Huh? You do realize that Arduino is pretty much a good example of the the kind of platform/business model we (TeamBlackFox and I) are talking about, right?
The beauty of ARM is also compatibility. Whereas an Amiga NG OS on x86 would require porting thousands of device drivers for all sorts of hardware, there aren't anywhere near that much different components in the ARM world.
x86 can offer long term platform stability by selecting an extended life cycle motherboard. Jetway are one manufacturer who offer a range of Intel products and a few AMD products.
Their latest I7/I5/I3 boards have planned availability until Q4 2018.
The NAF95-Q87 is an ideal candidate since it has has 3 PCI-e and 4 PCI slots meaning you can plug in cards supported on current PPC hardware and port the already existing AmigaOS or MorphOS drivers to x86.
I don't see any ARM boards with PCI-e or PCI slots so it would seem on ARM you have to write new drivers from scratch and may have trouble getting some of the documentation.
You may also be locking yourself to that hardware to a certain extent since there are a lot of different companies rolling their own ARM SOC's with different devices, leaving you at the mercy of the choices of whoever is making the next weird little ARM system. e.g. RPi and Beagle have completely different GPU for a start.
So much for compatibility.
@zylesea
Can you get an i5/i7 for 50 bucks (board included)?
Unless you can build an OS that is better, more stable and more compatible than anything else out there, people won't even bother to create another partition on their HDD.
People are currently paying thousands for PPC hardware to run OS4 so I think a lot more would be happier to pay hundreds for a dedicated x86 system.
The x86 market is simply too crowded. Everyone and his dog is pushing his distro. A hobbyist market simply doesn't stand much of a chance on there. Certainly not as much as on cheap hardware even people in developing countries can afford.
An ARM port of either OS4 or MorphOS would be equally as obscure as an x86 version.
As far as I'm concerned ARM has a long way to go before it can become a convincing alternative to x86 in the event of an architecture switch.
