A-EON Technology secures graphic card support for AmigaOS 4

[jorkany]

@lurch

The driver development took many hundreds of man hours.  Programmers need to be paid and the cost needs to be accounted for.

So what is Hyperion doing?


@Dammy,

Isn't it their responsibility to provide driver support for all supported systems since they are the OS partner that making money on OS4 sales?

Exactly. Hyperion has told OS4 users for years that the reason OS4 can only be allowed to run on proprietary PPC hardware is because buyers have too much freedom in the x86 market - Hyperion cannot afford to support every configuration out there like Windows, OS X, and Linux do because they are too small. So they have to concentrate only a very limited set of known hardware. If this is true then why isn't Hyperion releasing these drivers?

Sounds like OS4 development has stalled. Developers are apparently not willing to spend years of their lives working for free on an OS with no clear direction with a shrinking fanbase. I believe I read elsewhere that A-EON wanted these drivers because the availability of the already antiquated and out of production Radeon cards could no longer be guaranteed, so rather than wait around for support in OS4.2 (which may or may not ever be released) they took matters into their own hands and here is a driver for newer and more available Radeon cards.

Personally, I think A-EON made the right move and it sounds like Hans has been paid for his effort and is happy, so good on them. Non-X1000 owners can either pay for the A-EON drivers, or continue waiting for Hyperion just like they have for years for fully functional USB2, SMP, and 3D drivers.

As a whole though, the situation demands golfclap.

[jorkany]

@gertsy

I think you miss the point here... it is not about getting sth. for free you have not paid for, it is about customers of expensive OS4 hardware had wrong expectations regarding later support (new drivers, full support of the hardware...)

OS4 users are used to goal post moving by now.

[jorkany]

I'm not sure I see the relevance. OK, so Windows has 1000s of companies, and AmigaOS has two, that doesn't shift responsibility. Hyperion are still a very small company who are busily working on the core OS. They don't have the time to do drivers as well, so someone else has to do it - and that someone is Trevor.

It is not Hyperion's responsibility to write drivers, only the API.

And incidentally, many Windows machines are a lot  more expensive than the X1000. The X1000 is cheap compared to a lot of systems.

And if you investigate why a lot of those Windows (or did you mean x86) systems are more expensive there's generally a good reason for it, often related to performance.

Sure the X1000 is a niche system. So are these:
http://www.ruggednotebooks.com/

...the difference is that the ruggedized laptop niche exists because there is a reason for it. The X1000 has no reason to exist, it's simply a folly niche and therefore isn't worth the $3K unless you happen to be delusional. Fortunately this pay-for-drivers debacle seems to snapping a few people out of it.

[jorkany]

Hyperion is still here? Or is it Dickinson & Leaman now?

Hyperion is still here and will be releasing a netbook that runs OS4 any day now. No word yet on whether that netbook includes drivers but none have been explicitly promised, so there.

[jorkany]

Link?

The only quote I have is from Amiwest 2011:



How do you get from "introduced" to "released"?

Link?

#6

Oh did I forget this:

[jorkany]

Looks like this Storm in a teacup is over.

http://www.acube-systems.biz/index.php?page=news

You're that shortsighted or just joking?

I think ACube did the right thing, but the big picture is they should not have had to do it at all. ACube could have told their customers "wait for OS4.2"  That they did NOT do this shows that ACube has no faith in Hyperion getting 4.2 out the door with functional drivers.

Heck, the whole reason A-Eon paid for these drivers is because they didn't want to wait for Hyperion. The fact that these drivers exist is a no-confidence vote against Hyperion.

I think A-Eon had the resources and did what they thought they needed to do. ACube had a choice and made the right one. But these decisions had to be made because Hyperion doesn't appear to be capable of doing these things, at least not in a timely manner. Think about it - what's the last thing you heard from Hyperion? An OS4 compatible netbook announcement made at AmiWest, "coincidentally" when the X1000 preorder was announced. This "storm in a teacup" is looking more and more like just a rain band from a hurricane.