Aos 3 -> aos 4

[HotRod]

Hello!

I'd like to know why people using AOS 3 doesn't jump on the AOS 4 train? What is holding you back exactly? I've been an a4k user myself and wasn't sure when I bought my amigaone but I haven't regret it ever and it really is amiga in every single way but upgraded.

Now I'm sure that some MOS users will go crazy here since I didn't mention MOS but I'm wondering why people are stuck with the classics. Nothing wrong with that except that they are missing out on so many great things.

This is offcourse in my opinion but I feal that taking a step forward wouldn't hurt? Also you can keep your classics while moving forward!

I feal really at home with aos 4, just like using aos 3 but better. I've read that 4.0 classic wasn't good but for my amigaone it runs really well actually and from what I've read it does on the SAM boards too. Why not give it a try, it won't hurt you :-P

[HotRod]

It's AOS4 that's holding me back from using AOS4...

Reason being after having bought OS4.0 to run on my BlizzardPPC 240Mhz it was slower than a dead donkey with arthritis and three of it's legs missing...

Believe me it does hurt... especially your wallet... just remember you need a PPC board and GFX card for OS4.X to be of any use and the vast majority of Amiga users don't own these things...

I haven't used OS 4.0 Classic so I wouldn't know but from what I've read lots of people was dissapointed and that's a shame, really. Hmm... What about giving it another try then? Like I said I'm happy with it on my amigaone and people seems to be enjoying it on their SAMs.

[HotRod]

I am quite happy with my classic systems.  They run all the old software natively.  If I wanted to run them emulated I'd just use UAE rather than AOS 4.  I've got a Mac Mini running MOS, which is nice.  I run AROS through VirtualBox, but in the end it's only the classic systems that feel Amiga to me.

I haven't used MOS so I wouldn't know. AROS on the other hand doesn't feal very Amiga to me at all. To me AOS 4 works just like AOS 3.9 but with lots of improvements and old software runs really fast now compared to my a4k with a CSPPC.

I feal that I'm sounding like some salesman which I'm not but I'd really like for those who's had a bad experience to give it another go. I DO think that AOS 4 should work just as well as AOS 3.9 with the hardware though but if some old hardware doesn't work it shouldn't be the end of the world, it might be impossible to write drivers because of lack of documentation.

Once again, I'm happy with my amigaone and aos 4, it didn't feel too bad going from aos 3.9 to 4.0 even though the first versions had lots of issues. Now it works pretty well though and feals just like my a4k did with PCI expansion, voodoo 4 graphicscard, fastata III and what not but better in every way. Sure SOME software doesn't work natively but you might be supriced by how much does and it's way faster too. It isn't like runing UAE AT ALL. You run old programs in MOS in the same way you do in AOS 4, there's no difference, With AROS there is.

If you're used to AOS and been using it up to 3.9 then 4.x feals like a natural step forward. At least it did to me...

[HotRod]

I will likely never purchase aos4 or an aos4 machine.
 
The cost is ridiculous for 10+ year old hardware specs.
 
AROS is worlds ahead in my opinion...
 
Steven

The hardware is ahead, the OS is behind and far behind too.

[HotRod]

You are forgetting something ,an amiga one is much more powerful than a cyberstorm ppc amiga running classic os 4.x.imagine that your amigaone was only 233 MHz and could only utilize -until recently- only 256 ram .it would hardly be a nice setup let alone running CPU and ram hungry applications.From what I understand the latest 4.1 on classics is much faster in eye candy stuff and GfX appearing than the previous but you have to have the most expensive amiga peripherals to have a machine that is only capable of achieving part of amiga one performance.THat's the reason most people prefer 68k based os and amiga os 3.9 at least amiga os was based on motorola and with some datatypes or warp os or phase 5 solution you.can have something good. I think amiga os 4.1.2 should have appeared back in 1997 things would be better.

I can understand that but on the other hand it might be time to buy something new. Those machines are from -92-94 (and later ones from Escom). My a4k are from -93. The question is if you would like 4 colour icons for the rest of your life and 8 colour wallpapers? These things require more RAM. When I first got a graphicscard for my a4k I had 8MB RAM which was overkill but as soon as I installed the gfxcard and cybergraphis I took allmost all of that away! I didn't understand why back then and I still don't since the graphicscard got its own RAM but hey... that was a price I had to pay if I didn't want to be stuck with AGA for the rest of my life.

I don't know how much you can strip down AOS 4 to make it use as little RAM as possible but it's made to be run in high resolutions with nice icons and wallpapers. You can still drop the theme and make it look like AOS 3.x, remove the wallpaper, replace the icons and don't use a 32-bit mousepointer but isn't the thing about moving forward?

[HotRod]

I will likely never purchase aos4 or an aos4 machine.

The cost is ridiculous for 10+ year old hardware specs.

AROS is worlds ahead in my opinion...

Steven
The hardware is ahead, the OS is behind and far behind too.
 
I don't think so. I've tried out a friends os4 system and ware really dissapointed. I expected it to be more feature rich than AROS but the truth is, it really isn't.
 
I expected it might be faster, but the truth is, AOS4 on a 1ghz system is certainly less snappy than Aros on a 2ghz pc. Aros on a 3ghz system smokes it. No comparison at all.
 
Icaros also comes preconfigured with tons of utilities, games, apps and so on. AOS4 comes with nothing, and your likely to spend a few weeks getting it up to the functionality of a freshly installed icaros system.
 
To each his own. I choose AROS.
 
:laughing:

The fun is to install software yourself, software and games that you as a user enjoy but that might not be fore everyone which is the case with AROS. I didn't find much software for AROS that required a modern PC to begin with. MPlayer is probably faster but hey, DOpus or the calculator? Also it is really ugly to me in every way.

Funny thing about "have to use UAE" which is only the case with AROS, you don't have to in AOS 4 or MOS except for old games/demos and offcourse a few old apps.

I don't have to spend a few weeks to get AOS 4 usable, with AOS 3.x you have to and most likely with AROS. When did you run AOS 4? It comes with much needed software like webbrowsers, a burning app and other little things that you need and then you download whatever you want. It's like with some Linux distros, you get a bunch of games that are no fun throwed in your face, what's the point? Is that what makes you choose an OS, what software they put on the CD? Ehh... ok then...

FYI DOpus 4 isn't even for everyone like you might have noticed just to take one example so why force it on you?

Oh I got a 3.4GHz PC and an 800MHz amigaone and I don't know what issues your friend had or what version of AOS 4 he ran but I would go as far as calling you a liar. Offcourse apps like OWB and MPlayer are faster, they demand more CPU power, as simple as that but the fastest computer in the world doesn't mean that I will be the happiest user in the world if the OS isn't any good, as simple as that.

[HotRod]

Basically this: if I want something that will run on my A3000/040, OS4 isn't it. If I want an Amiga-like operating system that will run on PPC hardware that can be had cheaper than an Amiga PPC accelerator, OS4 isn't that, either. To run it, I'd need either a PPC accelerator (one of the most ridiculously expensive things you can buy for your Amiga,) or an OS4-supported custom PPC board (one of the other most ridiculously expensive things you can buy for your Amiga.)

And even if I already had those, there are a nice variety of OS options that don't involve shelling out a couple hundred bucks to one of the assorted shysters currently exploiting the Amiga name.

One thing that I really wonder about when I read that PPC hardware are so expensive is, what did your Amiga cost when you bought it? Did you get it for free from mom or dad? My a4k wasn't cheap when I bought it, damn expensive actually but it was SO worth it. Then you can imagaging what it has cost to change CPU cards up to the CSPPC which is probably the most expensive hardware that I've ever bought for it. Elbox tower with PCI-slots (the second tower that I bought), FastATA-III, GoldenGate, Voodoo 3, Voodoo 4, SB 128, CD-burner, RAM and so on. Let me tell you that my amigaone are A LOT cheaper compared to that and it runs much better too.

What I don't buy regarding the "it is two expensive" is when the same people upgrades their PC every 6 month, buy an iPhone, flatscreen TV etc etc etc.

If you are a die hard amiga fan but want... I don't know what... too expensive, I don't believe in that as a reason. I can do anything in AOS 4 that I could do in AOS 3, only better so why not? And regarding speed it's faster than any classic machine too anyway.

[HotRod]

That arguement doesn't really work because the Amiga was up to date back then. It was in par with or superior back then. People are saying it's expensive now because we don't want to spend $800-$1000 for a motherboard that is 10 years out of date technology wise.
People spend a lot on classic stuff because of the nostalgia of it.

That is kind of true I guess but it couldn't keep up for more than 5 years at most and even when it was brand new it was a lot more expensive than a PC. So the point is that the situation hasn't changed that much compared to then and a new motherboard, even the slowest one will be NEW and not old and because of it more stable. Also you get a new amiga experience that the old amigas can't give you in the same way.

[HotRod]

So, the "trophy wife" approach, then?

I just feal that people miss out on something really good. I could never get back to the "old wife" now other than for nostalgic reasons like playing an old game or two. But that works really well too with runinuae.

[HotRod]

If you're talking about Sam, they're not. Poor performance and overpriced.

Better performance than any classic machine and the price is what you would expect.

[HotRod]

Except WinUAE.

Umm, let me get this straight: People should expect to pay excessive amounts of money for inferior HW? Is that what "amiga experience" is about?

The "amiga experience" comes from the software you use, don't try to tell me that a mac or pc are any more speciall than the hardware available for aos 4, it's all standard components.

The question was why user hasn't moved on to the newer AOS. Some says price, some says performance and so on. The question is if it's better to use WinUAE or classic hardware? To me it isn't but hey, use whatever you want.

If you think that MOS are doing any better because you can buy second hand hardware to run it on (and G4 macs aren't exactly top modern either) then you better think again.

Let me put it this way. Everbody wants to have kick ass machines that are fast and cheap. The problem is that IT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. Or sure, it might happen one day but... sure... wait untill your at the age 80 to enjoy it.

What's the plan from the MOS developers? To port it over to x86 hardware and meanwhile port it to macs? Otherwise I don't know what you're doing.

One can assume that if PPC hardware fails completely AOS 4 will get ported over to x86, it's allready been mention by, I think it was H-J Frieden. But really, why not enjoy what's available now? It's not like it's useless and you can't do anything on it. Fast hardware are required for Windows 7 and MacOS X, it isn't necessary for AmigaOS 4 to feal good to use. I accidently downclocked my CPU to 533MHz and didn't even notice it! It was still as fast as ever... untill I ran Quake. You can still have lots of fun AND you won't get ruined.

However, to be honest, I won't settle with anything less than the X1000 for my next amiga but my amigaone has served me well and been lots of fun during these years. Back then watching HD movies wasn't an option or very common and as usual in amiga-land you can do it in other ways (playstation 3, blue-ray player, pc, mac, cellphone etc) so it doesn't even matter much, that's how it's been since forever. I would say ever since commodore went out of business. The PPC card helped but not all that much, it wasn't a new amiga.

If you *really* wants to hack away at chipset machines that's fine, I can understand that the interest in AOS 4 isn't enough, it is about the hardware apparently but if you enjoy using AmigaOS (I guess that's what people do that use amigas, or have I missed something?) then I don't quite understand why they don't try something new and better. The improvements are so worth it. It's kind of nice to be able to use a SATA harddisk for example... with DMA... not like FastATA. They are cheap but people still buy SCSI harddisks. No issue about spending money there. You get faster RAM that are also cheaper. 2GB, good luck with that on a classic Amiga.

The harddisk controller alone are worth it if your stuck with the internal IDE controller, I couldn't stand it even with AOS 3.9 on my a4k. And even if FastATA is nice for what it's it's crap compared to a modern controller.

Macs gives you that but for how long?

No sorry, I still don't get it. I can tell you that I enjoy using AOS 4.1 more than my PC and even more so with every update that are released and I enjoy it more than I've ever enjoyed AOS 3.x. It is the same but better.

Anyway, I've gotten answers to my question and that's all that I asked for so I'm pretty much done with my thread, I just don't agree with all the answers while some are valid.

[HotRod]

What? That's absolutely the case. You can quite cheaply acquire Mac hardware that competes with basically any PPC Amigoid board except maybe the X1000, and stomps all of them into oblivion where price/performance is concerned. It's not even like there's a shortage - there's still tons of the things popping up on eBay and second-hand retail sites. G4/G5 Macs might not be all that great compared to new PC hardware, but if you want PPC hardware, you can hardly do any better (at least now that the PS3's OtherOS option is gone.)

Oh please... I got 256 MB VRAM on my ancient Radeon 9250 and the best macmini got 64 MB VRAM. The old macs are not all bad but they are just that, old. I as a user want to be able to have an option to buy something new if I'd like to. My powermac is very nice and all but... come on... this is a sad future I would say. "So what do you run AmigaOS on?", "Well I got this old mac that I bought from ebay", "But you can buy it new like if I'd like to get one?", "no, but check ebay, you can get cheap used macs there"... does it sound good to you?

This is true, but it hardly helps your point - OS4 is just as tied to the PPC architecture as MOS, but is confined to an even narrower range of hardware. If you really think PPC is a dead end, why the hell would you pay that kind of money for a machine you think is going to be useless in the near future?

The thing is that my amigaone hasn't been useless and still isn't. I can't help what you're thinking but maybe your thinking is the whole issue? Regarding tied to, the one of the Friedens wrote that it would take them about two weeks to do the inital port to x86 hardware and I don't remember how many months for it to be usable. Now they don't make false statements, at least none that I've read during all those years so I believe it's true. I paid that kind of money because my a4k was coming to an end and I wanted to continue using AOS. Guess what, I haven't regreted that for a second. Maybe if you had something to run it on you would know?

Case in point. Yes, PPC Macs are going to be dead and gone eventually - but so are the OS4 specialty boards.

True, I haven't said anything else. You and I will be dead and gone eventually too so I don't really know what your point is. I've made my point above, read it.

[HotRod]

I have used AOS4.x a little bit on the "classics" and could tell you that (forget about price and all those issues) the good news is that they did a remarkable job of making an 3.9 + Visual Prefs, Birdie2000 and MUI type of system work a whole lot easier, stable and quick, even on these old PPC machines.

The bad news is they did a remarkable job of making an 3.9 + Visual Prefs, Birdie2000 and MUI type of system work a whole lot easier, stable and quick, even on these old PPC machines.

Meaning, they would not break ranks and move on to offer something very new and different. And that is partly all our fault, sending the wrong messages that it should be a very 68K AOS but just faster and with more Aminet junk added on.

So, to me, they did a good job giving you what you asked for, as a 'community' voice / consensus.

I will never really go for the rabble of "NG Amiga" banter. They are lost. Amiga 68K however is finally picking up steam like the C64 scene and I'm reading about Assembly language! That crap is hard...

One thing here is that you can get rid of the hacks and they will be implemented to the system in a clean way. Also you can now drag windows outside the screen, change the side from any direction and other little things that are nice to have. Screendraging are back and so on, and that is just 4.0. I know that there's a hack for draging windows outside the screenborders for 3.x but AFAICR I never had much luck getting it to work. There are tons of other improvements than those that you listed.

[HotRod]

Better performance than a 50Mhz machine... wow! amazing! wonderful! let's bring more popcorn! We would seriously have a problem if performance/price ratio wasn't much better than 7 years ago... what? did I hear you say Pegasos2-G4/1Ghz for 500€? nahhh I'm sure our wonderful 2011 brand new boing ball hardware is way faster and cheaper than that 7 year old hardware released in small batches :-P

I was offcourse (but hey, I was expecting too much from you) talking about a CSPPC with AOS 4 on it. If that's what you're stuck it but it feels fast enough any of the SAMs, A1s or X1000 will be faster.

I can't believe that I have to explain this to you.

[HotRod]

Maybe I would, but as an accelerator for my 3000 will set me back a half-grand easy, and a dedicated board will be quite a bit more than that, I'm not that motivated to find out. Maybe at some point when I've nabbed a cheap PPC Mac I'll give MorphOS a try, instead.

Then I just have to ask, if you're not interested why do you bother writing so many replys to anything I say? This whole statement is redicioulus. You can't get a "dedicated" board but you can get a mac and... okeeeey... good point