Alan Redhouse gives us a small update on the AmigaONE

[jumpship]

Taken directly from Yahoo, Alan updates us with the AmigaONE:

Original LINK

From:  "eyetech_group"
Date:  Wed Jul 24, 2002  10:39 pm
Subject:  Re: More Foolishness Was: Yet more delays


--- In amigaone@y..., "jtsiren" wrote:
> --- In amigaone@y..., NeRP wrote:
> > Hello jpkurki
> (...)
> > [cutting all the whining, sniveling, crying, doomsaying, and
> generally
> > negative attitude out]
> (...)
> > Regards
> > NeRP


> This post is not to say anything other than to acknowledge, at
least
> by someone, that Joanna, despite her views as they have been
> presented here, has truly given something back to the community and
> supported a cause she hoped she could belive in.
>
> I respect her for that, and I do believe she deserves to be treated
> better than called "whining, sniveling, crying, doomsaying, and
> generally negative" without any effort to offer constructive
> arguments.

I have to say I agree with Joanne and Janne. If I was in Joanna's
shoes I'd be asking exactly the same questions. The problem is that
this list is public, and whatever I (or the rest of the Amigaone
partners) say it gets copied, misinterpreted and severely criticised
on the other newslists like ann etc.

So what do we do? We make a closed list like the A1G3dev list - which
is highly democratic, productive and busy but is by invitation only -
or we release interim information to this list with all the time
consuming extra explanations needed after cross postings by the
cerebrally-challanged or malicious readers hereabouts.

Nevertheless I think its time for a brief update.

Many dev board purchasers were clearly motivated by the 10% discount
rather than their ability to contribute to the developer process. The
initial boards were therefore shipped to those who could make a real
contribution to developing drivers etc, and porting Linux/UAE
distributions. Their progress has been astounding IMO with no less
than 5 different linux distributions (SuSE, Debian, Mandrake, Yellow
Dog and TurboLinux) being ported within a couple of weeks.

However the Softex open firmware we had originally shipped with the
dev boards (incidently as seen on the Pegasos video) has several
shortcomings (although this has been used to boot the 5 linux
distributions and the OS4 kernel) and we are currently
developing/extending the alternative PPCBoot open firmware for use on
the production AmigaOne boards. This will allow us to build in Amiga-
specific boot etc options, a well as a more comprehensive multi-boot
environment.

We are not shipping the remainder of the dev boards (or any of the
user boards) until this code is complete because of the expense of
shipping update ROMs and chip changing tools. This is anticipated to
be towards the end of August.

This revision to the boot ROM is being undertaken by Hyperion as part
of the work necessary for booting OS4 on the A1.

Meanwhile the Amiga Inc club membership/coupon program results
(coupled with our own market extrapolation processes) means that the
future of the AmigaOne is in no doubt.

Finally several people have asked us why we are not delivering the A1
board to Linux users in advance of the release of OS4. Well there are
two main reasons:

1 - This is a product we are producing for the Amiga market and IMO
it is proper that the Amiga community get their hands on it first.

2 - I still cannot see why there would be a significant market for
Linux on the A1 given that the main focus of Linux is the x86
platform, which - because of sheer sales volumes - will always be an
order of magnitude cheaper than a ppc-based product.

Hope this helps

Alan