Blasphemy (I know, I know ...... but ?????)

[Waccoon]

melgross:  The PPC is now officially a dead end street.

My take as well, as the problem isn't the CPU, it's the chipset and all the other logic that makes for a "real" computer.

SamuraiCrow:  Amigas have always run on embedded controller versions of the 680x0 series so why would embedded PowerPC models be any different?

PowerPC isn't widely applauded for compatibility.  By comparrison, the infamous 68000 didn't change very much over the years.  Complex bus logic is also built into CPUs these days, and external logic must be matched accordingly.  It's expensive, especially without good chipset support.

SamuraiCrow:  It seems, then, that Intel is getting relegated to the desktop in a market where embedded systems and consoles are taking over. Which one's the dead end?

Coding practices are very different.  Desktop-style programming demands heavy abstraction.  Embedded systems and consoles encourage the use of special instructions and features that are not widely available, even on other devices using the same family of CPUs.

There are good reasons why the CPUs are developed the way that they are for each market, and the architectural directions they take are based on market demands.  It's not easy or practical to swap processors between markets, especially if the development tools are designed for a particular purpose.  Availability of tools is a major issue, since that's how you make things forwards compatible, not just backwards compatible.  I seem to recall that forwards compatibility isn't a major issue in the console/embedded market.  If it is, developers usually take the easy way out and use Java.  *shudder*

melgross:  Despite what you may have read, the Cell is only marginally a PPC chip. While the Xenon is closer to the older G4 line, with improvements, and deletions, the Cell is vastly different. It requires a very different programming model.

I've heard the PPE core in the Cell is more or less used as a preprocessor to keep the SPEs fed.

SamuraiCrow:  Speaking of not changing, the Playstation 3 will probably not change for the life of the product for compatability reasons. The Commodore 64 also followed that same pattern. The C64 was the best selling single-model computer in history.

The C64 also didn't have a real OS, people had to give up on their software when moving to the Amiga (or whatever), and there were a lot more games available than apps.  Even commercial programs required some POKEing every now and then.  What a pain.

With all this open-sourcing going on, and the fact that the Amiga pretty much started the public domain and shareware scene, it shocks me that many Amigans still want to shackle themselves to closed hardware.

SamuraiCrow:  If anything, that gives IBM the incentive to be more creative as the Cell processor and the Kilocore processor indicate. IBM is making great strides since Apple forced them out of their comfort zone.

They can afford to be more daring as backwards compatibility isn't a major priority, and if it is, IBM is being commisioned to do custom design for a specific platform that wouldn't be available to other companies without a hefty price tag.  If you buy a Cell processor, you're paying Sony, not IBM, and you have to pay IBM indirectly for the work they did on the processor.  More middlemen, plus, you still have to have a custom motherboard made.  Specs look good on paper, but real-world practicality is lacking.

All of this to do... what?  Web browsing?  E-mail?  Running 68K emulators?

Why bother with so much custom hardware if it will take forever to make OS tools to use it correctly?  What about the budgets required to make those tools and port them every time the architecture changes?  It doesn't make sense to hype a specific processor type unless you intend to hard-code it, and that is suicide for any real OS.  The whole point of an OS is so programmers don't have to worry about the hardware.  How abstract the OS needs to be depends on the usage, and desktop computers are really designed to do just about anything.

Release an OS first, get it in the hands of developers, get the basics out of the way, and then you can worry about cutting-edge hardware concepts.

[Waccoon]

Fransexy:  You are wrong.Sony not only wants that other OS´s run on their CELL based Playstation but to made the cell the next multimedia chip.  Sony, toshiba and ibm wants that their cell be used in all types of devices from computers to wasihg machines.  So it will be not difficult to abtain cell processors

That's what the marketeers say.  The vast majority of Cell applications boil down to a math co-processor or programmable DSP.  The "computers" proposed are workstations, not desktops.  Apple also outright rejected both ideas of using Cell for Mac, as well as porting OSX to PS3.

Every time a console manufacturer says their system is not just a game machine, but a "multifuncion" device, how often are they actually used for things other than games?

Also, I'm sure Sony et al want Cell to be used in consumer devices, as all hosts will have to be developed not just with Cell, but Sony software tools.  You can't buy a custom processor based on a more generic design, and not expect to be locked in somehow.  I wonder how many of those washing machiens will be forwards compatible with next year's model. :roll:

DonnyEMU:  The problem I had when it was announced that the Mac was heading onto Intel is that it's the obvious writing on the wall.

Exactly.  What does Apple know that Amiga doesn't?

A:  A lot.  Note that Apple also makes a lot of ARM-based devices.

melgross:  The most realistic route has got to be taken. I've looked at this for a long time, and I truly can't find any better idea than to move to x86 at this point.

That would be especially easy NOW, since OS4 apps are still fresh and developers can make the ports.  Older apps from the classic Amiga are pretty much abandonware, and will never be ported, so emulation is the only way out.

Of course, the OS is supposed to provide the tools for proper CPU abstraction.  If Hyperion doesn't care about x86, hard-codes for PPC, and doesn't bother making the proper tools, porting apps to x86 will be difficult.  So far, it looks like that's what Hyperion wants.

yak:  Dave Haynie once said the same thing, common hardware (x86) is the only way out.

He should know, as he tried to make his own PPC motherboard.  Funny how the input from even the most experienced Amiga experts is often brushed away.

DonnyEMU:  I was suprised when the AmigaOne made it to production even for the time it had.

Well, it was a fairly raw MAI Logic reference design.  Nothing special, but not much had to be done to get it to work.

DonnyEMU:  The community needs to stop and smell the roses and realize that the concepts of the Amiga are still with us long after the original platforms death and people like em enough to carry them over to x86 and PPC and even ARM.

In the long term, custom hardware could creep its way back into the platform.  Today, it's not feasable, and will only reduce the number of developers that can access the platform.

[Waccoon]

melgross:  By obsolete, I don't mean that they can't still be used if you have them. I mean that we won't be seeing anything new using those chips.

Well, technically something is obsolete, or outmoded, when it is no longer useful.  :-)

Fransexy:  On x86 world running windows you always have the perfomance of two generations behind.To run the current version of windows at happily speeds you need the processors of tomorrow and then you will be forced to run a new version of windows that need the next generation chip to run at reasonable speeds and then...........So what´s the point

I think you're still stuck in 1995.  Try running Windows98 on a 1Ghz Celeron.  Then replace it with WindowsXP.  You should notice a huge improvement in performance, even without much more memory usage.

Windows isn't the klunker it used to be, even if the amount of hard drive space it requires is crazy.  All of this is the hardware's fault, of course, especially since x86 code is more compact than PPC code.  :roll:

Then again, my Mac mini clearly shows that MacOS X alone uses 12GB of space.  Windows is far smaller than that.  Does anybody complain that MacOS is bloatware?  Nah, let's all skewer evil M$.

yak:  I don't understand why people think that x86 version of AmigaOS would have to contain drivers for all available PC hardware.

Probably because that's the mistake made by pretty much every commercial OS creater that tries to break into the market.  With all the hundreds of OSes out there, you think some companies would figure this out.  But no, Microsoft still enjoys its monopoly.

Look at Be.  They were selling a proprietary PPC machine for $5,000+, which nobody could afford.  Then, they went to Mac clones, and once Jobs killed all of those systems, Be went to "stock" hardware.  Why didn't they make a new BeBox using an x86 board and chipset?  Why did they waste so much time making drivers?  Why did they announce they were going to the "information appliance" market at the very end?  Why don't people learn from the mistakes of others?

Fransexy:  That´s is what i want to say, AmigaOS on "outdatet" PPC will perform as updated as and awesome ultra modern PC running the ultimate windows

AmigaOS isn't as robust.  AmigaOS doesn't have even a fraction of the capabilites of Windows.

It would be more fair to compare AmigaOS to another largely underdeveloped OS, like a heavily stripped, old version of Linux.  Yeah, the old version of Linux runs nice and fast, too, but nobody uses it.  Guess why.

[Waccoon]

Fransexy:  I had installed windows98 then upgrade to xp, xp was so slow on my machine that i have to install windows 2000, so no, i not notice an huge improvement in performance with XP is quite the opossite.

Sorry, man, but I do those kinds of upgrades all the time.  XP is quite a bit faster, overall, provided you use the classic interface.

I've never done a 98 to XP upgrade, though.  I always do clean installs.  It wouldn't surprise me at all if an upgrade turns the machine into sludge.

BootWB:  A lot of this is down to the fact that the hard drive will only run at PI0 mode even though it is capable of UDMA4 (and yes, I have enabled DMA in both BIOS and device manager - I also tried deleting and reinstalling the primary IDE bus - no effect).

Is this an nForce-based motherboard?  nVidia has their own ATA driver which may help.  There are also known problems between Maxtor drives and nVidia chipsets.

BootWB:  So I'm still weighing up W2K - WXP? Which is less annoying?

The main reason I've avoided XP (besides the issues changing hardware configurations), is that I hate those stupid pop-up balloons.

Also, Microsoft changed almost everything regarding network settings -- for worse.  I despise the new wizards.  Win2K is much, much easier to set up with regard to networking.  Then again, Windows networking was always braindead to begin with.  ;-)

Think I'll stick with 2k until something requires I upgrade.

I hope you've archived all the Win2K tools that you've gotten from Microsoft over the years.  They're no longer available for download.  I tried to get ACT 3.0 to help someone make a compatibility patch for 2K, only to find out it has been completely replaced by ACT 4.1, which will not run at all on Win2K.

Microsoft supports their products for 6 years.  While that's longer than most companies will support their products (*cough* Apple *cough*), now that Win2K is out of its support life, you may want to update.  XP is also a "consumer" product, rather than the workstation product that is Win2K, so it'll likely be supported for a very, very long time.