Registering Interest for AmigaOne X1000

[takemehomegrandma]

How much does the X1000 retail for ?

This much:

[takemehomegrandma]

@ takemehomegrandma

Isn't that an image of a PowerMac G4?  Weren't those about $3000 USD new?

Who knows, who cares, they cost about $25-$250 now, mostly seem around the $100 mark, give or take. And redrumloa just got a cheap CPU replacement for his, probably putting it among the fastest PPC *migas available now...

What is an A1X1K?

Try to figure it out! (Hint, it's a short for the name of the machine the topic is about )

Don't confuse him with facts or we are likely to get more graphs and diagrams based on false logic and tall tales.

Sorry, can't help you there...

[takemehomegrandma]

So you're comparing two debatably over-priced items (when new), but to try and validate your point about price

It's really not very complicated at all mikeymike, the only relevant comparison for anyone thinking of buying a NG system *today*, are what options are available *today* (not a decade ago, not a decade into the future when/if OS4 finally supports the HW fully)! I'm talking about hardware availability, hardware price, hardware performance, hardware quality, what features the OS has, what Amiga Standards (like MUI, Poseidon, CGX, etc) the OS has, the performance of the OS, the level of Amiga compatibility in the OS, the stability of the OS, etc. Learning things like this, might help you make a well educated purchase decision, *not* having access to this kind of info may lead to people being fooled to buy a $3,000+ system while being of the wrong impression that it would be the only or the best alternative. Knowledge is good!

you're comparing a second-hand approx. ten year old Mac with a brand-new X1000.

The motherboard design may be new, but the core PA6T was created in 2005 to be ready for laptops in 2007, but got shelved after Apple went x86 and bought PA Semi for the competence and pulled the plug on the PPC things, so it's at least half a decade old technology, aimed for mobile/power saving applications, and all this clearly shows in benchmarks.

[takemehomegrandma]

The topic is...
"Registering Interest for AmigaOne X1000".

Why this über-sensitiveness about topics all the sudden? Judging by your über-strict views on topic-discipline, only post #2 was on topic (since it was Darrin "Registering Interest for AmigaOne X1000", which by your definition would be the only posts allowed), and *every single* subsequent post was off topic, including yours! If that would have been the only thing allowed, then you could as well lock this thread and let it fall back into the history. But reading the topic in a more common-sense/humane way, it could be construed as a discussion about another upcoming batch or A1X1K might be on its way and people who would be interested in it should act now. Naturally discussions about price, availability etc will comes up, and can be discussed, all on topic. I find the A1X1K price to be almost criminally high, especially when looking at the alternatives available, so when someone asked for the price, I made that picture illustrating what it costs compared to the alternatives, and also what you get for your money when it comes to performance. A picture says more than a thousand words, sorry you didn't like it, but there is no reason for you to play the "off-topic-crybaby" card. This is a discussion board, meant for discussions...

[takemehomegrandma]

why do you care so much about something that you clearly have no intention of buying

I'm providing a critical view in a community where criticism aren't allowed, consumer awareness about better alternatives in a community with a long tradition of shifting semi-functional products to gullible trade mark followers at an overprice, and rational thinking in a community where all rationality and logic seemingly left over a decade ago. "The usual suspects" always come moaning abou this, as we see in this thread as well.

Let's look at the "provocative" picture again, that made some of them cough their Kool-Aid all over their Boing-Ball branded keyboard from Amigakit:



What provokes them aren't the fact that this is roughly how many (depending on your search abilities) PPC NG computers you can get for *the same* amount of money as one single A1X1K system. No, what provokes them is the fact that someone has the nerve to actually point this out!

Is the A1X1K really better and faster? Not really, at least not by a great deal, it's roughly the same. To *really* illustrate the madness: For $3,000 (which is an obscene, almost provoking, amount of money for a computer in itself), you can actually get *30* fully working systems, each about on par with the A1X1K. You can use one, keep a second one for spare parts or whatever, and *give away* 28 machines (twenty-eight!) to developers or 68k users that may be curious to take the "NG Step". TWENTY-EIGHT people could have been provided a NG machine, after you have set up one (and having a spare), all at roughly the same speed as the A1X1K.

Another example - There was a community initiated effort (bounty on power2people collecting money for it) of involving bPlan (maker of Pegasos and other high-quality HW) to design a new desktop motherboard based on the 8610, one of the (if not *the*) fastest G4's ever made. It was a multi-step bounty, with a money sum that seemed incredibly high for a bounty system. But it would have resulted in a very capable and totally open source and community owned design, and it would have had a sponsored development program with free HW as well (as we have seen from other Genesi/bPlan HW launches). The irony is that all this would have taken was some 20-30 buyers of the A1X1K placing their money towards that instead. That's how excessively obscenely über-expensive the whole A1X1K deal is, without bringing much to the table beyond what a PowerMac/MacMini/PowerBook can do.

Billyfish, I will keep enlighten the world about things like this, about the alternatives you can choose instead. Don't like this? Well, too bad...

[takemehomegrandma]

Where are you getting your "20-30" buyers numbers from, TMHG?

20 is the bounty divided by $3,000 (I wrote 30 to cover all eventualities since I can't remember whether the bounty was in Euro or Dollars, or the exact bounty target for that matter).

[takemehomegrandma]

So no, youre not "informing people", youre doing damage and making the amiga scene appear as screwed up as it really is.

I simply pointed out the obvious lunacy in trying to shift 2007 level HW at $3,000 a piece (by showing what you can get as an alternative), and then you get upset with *me* for making things "look crazy", instead of being upset by the craziness itself! :crazy: Yeah...  :lol:

Buying ONE A1X1K for $3,000, or buying THIRTY computers of roughly A1X1K performance for the same amount of money, or buying one computer at 1/30th of the cost — It's a free world and people with no respect for moneys value are free to make a $3,000 bonfire if they think it's a smart thing to do (I don't however, and in this free world I reserve the right to suggest to them how the money could be better spent). Don't blame *me* for "making the amiga scene appear as screwed up as it really is", I was merely pointing out alternatives to $3,000 bonfires. Everyone with a brain sober enough from Kool-Aid will see the screwed up situation in the first option (or even the first *two* options), and only those who don't can possibly be "provoked" by my picture anyway...

[takemehomegrandma]

Piru, i agree with this completely. But it's still an apple therefore it is crap. I use Mos on a MacMini and i can't stand the thing...

The Mac Mini is just slightly bigger than an Efika in a case (or slightly bigger than a CD, meaning *tiny*!), it's virtually noiseless, it has a built-in optical device etc, perfectly adequate graphics, it's way more powerful than any AmigaOne from Eyetech, any Pegasos, any Sam 440 or Sam 460 (meaning, it's much more powerful than anything that any "NG" folks traditionally has had to live with during the last decade), it's very cheap, it runs MorphOS very nicely (it plays x264 720p HD streams in SW), and you "can't stand the thing" because... it was *originally* made by Apple (even though you don't use MacOS on it now)? I'm curious, surely there must be some other reasons, or are you really *that* irrational?

[takemehomegrandma]

Don't forget about i (eye) pollution! Everytime i look at the thing i want to puke!

That's a matter of opinion I guess. When it comes to the Mini's design, my biggest (and only) grudge against it, is that the power button is in the back. I usually like to have a power button and a reset button both on front. But that's a minor thing anyway, and otherwise I find the Mini to be quite beautiful, with clean lines, a nice set of colors, etc. I think it's a perfect design (or had been if the power button hadn't been in the back)!

Also the sound is crap from the 3.5mm output because of interference

Sound could be better, I agree. It works fine, but could definitely be of a bit higher quality.

and leopard is as slow as a GIANT snail. It is also noisy because of that stupid optical drive.

You should really use Tiger on the Mini. And eject the disk when you are not using it...

[takemehomegrandma]

take into account X1000 has dual core CPU that is yet to be used, much faster RAM, R700 video chip with a ton of VRAM, much more and is quite expandable board, especially when onboard drivers will be done. Board also supports 8GB RAM I believe, so might drive OS4 to brake its own limits in many, many ways (from RAM barreir, SMP, XMOS support, RadeonHD drivers ...)

Yeah, it's always this "is yet to be used", "might", "future", yada, yada. Anyone knowing Hyperion, should really know by now that they love to sell unhatched chickens with great promises, long before the chickens are hatched. Sometimes it turns out in the end that the eggs never was laid, and never will be. Was the Micro A1 GX ever sorted out/fully supported? The driver situation on the Sam? Back in 2009, when the performance of OS4 and MorphOS 2.3 was compared on exactly the same HW, the reactions from "the red side" was a lot like what you wrote in the quote above; "It's unfair because it's not optimized, 3D will be better", etc, etc. Yada, yada. It never was, 3D is AFAIK pretty much the same, and here you are, cheering for new 3D technologies when Hyperion haven't even shown they can really support the old ones yet. Will you *never* learn I ask myself?

And then you write about SMP, Memory Barrier, etc, etc — lots of stuff that's completely incompatible to Amiga per se. Well, none of this is here, only more promises of more unhatched chickes. Things like true SMP, true MP, removal of the memory barrier/true utilization of the 64bit architecture is nothing you do easily on Amiga. In fact, it can't be done without breaking the "Amiga" part of the OS. And since this *will* require a clean-slate break from the Amiga legacy anyway (it must happen if you decide to go there), with a clearly defined border line marking the "before" and "after", the seemless "Amiga compatibility" with old Apps scrapped post that line, starting anew, I must ask the question:

At that point, why continue the PPC path at all? If you are to break the "Amiga" anyway, why not do it on some *other*/BETTER architecture? Performance wise, and from a desktop Point of View, x86 is much more attractive. Isn't a platform migration the natural thing to do at that point? There is no "Power" in PowerPC, not in the year 2012 and beyond! ARM and/or x86, but not PPC!

Isn't the $3,000 A1X1K *the worst possible* path to go if your goal is to introduce those things into the OS? After sacrificing the Amiga compatibility as we know it, you may (after long hard work) have reached the goals, but then you are *still stuck* on a dead platform, completely without viable motherboards, since there hasn't been any viable desktop motherboards manufactured since Apple dropped out of the PPC architecture half a decade ago, and there never will be! It would be AROS, but without any option of good hardware. You will have your platform chained to a sinking block of concrete. And you think that at $3,000 the concrete block should at least be gilded or something, but it isn't, it's just plain nothing out of the ordinary, old boring concrete from 2007, but it will drown your platform nevertheless...

(BTW: If you think this is going off topic, please feel free to direct your replies to this thread, which is entirely devoted to this issue, maybe by commenting post #4)

[takemehomegrandma]

this is no cheap hobby

It seems the hobby of you people is basically destroying good money...?

if you really want a cheap Amiga ng type of experices then I would personally recommend getting an old pc and installing Aros on it, not a PowerMac.

It would be interesting to hear how you can even compare MorphOS to AROS like they would be playing in the same league?

[takemehomegrandma]

you are my king. How can anyone compare with your knowledge. You play in another league too...

Instead of making pointless grumpy posts that just increases the noise, why not try to answer the question instead? (Edit) By "recommending getting an old pc and installing Aros on it, not a PowerMac", you are solely focusing on x86 hardware *for the sake of it*, totally neglecting the differences in features of the two OS's, which probably is the most important variable of them all for the user experience and *usability* at all. "An old PC" is hardly any cheaper than an old PowerMac, and if it's the user experience you want (i.e. really being able to *use* it as an Amiga), then MorphOS is the one NG solution that has the most to offer...

[takemehomegrandma]

because when you say Morphos is unbeatable and everywhere the best (Gallium?, poseidon is from Aros?, TCP is ArosTCP?, support of different processors?, drivers?, can be combined with Linux?, running on modern hardware? ...) what should we discuss?

I fail to see what point you are trying to make? Do you think the ties between MorphOS and AROS is unknown to anyone? MorphOS has used (and also returned them to AROS in an evolved state) some AROS components over the years, but what has that to do with anything? (And I won't bother commenting the factual errors there...)

[takemehomegrandma]

This thread is (was) about X1000

Indeed it is!

[takemehomegrandma]

So based on this post can you understand why people who are interested in getting an OS4 machine are a bit confused when you recommend a PowerMac on a AmigaOS4 related thread.

Not at all, that was settled in the original post already, everyone really interesting in getting an A1X1K knows exactly how to proceed from reading that single post!

Anyone wanting to *learn more* however, to hear more than a single view on the HW (the "impartial" view of the seller), etc, is free to proceed reading the rest of the thread. And since $3,000 is far from a trivial amount of money, I think it's only fair to (as a complement) point out what you can actually get as an *alternative*, i.e. a system with roughly the same performance, running an OS with more and better features, better Amiga compatibility, higher stability, etc, for 1/30th of the asking price in the original post. It's a free world, if you absolutely want an A1X1K and have a pile of money that you stumble upon every time you walk into the kitchen, then there is nothing stopping you. But *maybe* you'll rethink and chose the other way, ending up with a *more competent* system overall, while still having some $2,800 left in the bank (depending on how much you "pimp" the HW)? I can think of *many* ways to use some left-over $2,800 personally, as I think most people can...

I get it that you don't like this, you have made it more than obvious...