I stated previously that I thought a modified PCI sub-system should have been implemented just for the Classic systems, separate from the ACube and Eyetech hardware, which should have been done at the planning stage, back in 2003, or earlier, when OS4.0 was being worked on. Hyperion said at the early planning stages of OS4 that there would be a version for Classic systems, but frankly it's been poorly implemented, and I feel most of the effort has gone into the ACube boards, and the Classic systems have really been left as an afterthought, rather than as it should have been their primary goal, seeing as it was the Amiga 'faithful' who bought the Phase 5 PPC hardware, which was the reason for the OS to move forward. The words horse and cart come easily to mind in such circumstances.
Hyperion don't have infinite resources, though... they can't specialise in the past
and the future. They chose to support the future in preference to the past, which is what I would do. Most of the people who have PPC cards will also buy a new machine (which are readily available), whereas the amount of PPC cards available is tiny.
Well, it would be nice to know what is specifically going on, as communications has not historically been one of Hyperion's strong points so far.
I agree there. However, I do think they've made inroads into that problem of late.
No, I don't agree, if the hardware had been planned for, then I feel sure a way could have been found to implement the Mediator operation into the OS4 sub-systems, after all, it's only digital data, and as long as the CPU knows what to do with the data then it can be made to work, it is just that it has been outlawed, ahem 'unsupported' by Hyperion.
So Hyperion, it seems to me, have shot us all in the foot with not 'supporting' the Elbox DMA 'hack' method, and/or not modified a way or supplied code that would allow Elbox's Mediator to function in a way that works under OS4.x.
It's not that simple - there are good technical reasons as to why they stopped supporting it.
People seem far too willing to think that Hyperion just cut features or raise prices because they feel like it. They don't!
The major improvements to OS 4 - particularly OS 4.1 - is in the workings "under the hood". Most of what they've done has been to improve reliability, and to work towards the future for things like SMP. These updates were necessary for new Amigas, but the classics (which took advantage of the simplicity of the memory sub-system under OS 3.x) suffered because of it.
Unless you're going to have a completely different sub-system for classic Mediator users, they're going to be compromised. And nobody can say that putting months of work in for a special case that's only used by 100 people or so is worthwhile for a business.
We're very lucky to have OS 4.1
at all for Classics. It's not on their road-map, they're more interested in future Amigas. We're just lucky that some people still have the time and enthuiasm to keep our Classics up to date.
It's the only PCI hardware that's still supported for the Classic systems, and Hyperion should have made the best use of it for OS4.x but it's been stymied/thwarted/stumped by the intransigence of Hyperion IMHO..
Prometheus is still supported. But the DMA doesn't work in that either (but only beta-testers had DMA anyway and that was a Mediator-style hack).
Do you have an A4000 or an A1200 PPC OS4.0 system?
A4000 with a Prometheus, Voodoo III 3000, RTL8029. I also have a Sam, a Peg II and an G4 AmigaOne, for what it's worth.
I don't mean to sound too scathing, as I can see you're upset that your system isn't supported properly, but from a technical viewpoint (which I have) it's a necessary evil.
We have to remember one thing here - our A1200s and A4000s are nearly 20 years old now. In computer terms that's not just one lifetime, that's several. The fact we're able to run anything modern at all on them is more than remarkable, the hardware just wasn't built for this sort of thing.
