The Next-Gen Amiga hardware

[KingTutt]

The problem with going to x86 is the massive hurdles faced when trying to support every x86 combo under the sun. Hyperion are a small company and if they want to make their OS viable, then they will opt for a smaller number of mainboards to support. I agree with them on this part.

Of course if they had the corporate muscle of Sony or Microsoft, then they would have no reason to make such concessions. Having said that, I look at OS4 as a stopgap in having a more advanced solution, compared to the old classic Amiga line.

I don't see the point in discussing why OS4 won't go x86 or why it won't have custom chips? Its a moot point. Everyone knows that its money and market forces. So ask yourself this, will x86 survive indefinitely? Eventually there will be 64 bit computing, and believe me Intel are having big problems with maintaining native backwards compatibility. I think that in the next few short years, Intel and AMD and especially M$ will be facing the same kinds of problems Apple faced when going PPC, or what we are facing right now. The difference will be that Amiga by that time will be well and truly established on PPC. It can only get better from there on.

[KingTutt]

mdwh2 wrote:

KingTutt wrote:
The problem with going to x86 is the massive hurdles faced when trying to support every x86 combo under the sun. Hyperion are a small company and if they want to make their OS viable, then they will opt for a smaller number of mainboards to support. I agree with them on this part.

You don't have to. They can simply only support one, or a small number of x86 motherboards. You could say a similar thing for PPC, since industry standard hardware will still be used - eg, claiming that having PCI slots means that have to support every PCI graphics card under the sun, so they'd be better off with AGA or Zorro.

Actually the Scitech deal pretty much takes care of the "all the PCI cards under the sun issue", besides most people won't be using some Trident or Tseng Labs 1980s video card. And since Scitech already cater for a respectable amount of video drivers, its only fair for the OS4 user to use a video card from the list provided.

I still don't consider x86 a viable platform for Amiga. Maybe when they hit 64bit Opterons. But for the meantime there really isn't any real impetus. And then there's the question of porting already existing PPC Amiga software to x86, not to mention 68k code. That would really mess things up, quite nicely.

So in my mind, Hyperion have gone with the best choice for a niche market OS. Trying to go for the x86 platform would have undermined its interests considerably.