be maintained in the future.

With our needs for new software being so huge, I believe that any and all means to support and encourage new software development should be used, including bounties, sponsored commercial projects, and maybe even a few Kickstarter projects, along with donated hardware and the creation of sites like the AmiStore or other online services which make it easier for programmers to sell their work and continue programming for our platforms.  There is no single solution and I guess we will always be struggling to get more and better software for our platforms, until such time when we are large enough to make it more financially desirable to program for any of the Amiga inspired platforms (if we ever reach that point again is doubtful).

[amigadave]

As I said, A-EON should partner with TYAN to adapt some of their CPU designs to a newer, less expensive AmigaNG system,since TYAN already manufactures POWER hardware.

With A-Eon's investment of more than 1 million dollars to Vari-Sys to design and build PPC motherboards for running AmigaOS4.x (and possibly some embedded markets), I don't see them changing directions any time soon, or switching to a different company to do design work, or manufacture boards for future A-Eon computers.

I think they are committed to the road they have laid out in front of themselves for many years to come.  This decision has it's own pros and cons, but one of the pros is that the direction they are going for the next few years anyway, should be stable and predictable, for users and developers who are interested in continuing development of AmigaOS4.x on PPC hardware.  I am not personally convinced 100% that this is the best path forward, but it might turn out to be the best choice we will have for future NG Amiga hardware.  I would like to see MorphOS also ported to future A-Eon motherboards, so we could have a new common hardware for both PPC NG Amiga inspired OSes, besides the SAM460, which I still consider to be a bit low powered (and there is no telling when the port of MorphOS will be finished for the SAM460).

[amigadave]

Lots of interesting answers and opinions being expressed in this thread, and almost zero trolling or baiting of members who disagree with each other, so thank all of you for that.

As a strong supporter of AmigaOS4.x and a primary supporter of MorphOS3.x in the USA, it almost pains me to write the following.  I think that many users in our community who can look at the "Big Picture" objectively realize that AROS is the only real choice we have for moving forward toward more modern systems without limitations or "work-around" compromises.  If the goal is to have a platform that works like the original Commodore Amiga in many ways, but has already made the break away from several undesirable design decisions contained in the original API that have caused problems, or held back progress, AROS appears to be the clear leader in making good choices for future development.  What AROS lacks is organization and some of the polish of the user interface, that might be present in the other NG Amiga choices.  If AROS had more community support and could gain more programmers working to complete more of the features and functionality of AROS, or if it could gain more programmers creating native AROS software, maybe it would begin to emerge as  the leading choice for NG users?  The split of our community into 4 parts seriously slows down the speed at which software can be created, or the number of available programmers willing to work on just one of the 4 remaining platform choices.

It is still unknown if AROS, or any of it's variants, will succeed in reaching it's goals, but to me is seems to be making better progress the last couple of years.  I have already expressed many times my hope that if/when AmigaOS4.x and MorphOS3.x reach a point in their development where they decide to switch to different architectures, or if/when they lose momentum and start to fail as a organization, that they would dissolve and the programmers would join forces with the AROS developers, so we could have a unified platform again, at least unified for the NG Amiga users wanting something different than 68k Amiga hardware and software (I know that this is unlikely to ever happen, but I can still hope for unification and faster progress through combined efforts).

The keys to survival and possible success in growing the number of users wanting a NG Amiga inspired platform in our community are:

1.  Better tools for ease of software creation.  Software availability can make one platform a clear winner, but only when the difference in the amount and quality of software for that platform is far above the other similar platform choices.  None of our current NG Amiga platform choices have a significant advantage yet.  For example, when the OWB (later renamed Odyssey) web browser had reached a level of functionality and stability that far exceeded any other browser for Amiga & Amiga inspired platforms, it made many users take notice of the one platform it had been developed for, and had them asking for it to be ported to their platform of choice.  It may have even been successful in getting a few users to become MorphOS users, who had not previously considered becoming a MorphOS user.  I know this because I was the person promoting MorphOS at several AmiWest Show over the last 4 to 5 years, and saw the change of opinions and increase in respect those users gained, after seeing how well OWB/Odyssey works, as well as other features and software available for MorphOS3.7.  My point is that software makes a difference, and none of the NG choices has a large enough advantage yet to make it a clear winner over any of the other choices to most users.  Software availability is why all of us also own Windows, Mac, or Linux computers, in addition to what ever Amiga & Amiga Inspired systems we may own.  If Aeros continues to improve so that it can seamlessly run most or all of the Linux software library, without the user being able to tell the difference between the software being a Linux program or an native AROS program, or legacy Amiga program, AND the Aeros user experience can become more like the Amiga it was inspired from, it may gain many new users in the future.

2.  Reasonably priced hardware that is easily available to everyone, but still has sufficient performance to run all kinds of software that a typical computer user would want to run.  It does not matter what architecture is used, so long as the platform has drivers to fully utilize all components of the architecture chosen, and the architecture has a future development path in front of it and large enough market that will keep it available for many years.

3.  A difference at the OS level that makes users and programmers want to use it instead of the already established OSes available.  This difference in user environment and/or structure and how the OS works has to be compelling enough to make it worth the time and considerable effort to create and maintain an OS outside of the mainstream choices.  AmigaOS1.x to 3.x had that difference in the user experience that kept many users and programmers interested to this very day, but it also had design flaws that have not been easy to fix, while keeping the user experience close to the same, so people want to continue using and improving, or creating new software content for any of the NG Amiga inspired OSes.  Without 1 & 2 above, 3 can only hold the interest of a diminishing number of users and programmers and the length of time it can hold the interest of any of us varies, which causes some to leave, and very few to join any of the NG groups from the "outside".

[amigadave]

I thought this discussion was about the (impossibility) possibility of a single OS that could unify the Amiga community, not the pros and cons of which hardware to use for any OS?  What ever, carry on........ but some of these statements are seeming fairly useless to me.  I hope we are not creeping back toward any kind of discussion that start pointing fingers and claiming which choices are the RIGHT choices, and everything else is the wrong choice.

[amigadave]

Well if you produce that many than there would be the funds
to also produce 68k cores which can compete with PPC systems.
Including real AMIGA chipsets again.

Right now we can with FPGA technology build 68k system
in the performance range of PowerpC Efika systems.

If you would produce around 15,000 - 20,000 systems as you describe
then you could "bake" real 68Ks including AMIGA chipset as SOC.

These systems would have the real chipset and performance
wise would be able to play in the same league as PowerPC AMIGA XE systems.

Maybe when more work is completed on the FPGA 68k Soft-Core design, and if a standard can be established for some kind of SAGA, and after several "Proofs of Concept" have been produced and sold to customers as accelerators for existing Commodore Amiga 68k computer models, or stand alone FPGA Amiga clones, maybe after all of that has happened, we can get a Kickstarter project started to provide the funding needed to "Bake" some new ASIC chips and increase the speed and performance of these FPGA accelerators and stand alone clones by another factor of 2x to 4x, or more.

I think that a Kickstarter project to fund the creation and production of new Amiga custom chips would be wildly successful, compared to other Amiga bounties.  There was a ton of interested and support for the Natami project, so the interest in an enhanced 68k Amiga accelerator or clone system is clearly there.  Maybe not in numbers greater than 10,000, but certainly more than 2,000.

Too bad that none of this will be ready in time for the 30th Anniversary of the introduction of the Amiga, which is planned to be celebrated late in July of 2015 at the Museum of Computer History in Mountain View, Calif., as well as other locations around the world.

[amigadave]

The FPGA get faster every other year.
If you assume that "maybe after all of that has happened" will take a year or two.
Then simple using the new FPGA models will us a 2x performance factor.
No big fund will be needed for this.

That is true.  Maybe it will never be cost effective to "bake" new ASIC chips for an updated Amiga clone.  I don't know how much performance increase is gained from going from a fast FPGA to a new baked ASIC, or how much performance increase is "Enough".  It has been stated in the past that 10,000 to 15,000 chips would need to be produced to make any new ASIC chip cost effective, which is probably too many for our remaining community, but who knows, maybe with the improvements shown using FPGA's and the Apollo Soft-Core 68k CPU, plus a SAGA core, we will see enough former Amiga users become interested again to reach those numbers.

I have guessed that we only have about 1,000 to 3,500 active users counting all flavors of Amiga & Amiga Inspired platforms today, but others claim there are many more than my estimates.  It will be interesting to see how many users line up to purchase the Phoenix accelerators, so please do NOT keep your sales numbers secret, like so many other sellers of Amiga gear do.  We want to know how many units you produce and sell and how quickly they are sold, which will help all programmers know the size of the community they might consider writing software for really is.

I can understand secrecy about some things from Amiga companies, but have never understood why they refuse to release sales numbers.  The only reason I can think of to hide sales numbers is that the number of sales is so embarrassingly low, they refuse to let anyone know how bad things really are, for fear of having the community shrink even smaller.  I hope the Apollo Team will not follow the pattern of hiding sales numbers for their Phoenix accelerators, or the Viper boards from Majasta.

Edit:  Maybe a big Kickstarter fund would help get hundreds of Phoenix accelerators built quickly and eliminate the risk of producing more than the number you have buyers for them.  This could also help fund the design and production of additional Phoenix accelerator models for any Amiga models you have not already designed an accelerator board for.

[amigadave]

I talked about the choice of 32 bit 68k for the low end and 64 bit PPC for a high end Amiga with one unified API. Let's let the consumers choose:

1) 68k laptop Amiga for $1000
 o CPU speed of a Raspberry Pi or better
 o 1GB of memory
 o 40GB SSD
 o SAGA gfx with chunky
 o supports most 68k Amiga software
 o battery life of 16 hours

or

2) PPC laptop Amiga $7000
 o CPU speed of an i3 or better, 64 bit, 2-4 cores, virtualization support
 o 8GB of memory
 o 1TB hard drive
 o integrated modern gfx card
 o 68k software is sandboxed, PPC AmigaOS support is possible, no virtualization software
 o battery life of 4 hours

Like Olaf said, it's not just about wants (or even needs in this case) but what is realistic. We could probably realistically have option 1 as it would sell in the thousands. Option 2 would have a few hundred buyers and not enough high end Amiga software to take advantage of it.

I have been programming, debugging, using a web browser and transferring files with SMBFS on my Amiga for the last few weeks with several days of uptime. I have done up to 32 bit gfx editing for a web site using TVPaint, ImageFX and PPaint. I can do a lot with 128MB on a 68k classic Amiga. I could use more speed and a little more memory would be nice but I can't see any way that I would use more than 1GB of memory with current Amiga apps.

I take one from column A (#1 above) now and one from column B (#2 above) after it has been out for several months and is proven stable with completed drivers, and I have had the time needed to save up the money to buy it.

Perhaps #1 from your post could be done very soon-ish, using FPGA technology and existing laptop components for battery storage and management, plus an LCD screen, but I am not convinced it could be done for only $1,000 US dollars.  Maybe 1,000 UK pounds, but who knows, maybe if the people creating it don't ask for a huge markup profit, then maybe $1,000 US dollars is possible.  I would suggest 2gb of RAM though, as that would provide us with more room to develop new software that takes advantage of the SAGA video resolutions and features, plus more demanding 68k software, which can take advantage of the increased speed of a Soft-Core 680x0 CPU running at close to Raspberry Pi speeds.

I also agree that such a laptop could sell thousands of units, compared to at best a few hundred PPC laptops meeting your #2 description, and selling for $5,000 to $7,000 and up prices.  I can't wait to test how fast LightWave3D v5.03 will run on one of these Phoenix accelerators in one of my Commodore Amiga computers!  LightWave3D for 68k runs on both AmigaOS4.1.6 and MorphOS3.7, but has some rendering or display problems that should not exist on an accelerated Commodore Amiga.

What would be the best way to fund the creation of #1?  A bounty, a Kickstarter project?  A "Do-it-Yourself" design using common off-the-shelf laptop parts (if you can really find laptop parts for sale to "Do-it-Yourself" builders)?

@Blinx123,

It is in the Amiga community universe where you will find 2 to 3 thousand buyers for a 68k laptop as described in #1.  There are more Amiga users who remain interested in 68k Amiga software and hardware, than all of the NG Amiga Inspired platforms combined, or at least it appears that way to me and many others.  If we will soon have 68k Amiga accelerators and stand alone clones that can provide performance equal to or faster than the SAM440ep, I think that interest will grow even higher for 68k software and hardware.  Only time will tell, but thankfully, we don't have much longer to wait, as it appears that progress has been good, and reports seem to indicate that these new FPGA accelerators and stand alone systems will be released within the next 2 to 6 months.  

@ Blinx123, Paolone, itix, etc.

This thread seems to have evolved into at least 2, if not 3 or 4 different discussions.  The question of should NG Amiga OSes use 64bit memory space, or 32bit memory space, IMO should be a separate question from the running of AmigaOS3.x on 68k and FPGA hardware.  I agree with you that if we are talking about the topic of this thread, one OS to unify Amiga users as a possible future choice, then 4gb RAM is not enough.  I think any new OS should provide the possibility to expand as far as possible in the future and should not be designed with limitations that are already known, or tied to any single hardware choices.  One of the other discussions is about how much is enough, when thinking of improving existing Amiga 68k hardware, software and actual enhancements to AmigaOS3.x for 68k and FPGA hardware.  In that discussion, the decision to have 32bit (or even 31bit) memory space, or 64bit memory space is less black or white.

As different as apples and meatloaf to me, but maybe you see all of this differently.

[amigadave]

To be honest I find both way to expensive...

I would rather target something like this:


* 68K CPU with enhanced feature set and instruction providing multimedia acceleration
* 1 GB of fast main memory
   My design target would here by to reach 1.5 to 3.0 GB/sec memory copy speed.
   This means this 68K system would be about 10 times more powerful in memory than a PowerPC G4 Amiga.
* USB, Network and HDMI connectors
* Amiga Chipset with P96 und truecolor
* Video resolution up to full HD
* SDCard storage

We have the know-how to produce the above today.
The whole could be sold for $300-ish

I would not want to add any new ideas or demands to delay your Phoenix accelerator projects, but it sure would be great if the Apollo Team, or someone else that has the engineering and design talent, would take the next step and create an FPGA based 68k Amiga laptop.  It is one hole in our available hardware that is only filled by AROS and MorphOS users, and at least for me, a portable system is much more useful to most peoples lifestyles these days, more than a desktop system, though I am not advocating that everyone switch to using laptops or tablets (personally don't like tablets myself), or abandoning the creation of Phoenix accelerators for all or most models of the original Commodore Amiga computers.  After production and sales of Phoenix accelerators, and maybe even stand alone desktop systems, it just would be great to have a laptop option available.

It is just so much more convenient for myself anyway, to use a laptop and be around other family members and friends, instead of being alone in another room with my desktop system, or being unable to use my preferred platform except through emulation when I am traveling, because there is no Amiga 68k laptop option available.

Your cost estimates are impressive and admirable, but don't under estimate hidden costs.  It is better to estimate the costs a little higher than actual and then be able to deliver a product at a lower than anticipated price, instead of giving the impression that a lower price will be possible, and then having to raise the actual selling price to an amount that is higher than your original estimates and be criticized for making the original low estimates.

@TeamBlackFox,

I think that users or programmers in the Amiga community who think that any of the 4 different directions the Amiga has survived in will ever become competitive again with any mainstream platform, are seriously delusional, or hopelessly out of touch with reality, IMHO.  I don't think you believe that the hobby OSes that have sprung up since the demise of Commodore and all other companies who have come and gone, who purchased the rights to the Amiga API since Commodore went bankrupt, plus AmigaOS3.x, which has fallen to the status of a hobby OS, due to a lack of support and slow development to provide any current modern features, will ever be able to compete with mainstream OSes.  It is doubtful that any of these hobby OSes will even be able to compete with any Unix, or Linux based niche distributions, which have many more programmers available to work on upgrading them than any of the Amiga Inspired OSes.  I only bring this up, because several statements in this thread have compared what we currently have and what some users believe we should strive for in the future, to mainstream OSes.  No doubt, we should learn from platforms which have much greater resources, and strive to copy as many features and improvements as we can from them to our tiny niche OSes, but if some of those features and improvements comes at the cost of throwing away all or most of what makes an Amiga Inspired OS related to our Amiga legacy and heritage, then why even bother?  If we have to give up almost all legacy support, then why not just abandon any connection to the Amiga and use the mainstream choices available to us?

If we instead wish to continue working toward an improved Amiga Inspired OS, some compromises must be made with the understanding that we will never be able to compete with mainstream OSes, but we can provide "Better" Amiga Inspired OSes, than we currently have available to us.  That is where we fall into 4 different directions where people think their direction is the right choice for themselves and several others and why we can't, or won't be able to ever agree on one unifying OS that satisfies all remaining Amiga users and programmers.