AmigaONE X5000 (A-Eon Technology Ltd on Facebook)

[wawrzon]

Well, one sane voice from amongst the fanatics.
Don't expect the legacy wackos to appreciate the new hardware.
Even if it can run circles around their beloved hardware, they hold tightly to their beliefs.

As to pricing, don't get your hopes up folks.

i do not appreciate being called a "fanatic" or a "wacko" as long as my interest remains (for various reasons) with the real thing and not neccesarily with followup hobby projects. it remains everybodys own right to choose whether they are into the fpga systems, mos, aros or os4 or not. while these solutions may be interesting for some (even i have remaining interest in them), they cannot compete with what genuine amiga is, being actual popular and progressive product at its time, rather than a geek project for few interested. wandering around the net you will notice, that there is still rather huge sentiment for amiga, its users keep in private, usually not participating in any so called "amiga" forums, partly even aware of current developments such as aros68k. i dont think you are entiteled to insult these people, just because they might not buy into what *you* consider "amiga ng".

[wawrzon]

Apparently you have your own opinions.

sure i do, am i supposed to be a sock puppet?

But while you can ask me to be more civil

thanks, i almost didnt dare.

you can't convince me to join you.

as if it was my goal. btw, missionize is (i guess) exactly what fanatics usually do. and now note, that it is actually you, who want to convince the likes of me to resign of our bias in favour of yours.

The Amiga is dead.

well observed. except that mine are working.

And, it was a seriously over priced device when new.
Which is why I gravitated to other 68K based systems that offered better value.
As to the value of NG systems, while no one is insisting you join this community, at least they can run modern software.

"they cannot compete with what genuine amiga is"

Yes, they are not deathly slow with limited and expensive upgrade options.

im not so much interested to engage in that kind of arguments anymore. it doesnt actualy affect facts.

And you are a fanatic.

see my answer above. seems asking you to be civil is really a waste of time. wonder why.

[wawrzon]

Quite right actually.
I was discussing this with Andre Siegel recently, and I think its related to an innate need to cut through it and quickly establish the boundaries of a relationship.

ok, apparently you have a problem.

We have an obvious difference of opinion here, but I at least look favorably of the devices in question.

if it still makes you feel entiteled to call others names..well. i had my say and am done with it.

[wawrzon]

sigh.. you are obviously mistaking me for vox. i didnt went rage on cusa when they secured the right to call their systems "amiga". it doesnt affect my genuine interests. are we done yet?

[wawrzon]

Now that A-eon is not directly tied to Hyperion,

is that how trevor sees it? because so far it looks like they are directly tied to each other, doesnt it?

[wawrzon]

i definitely do not dislike trevor, nor even hold grudge against os4 home company, while im just not buying into their offer anymore. especially i dont see why i necessarily need to support something i dont believe in or keep my mouth shut against all odds. while i can understand that trevor probably still sees os4 as best opportunity or a good starting point, no matter the drawbacks, i alas cant share this view. perhaps there is something to justify it i dont know about but, alas the passing time and course of events seem to fit my exepectations.

[wawrzon]

If Trevor followed any economic sense or logic he wouldn't be in the Amiga market at all.
The fact that he decided to ignore sense and spend his money the way he wanted to - rather than the way many would deem sensible - is something I and many other AmigaOS 4 users are very grateful to him for.

Basic economics says that it's impossible to make much money in the Amiga market these days. Supply can be made but the demand isn't there. Therefore supply has to be lessened. Less supply means higher prices - economies of scale. Higher prices then means less demand. Getting the balance right is very tricky and I think Trevor did it well with the X1000.

Trevor aimed for the high end of the Amiga market, leaving Acube with the low end, which makes complete sense. That meant using high end components like the PA6T despite the cost, on the grounds that the Amiga users really wanting as fast a machine as possible would have deep enough pockets, and they did.
 
Commodore were in a BIG market but Trevor isn't - hardly anyone wants a platform with very little software, even at a low price. In the 80s, small companies existed to make big games and programs, which helped push demand. Today people expect programs made with budgets in tens if millions of dollars or more.  Not practical on a tiny OS.

Whatever we do, we will never be able to take advantage of economies of scale like Commodore did, it's just impossible. Comparing Commodore to A-Eon is pointless unless you also compare the meerkat that A-Eon and Commodore are in.

Trevor knows full well about economics, but he chose to spend his money the way he wanted to and benefited hundreds of others in the process, and for that I applaud him.

isnt that mantra of small scale economics anything but a self fulfilling propecy? i mean one could even imagine a strategy to address a wider audience and therefore lower entry cost even with some custom system (as its been proven in case of raspi and similar projects that do not even have a legacy to build upon). but i dont think, one should start with developing yet another similar hardware in the particular case of os4. it would be more important to establish actual unique (software) features (not xmos) and secure steady development to attract young users, and this is where the initial investments should have gone. the current strategy instead seems rather to addres exclusively the existing well-off collector user base, where the price point doesnt really matters and the drawbacks are easily accepted as long as the system is not neccessarily needed for actual usage. the minor questions like a naming convention arent going to solve the matter either.

[wawrzon]

@EverBlue,

OK, one example scenario: A-EON buys 10,000 units of off the shelf x86 motherboards without CPU at about $1m cost, which will likely be discontinued stock in 3-6 months in the PC world.

Then Hyperion takes at least 18 months to port the OS to it.

why would you need to secure 10k units in advance once the os is ported to a a platform with rather well maintained backwardards compatibility. aros has proven that it is possible to maintain "amiga ng" system not only on x86 hardware.

What will happen?  Will customers want an x86 board in 2 years time branded as an "Amiga" that has long since expired its shelf life in PC world terms? Or will they accept that it?  

like they are already accepting an already by it specs at the release time outdated hardware?

Will be be able to sell 10,000 units?  These are the business risks that would have to be taken.

im not a position to lecture anyone, thats sure, but frankly, can you explain, how is your (aeon's) current strategy less risky?

In addition to the hardware, every third party software that has been written for PowerPC AmigaOS needs to be recompiled for the new x86 ISA under AmigaOS.

im not sure it should even been done. there is x86 amiga ng os. its aros. just port whatever os4 software you deem neccessary to it (i dont think there is much of it) and you are done with the x86 "amiga" transition.

edit: btw i dont think an os porting timeframe figure of 18 months is realistic. at least not for hyperion. judging the current progress pace when every single driver is taking forever i dont think they would ever complete such a task. another reason to go aros as a base, if you ask me.

[wawrzon]

@Andre.Siegel
may i point out that you seem to propose a bare motherboard for 230gbp, without cpu and ram, let alone a complete system. okay, its still much less than x1k for much better hardware, but it still isnt cheap.

anyway, we can talk it to the death, but the train has departed, the funds have been invested, development or even betatesting started, so os4 fans are left with no choice for better or worse.

[wawrzon]

A port to X86 is not going to happen. We all know Hyperions position on that subject, which IMHO is good. If people want X86 then go for AROS or UAE.
New hardware is good news for most of us.

exactly, and since what you say is true, it remains nothing else to do as to wish the effort success and that both customers and developers will be satisfied with the outcome.

[wawrzon]

I disagree.  If you don't like something you try to change it.  Put your money where your mouth is, support the vendors you believe in, and try to take back your community.  You don't just sit and accept things - that's a poor attitude.

you perhaps missed out that im considerd the anti so4, hyperion and aeon troll around remaining amiga forums. i said things like you over and over for years and years. did it change anything? no. does it mean that i accept this? no. i have even supported aros even though being actual amiga user im not much interrested in neither x86 nor ppc hardware in this case. tbh im a little tired of this all, ive probably only jumped on this thread, because as factual amiga fan to this day i dont like to be called a "wacko" by people who cant talk me into some amiga derived system, whatever it is.

[wawrzon]

Nobody said that was the reason you're a wacko.:destroy:

:facepalm:

[wawrzon]

by the way, as there is always so much talk about how retarded genuine amiga users are, and how they should upgrade to ng solutions, and also countless guesses about what camp has most followers (judging by download figures of whatever), it just occurred to me today checking aminet that there is an obvious and objective indication to that.

so check out these download figures of fresh release of amiarcadia (by 11.01.2014):
AmiArcadia.lha   22.24   misc/emu   23981   3.6M   m68k-amigaos
AmiArcadiaMOS.lha   22.24   misc/emu   18820   3.9M   ppc-morphos
AmiArcadia_OS4.lha   22.24   misc/emu   12302   3.9M   ppc-amigaos

given that mos and os4 have stil their own download depots the figures there do not seem to account for much (ive checked out of curiosity, there seem to be just a few). so i think we can safely say that the biggest amiga community is still the genuine amiga owners (or uae users) followed by mos (80% in comparison, which is not bad) and os4 being third, accounting for about a half of genuine amiga users. there is no aros (x86) figures in this case alas, though i consider it possible that it would be even lower than the os4 result.

q.e.d.

[wawrzon]

what concerns aros i think the stereotype is rather DIY and dont pay a cent.

[wawrzon]

You can't really draw a conclusion based on a single piece of software. I for example have never felt compelled to download Amiarcadia since it didn't appeal to me.

neither to me. since this is the same piece of software for all these systems one can assume the interest distribution may be similar across their userbase though, figures? of course there may be some minor factors that influence this, like lack of own software that pushes customers for use of emulators (on genuine amiga there might not be much interest) or lacking system capabilities (the requirement is os3.5 and 16meg ram, which rules each an every unexpanded amiga right out) so in fact the amiga scene will be magnitudes bigger, in fact we are only talking here of expanded amiga power users.

You really need to find a number of pieces of software available for all systems and get the averages across those pieces of software. The more pieces of software the better.

i dont care so much to intentionally look for it, its only a quick observation, that fits each and every other hint i came across over the years. why should i assume the opposite of the hard facts?

Also since you pointed out that OS4 and MorphOS have their own repositories you really should be pulling the stats off those and adding them to the Aminet stats too. I usually download OS4 software from OS4 depot.

os4 depot: 12 downloads. i assume it concerns only the current version, still it doesnt mean anything in comparison with several thousands. does it?
morphos files: 76 downloads. much, much more, still only few. do i have a point or do i have a point?

The only times I remember going to Aminet in the past foew years is to actually provide link to a piece of 68k software for someone asking on the forums if there's a piece of software for the A500, A1200 etc that does X.

sure. same for me. likely the most visitors are uploaders themselves. ;=)