What If It Wasn't PPC

[dammy]

If AI went against the idea of using PPC, but went with a mobile friendly arch, where would they be today?   Could we be busy trying to purchase a new generation aPhone this Xmas?

Dammy

[dammy]

Isn't that what they were trying to do with AA?

That was just a over grown graphics layer.  Like anyone needed more bloatware.

Dammy

[dammy]

I used to ponder what would have happened if Amiga Technologies had not wasted time with the walker, restarting the A1200/A4000, but instead spent that time and money porting AOS to the ARM, with a built in 68k emu... It would have been dog slow at the time... But we would be in a much better position now...

Probably would have been best if they went half way with the Dragonball series and then jump to the ARM core Dragonball MX series.  If AT would have know of the potential Dragonball's  road map that is.

Bet AT could have made some decent money with a wireless "aTablet."

Dammy

[dammy]

Nowhere. Without full OCS or AGA compatibility it would have been yet another fiasco for Amiga Technologies. It was the custom chips which made Commodore-Amiga successful.

For a mobile device, it ECS/AGA compatibility wouldn't have been needed, at least not initially.  If they had gotten a base model out and released a decent SDK, we would have many ports as we see to day for OS4/MOS/AROS.  With a jump to the more modern DragonBall MX, EUAE integration would have been option.

On the other hand Amiga Technologies never had resources to enhance Amiga in any way. They had only one employee: Petro Tschytschenko. Amiga Technologies was always "dead" company with few ideas with even fewer resources.

No more so then Hyperion's two people, now just Evert, have done with OS4.  Except Petro would have demanded more code and all of it being on time, or else.

Dammy

[dammy]

Which magic in ia32 and amd64 are you thinking about ?

Does quad core with direct connect architecture for under $200 USD count?

Dammy

[dammy]

by itix on 2008/11/29 15:48:24

And not to forget... HP released their OS 3.5 in 1999. That was quite late, wasnt it? Now how long it would have taken to port the OS to another CPU? We have got real life example...

We certainly do. It took Dr.Schulz about seven months, doing it part time (full time job, wife with newborn plus two very young children) to port AROS to SAM440, and that was a crap load of stuff being ported or fresh code.  Had he been full time at it, I bet he could have done it in less then 12 weeks.

Dammy

[dammy]

Its not about PPC beeing any better than ARM or x86. All I say is that Amiga alike operating systems should stay on PPC. In this way AmigaOS 4 or MorphOS can create communities which promotes for what they use to others. On x86 MorphOS or AmigaOS 4 would just vanish into nothing like BeOS.

IIRC, BeOS had the biggest increase in number of users and developers when they went to x86.  BeOS management, OTOH,  :roll: Arch is meaningless TBH, it's about the OS that matters.

Dammy

[dammy]

I haven't been keeping up on PPC, so forgive this if it sounds dumb, but isn't the cell processor multiple PPC cores?

Single PPC core with SPEs, see Wiki. Not very impressive for a desktop CPU (no OoO processing) and using a PS3 would be gimped by Hypervisor.  Which is why the thread if AOS went to another arch, where would we be now?  aPhone?

Dammy

[dammy]

by itix on 2008/11/29 19:49:51

Quote:

    Quote:


        And not to forget... HP released their OS 3.5 in 1999. That was quite late, wasnt it? Now how long it would have taken to port the OS to another CPU? We have got real life example...


    We certainly do. It took Dr.Schulz about seven months, doing it part time (full time job, wife with newborn plus two very young children) to port AROS to SAM440, and that was a crap load of stuff being ported or fresh code. Had he been full time at it, I bet he could have done it in less then 12 weeks.



AROS is written portability in mind. OS 3.1 wasnt and according to an interview of Olaf Barthel it seems that it was quite mess:

They could have easily used AROS code for their own as MOS did.  Then there is AFA, there is no reason why the project couldn't have been done by a couple of great coders in a very reasonable time period. Ben and Evert already had a deal with Olaf for the source code and they pitched a six month time period so they had to know the status of the source code for a port project for a contract with AI.

Now given the capabilities of portable devices of that time period, why couldn't it have been done in a pretty tight time period?

Dammy

[dammy]

by itix on 2008/11/30 4:10:27

Quote:


    They could have easily used AROS code for their own as MOS did. Then there is AFA, there is no reason why the project couldn't have been done by a couple of great coders in a very reasonable time period.



Maybe Amiga Technologies was just badly managed.

AT wouldn't have been involved, it would have been AI since they were the ones authorized a PPC port.

Quote:


    Now given the capabilities of portable devices of that time period, why couldn't it have been done in a pretty tight time period?



Who would have done that and who would funded that project?

I couldn't tell you back then who would have had the skill to do it, but there certainly some great talent out in the Amiga community that could have done it.  AI had funding back then, they could have easily thrown some of funding from all the millions they burned through on a couple of decent coders to do the port, in house.  They had Ray at the time, he could have been their internal project manager or just done a bounty.

Dammy

[dammy]

I think the results would have been the same as they are now. Amiga in the bin and Amiga developers -- including Ray Akey -- left unpaid.

I'll disagree as there were probably a good 100,000 amiga users back then.  If a quarter bought the new product and AI got $50 before any upgrades, that $1.25M may have kept AI alive and employees, like Gary P, in health insurance.

Dammy

[dammy]

Sure, with a different AI things might have been different, or do you really think they were ever competent enough to succeed?

If the Sheep Lord didn't have a a hand in it, maybe. If Ray was the project manager, it could have successful IMO.  Key would have been something people could see a future for and getting the product out within six months, not six years like OS4.

Anyhow... doesn't really matter, and didn't you move on already? It's hard to let go I guess

I moved on from AROS, not the Amiga community.

Dammy

[dammy]

Ha! Only if a quarter of Amiga users bought new Amiga in 1993...

By the time line I'm speaking of, I would have bought a new Amiga from AI.  I held out as long as I could before going x86.  Especially if the plan going forth was calling on devices about the same price but jumping in capabilities year after year.  Guess I should have jumped on Amithlon when I had the chance.

Dammy

[dammy]

by Gebrochen on 2008/11/30 22:23:57

Honestly, we all like you being on here with your lovely viewpoints.

I'm sure.

But, er, whyis it then, that my 3700+ amd 64 Athlon with 1.5 Ghz ram cannot burn something on XP while trying to run two games (simple games) at once and winamp??

Ever thought it could be it's a issue with your OS and not the hardware?

Dammy

[dammy]

by terminator4 on 2008/12/1 2:56:33

This isn't an issue/option (I honestly can't understand the yapping on this here). OS4 is done on PPC. Took 6 years to get there, and I doubt all developers got paid for it (amiga platform has always been a labor of love). To leave PPC is not an option, regardless of technology today, unless you are rich enough to hire developers full-time. And even then, why throw away all the effort that went into it. And I'm talking about someone rich enough with more than $100 million to invest in a company & business plan to sustain the development... and at the end is there room for another platform? (Apple has done well with their gadgets, not so much with their desktops)

OS4 is one of many Amiga-like OSs out there.  I'm not expecting the final out come of AI vs Hyperion to come out well for OS4 TBH.  Had someone smacked Sheep Lord over the head numerous times with a smart stick, he might have seen the light that PPC was going to be a dead end for desktops. Thankfully, there are several Amiga-like OSs out there that can be ported, regardless what the jury decides on.

As for Apple, I haven't seen any negative impact since they went Intel on their sales numbers, have you?

Dammy