AmigaONE X5000 (A-Eon Technology Ltd on Facebook)

[OlafS3]

Well, one sane voice from amongst the fanatics.
Don't expect the legacy wackos to appreciate the new hardware.
Even if it can run circles around their beloved hardware, they hold tightly to their beliefs.

As to pricing, don't get your hopes up folks.

And that from someone that wants to buy not competitive PPC hardware (both price and performance). From the view of a X86/X64 user you could be called "legacy wacko" too. What do you think? And do Amigans only like hardware that is underpowered compared to the competition? :-)

"they hold tightly to their beliefs" I do not know why I think of you too...

[OlafS3]

Funny how often/much, aros/morphos users are commentic (again) hardware / os wich shouldn't interest them.

I only comment here because of certain phrases used by him that are not very nice. And to be precise Iggy is a MorphOS user praising A-eon (a mixed beast so to say :-) ).

[OlafS3]

@EverBlue,

OK, one example scenario: A-EON buys 10,000 units of off the shelf x86 motherboards without CPU at about $1m cost, which will likely be discontinued stock in 3-6 months in the PC world.

Then Hyperion takes at least 18 months to port the OS to it.

What will happen?  Will customers want an x86 board in 2 years time branded as an "Amiga" that has long since expired its shelf life in PC world terms?   Or will they accept that it?  Will be be able to sell 10,000 units?  These are the business risks that would have to be taken.

In addition to the hardware, every third party software that has been written for PowerPC AmigaOS needs to be recompiled for the new x86 ISA under AmigaOS.

You always insist on building custom boards. Why on earth when hardware is available everywhere? It makes economically no sense. Use X86 Macs like MorphOS team propably want or you have compatibility list with supported hardware. Use Linux kernel like the Arix team does. Or port it to ARM and support Raspberry. Developing own hardware makes no sense. Even Amigakit could sell custom build PCs then and earn money with it. Everything would make more sense than building "Highend" PPC based custom hardware (the problem is highend is not performance but only price).

[OlafS3]

The RPi has a huge established market (Linux and/or geek users) and is really just a cheap embedded chip on a board with a few sockets - orders of magnitude less complex than an X1000.

They knew that because the unit cost was going to be SO low, they could produce millions and they would sell, and recoup costs.
Design costs of RPi: Much, much lower.
Market size of RPi: Much, much higher.
Risk of producing 1,000,000 Rpi and taking advantage of economies of scale: Much, much lower.

Making 1,000,000 RPi = make a fortune. Making 1,000,000 Amiga boards of similar spec to X1000 = suicide.

The two cannot be compared.

Would a Amiga that would have sold like RPi not been better?

[OlafS3]

Thanks, I thought I was the only one seeing things differently here.

No you are not alone :-)

but Trevor is not interested in creating a Amiga-Market but creating his own small toys. So it will propably not happen. But the nice thing is there is one platform that is supporting X86/X64 and ARM. So people should support it where possible. MorphOS might change platform too in future, who knows. AmigaOS will not change platform because of missing money. Frieden brothers do not own the OS, they are propably contract workers/freelancers so a change would require lots of money and I do not see where they would get that. Trevor is mainly interested in his custom hardware and already invests further in new PPC hardware so I do not expect him to pay for a port.

[OlafS3]

The steady development has to be done on hardware, though - and before the X1000, the highest end Amiga was the Sam 460 which doesn't have many of the features we need to keep up (SMP being the obvious example).
There's no point in just/ throwing money at software, as the hardware will then stagnate. By providing the hardware, Trevor has allowed other people to produce the software; the other way round, though, can't happen - if Trevor were to put money into software, there'd be no hardware to take advantage of it: people can't homebrew hardware platforms like they can software.

I think people have forgotten why the X1000 exists.

The X1000 was created to allow hardcore fans of the Amiga the chance to buy really powerful (for an Amiga) hardware, and to allow Hyperion a platform on which to build new features such as multi-processing, which are a necessity in computing today. It was never meant to be accessible or to gain new users, it was meant to provide the foundation upon which future hardware boards can be made. Without the X1000, most of the advancements that have been on OS4 (which are "under the hood" so non-developers can't see them yet - but trust me they are there) would not have been possible.

We can't move forward by standing still or by concentrating on what already exists, we need to keep pushing, and that requires boards like the X1000 to exist.

As for unique software features, I don't believe that's possible - much as I'd like to. Computing is too big a field, and expectations are too high these days. The RasPi was in a different situation because the goals are much lower (the PI is just a chip on a board with a video and USB sockets really, nothing like the complete system the X1000 is) and was always designed to run Linux so it had an existing semi-mainstream software base.

"As for unique software features, I don't believe that's possible - much as I'd like to"

I think a "unique" feature would be running faster on a hardware than competition. All Amiga-successors are simpler than Linux/Mac/Windows, that is sometimes a disadvantage but that can be a advantage in regards of performance. Even if some devs (including members of the MorphOS team) claim otherwise, performance is still very important and defines what can be done with a computer.

[OlafS3]

If you do not choose a product based on one specific x86 motherboard, A-EON or Hyperion will need to commission a wide ranging development of drivers and firmware for the any supported x86 motherboard because no two x86 motherboards are alike.

The developer resources to keep pace with current x86 motherboard hardware developments would be significant, due to the short shelf life of x86 hardware.

It would be better from a practical and anti-piracy point of view to concentrate on a limited set of x86 motherboards.  Apple do exactly this.

The Linux community can support a wide range of x86 boards due to the huge pool of developers willing to write drivers and provide support for different hardware configurations.

ARIX shows that it is possible to use Linux as base for driver support. Or you use Mac X86/X64 as hardware.

And BTW on X1000 parts of the hardware are unsupported and the functionality is added by additional cards. I do not see a real difference to build a PC using compatible off-the-shelf hardware.

[OlafS3]

Absolutley no disrepect intended to AROS developers: I can imagine how much hard work it is to maintain distributions for specific systems, the key to a viable business is having a current product that is available and in demand.  AROS Devs are always reactively developing their system to x86 hardware that has hit the retail shelves already, so hardware quickly becomes discontinued.  

Despite the long time AROS has been available since late 1990's, I do not see a plethora of AROS retailers out there and a lot of AROS machines sold.  I expect the AROS team continue development from a love of the original Amiga spirit, as we all do.  However if you think that x86 Amiga is the future, why has AROS not attracted a significant market share yet?  Is it because of the pace of keeping up with x86 hardware changes?

I had contact to former Amiga developers to get permissions, many were former AmigaOS user but were not interested to spend the money for new PPC hardware and had no faith in Hyperions strategy. Sadly, they most left the market and did not change f.e. to MorphOS. Where is the "success" of current strategy. It is astonishing that such a expensive hardware sales at all but I see not that the userbase grows or will grow.

Regarding AROS I have a different view. Look at the userbase. Many have left at all, those who are still there have mostly decided for a platform a long time ago, they have their software and are mostly emotionally tied to it. And to win real new users all camps lack features. Aros with 64bit, SMP in some form, driver support by Linux, 128 GB RAM support and so on might bridge the gap.

The main problem (for all camps) to win real new users is missing software. And outside the community nobody knows that the platform is still there (no marketing)

[OlafS3]

Since ARIX isn't available or even been demoed publicly it shows nothing.

then I could say X5000 is not existing either because there is no working system shown in the public. And 4.2. is vaporware too because it is only talk.

[OlafS3]

Yes, I agree with you.  People buy computers for the software they can run on it.

That is why A-EON is developing AMIStore (an app store for AmigaOS) and the emphasis from A-EON in 2014 will be on software production, supporting the AmigaONE X1000 owners out there first and foremost and creating a base for future models such as the X5000.

There is already a app store created by phoenixconsole that supports AmigaOS, doubling it exclusively for AmigaOS does not make sense (but we have the resources sigh...).

And regards software... we will see. I only know from the port of Libre Office but it is again done by the Friedens and after the experience with Firefox I have some doubts. The problem is when you have software that is in development then it is not done with a one time port.

But as I wrote, I think Trevor does it for his own pleasure and not because he want to revive the platform. And everybody can do with his money what he likes. My personal interest is to recreate (to a certain degree) a platform that is interesting for commercial development (f.e. for small INDY developers) and I do not believe that X5000 is the right direction to get there.

[OlafS3]

Absolute nonsense.  AROS has drivers for more hardware than MorphOS and OS4 combined.

he propably means that not everything is supported. That is true (even the case on Linux) but for that you create custom build sytems using supported parts. That is already possible with Aros.

[OlafS3]

I don't know why you bring OS4.2 into it, this isn't some kind of battle of the OS'.

Olaf said that "ARIX shows that it is possible to use Linux as base for driver support.".  The point is that without ARIX being out in the wild it does not and can prove or show anything.
People have to be able to see something to be shown.  Do you understand?

they showed the concept as graphic. If you see a system booting you do not see the kernel, think of Mac using a Linux kernel (I think BSD). So it is a matter of believing :-). But I assume that we will hear more from it this year.

[OlafS3]

I've used ARIX since the middle of last year and I'm not even under NDA.

all who want to betatest it now have to sign a NDA. When I read it I thought after signing the NDA you are propably even not allowed to say that you signed a NDA :-).

It is existing but it does not look different to Aros. So even if there would be a video on youtube showing it booting people could still say it is Aros. And that is not untrue :-).

I see no reason to doubt that the concept works, otherwise why publishing the graphic. And there was a interesting discussion on amigaworld where the main kernel developer explained the concept.

[OlafS3]

   And the funny part is that many of the loudest complainers, are mos and aros fanboys. Who will never get os4.

 

And even more funny is that some of the loudest AmigaOS fanboys are not even owning it

[OlafS3]

LOL :-)

good explanation