Dave Haynie (lead engineer of C= Amiga) opinion on Amiga Successors

[motorollin]

A very convincing and well articulated comment. If only he had said this to Commodore (and they had listened), they might still be here today.

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moto

[motorollin]

Well I agree somewhat with both sides of this argument. But I do not believe x86 is the way forward for Amiga as the hardware is too diverse. And in my personal experience, diversity of hardware with a common OS is a Bad Thing.

One reason why Amiga's (and to some extent Apple's) platforms are so stable is because the OS and the hardware are/were developed by the same people. It makes sense: if you know the hardware inside out, then you can tailor your OS to fit it exactly. As soon as the hardware is out of your control, you have to rely on 3rd party hardware manufacturers to conform to standards in order to keep your OS compatible and stable, and that is one reason why x86 operating systems like Windows and even Linux can be unstable.

I can see Dave's point, that in order to attack the market and really be successful Amiga need to appeal to existing Windows and Linux users, i.e. those who are using an x86 platform. This means porting AmigaOS or a clone to an x86 platform. But I fear that would compromise the speed and stability that Amiga Classic/AmigaOne/MorphOS users enjoy.

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moto

[motorollin]

CHR_ZD wrote:
Dave opinion is Windows is not unstable anymore

I disagree.

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moto

[motorollin]

Legerdemain wrote:

Well I agree somewhat with both sides of this argument. But I do not believe x86 is the way forward for Amiga as the hardware is too diverse. And in my personal experience, diversity of hardware with a common OS is a Bad Thing.

Hardware such as what?
...
I really seldom comment on the AmigaOne / Pegasos discussion, but the hardware diversity problem you stated above, is something I really can't understand. Could you please clarify?

Motherboard chipsets, graphics cards, sound cards, PCI buses, just for a start. I have seen so many (x86) machines come back to me when I had to build them from cheap components requested by the customer, which had obscure chipsets I had never heard of. Windows had to use generic drivers, and my guess is that these drivers make guesses about the hardware in order to maintain compatibility. Needless to say the machines were unstable.

The machines that were built with well known boards with widely used chipsets were rock solid.

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moto

[motorollin]

bloodline wrote:

motorollin wrote:
The machines that were built with well known boards with widely used chipsets were rock solid.

Exactly, so only support specific boards and you will be fine...

Isn't that exactly what they have done, with the A1/Peg? That is what I was getting at when I talked about Amiga/Apple being stable because they restrict the hardware their OS will run on.

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moto

[motorollin]

Legerdemain wrote:

Motherboard chipsets, graphics cards, sound cards, PCI buses, just for a start. I have seen so many (x86) machines come back to me when I had to build them from cheap components requested by the customer, which had obscure chipsets I had never heard of. Windows had to use generic drivers, and my guess is that these drivers make guesses about the hardware in order to maintain compatibility. Needless to say the machines were unstable.

But besides the chipsets directly on the motherboard, all the others, the graphic cards, the sound cards, network cards and the "everything related to PCI" they are the same no matter if you are running PPC or x86.

Ok, point taken. If you start adding expansions to the machine then you could start having problems. Speaking personally, I don't need anything more than my iBook provides. The on board video, sound and network capabilities suit my needs perfectly so I don't see why I would need to add any 3rd party addons. Consequently, my iBook is rock solid. I suppose other people would want to expand though.

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moto