what the hell is an amiga one?

[Hans_]

Oh boy, this thread is so overloaded with spin, hearsay, and spit and venom, that it's pretty hard to pull the facts from fiction.

Here's my understanding of what the A1 is:
Designed to run Amiga OS4, the A1 boards were produced by Eyetech to be the next generation Amiga. It uses PowerPC CPUs mounted on a card; both G3 and G4 cards exist (apparently there are a few prototype dual-processor CPU cards in existence, but I've never seen them). They use SDRAM (133 MHz), have a 2x AGP slot and several PCI slots.

They are pretty much the Teron reference design created by MAI Logic. Eyetech claim to have worked on them and made improvements, but any changes probably made their way back to the Teron dev. boards too.

Unfortunately MAI logic's northbridge chipset is buggy, and they are now out of business. This results in a series of flaws for which software workarounds are in place, wherever possible. Added to this, the southbridge is a VIA686b, which is known to be buggy, even on x86 boards (VIA refusing to help out with undocumented features, etc., didn't help).

I have an A1, and for "the worst consumer product of all time" and "total garbage," it actually works quite well. The bugs have a performance hit (e.g., memory access is slower than it should be), but Amiga OS4 works well on it and is fun to use.

They are no longer produced, for obvious reasons: the chipsets are buggy and the specifications are dated. Unfortunately, no replacement system has been forthcoming. Sure there are plenty of PowerPC hardware that could theoretically be used to run OS4, but no licenses have been given, and legal issues are blocking this.

Hans
 

[Hans_]

redrumloa wrote:

spirantho wrote:
I was wondering why some of the other Amiga sites are getting refugees from Amiga.org ... after posts like this one I can see why.

People are fleeing from freedom of speech?

There's freedom of speech, and then there are people spewing out opinions as facts and generally deriding things other people like. Most of the "facts" here come from people who have never used an A1. Having to listen to negative BS is unappealing.

The reality is simply that Eyetech needed a PPC board, and MAI were the only ones making one cheap enough;

Genesi was making the Pegasos II for half the price, and there was at least one other company. The Pegasos II worked as avertised and carried a true warranty.

I would have preferred it if they had gone that route. The Pegasos II is undoubtedly a better board.

Hans

[Hans_]

redrumloa wrote:

I have an A1, and for "the worst consumer product of all time" and "total garbage," it actually works quite well. The bugs have a performance hit (e.g., memory access is slower than it should be), but Amiga OS4 works well on it and is fun to use.

I think you are confusing OS4 with AmigaOne. OS4 may work well and assist the hardware with workarounds, but that doesn't make the A1 any less buggy / unreliable. Even in your explaination you explain the problems.

For all its bugs, my Amigaone has been very reliable. Yes the workarounds are necessary; yes there are some pretty sizable flaws, but it's not randomly crashing, nor is it a pain to use.

Can you name a worse motherboard or other mass produced consumer product in recent history? I am curious.

Try those no-name DVD drives that work half the time. Try those $10-$20 MP3 players that are unreliable and have poorly finished UIs that just don't quite work right. What about those fancy new TVs that crash every half hour or so? What about those cheap toys/gadgets that half work?

How about baby toys containing dangerous amounts of lead? Or t-shirts with dangerous amounts of formaldehyde.

There is a whole range of really bad/ partially usable consumer products out there. Heck, the MacBook Air is supposedly semi-usable because of design flaws. It overheats (even in temperate climates) and locks up regularly. I've heard people say that it's currenty unusable as-is. At least my A1 runs for hours without locking up randomly.

Hans