Dave Haynie (lead engineer of C= Amiga) opinion on Amiga Successors

[Legerdemain]

Well I agree somewhat with both sides of this argument. But I do not believe x86 is the way forward for Amiga as the hardware is too diverse. And in my personal experience, diversity of hardware with a common OS is a Bad Thing.

Hardware such as what? Considering that most of the cards used together with either the Pegasos or the AmigaOne is old PCI cards which in time will become harder and harder to get hold of (and more expensive)... I can't see anything but the motherboard in itself being the hardware obstacle to overcome if either OS would be ported to x86 (and how often is the motherboard in itself an issue on the PC-side, really?). Besides the motherboards, the hardware is JUST as diverse no matter if you're running on a PPC motherboard or a x86 motherboard.

I really seldom comment on the AmigaOne / Pegasos discussion, but the hardware diversity problem you stated above, is something I really can't understand. Could you please clarify?

[Legerdemain]

Motherboard chipsets, graphics cards, sound cards, PCI buses, just for a start. I have seen so many (x86) machines come back to me when I had to build them from cheap components requested by the customer, which had obscure chipsets I had never heard of. Windows had to use generic drivers, and my guess is that these drivers make guesses about the hardware in order to maintain compatibility. Needless to say the machines were unstable.

But besides the chipsets directly on the motherboard, all the others, the graphic cards, the sound cards, network cards and the "everything related to PCI" they are the same no matter if you are running PPC or x86. I still don't really see your point? The motherboards will be cheaper, and as long as some fairly common ones are supported (in fact, considering basic motherboards, how much is there really to support?), the rest of the drivers will mainly concern PCI cards... which, again, will be the same no matter what motherboard you use?

If you are talking about AOS4 working on EVERY PC that can be found out there. Yes. Then there will be a problem. But why on earth stick to extremely expensive hardware (PPC), just because there's so many different x86 PC's to chose from? There no one saying that there is a need for every single hardware to be supported, because just like now some few PCI-cards can be supported. Just like now, people would consider what hardware they bought, so I can't really se the difference, besides it just being much cheaper.

[Legerdemain]

Ok then..........why do you suppose many of us Amigans still use our Amigas as Main machines???

Because they are Amigans?

No, seriously, I could NEVER do with only an Amiga as my main machine. I can surf the web using IBrowse and be extremely fascinated over how fast it is on my 060. I can be impressed with how well Shapeshifter runs. I can bash my head against the wall when I realise that there is no pixel-GFX-proggy on the PC side which comes close to what DPaint and Brilliance has to offer. I can play games and cry somewhat when I realise how extremely well programmed they must be considering what a mess the Amiga must have been to program really advanced games on...

...I can do many things with my Amiga...

...but 50% of what I do, is just out of pure fascination on what it COULD do considering WHEN it could do those very things and how EFFECTIVE it actually was in some aspects...  not to mention thinking about how time not have managed to make other OS'es cacth up in every single aspect, yet...

...another 45% I do to be inspired how things COULD have looked today if everything didn't go so wrong as it did, even wishing that OS:es of today could be inspired of some of the extremely effective and smart solutions classic AOS has had, and to some extent still has, to offer...

...and the remaining 5% I actally spend on doing things that I still can't do in a pleasing manner elsewhere. Pixling with DPaint V (did never surrender to the favourable Brilliance II, don't know why) for example. Can't find a way to do it on the PC... Photoshop, Grafx2, PaintShopPro... no way! I could always emulate it, but DPaint doesn't behave entirely correctly and Brilliance doesn't seem to work at all as it should under WinUAE, well, anyways...

...but, 100% of the time I spend with my Amiga I spend because it makes me feel so good sitting playing around with it. I love the OS, no matter that it lacks many things and have many things to be complained about, and I love many other things related to it, aswell...

...but, once again, I couldn't have it as my main machine. What it offers to me today is a source of inspiration, dreams of better times and extremely high nostalgic value. No matter if I actually use it for a couple of things I haven't found a way to do pleasantly elsewhere.

It is a sort of lifestyle and a hobby.

Everyone knows PC's are massive headaches...I have never ever in my entire life had a pleasurable PC experience. not even with my Pentium 4.......

I feel sorry for you. I've had extremely much pleasure with my PC's. Yes, they have given me headaches from time to time, but all in all I think they the best affordable alternative there is, at the moment. Possibly Mac's can be counted in here, aswell, but I am not to familiar with them yet (they have always intrigued me, but never have I owned one to toy around with... I have mostly emulated Classic Mac with the help of Shapeshifter on the Amiga and from time to time seen bits and pieces of MacOS X in action).

If it isn't headache to get a complete crash of the system, no matter what important tasks were running in the backgroung, a crash you will get on the Amiga almost anytime and anywhere when toying around too much in AOS, then I don't know what is a total headache. Of course I've had problems with Windows aswell, but only one time during the three or four, don't know really, years I've used XP it has completely crasched on me.

PC's just suck and so does Windows.

No they don't and no it doesn't.

It may be that the Windows, all of the different versions of it, has big flaws, and that there are too many things to be complained about concerning the OS in itself, but suck Windows does not.

Why do PC's suck, according to you? And why does Windows suck, according to you?

[Legerdemain]

Hyperion said a long time ago that they were moving the OS to a much more portable language. It was said that porting to other architectures would be easy.

Yes... and, really, how small are the chances that they haven't tested to compile OS4 for x86 machines already? Would you have tried it if you were Hyperion? If yes, you know, they are human too...  =)

To be honest. I think that everyone that objects against AOS4 being released on x86 would change their mind the minute they would see it outperform their PPC machine. And, really, releasing it for x86 wouldn't have to mean a cancelation of the PPC releases.