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

[A3KOne]

leirbag28 wrote:
@cv643D

 (ie a 486 is about the same speed as a 040).

-------------------------------------------------------

I know what you are trying to say.....but just a sidenote.

a 486 is NOT the same speed as an 040...........though they were in competition with each other at the time and existed around the same time............an 040 will destroy a 486...........an 040 plugged into an Amiga is more like a Pentium II in my experience.

Mathematically calculating...........Yes a 486 will render about the same or faster.  But in actual use..a 486 is super unusable...........heck........my CD32/SX32 pro is 030 50 Mhz and its faster and smoother than any Pentium II.

Just amore satisfying experience is what I really mean.

an 030 cant play Quicktme or edit Video like a Pentium II, but when it comes to responsiveness..........Ah man! Amiga kills in this area.

I cant use a Pentium II today....too slow!.......  but my CD32  however, is my main machine and even use it over my Pentium 4!

ACK!!!!!

I don't post much, but I have to on this one.

First, your earlier post about Amiga having to come back as a hardware company may be partailly correct, only it is impossible.  In a perfect world Amiga execs would have $100 dollar bills on rolls like toilet paper but it does not work that way. Amiga will never return like that.  x86 would be a better avenue.  If there was an x86 port with open office and firefox I would be running it on this laptop right now.  I would spend the $100 price tag without batting an eye and have a portable Amiga environment.

Now...as for your 040=Pentium 2 comment.

The only way an 040 is close to a pentium 2 is that they both run hot.  The P2 runs laps around the 040.  The absolute slowest P2's were 133?  On the high end, there were 600 Mhz and higher P2's.  A 600Mhz p2 will playback 16bit MP3 while surfing the web and playing Quake in a window at 30fps without any serious slow down...that while running windoze 98!  A 40Mhz 040 cannot even play back MP3 well.  Maybe if you run songplayer and cut your quality to crap it will, but if you try to do more than IRC it will skip.

My P2 generation celeron desktop is in my son's room and it will play DIVX files full screen in 1024x768 24bit.  Try that on an 040.  Can you lower the resolution and color depth enough to get the image to move?

A 600Mhz P2 is more on par with a Cyberstorm PPC233/060 board, with the context switches thrown in to slow things down. The P2 would beat it at most CPU intensive tasks though. The slower P2's were on par with an 060.  Once PC hit P3, Amiga has nothing even close, including am1ga. This laptop is a slow 1.13Ghz p3 mobile.  I installed UAE on it with OS3.9 and it benchmarked faster than my miggy, but it was a pain to deal with so I dumped it.  If I could do a complete native OS install, I would be there in a heartbeat.

I don't understand why that is so difficult for Amiga companies to understand.  Sure there will be more piracy if you move the AmigaOS to PC, but you will sell so many more units that the pirated units will be insignificant by comparison.  I was a huge amiga fan.  I had an A4000PPC/060 system built to the gills.  I will probably never buy another Amiga system because the gap in hardware is so significant, especially given the premium price.  If I could log into Tigerdirect and order a $450 wintergreen PC that includes a DVD+/-RW, 512Mb ram, 80Gb HD, nic, AC97, etc...slap a $5 case sticker on it with a boing ball, and install OS4 for $100, I would do it within the next month.

But $500 for a bare motherboard that is 4 years out of date?  I might spend $50 on a tee-shirt, but I am not THAT gullible.

[A3KOne]

leirbag28 wrote:
@A3KOne

 I think you respond unecessarily......as I already explained that....if you read more closely, I think you will get what I am saying. Already said that the Pentium II will win in Mathematical area.

but I think this part of my comment sums it up:

"Just a more satisfying experience is what I really mean.

an 030 cant play Quicktme or edit Video like a Pentium II, but when it comes to responsiveness..........Ah man! Amiga kills in this area."


 Plus you compare unfairly.........add a Picasso IV and a VLAB motion to an 040..and it can do quite amazingly.............no it wont play "DIVX"  but will play Divx quality movies.........one just has to know what they are doing......or if someone took the time to convert it to an Amiga format......you will be amazed.

its all about the Closeness of everything in the Amiga working together and AmigaOS

Windows is a horrible OS, horribly organized.

Amiga wins in Responsiveness and better overall system.

Keep in mind, one can easily say a Pentium II is even comparable to an AmigaONE...in some ways one can see that.......but in reality they would be wrong........as they are judging it based on lack of Apps, including DIVX playback, or FLASH or Quicktime.............these things just need to be written.


I think most would choose an Amiga with 040 VLAB and picasso set up correctly over a Pentium II any day.

Heck.....I personally would choose an AGA 030 Amiga over the fastest Pentium III
 

In the case of my 500Mhz celeron PC, it uses an intel 810 Gfx chipset.  My PPC Amiga had a CybervisionPPC board.  The Permedia2 on a local PCI was probably faster than the intel.
The PC was as fast or faster playing video.  At the time I Got rid of my miggy, there was no DIVX.  The CPU was the bottleneck.  My underpowered x86 win98 box was just as fast.

I agree that responsiveness is an issue...but the fact is, if you ported OS4 to x86 and had it running on cheap PC hardware, it would be even more responsive.  A cheap integrated P4 3Ghz motherboard, with a cheap SiS integrated chip set and shared ram would run circles around the fastest Amiga or clone on the market (or drawing board).

I am posting this from my IBM Thinkpad T23 1.13Ghz P3M laptop with 384Mb ram that I bought used for $400 almost a year ago.  I am running Debian Sarge that I installed for free, and using a wireless network card that I paid $12 for, from TigerDirect. I use OpenOffice and FireFox every day, and If AmigaOS was available for it, I would gladly pay $100 for it...and it would fly...and I would be happy.

The fact is, OS4 was rewritten to uncouple it from the legacy Amiga hardware...unfortunately it has been couple to another dinosaur, the PowerPC.  

If Hyperion or Amiga was serious about moving forward and making Amiga a viable platform again, they would move to x86.  The only reason I can see that they would not, is if their intentions are not for the desktop market anyway...and I think that is likely the case.  I spent more money on Amiga hardware than most people, but here is reality...my antique laptop with Linux will outperform the fastest am1ga solution in every way, responsiveness included.

I wish AROS well, but without official support, I don't see them becoming more than a hobbyist OS.  An official Amiga x86 release could potentially be more.

I want Amiga to succeed.  I REALLY WANT an Amiga solution.  I am not going to pay a ridiculous price for vintage hardware to get it.  You can flame me or insult me or whatever, but here is the truth.  Most people care about how well something works and how much it costs.  AmigaOS on x86 would work better than on PPC, and cost MUCH less.  Most people do not care if the chip says motorola instead of intel on it.  The only people who do are the fanatical Amiga purists, and there are not enough of them left to buy the am1ga to make it a viable platform for the future.

In the end when the question is asked "who killed Amiga?"

The sad answer will be "The people who loved it most."

Even sadder is that they will blame someone else...Medhi Ali and Jack Tramiel are not around to blame anymore, but I am sure that they will find someone.

[A3KOne]

Like Dave said...Geeks want something cool.

There is nothing cool about 600Mhz G3 other than operating temperature.

Geek toy? No.

Fanatic toy? Yes.

[A3KOne]

You know... one thing that amazes me is that the fanatics will start off saying how fast and responsive and powerful their Amiga with an 030 (powered by a squirrel in a cage) processor is, and then will use Cell processors or some other incredibly overpriced -yet obsolete by the time it is mass marketable- CPU as justification for sticking with PPC tech.

Reality:

AmigaOS ported and running native on a $300 PC would run circles around any PowerPC alternative currently available.  

A specifically chosen aftermarket Amiga seller (maybe one on each continent) could build a single system based around a specific motherboard and gfx chip combo specified by Hyperion, and the hardware support issues would be gone.  Future upgrades and additional gfx card alternatives could be handled via RTG drivers released for the specific cards.  The Amiga 1000/500/2000/3000/1200/4000 did not support a vast lineup of gfx cards. Commodore did not sell motherboards stand alone unless it was a replacement part. With the price of PC hardware being as low as it is, you could replace a motherboard 4 or 5 times for the cost of a single PPC A1.

It is really simple.  An official Amiga x86 package is selected and released.  It comes with everything in the box to work when you plug it in.  It could have a custom case, or there could even be multiple solutions released...IE: an A1200 style system with a fully integrated motherboard and a big box system with the supported gfx card on a high speed pci or agp bus.  
Upgraded gfx cards could come later as drivers are written for newer hardware.  Amiga dealers could sell the off the shelf PC GFX cards at the same price as the PC dealer + a nominal fee for the driver.  You would not have to support every chipset on the planet.  The systems would be low cost and Amiga users could purchase them for $500 or less, loaded and ready to go.  Since the hardware would be bog standard PC stuff, if a user desired to purchase the hardware and build their own system, all they would need to do is buy the OS.  If they are upset because their Funkytronic xs5000 gfx card is not supported, they will have to deal with it.  AmigaOS 3.1 did not support anything but AGA/ECS. At least OS4 has RTG built in for future expansion. The reality is, the prebuilt system will be just as cheap as do-it-yourself because the Amiga builder will be buying the components at an OEM price. He can sell it and make a profit without killing the consumer.  Lot of successful PC companies started this way...Dell comes to mind.

Some people will immediately scream WHAT ABOUT PIRACY?!?
Well...newsflash! Piracy may or may not happen...it probably will to some degree.  The fact is, if you sell 100,000 copies of OS4 and 10,000 are pirated, you have lost some money, but it is still better than selling 5,000 copies with no piracy.  In all likelihood the same number will be pirated regardless.  The l33t h4xX0rZ will be l33t h4xX0rZ regardless.  The difference in piracy numbers will be nominal...the difference in sales will not be.


100% of new users could not possibly care less about what CPU the computer uses. They just want it to work and work well.  An x86 Amiga could and would work well.

80% of Amiga users would immediately be happy with this solution.  They would have a fast an powerful Amiga.

10% of Amiga users would be happy with this solution once they used it and saw how fast/powerful it is.

10% will not be happy unless Jesus raises Jay Miner from the dead so he can design a new Amiga complete with new custom chips, that is then built by CBM/Amiga at their plant in Germany using chips fabricated by MOS technologies.

That is the truth as I see it.

[A3KOne]

Tigger wrote:

 Commodore did not sell motherboards stand alone unless it was a replacement part.

Actually as someone who bought thousands of motherboards from Commodore, I'm going to have to disagree with you on this point, however everything else is pretty much right on.
    -Tig

I think you misunderstood what I was saying (or trying to say) about the motherboards.

There were not 500 different motherboards.  Sure there were revisions, but they were the same motherboards with bug fixes...just replacement parts. There were a couple of exceptions such as the short lived A3000 030/16.  You would not buy a new motherboard from CBM to put in your A3000 because it was a huge upgrade. You might replace the buster because of flaws in the original.  There was never a "WoW! I gotta run out and buy that new motherboard for my Amiga 500!"
Nor would you buy an Amiga motherboard to install it in the new case from brand-X and build your own...unless you were a hardware hacker.  It was not like PC's today.

I doubt you ever had to install new drivers because you changed motherboards.

[A3KOne]

Oliver wrote:
Have to agree with A3KOne about x86 amigas.

edit- actually, I know a lot of people these days whos home computers are mostly just for fun.  People who work all day with windows, and don't really want/need to use windows when they go home at night.  Some of these friends still turn on their old classic Amigas just to play and tinker.  I asked one of my friends why he used his A3000 in this fashion, instead of his all powerful PC sitting right next to it, and he just said "nah, windows: use it all day".  I think these people would be happy with an x86 Amiga OS.

You know, if done correctly, an x86 Amiga could turn the tables on Windows and do some of the same things to Windows that has been done to Amiga.

Think about it... implement Wine on AmigaOS and have Windows apps running in a windows compatible API...or make a sandbox environment where Windows can be booted within AmigaOS.  It would be easier than UAE because there would be less hardware emulation required.  With the bright minds in the Amiga community, it would be interesting to see a WINE port.  I bet it would be cleaner and more usable than the Linux version.  Amiga Installer could be used to take care of all the config issues so it would not be as complicated as the Linux version.

This would be important because the AmigaOS would, in a sense, be tied to the hardware.  The difference in the x86 AmigaOS would be that the extent of the hardware dependence would be minimal... Chances are that if someone wanted to upgrade speed, a new motherboard would exist that would be 100% compatible.  The only legacy hardware would be the gfx card.  support for integrated ethernet and ac97 would not be a big deal since there are not that many commonly used chipsets.  When the time approaches when a significant speed upgrade is needed, Hyperion or Amiga or whoever could find a motherboard that is reasonably close, release a patch or two, and make that motherboard the certified Amiga board.  There would probably be numerous PC hardware manufacturers willing to provide docs to get the additional business.  Again, the key is quality and price, not quantity.  There is no need to support every single motherboard combo.

If there is an A1200 style machine, that is even easier.  There are a limited number of Mini motherboard providers.  Amiga companies seem to like strategic partnerships and are good at making them.  There would be an opportunity to have one that is worthwhile.  Via makes good boards and they are reasonably priced.  There are others...

To me, it seems insane to go the PPC route at this juncture.
In 2000, I was all for it, but now it is the wrong thing.  PC hardware has advanced a great deal. Legacy ISA is gone.  The PC is much closer to Amiga in hardware philosophy than it used to be.  When the AmigaOne was first announced, the most common Mac was a G3 or a slow G4. Speeds of 1Ghz were rare in the PPC world. The AmigaOne was already behind, but not that much.  The PC world was not that far over 1Ghz, either...2Ghz systems were extremely expensive.

In 2005, 3Ghz on a PC is cheap and the AmigaOne is still stuck at 600-800Mhz.  Even Apple has bailed on PPC.

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.

If that is the case, it is time to consider it.  We need to swallow our pride and realize that the PC world evolved past us.  It is foolish to forsake powerful, inexpensive hardware, for overpriced pocket calculators.  Compare the Amy05 to the Dell Axim x51v, which is a 624Mhz PDA with integrated 802.11b, bluetooth, 256Mb rom, 64Mb sdram,16Mb video ram and is multimedia capable, and pocket calculator is not far from the truth.  

I know the zealots are probably fuming by now... I used to be one of you and I would have been fuming too.  I finally woke up and realized that computers are tools to allow me to do things. Amiga just happens to be a more fun tool to use for many.  The OS is what you see and what you use...the hardware is only as imporant as its performance and price. The fact is that the current hardware options AmigaOS has  are outdated and have little to no support.  At least main stream PC hardware would have a warranty that would be easy to take advantage of.  If you are in the USA and have trouble with your AmigaOne (which appears to be common), good luck getting it fixed.  By the time you pay to ship it overseas to someone who can fix it, you could have bought another PC motherboard...and like it or not, the Amiga is a PC...personal computer.  Some people have forgotten this.

Hyperion...please...if you read this. Move the desktop OS to x86. Read what I said and consider it...I believe that is the only hope for a successful return of Amiga.


edit- one other thing...I believe the only hope for success is if the system has the name Amiga.  There is still value in the tired old girl, believe it or not.  While Aros and Morphos are worthy efforts and nicely done, they will never experience the widespread acceptance that Amiga potentially could with the release of a new hardware/software platform, even if it is x86 based.  Aros and Morphos are great for hobby computers if that is all you want.  If there is any hope of a return to levels where major software houses port recent software, it lies solely in the hands of the name that started it all...Amiga...and in my opinion the AmigaOne and Amy type names need to go the way of the dodo.  Any new hardware/software platform should return to the naming scheme from the old days... something like...Amiga 1100...Amiga 510...Amiga 610...Amiga 2200...Amiga 3300...etc.

[A3KOne]

Nitro wrote:
Why should OS4 be ported to x86?  I think AROS has came along way.  Anyone who feels they must have an AmigaOS on x86 can use it.  It`s open source, Aros users are all for people helping to develope it.  It may one day be better than OS4.  They choices are all ready in front of everyone.  It doesn`t have a big AMIGA sticker on it. (Just for hobby users)

And you have answered the "why" question.

Aros has came a long way....It may ONE DAY be better than OS4...

OS4 could be recompiled to x86 in no time (and probably already has been) and in an instant it would be lightyears ahead of Aros.  The Amiga community has always been fractured by people wanting to protect their interests as opposed to moving the platform forward.  It looks like Aros is potentially another one.  If AmigaOS was ported to x86, what would that do to Aros?

[A3KOne]

Fats wrote:

A3KOne wrote:

The Amiga community has always been fractured by people wanting to protect their interests as opposed to moving the platform forward.  It looks like Aros is potentially another one.  If AmigaOS was ported to x86, what would that do to Aros?

AROS is open source so by default the code can be used to improve other platforms, be it MorphOS, OS4 or OS4/x86.

Staf.

I don't disagree with you, but my point remains.

It appears that Aros may have created yet another faction that does not want any future for Amiga unless it is of their design.  At least that I what I get from some of the posts.

There are many in the Morphos Community that are that way.  IF Amiga Inc would have produced a top notch machine with powerful custom coprocessors and updated the OS to modern standards, many in Camp Morphos would have written pages telling everyone how bad it is.  There are a large number in the Amiga community that do not care about it at all...they are motivated only by their own desires and if something is not in their designs, it is wrong.

This same thread has been going on over on aw.net and Dave Haynie himself has been involved.  I agree with pretty much everything he has said over there.

What Hyperion is doing is akin to this...
Imagine that computers were cars and the OS is the fuel...the Amiga was a car and fuel provider that was decade ahead of Ford and Chevrolet (or Daimler or whoever) and Microsoft (the fuel company).  Amiga did not build a car for two decades and the fuel stayed the same.

Now Hyperion has upgraded the fuel but has made it where it works exclusively in an ugly car that gets horrible fuel mileage, runs really slow, breaks down a lot and has no one to work on it, and has horrible safety and emissions ratings, that no one drives, few people want, and fewer people can afford.

In the mean while, Chevrolet has built a car that goes really fast, gets great gas mileage, is reliable, cheap to repair, parts are readily available for it, and it is safe...and it costs less than half what the Amiga car costs.  There are tens of millions of people driving it already and many are looking for a better performing fuel, including several million who were Amiga drivers twenty years ago and would love to relive the memory.

Hyperion is afraid that if their gas will work in the Chevrolet, people will pump it and drive off without paying for it, when the fact is that people who want to steal gas will steal it anyway.

They are not looking at the fact that so few people will buy their gas that they will not make anything anyway.  If it ran in the Chevrolet, the amount they sell would more than make up for a few drive-offs.

Amiga on x86 makes sense.
I like Hyperion. I am a fan of their work...but...
If a fuel company did what Hyperion is doing, they would be the laughingstock of the business world.  

[A3KOne]

Dave speaks a lot of sense, and has done so for years, but no one's listening. Now some - a minority - are starting to ask themselves: "Did we do the right thing? Were we really justified?". Well, it doesn't matter any more. As Mikey_C himself said on AWN: "the train has left the station", and those who made the wrong choice are left sitting on the platform. There are now only two choices left: ( a ) insist that it was the right choice regardless of the mounting evidence that would suggest otherwise, or ( b ) give up, move on and treasure the memories.

If there is a problem, it's too late to fix it.

I agree with all of what you said except for this last part.

One of the things that Hyperion supposedly has done is to rewrite the OS into a language (c?) that is easily portable to other architectures.  If this is the case, it may be faster to port to x86 than to wait on someone to finally deliver a viable ppc machine... if they are willing to swallow their pride and do what it takes to make it happen...which I doubt.

One thing I have learned about the Amiga community, it is never too late.  I would have thought you all would have gone away 5 years ago.

If they wait another year or two, then I might agree with the summation that it is too late.

I believe it will eventually happen.  AmigaOS is not Gem or some other crappy OS...it is too good for it not to happen.  It may take another owner or two and the community to completely disolve before one day we see a commercial or a print ad for AmigaOS...Hopefully it will not come to that.