AmigaONE X1000 Free Shipping Offer

[spirantho]

This thread demonstrates very well why there are so few Amiga developments.

Make a low end computer that's cheap? Get complaints that it's not as powerful as a PC made in its millions.
Make a high end computer that's expensive? Get complaints it's too pricey compared to a PC made in its millions.

Make both? Get complaints that the low end one is too slow AND the high end one is too expensive.
And then when you offer free shipping, get complained at for "spamming" when a sysadmin posts the news.

Reading this sort if thread, I do sometimes wonder why A-Eon and Amigakit bother (trust me, it's not for the money, given the size of the market), but I and many others are very glad they do.

[spirantho]

. What I would have preferred though that they did like the Mac and skipped PPC and go x86 as Mac have did and still made it a custom hardware that only run OS 4.1. Forget that I want to install OS OS 4.1 beside Windows arguement...my idea that had they skipped PPC and did a custom x86 that cost for manufacturing of expensive CPU which ranges anywhere from 600 to 1000 per CPU would drop the price of the computer from say 3300 to 2300. Bare in mind even modern consoles are going through this route for reason of cost efficiency and easy programming. A CPU IS A CPU....no matter what type of CPU you go...be it AMD, Intel, PPC, 68k, 6502, whatever it is...they all do one and same thing...calculation and execution

That's incorrect, though. CPUs are all different, that's why they went PPC in the first place (same with Apple). Apple went x86 after 10 years or whatever as PPC because they had no choice, they were unable to keep up with PCs' power and it was losing them marketability. Unlike AmigaOS, MacOS had the resources available to do a complete architecture change. We didn't, and still don't. They also were able to convince their fans that BSD with a shiny surface was the Next Big Thing because it was called MacOS X.

Different CPUs have different strengths and weaknesses. Look at Itanium several years ago with x86 - it was very fast in certain areas and completely useless everywhere else. Power chips from IBM are similar, but better - but you wouldn't put one in a console, for instance, because they're designed for servers.

The big reason for not going x86 was endianness. AmigaOS 4 uses AmigaOS 3 as a basis to allow backward compatibility. With x86 this couldn't happen, as AmigaOS 3 binaries would just crash because of the different endianness. To go x86 required a completely clean slate (such as what AROS had) which is why AROS relies on JanusUAE for its legacy compatibility, and that wasn't the objective, which was to update AmigaOS, not replace it.

This is why we use PPC and we can't go x86 - to do so means writing off the entire basis of what AmigaOS 4 is:  an update of AmigaOS.

[spirantho]

I agree with you persia...I thought 4.x is not backward compatible at all and that it relies on UAE just AROS does. Am I confused?

I do wonder how much of this forum's hatred of AmigaOS 4 is based on misinformation (no offence intended, please don't take any!).

AmigaOS 4 has an excellent level of compatibility with OS3 apps and always has had. Some really badly written programs don't work, of course, as AmigaOS 4 is deliberately less tolerant of bad coding that just happens to work (stuff like writing to bad pointers), but I regularly run OS 3 programs on my OS4 machines with no problem at all - just as if they were OS 4 native.
The JIT 68K emulator, called Petunia, is incredibly fast and very compatible, but if you need to disable it for some reason it's easy to disable by blacklisting a program, so it runs using the normal interpreted emulator. You can, for instance, run PC-Task on an AmigaOS 4 machine. I've done that before.

AmigaOS 4 does also come bundled with RunInUAE which means right out of the box you can double click on an ADF and have the game come up (it even comes with the Kickstart ROMS legally supplied). If you run a 68K program with RunInUAE running, you can choose to run in UAE or in the AmigaOS 4 environment.

Sorry - that post sounds like an advert There is a heck of a lot of work gone into the backward compatibility, though, and they deserve praise. If they'd gone x86, we'd all be forced to use UAE for OS3 apps, and that can be a right pain, especially if you need to do it in a script...

Edit: Just as an example, when I wanted to add IPF image support to my Catweasel disk image writer, I didn't have access to the IPF library source. I just made an interface file so that AmigaOS 4 could use it natively, and my PPC AOS4 program could then use the 68K OS3 library just as if it were an OS4 library.

[spirantho]

I don't think they went through the entire aminet to make that list!
That list mostly says what apps do NOT work. not what does.

This is precisely the kind of misinformation I'm talking about, giving people a completely inaccurate view of what OS 4 is actually like.

[spirantho]

Exactly. OS4 is not as compatible with OS3 as OS3 is - obviously If you rely on something that doesn't exist as an OS4 program, then ask an OS4 user if it works (but make sure the person answering your question has actually tried it!).
If you just want a neat little machine, though, the Sam440 is an excellent starting point... just remember its limitations and don't expect to run HD video on it - you need the much more expensive X1000 for that.

Personally, I find my Sam fits perfectly next to my A4000 - neither will replace the other, they complement each other very nicely.

[spirantho]

I wouldn't recommend an X1000 either for a first OS4 machine. As there's no easy way of testing it for free, the Sam 440 is an excellent way of seeing if you like it.

Question is this, until OS4 is running SMP out in the wild, why bother with any multi-core CPU computer unless you are directly developing OS4 SMP for it?

Because it's still the fastest machine out there by some margin, even in single-core mode. It's a little annoying that the X1000 has another core unused for now, but it's hardly a show-stopper.

I believe the X1000 as much as anything else was a platform for the OS devs to make SMP on - after all, it'd be rather difficult to make OS4 support two cores without any multi-core hardware to run it on!

[spirantho]

You can get a Sam440ep board for less than a 68060 accelerator, and a heck of a lot less than a CS-PPC (which is not primarily an OS4 board)...

Like any other hobby, Amiga can be expensive but only if you choose it to be. If you want to get by on a shoestring budget, you can do so - and you can do that with OS4 just as with OS3... in the same way as you can use a 1200 with an 030 and have a good OS3 experience, so you can have a Sam440 and have a good OS4 experience - and neither is really expensive.
However, if you want a PCI-equipped PPC/68060 A4000 you won't get much different in price from an X1000.