How much would it cost to port AmigaOS to x64?

[A3KOne]

No valid reason for OS4 to go to commodity hardware.  The market isn't there - niche OS's are free/open source on commodity hardware, Hyperion would have no business model.

It's be just another offshoot hobby OS that could once make a meager earning on the PPC side that is now on commodity HW where there's a plethora of free OS'es for every niche market.  Another OS I'd have to run an emulation layer on to run legacy software.  Why should I run OS4 x86 vs. AROS, vs. UAE/Amikit/Amithlon?

There is also the fact a small team could never support the vast range of PC hardware.  This is the same problem that hampers AROS.  A small team cannot support every chip made for a mobo, or every gfx card released in the last 10 years.  The same reason Apple locks hardware to software - no ****ty coded 3rd party drivers on core HW.  Same reason MS doesn't do drivers themselves and why they have WHQL.

I'd love to run AROS, but it simply doesn't run on the hardware I own.  AROS for SAM 440 is absolutely unfunctional.  That being said, I don't expect a hobby OS to support my dual 590 GTX's.  Either would OS4.

Now OS4 for PPC Mac, that's something I could go to bat for.

Beh.  Wrong.  The market isn't there to sell 10 copies of an OS to the 10 people willing to pay $1000 for a motherboard built around 10 year old tech that represents bleeding edge in the Amiga world.

I would pay $100 usd for AmigaOS to use on PC hardware, and I am sure I am not alone.

I think it would be safe to say the number of people who would pay for AmigaOS that they could install on PC hardware is so much greater than the number willing to pay for underpowered and overpriced PPC hardware as to make a comparison laughable. The number of copies sold to PC hardware owners would surely number in the thousands or tens of thousands from day one...and custom built to spec machines bearing the logo and OS discounted for OEM bundling would only increase that number.

I went the overpriced PPC hardware route years ago with my A3000 68060 & A4000 + 0600/PPC+CVPPC loaded to the gills. Many Amiga users never went as far as I did.  I left in 2001.  For general computing it is no longer viable, but I still love the OS and would gladly purchase it for installation on commodity hardware.  

Support one family of motherboards and one family of graphics cards.  For printing, maybe CUPS could be ported?  I am not a programmer, but I know that Mac uses CUPS.

If AmigaOS was on PC hardware, the potential for platform growth would exist.  On PPC hardware that is 10 years behind the current x68 in terms of performance, and twice the price, there is no market outside of a handful of fanatics.  The PA6T-1682M CPU cranks out what??? 3,000 MIPS give or take?  That is slower than my Athlon 64 from 2004.  I know there are other variables to consider...but that is 1/3rd the MIPS rating of my Athlon 64 from 2004. ONE THIRD!  This doesn't even address availability of the processor, as Apple owns PA Semi and keeps them alive because the US Government uses them in embedded applications...and that is the current HIGH END custom Amiga CPU, and other than memory speed it is slower than 8 year old x64 hardware.  The I5/I7 is so much faster still...

I am writing this post from a dual-boot Windows/Mint laptop with a 2.53 Ghz core2duo cpu (30,000 MIPS), 6 gigs of ram, 500gig HD, and Nvidia GT260M with 1 Gig dedicated video memory and a 17.3" screen.  I bought it 2 years ago and paid $800 for it - $300 less than I paid for my CVPPC/CSPPC in 1999 - and I got a "good deal" on the miggy upgrades.  I rarely use Windows, and I would love to ditch Mint and use AmigaOS - or install a drive in my second bay as a dedicated AmigaOS drive.

Of course, AmigaOS on x64 will never happen.  The priests make sure of that...

Eddie Izzard could do a good bit on this scenario. Oh look, a shotgun...BLAM! oh I just shot myself in the face! Well of course I did. I wanted to shoot myself in the face. Shooting myself in the face is so much better than not shooting myself in the face... Amiga logic. Its no wonder it is dead with so many adherents who believe that face shooting is the way to go.

[A3KOne]

The question noone seems to have answers to is..

okay. Now you got amiga OS on an I7.

What difference does it make when Quake 3 is the most you can put it through?

Web content, video and audio encoding and converting, digital photo editing... lots of stuff that having more CPU power would be beneficial for.

With a teensy user base that isn't going to grow with overpriced PPC hardware sales, Quake 3 is about the greatest thing you can hope to put through it.

(edit)  Not only is the user base not going to grow, it is going to continue to shrink.  PPC - the current model - is nothing more than slow suicide.

With access to AMD or Intel CPU power for pennies on the dollar v/s PPC, and the possibility of purchasing a new OS to run on your machine, there would be new users. Thousands on the conservative side.  Tens of thousands in all likelihood. From there you have a seedbed for forward momentum.  Embedded CPU's in limited quantity is not a viable upgrade path, no matter what the zealots say.

[A3KOne]

Why didn't AROS make this happen already then?

It's tough enough to get developers to support apple, harder still to get them to support linux, and we're banking on a sudden renaisance for an OS most people today haven't heard about, which would have 20 years of catching up to do, and which would start with zero software support ?


People love to moan about PPC but it's not a difference of "path forward" versus "dead end". THey're all dead ends here.

AROS is a good idea, but the last time I tried to use it, it had zero usability. I couldn't get it installed on one machine, and the other wasn't supported.  Had there been an Amiga machine with a reasonably competitive price to performance ratio, many people would have gotten on-board ages ago.  Unfortunately, all that materialized were bug ridden machines that once the bugs were removed, were so far out of date as to be ridiculously overpriced v/s new tech.

Your arguments are not really valid.  It still boils down to - OS4.x on hardware that people can actually buy and use for minimal cost (or they may already have), verses OS4.x on custom hardware that costs 10x the price of more powerful commodity hardware.  Either way you go, you are still facing the same issues on the software side.  At least with PC hardware there is a potential market in the thousands.  With custom hardware, it is a handful of fanatics - not a viable user base.

Hyperion stated when they started the update of AmigaOS that one of the results would be improved portability - the potential for porting the OS to other platforms with much less work needed.  Given the market choices there is really no argument for supporting PPC over x64.  The only argument is whether to continue AmigaOS on x64 or not at all.

If Hyperion or whoever owns AmigaOS has any intention of a future for AmigaOS, x64 is the only choice.  If they continue the PPC route, the platform is no longer in limbo - it is officially dead.  I hate it, but it is the truth.

[A3KOne]

I just roll with Ubuntu or Debian when I have installed linux, but I have to say DragonFly BSD is looking up from here, it has some Amiga inspiration apparently.

And Digiman, don't mindlessly attack the PPC standard with fallacies. It has its flaws, yes, but RISC processors at the same speed as an X86 are far better, especially if you consider the contemporary NetBurst architecture, it runs circles around it. My G4, runs circles around my friend's P4HT at 3 Ghz. The NetBurst is dated, yes but tis a proof that x86 isn't always foolproof. OTOH, my mini C2D does decode my BluRay rips better, but granted that it has faster versions of the decoding software I use to decode the matroshka files

...you know, in most applications, the 1.6Ghz D510 trounces a 3Ghz P4HT?

An Intel Atom CPU that is considered a squirrel running around in a cage by comparison to other modern CPU's outperforms a P4 @ twice the clock speed.

Seriously.

That is 10 year old Tech.