Amiga One X 1000 and Xena/Xorro

[wawrzon]

Hmmm - to me the "uselessness" rather seems to be a consequence of the lack of vision and inspiration among the community, which in turn partly is a consequence of the poor support for XENA/XORRO (documentation, tutorials, devkits, ...).

community is how it is, and how it became over time in course of events it had no influence on. We know that currently there is only very little technically educated, skilled people left with us, especially those with spare free time and motivation. so i consider it unfair that the consumer repeatedly gets blamed for every failure, in particular the lack of unconditional support or "vision", in the end. the x1k, as example, was designed and developed behind the closed doors without the community being involved or consulted and what concerns the inclusion of the xmos chip apparently both, without properly analysing the consumers expectations and without securing the software support in advance, that should usually be included with in the system. the current situation is nothing unpredictible, but a straightforward consequence of approach taken.

[wawrzon]

If the idea is from Varisys and they should have known that you need certain software and drivers for it that are closed source they should have had a plan how to support it in future. If not why integrating it? And why integrating it in X5000 yet again?

taking the comment here into account:

Having the ability to run Linux makes the Nemo board a very good general purpose development platform. We have certainly played with it extensively here although the appetite for AmigaOS amongst the younger engineers seems to be a bit of an acquired taste.

http://obligement.free.fr/articles_traduction/itwgentle_en.php

it seems that varisys considered comission for x1k an opportunity to design experimental linux based ppc development platform without taking financial risk themselves. they probably have not been technically concerned with os4 side of things, since it likely did not qualify for a valid part of agreement, due to their lack of expertise in the field and also since it couldnt offer a stable reference when finalizing the project.

[wawrzon]

I agree that there are better, easier and cheaper ways to do things, but my posts are about getting XENA to do them.
Developing expansion cards is expensive, I agree, so it makes more sense to develop a programmable, multifunction card that can change when requirements or standards change.

People are doing this kind of stuff using fpga and other dedicated chips. I have never heard any amiga hardware developer to even mention xmos. Clearly if needed they woul likely build dedicated boards themselves. But why look for more complicated way with limited time and resources. Those calling for it may do some project themselves instead complaining of no time. Besides There is plenty to actually help with even if only a little instead talking of pipedreams.

[wawrzon]

More users have Zorro slots than have PCI slots,
If the Xena chip is as useful as A-EON say it is, then why would classic users not want one in their machines also?

when talking about amigas, personally id prefer an interface to fit a capable fpga board to amiga bus, as gunnar proposes. there is already a number of fpga projects that improve on amiga capabilities and are run by amiga enthusiasts, so this is definitely something which when fabricated would find some use. you dont even need to think in therms of an accelerator alone but such boards may include i/o and expansions opportunities people are looking for. luckily it seems to be already underway. what concerns xmos, it is completely different technology with nothing in common with amiga concepts or desktop computers application at large as it seems. there might be some people in the widest amiga scene that are interested or have some experience with xmos as well, though they are likely too few to bother. the experience with the xmos chip included in x1k seems to indicate that at least in os4 scene there is almost none. therefore i wish os4 fans luck with finding some use for the xmos, but i think building a zorro expansion board with it would be a mistake.