potential PPC Amiga REAL CHEAP

[Waccoon]

Who would have thought that people might want there game console to also surf the web and check email and stream video? Darn, why didn't I think of that...oh wait! I did! I did!

Sega did, too.  No matter how many times console manufacturers try to make mutifunction devices, only the games sell the systems.

Something has to change. It seems that it's the A1 that has to change.

I agree, which is why I've hated the AmigaOne since DayOne.  Using proporitary hardwarewhich is several years old and built for running games is hardly the answer.

Eyetech can design the "GBA Player"-like addon that will give you IDE ports and the like... One without a 'DMA bug'.

How much will that cost to design, test, certify, and manufacture?  Even a simple PCB for an A1200 may cost several hundred to materialize.  Are you considering this when you spew prices?

There's a reason why the console is so cheap.  After so many years of plastering boards together with spit and chewing gum, I'm not sure Amigans really want to hack together lots of extra hardware.

All I can say is if you don't support this topic then why bother posting in it?

Because we're all tired of your fanboy B.S. and the fact you keep bumping your own thread just to keep yourself in our faces.  This thread isn't long because lots of people are interested -- it's because it's friggin' old.

Hyperion doesn't want cheap hardware, or else the buggy MIA board would never have been chosen in the first place, and they would have used off-the-shelf hardware which is far better suited for expansion.  Nintendo would never agree to sell themselves cheap to support a dead computer with no real plan for the future.  Amiga doesn't care about OS4.  Developers would have to pay for their tools if Nintendo was officially involved.  Code written for Gecko would not run on other PPC devices without porting or re-compilation.

You're also basing your prices on hardware that's either bought used on E-Bay, or several years old.  That's not a good way to build a profitable market.  Nintendo would see that right away if Amiga proposed the idea.

OS4 on GameCube will not happen.  Let it go.

I am on my way to having a GC-Linux setup.

I thought you said you had no interest in Linux.  Shouldn't you give Linux a test-drive on your own computer before gearing up to run a raw kernel with limited functionality on your 'Cube?

How can you release a product where using the ethernet port and IDE at the same time can randomly cause data corruption? It's Russian Roulette. And it looks like it's the hardware that needs changing. Change it.

Well, a second option is to not use IDE devices at all.  That would make the AmigaOne work very much like a GameCube.  :-)

[Waccoon]

If I can buy a full PC motherboard for $50, and a GBA Player for $50, I don't see why this couldn't be reasonable in that price range either.

Hahaha!  Ask a PCB design company to give you a quote.  :-)

LOL, the main anti-topic troll strikes again!

If you had called this thread "OS4 on GameCube", it wouldn't have survived this long.  If you were more open-minded to other platforms besides just Nintendo, I wouldn't call you a fanboy, either.

I think what they want is a working/reliable target platform with an eager user base.

Given all the bugs and technical issues in the MIA design, an x86 PC would have been far more reliable.  People are so focused on PPC that they fail to realize how much the rest of the system matters.

I gave new prices originally.

You mean like this?

"used gamecube at Electronics Boutique $60"

Instead of trying to convince me to let it go, why don't you just go away?

That's difficult when you keep bumping your own thread so much just to tell us the latest round of unconfirmed Nintendo rumors and how much each accessory cost you on E-Bay.

Or you could have just bought a gamecube and saved $800.

Correction: $800 minus the cost of the GameCube, the accessories, the cost of the OS, Nintendo licenses, profit margin, tech support, the IDE controller add-on that doesn't exist...

[Waccoon]

Sales=growth.

Profit = growth.

[Waccoon]

if that were the case, the GBA player would cost as much as a GBA.

No screen, no batteries... there's half your cost right there.

CPUs and the like are "Jelly Bean" parts.  They're worthless compared to the cost that goes into the form factor.  Check the latest prices on those Sega Genesis Direct-to-TV units.  Wal-Mart recently had a sale on the 1st gen Atari Flashback for $7.50.

The GBA player application draws a selectable border around the GBA display and allows you to swap carts without shutting off the GC and rebooting.

I'd be willing to think the GC draws the border while the Player provides the underlay video.  Maybe it's all done in the Player, but I doubt it.

Seeing how the borders are not part of the "emulation", I don't see what you're getting so excited about.

Cart hot-swaps are hardly magic, especially when you don't have to rely on batteries.  I have a Gamecube, but not a Player, so I don't know the procedure for hot swapping the carts.

If the parrallel port can do 30 frames per second of video as well as audio while receiving controller input, then hard drive access is trivial through that port.

*cough* low resolution *cough*

What are the specs of that parallel port, again?  As usual, almost anything is possible, but not always practical.

How do you explain getting back to the cartridge swap screen?

The same way the PS2 returns you to the browser when you eject a game disc, or the Amiga brings you to Guru when the CPU stops responding.  This is hardly extrodinary.  It's all in the firmware.

PCs could do the same if it wasn't for the bloddy real-mode BIOSes.  If there weren't still millions of people running Win98 and flakey old versions of Linux, we could all just flash our computers with new BIOSes and rid ourselves of 20+ years of garbage.

If anybody knows how to emulate Nintendo hardware - it's Ninetendo.

The PC emulators I use are pretty damn good.  :-)

I should hope the official Nintendo emulators are good!  Remember when Nintendo was charging $20 for NES re-releases?  That's a lot of cash for such old games.

Next you'll be saying that "Revolution" is going to have GC, N64, SNES and NES hardware in it because it will emulate all those machines.

GC hardware... very likely.  The techniques game programmers use to write software is quite different from PC developers.  True forwards compatibilty requires a bit more going on in the hardware than what happens in Windows-Land.

Anything older is trivial to emulate in software.  However, the emulators will not be built into the machine, and will come with the games when you buy them.  They will just be programs.  The emulation quality is what makes it shine.  If Nintendo's SNES emulator for Revolution is anything like Atari's official 2600 emulator for the PS2, I'll puke.

What does that tell you? It's not 100% GBA hardware.

From that article:

"Sashmoto: (laughs) It's just a Game Boy Advance system that you can play on your television. That's pretty much it. So, no secrets."

Of course, the GBA needs a BIOS.  Patches for the BIOS can be read from the Gamecube disc, so that's what can be used to "improve" the player if such ROM patches aren't already available on the GBA carts.

[Waccoon]

Can you solder?

I've built a number of circuit boards over the years and modified my mice and joysticks.  I also make my own headphone amps for all my computers, since I can't stand speakers.  I've never tried changing traces on a surface-mount PCB, though.

Lou:  Limitations? 24MB of main ram is 12x more than any Amiga shipped with.

Still living in the early 90's, eh?

I'm still confused as to what you want your AmigaCube to be.  An update for existing Amigas or a next-gen platform?  Given that you keep comparing it to the AmigaOne, I assume the latter, and Gamecube is pretty pathetic in that respect.  Revolution may not be so bad, but with enough mods to make it usable as a PC, it'll probably cost as much as a cheap PC, too.  And, there's still the question of binary compatibility and all that stuff.

Lou:  Yeah, and they thought Linux would quickly dominate the x86 platform

Only people who don't understand why Windows remains so popular would think this.  Given that almost every alternative desktop OS vendor has bit the dust, that includes a lot of people.

Linux has no central design management.  Standards only apply to protocols, not interfaces.  It'll never dominate the market until someone does to Linux what Apple did to UNIX.

Of course, Linux fans are perfectly happy with its underdog status as it is.  I see Linux permanently riding on the coat tails of Windows, but never getting ahead.  Linux and Windows have entirely different design principles, and ordinary people don't care about technical supiriority.

Nobody wants a revolutionary OS.  Developers want good tools and end users want products.  This is why Java has managed to survive even though its performance and reliability is questionable.  It has a huge number of tools and it's easy to write software for it.

Lou:  Apple shot itself in the foot by choosing to be overpriced.

Really?  Since Jobs came back to Apple, it looks like they're doing pretty damn well.  Apple fans have always sucked up the high prices without too much huff, and that includes their embedded devices, too, like iPod.  $300 is pretty expensive for a music player, but people bought it anyway.

Lou:  So having a disc they can buy for $50 and can just pop in ther 'game' machine and have it work right away is the only way to make this long-dead market grow.

Fully-integrated form factors, only.  An OS is a completely different beast.  I'm sure PC vendors would love to make cheap boxes like Gamecube.  There must be a reason why they don't.  You can hardly blame the generic PC architecture for this failing, given what Apple did with the Mac mini.

Lou:  hence applying some of those Super Sai video modes that the PC emulators have could have always bumped up the image quality to 640x480

You know, it makes me wonder why Nintendo doesn't do this.  It seems pretty cheap to just stream a low-res video feed and mono audio through the Gamecube when you could use all that CPU power to enhance the video or add some audio enhancement.  The option they took (and Sony took with their PSX backwards compatibility) seems like a cheap cop-out.

But, hey, so long as people buy it...

Lou:  I've found an alternate 5v power source for my qoob chip.

Nintendo emulation... Game Boy Advance... alternate power sources...

Would you please get back on topic?  This thread is supposed to be about alternate PPC machines.

adolscent:  But, note that an update disc has never been released so it's really moot.

Good point.  Capability is nothing if its not exploited.

Lou:  Enough memory for you yet?

Call it what it is: storage, not memory.

[Waccoon]

Give it a rest it's a stupid point just as your comment about GBA Player exclusive content - like that would make sense.

Your point is that the Gamecube is doing emulation rather than the Player containing GBA hardware.  This is not the case, so stop calling other people stupid.

It would boot in seconds. And it's looking better all the time.

AmigaOS is not a very robust OS.  It boots in seconds because it doesn't do all the stuff a modern OS should.

Oh, look, MS-DOS boots in seconds, too.

[Waccoon]

Win98 runs fast on an 800MHz cpu with 256MB of ram, Win2000 and XP don't. Why? Don't answer.

I think I will.

I replaced Win98 with Win2K on my brother-in-law's laptop, and it runs much, much faster than Win98 ever did.  It's a 1Gz system with 256MB of RAM.

It just depends how you set it up.

OS's are getting too complicated and are doing things to protect average users from themselves.

It's unfair to say OSes in general are getting to complicated.  It really depends on the customer and how much capability you want to stuff into the system.

When you're talking about ordinary people, hiding as much of the underlying OS as possible is supposed to be a "good thing."  Most developers just take the idea overboard and try to tweak a design until it's perfect, which, of course, never happens.  Windows has always been this way, and desktop managers for Linux are becoming like this.  Raw Linux is very fast and efficient.  A typical Linux distro these days comes on several CDs, requires a Gig of hard drive space, and takes two minutes to boot up.  I know -- I've tried 8 distros and don't like any of them.

When talking about power users, they tend to be fiercely traditional and shun high-level interfaces.  They don't tweak or redesign anything.  You end up with a very quick, simple OS that requires users to spoon-feed everything to the system manually.  AmigaOS is very much like this if you think about it, though not anywhere near as bad as UNIX.

Of course, the majority of the complexity is due to eye candy.  There's so much junk running in the background that people just don't need.  If you strip the inactive junk out of an XP system, it really is a lot less complicated than Win95 is.  Windows is and always will be a resource hog, but I can get it running comfortably in 80 Megs of memory.  I could probably get it running in less than that, but it's been a while since I've used a machine with less than 128Meg of memory.  :-)

OS3.X is a good enough OS for a single user with some updates.

Good enough?  To do what?

Given how few tools are available, and the fact that OS3 doesn't have proper resource tracking or memory protection, it's fair to say OS3 is more of an application launcher rather than an OS... at least by modern standards.  The apps do everything and the OS does hardly anything, much like old Macs.  If that's your expectation of a modern OS, well, you can really use anything.

A GC running AROS and a web browser and email client and games.

Well, the reason why your setup is so simple is because of your expectations.  E-mail is just text transfer.  Games don't need an OS -- they just hit the hardware.  The browser is complicated because of heavy multitasking, and I'd imagine AROS is going to give you some trouble in that regard.  Is there even a CSS web browser available for AROS?

You can do this stuff with a Windows machine, too, if you know how to select your parts.  I'd expect it to be just as cheap, if not cheaper, than your system.  How much did you pay for this qoob thing, again?  Didn't you have some trouble soldering it?  Why go through all the trouble of hacking when there's ready-built solutions available?  Amigans don't seem to get this at all.

The device is truly portable and there aren't any hard drives that would get banged around and ruined. Get where I'm going?

Oh, so you don't want a potential PPC Amiga REAL CHEAP.  You want a homebrew PDA.  I think the computer industry already released a slew of those devices a decade ago.  What's the point of insisting on an Amiga if you're going to spend all your time staring at an application that doesn't really care what OS is underneath?  I find it difficult to believe that AmigaOS (or AROS) is just "better" at e-mail and web browsing than any other small OS that fits nicely on a flash card.

[Waccoon]

Lou:  My CD32 with 4megs in my SX-1 ran IBrowse. If Firefox is a bigger pig than Internet Explorer (<21MB) then those coders (FireFox) need to write better code. How big is Opera?

The v8.5 archive is 3.6 MB in size.  Granted, that's a compressed archive.  Installation is about 13MB, and memory usage is 16MB when I look at my master links page, which is written in strict HTML 4.0 with no graphics, CSS, etc.

Lou:  So, it can be used like RAM: or RAD:
It's still useable.

For config information, I suppose.  But, to be usable, you still have to jump through hoops to get it to the CPU, somehow.

Funny, GameCube memory architecture is somewhat opposite of the Amiga.

Lou:  Well, not every web page contains Flash, Javascript, VBscript, streaming media, etc.

Point a modern web browser to a plain HTML page and see how much memory it uses.

HTML is just a markup language to describe content.  You can get a 100k parsing engine to display HTML as graphics.  That doesn't mean anyone wants to use it.

I thought people were all complaining about the limitations of iBrowse and the like, and wanted CSS support.  Think about why CSS was created, too.

Lou:  You guys are trying to acheive a monumental step forward.

That's kind of the point to making a "new" system.

You did originally compare GameCube to the AmigaOne, not to old PPC-accelerated Amiga hardware, like an expanded A4000.

Lou:  Amiga OS is a fast single-user OS. I don't need all the features of os 'xxx'.

Take a look at the kernel of a modern OS.  Multi-user support is piddling.  Even embedded OSes like QNX support it.  The lack of core features usually relates to a lack of foresight and development time, rather than trying to skim on system resources.

Note that security largely depends on groups.  Obscurity is hardly a justification for the lack of security, as filesystem security is important for more things than keeping out viruses, you know.

Of course, that's reaching a bit, given that most "real" OSes lock software out of the system, but give full access to what counts:  "Home".  Even UNIX security seems really flimsy to me.

MskoDestny:  Or you could just get an old laptop and stick a flash drive in place of the hard drive.

Yeah, but it won't be PPC, which is all that matters, of course.  We need to use a sub-$100 console which, when new, originally sold for, what, $250 wihtout any software?

Lou:  Here's OS 4 with 2 docks open only using up 8MB out of a 256MB system:

It's hard to gague memory usage from screenshots wihout a real memory tracker application open.

I wonder how much memory they are using for disk caches and the like.  Maybe caches don't show up at all as "used" memory, since technically caches are "free" memory that's released to applications when they need it.

Hardly worth arguing about in the PC world, but for embedded-class hardware, every killobyte counts.

Lou:  Amiga-On-Nintendo won't replace my PC but when I can show it around and then say that new more powerful dedicated hardware that can run this OS is around the corner, then some people may go "hmmm...", providing the price is right and the apps are there, ofcourse.

Ah, reality is starting to sink in, now.

Except for the fact that developing for GameCube without Nintendo's help is next to impossible.  Unlike the GCLinux team, Amiga and Hyperion are commercial companies.  I don't think Nintendo would like it if OS4 was released... and there's still issues with compatibility.

And, yes, GCLinux is still struggling to get even basic features implemented.  If Amiga counts on people running OS4 on used/bargain bin hardware, instead of new systems, they'll end up having to reverse-engineer everything just like the GCLinux team.

You did mention in another thread that you're not into making Nintendo a profit.  I don't think they'll like that idea very much.  :-)

Lou:  But without affordable hardware to run the OS on, how will there ever be a demand of the OS?

Ask the hundreds of millions of people who own PCs.

Ask the millions of people who spent $300+ on a glossy-looking, over-hyped MP3 player.

Ask the millions who will spend $50-$100 for a new cell phone because the one that came with their calling plan is too cheap.

Ask the "1000+ a day" that are buying "cheap" Mac minis for $500 or more.

Ask the people that are actually buying those Godawful plasma TVs for $1,000+ when they look like crap from a standard analog signal.

Seems like you think all people have money except Amigans.  Oh, and even hobbyists need more options than a game machine that must be soldered together or have special custom hardware built for a proprietery serial port (regardless of performance).

I thought the whole point of making a new Amiga is that we don't have to do this frankenstein crap, anymore.  It's unfortunate that Amiga has chosen the Teron as the base system, but you need to evaluate more options.  There are plenty of cool-running, portable, affordable PCs.  If you can't think of any, ask Google.

Better yet, stop wasting time pining over GameCube, and ask Amiga/Hyperion why they can't actually deliver CPU-independent code running on a real, modern embedded OS.

Obviously, they don't care.  That's all that really matters in the end, and five years from now, when every handheld computer has 128+ MB of memory, the idea of running OS4 on proprietary game machines run by companies that don't give a damn about real operating systems and won't help OS developers with real hardware documentation, will still look absurd.

Lou:  Oh and outside of running OS4, a Gamecube is much more useful than an A1, afterall a Gamecube is still a Gamecube. Modded, it's still a fully functional Gamecube.

Interesting.  Many people made a point that if Amiga went x86 and was dual-bootable with Windows, nobody would use it.

The cost of the SD card is a bit of a wash as some people may already have them in a camera...or eventually will. So it also has some value outside of this project.

You know, I have an old, spare PC.  Lots of people do.  We could have an Amiga for nothing more than a software fee!  Wow!  Granted, some things may have to run in safe mode or flat mode due to a lack of specific chipset support, but since we're considering GameCube, obviously overall performance and functionality isn't an issue.

Lou, you don't have to lower the costs even more by touting re-usability of parts.  There is a prime selling point for all devices, and people have a gray area of negotiation.  There are many new cars for $10,000, but nobody buys them.  GameCube is simply below the cheap threshold.  People want more.

It's just about getting Amiga out of the early 90's.

And into the late 20th century.  :-)

Lou: How many copies of OS 4 could they sell now?

MskoDestny:Not enough to make the porting effort worthwhile.

If the port is difficult (lack of documentation, dev tools, and Nintendo's support), then it is more expensive, too.  A lot of wasted effort when the next big thing comes along.  Revolution may be similar to GameCube, but it is not the same, and at some point, people will want laptops and more traditional computers.

Given how long it's taking OS4 just to be released, I'm sure everyone can agree that porting OSes, especially to platforms that are not compatible with PC standards, is not an easy or cheap task.  Also, GameCube is almost end-of-lifed, just like the AmigaOne.

MskoDestny:  There are a bunch of lightweight graphical operating systems with more modern software than OS4 does. Some of them are even free.

Yup.  OS4 is being made by Hyperion because Amiga Inc. didn't want to do it.  Doesn't that say something, Lou?

Maybe you should stop blaming AmigaOne for being expensive and blame the people in charge.  Everyone knows AmigaOne is overpriced, and it's that way because somebody in the head office (investors, or whatever), wanted it that way.

[Waccoon]

[Waccoon]

That's why you are what I've always said you are. You made the claim, YOU need to back it up.

I made no claim about in-order or out-of-order execution.  I don't see you posting any proof to back up your claim.

It's a well known fact that more cache improves performance.

To a point.  After that point, it's a waste of money (or die space, or whatever).

68k emulation is no big deal. There are open source 68k emulators and there is currently a homebrew GC developer writing one.

So, emulators are available.  What I said is that you still need memory to run them.

My point is there marketing. What's your point?

That it's marketting BS to say the PSP runs at 300Mhz because it clocks down when the CPU is at idle.  It's not BS.

They make it sound like a PSP is as powerful as a PS2

In what way?  I certainly didn't bring this up, nor do I follow PSP advertisements.

The exact number is irrelevant. The fact that it's not 100% is the point.

How Sony holds up to the competition is the point.

It's kind of funny to hear an Amiga fan complaining about compatibility, isn't it?

Actually the 2 Zelda N64 games released on the GC as a ore-order bonus for pre-ordering Zelda:The Wind Waker were emualtor based.

Emulator-based is not always backwards-compatible, because you're actually getting re-licensed games on a native medium.

Lots of companies re-release their old games.  I didn't have to repurchase my PSX titles or sign up to some subscription service when I got a PS2.

the Atari 5200 had a plug-in module for 2600 backwards compatibility.

I suppose this is equivalent to the Game Boy Player for the GameCube, as the hardware implementation is the same.  I had an Atari plug-in module for my Coleco Vision.  Does that count as backwards compatibility, or just emulation?

3" discs rare? Yeah, Ok. 3" CDs and DVDs have been around a long time. Look at the center 3" of you PC's DVD player, they all support them. Ritek it the preferred brand for GC pirates.

I think you overlooked something important in my post.  :-)

Elder Scrolls is supposedly on 4 DVDs right now

That's because the developers suck.  If I can get a 625x500 JPEG photo down to 80K without any visible artifacts, any game developer should be able to make a game that will fit on one count of whatever medium a console uses.

All this horsepower is cool, but it makes developers lazy.  I wish developers would look into things like fractal-generated textures.  It would help to make the games look more unique every time you play them, too.

I presume cut-scenes are largely to blame.  Game developers should stop making "interactive movies" and keep making games.

As for the catride issue...so what, it happened, it's been over with for 7 years.

Well, the cartridges are partly to blame for the company losing their massive market share.  They haven't gotten that market back, so it's arguable as to whether the issue is "over."

Because Nintendo is sticking with 480p max, there games will fit on 1 DVD like current gen Xbox games.

The total size of a game is determined by its screen resolution?  Low resolution is a virtue?

Yes, I see your point.  But, I thought the whole reason for using 3D graphics and vectors and nurbs and all this new-age crap was to make everything resolution independent.  Only cut-scenes and other movie clips really justify your argument about low resolution.

I guess you forgot that I play my GC on my 50" DLP HDTV using component cables from my GC's digital video output. It can be modified to display VGA or a separate cable can be purchased. This can be done on the GC because the DAC in built into the cable, not the system.

It's the extra one I bought to put the modchip in that doesn't support the DV out.

My bad.  I have a Rev C GameCube, so I can't get a cable to do that.  I'm not into used hardware, though, so I guess I'll stick with S-Video.

I do find it annoying that newer versions of hardware, from any manufacturer, might lack features compared to the original design.  Also, the VGA cable is pricey.

I'm arguing the application of it. I'm saying it's marketing spin by Sony. You want a PS3, buy it. You don't want a Revolution, don't buy it. I don't care.

Is this a rebuttal or not?

5FPS...Oh that's a good one. I really think you have nothing better to do than write rubbish in this thread.

What's rubbish about it?  You blame the choppiness of XBox 360 titles on the inability of developers to use the full capabilites of the tripple-core CPU.  This is what's rubbish.

Personally, I think the ease of development with XBox 360 just makes the programmers lazy.  As a person who often ends up refactoring other peoples' code, I've seen plenty of this.  The more forgiving the language, the sloppier people are at using it, and it drives me nuts.

Don't expect Revolution lauch titles to be as good as the ones developed years later.  Nintendo programmers are not immune to the problems faced by XBox 360 and PS3 programmers.  Hell, it's pretty much the same hardware, really.  It's the dev tools that count.

adolscent:  Not true anymore. The micro only supports GBA games.  (And, if you re-read what Wacoon said, you'll see he said the portables were backward compatible)

I should've pointed out that by "console", I meant to exclude hand-held systems.  Technically, a hand-held system is a console.

Even calling a machine "portable" isn't terribly accurate.  Or dare I say it, "REAL CHEAP."

Lou (@ me):  I'm still waiting for him to show me a cell phone with 256MB of ram.

I didn't make that claim.  Ask adolscent.

[Waccoon]

Lou:  I think I will just ponder how much effort was wasted trolling instead of petitioning or coding.

Good idea.  Go ahead and start, and show us the results.  Proof of Concept is the only thing that will get your idea in motion, not complaining about how narrow-minded the rest of us are.

Lou:  Here's the bottomline. You, Waccoon and adolescent all own GC's. Yet you are the biggest "critics" (being nice) here.

You're surprised?  GameCube was purpose-built for a limited set of tasks.  I have three games for my GameCube, not a delusion that it may one day run an OS.

I don't expect AOS on GC/Rev/360/PS3/XBOX/DC to ever replace my PC, but it sure would be cool and fun to try out. That alone could help the platform grow if done properly.

The only way to grow is to evolve.  AmigaOne isn't going to cut it.  Neither will GameCube.

Coldfish:  I for one would be quite dissapointed if they presented us with boring, more-of-the-same-2D-windows-like interfaces.

What do you have in mind?

Lou:  That's why it's going to be all about the Revolution controller. You'll be able to drag "icons" in 3d space...

How would you resolve the problems with representing 3D motion on a 2D surface (the screen)?  The "dentist" promotional video released by Nintendo, in particular, leaves me shaking my head.

This is all sounds very cool, but serious interface designers shy away from 3D interfaces altogether unless true 3D feedback is possible.  Zooming interfaces work much better.  Note that pencil and paper is still the most frequently used medium in the world.

For games, Nintendo will make it work, even if their software may end up focused too strongly on the "experience" rather than the "game."  As far as a serious GUI tool is concerned, the remote has some serious limitations, especially for people with disabilities.

I know it's been a while...I was comparing it to the A1 on a performance/price basis. It's everybody else that shot it down for not being as good as a Mac or whatever other more useful platform that isn't getting a port either.

There's also the economics of the port, how it would sell, how many people would buy stuff for a game machine they would have to hack, whether people would be comfortable buying used hardware, if a GameCube is really as good as a used Mac, if people would tolerate the lack of display options (sorry, but my GC looks like crap running off S-Video compared to my PS2.  Nintendo seriously cheaped out, here).

Bottom line:  you get what you pay for.

Given how many people will easily plop down $150+ for a cell phone, I don't think they're going to argue about $50+ here or there.  It's been over a decade since Commodore went under.  If Amiga had gone PC, we'd already have at least tens of thousands of desktop users (and developers) out there, and could then port to game machines, cell phones, PPC-Anywhere, or whatever.

My idea came from every other Amiga user and their mother whining about not having an affordable PPC OS4 solution.

AmigaOne is not affordable because the establised business model doesn't allow it to be.  The actual hardware has little to do with it.  It's greed, plain and simple.

It was the strong emphasis on PPC technology that got us into the AmigaOne mess in the first place.  So much for VP code.

My first question would be how much longer before their contract with Hyperion and Amiga, Inc. expires so they can rebrand the OS and dump the curse that is backward compatibility and actually get the OS in users' hands.

I think Hyperion is more interested in licensing parts of the OS to vendors than in selling the OS itself to end users.  They did have to take breaks from working on OS4 to make some money.

Technologically, OS4 is still way behind the curve.  If backwards compatibility isn't an issue, they should've just done what Apple did and make a new desktop on an existing, proven OS that works on multiple CPUs because, well, the OS would actually be designed properly.

I find it pretty stupid, really.  Old Amiga apps are so old, even modest hardware will give a big boost in performance.  Why they didn't just sandbox everything and make a fresh, modern system is beyond me.  I'm sure that at this point, they really wish they had done that.

Bloodline:  Ahhh yes the holy grail of PC design... lets build a better gui... so easy.

Well, it's the only thing the end-user really sees.  Too bad a slick GUI doesn't show users how much stuff there is underneath and how much it costs to make it all work, and work well.

That's why I don't like all this embedded crap that's going on.  It doesn't look like an Amiga because these kinds of devices basicly make the OS transparrent in the first place, and the GUI is effectively crippled by default.  I don't want another seriously late Palm clone.  I want a brand new desktop system that reminds me of an Amiga, and doesn't suck.  I don't know why people keep making yet more Windows clones out of Linux/GNU systems.  The only times we get something really different, it gets killed by poor hardware choices.  Isn't there anyone in the software industry with marketting sense besides Microsoft?  Didn't anyone learn anything from Be?

[Waccoon]

Well, having a controller interface that inherently detects 3D spacial movement does lend itself to allowing for 3d manipulation of the location of objects on a screen.

Yeah, but it can be very difficult for people to use that kind of interface without real depth perception.  More than three zones (2D planes) of depth, and it turns into a real mess.  This is hardly the "natural" control that Nintendo is promoting.

Note that many people have trouble managing several open windows at a time in 2D space.  Blaming the 2D environment is easy and popular, but incorrect.  It would be wise to reduce or combine the number of objects before talking about stacking objects in 3D space.  How about being able to "attach" one window to another, or even splice two apps together by joining "seams"?  We really can't go on having a dozen different windows for everything.

Most people don't multitask as well as the OSes they are trying to use.  :-)

The zooming interface paradigm is used very well with Expose in MacOS X.  I really, really wish I could make my Win2000 system do that.  Of course, that's about the only thing I like about OSX.  In terms of usability, even OSX has tons of problems.  It's different, but certainly not better.

future: 3D - we still have icons but not we can move them behind each other then you can move the camera/view angle

A popular concept, but the camera just adds one more control element.  Workspaces work much better.

Refer to Microsoft Bob, and how it tried to simplify usage by assigning each app a "room" and allowed you to navigate through a "house" to find your stuff.  Naturally, it was a disaster, though a lot of people don't seem to understand why.

I'd like very much to save a workspace with all the apps (or licenses for them) onto a memory card.  I could then take that card with me and plug it into any comatible OS.  I could then have my environments, complete with backdrop images and other eye candy, on ANY system, anywhere.

I could have a gaming workspace, a coding workspace, a media center workspace, and not have to worry about faking all this with multiple user accounts which all have to configured seperately.  I could set up each workspace for different input devices, too, so a split keyboard could be configured for gaming for one workspace.  By switching to another workspace, my keyboard could have dedicated buttons for undo/redo/history, which would otherwise go berserk when trying to play a game (remember all the problems we had when accidently pushing the Windows key while playing games?  It often crashed the computer completely!)

Oh yeah, to do all this, I'd also take a Wacom tablet over a Revolution controller any day.  I can't live without my Intuos.  Imagine being able to just write directly on your desk with a radio-controlled "pen", instead of tiring your arms by waving a controller in the air.

I don't have enough faith in speech recognition, yet.  Talking to computers isn't very private, never mind silly.

"FORMAT SPACE C COLON ENTER!  YES!"

Once holography becomes commercial technology, interfaces like in the movie Minority Report will be totally possible. A 3d Workbench could be the same thing but without the holography, a virtual pointer placed on the screen then becomes necessary - but that's what today's mouse pointer is now.

I don't think Workbench will still be around when holographic technology becomes affordable.  ;-)

I'm not sure if a pointer is strictly required if you get rid of the ancient "point, select, open" paradigm used by computer mice for years.  Highlighting is enough.  Think about how people search for things, especially with realtime searching, as is supported in Firefox.

Really, even basic computer concepts like "saving your work" should be obsoleted.  Journaled filesystems have been hacked into modern OSes so apps don't have to be rewritten to support histories.  Doing this properly would require a completely new desktop environment, and OS4 isn't even close to doing this properly, seeing how Hyperion has chosen not to support user accounts, which is mandatory for this kind of work.

Yeah, yeah... maybe OS5 will do it.  Or maybe it'll still be and embedded class OS that will just be licensed to other companies in bite-sized pieces.  I really don't see OS4 moving is the right direction for doing anything new, let alone cool.

[Waccoon]

Lou:  As for the rest, some nice ideas but my scope here has always been cheap hardware + OS 4 for the masses.

How can a platform grow if it can't improve?  To improve, the platform has to be flexible to appeal to a wide audience.  Suggesting GameCube is just another example of desperation to get any hardware at all, because the people in charge of the Amiga don't have a clue what they are doing.

Making software for a proprietary platform is difficult and expensive, and PPC doesn't have very good legacy support as it is.  Nintendo wouldn't let Hyperion use the APIs to make an OS, and even if Hyperion could do it, they would just have to write tons of wrappers to get standard tools to work with Nintendo's tools.  It would be a mess, take more memory than it should, and make it difficult for the OS to provide the services that are expected of an OS.  If your expectation are limited to OS 3.x, you're still living in the 90's.

When writing an OS, you need to think of a lot more things than a CPU and memory.  Any turing-complete machine can run an OS.  The question is how well, how much can be done in hardware vs software, and the cost of development.

I wish your friend luck with getting AROS running on GameCube.  But, AROS is still very raw and brittle as it is.

Lou:  Who knew this thread would get so philisophical?

You rave about the Revolution controller and 3D interfaces.  I rave about workspaces and tablets.  We're both looking to improve the platform through new ideas.  Will GameCube deliver, or should we just ditch the idea altogether now that Revolution is around the corner?  Does that mean we can widen the scope to beyond non-Nintendo hardware, too?

If you don't see anything going beyond OS4 and want to run OS3 class software, why even bring up the Revolution controller at all?  Amigas have mice and keyboards.  Do you want to move forward or just desperately keep the Amiga alive by life support?

Eh, we both know it's not going to happen, even if we disagree on the reasons.

Lou:  As for your comments about a PS2 looking better than a GC - hahahaha... Maybe you should compare apples to apples. Get the same game on each system and play them both. The GC verion is either an exact port (graphically) or better. I've played Madden on both systems, PS2 looks like cartoon drawings of real people. Not much shading and not too detailed textures. The GC version looks about 3/4 of the way from the PS2 version to the XBOX version, but I guees with the 3 games you own, you'd never know how great the GC really can be.

Lou, I'm talking about video out, not textures and GPU features.  S-Video on my GC looks worse than AV on my PS2.  Maybe the Rev A GameCube looks better, but the Rev C has a very poor video out.  It's fuzzy and the reds bleed like crazy.  I wouldn't be surprised if the S-Video is actually an AV split, rather than a true chroma signal.  I'll see if I can confirm that.

I don't see the point in talking about great GPU features if the video signal is cheap.  I'm concerned that if Nintendo really is aiming for a $150 or less price point on the Revolution, it may suffer from this same issue.  We'll see.

What are those 3 games you own anyway?

Go Go Hypergrind, StarFox Adventures, and Rally Championship.  I waited so long to get the machine because I wasn't going to spend more than $100 to play the first two games.  GGH is a lot of fun, and I'm surprised the game hasn't been selling better.  StarFox (which I got used) has been very disappointing, especially because you can't control the camera in that game, as the C stick is used to cycle inventory.  It's just annoying.

Well, OK, I also got Pokemon Colloseum bundled with the GC, but I haven't played it, yet.

[Waccoon]

DamageX:  I majored in computer science for one semester. What I learned is that no matter my understanding of numbers and CPUs, I will never understand other programmers, and certainly not their source code.

Most programmers seem more interested in saving themselves some typing than doing things properly.  For the best example of this, try looking at almost any random Perl script.  Regex was never meant to be used in such ghastly ways, but since Perl doesn't really support functions, I suppose you have to use what's available.

Lou:  Now others can possibly understand why C/C++ sucks arse.

I agree that C/C++ is too low-level for most things these days, but criticizing the syntax is hardly helpful.  There's nothing wrong with a=b++ if you know what you are doing, and actually use better variable names than "a" and "b".

A better example:  strings.  Why do we still use arrays of characters in C?  Because C progammers are professionals, and are not stupid enough to do things that will result in gobs of buffer overflows, of course!  If one occurs, we can just blame Windows, because everyone knows that buffer overflows don't happen in Linux.

I've heard similar arguments to support SimbianOS.  Who cares if it's complicated and requires lots of manual low-level control?  The coders are good enough to handle it!

Lou:  b += 1

Er, C supports this operator.  It might be more useful to complain about something C can't actually do.  ;-)

C saved space when that requirement was important. It's not anymore...and it still requires those accursed semi-colons so when you break it up, it takes up more space in your source code file sizes...

What's wrong with spacing out your code?

Of course, the size of source code is a terrible thing, considering that it doesn't really affect the size of the compiled program.  :-)

Gee wiz, I notice people are still using spaces instead of tabs to indent their lines.  Do they care that all those spaces add to the file length?  Nah, if they run out of space on their 160GB hard drive, they can always just trim off a comment or two.

Oh yeah, and having to write everything on one line is not an advantage.  I can't even stand to look at any BASIC descendent since I gave up on AMOS and learned a *real* language.  VisualBasic looks so archaic for a high-level language.

adolescent:  What came first, the interpreted language, or the interpreter?

They were both shipped 6 months late.

Seriously, I find it unfortunate that "old" language are left to rot while people put all the development time into newfangled OOP languages that still don't put logic ahead of syntax and less typing.  The world really could use a good, modern procedural language.  As a person who isn't that fond of OOP, I'm tired of seeing such languages get all the cool features.

[Waccoon]

Lou:  @Waccoon
I wasn't trying to look cool by using b+=1 vs. b=b+1, just pointing out there's less chance of a logic error when the code is split up with one function per line. It's easier to debug.

Uh, you were actually comparing "+=" to "++".

C is perfectly capable of using "+=", which means your example effectively is C code.  A better example would be nice.

Lou:  I mean it's just a fugly language that makes for poor readability and prone to bad indexing, illegal referencing and logic errors.

Everyone knows these problems don't exist in non-C lanugage, of course.

As with most topics in this thread, you're trying too hard to defend or bash one particular way of doing things.  You don't keep your options open, or even care to know about them.

Koaftder:  yes, your {{{}}} example is cute

Indeed.  Good programmers don't nest lots of loops.  C also doesn't require code to be broken into blocks in most cases.  Brackets are designed to improve readability, if used wisely.

Thus, the endless debate about whether to use open brackets at the end of a line or on a new line by itself.  Personally, I prefer the end-of-line structure, but C doesn't force anyone to do that.  That's what's nice about the structure of C code.  For the most part, it doesn't dictate form, like many BASICs do.

Lou:  /* let me count...did I use enough closing brackets? */

*cough*  Try indenting, or at least use the "[ code]" tag when you want to show examples in a forum.

If you don't indent when using "THEN", "ELSE", and "END IF", does that improve readability?

Lou:
If ... THEN

I find keywords to be much harder to read than brackets, capitalized or not.  But, that's just me.

Lou:  Dim i as short

This is easier to read than "int i=0;"?

[Waccoon]

Developers has their favorite environment and it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks of it unless mandated to change it by a superior or sheer curiosity.

Yes, and the developers of C made their decisions based on what they felt was usable, not because they didn't have the memory to do it the way you like it.

If C sucks, why do so many languages do things the C way?  Visual Basic has an awful lot of C in it, if you know anything about the original BASIC language.  Almost all BASICs these days are not actually BASIC.

Waccoon, you can run your mouth all you want. So because I had 2 classes in C/C++ some 15 years ago, I'm supposed to remember every nuance?

First of all, you should remember basic things like operators.  Second, you need to know the basics if you're going to say that something sucks.  Third, you're sitting in front of the world's largest electronic library, so it takes minimal effort to look-up things you've forgotten.

Because they keep expecting me to change it as if I should worship the keyboard they type on.

More like, when you provide an example to show that C sucks, you use poorly formatted code.  Brackets on the wrong line, for example, and using brackets when you don't need them.  Your constant exaggeration and misrepresentation is what annoys people.  You cover it up by saying, "I only took 2 classes 15 years ago."

Well, rip out your old books and have another look.  But then, you don't need C, which is precisely why you need to complain about it.

Why do I complain about inconsistencies in PHP?  Because I need to maintain code written in PHP, and would like to see some improvements in the near future.  Why don't I go around telling people VB sucks?  Because while I have used it in the past, I don't need it today.