AmigaOne Hardware Design

[Argo]

um, it's not a custom board. It started out in its original form as a developer board for MAI, the designers of ArticaS.

[Helgis75]

That's right..:-)

[Argo]

JurassicCamper:

If they had chosen X86, we would be in basically the same boat. People would still be pissed off because they wouldn't be able to run it on their own X86 machine.

[Madgun68]

~1700 people bought Amithlon, and that is with poor marketing, high price
legal wars and so on for an emulator.

I'd bet the number of people who pirated it is much higher than those who bought it.

Let me put it this way:
What is better, 10000 copies sold and 50000 pirated, or 2000 sold and 0 pirated ?

Those figures aren't realistic. Nothing in the Amiga community is going to sell 10,000 copies.

alx wrote:
I guess that one of the main reasons that they chose PPC was that Amigas were already going that way - PPC apps for Amigas already existed, providing a better software base, and making it more familiar to existing Amigans (which is who it's aimed at).

I agree.

[ne_one]

@Madgun68

[Amithlon]

"I'd bet the number of people who pirated it is much higher than those who bought it."

You're missing the point.

Kronos is claiming that even a small percentage of an established market base is significantly larger than one that doesn't yet exist. Investing in a USD$200 software solution is likely to be more appealing than USD$1000 in new hardware.

There are 600 million PCs out there. Even if .001% of these were capable of running an x86 version of OS4 and some of these users were willing to pay for it, the install base would be huge.

[Seehund]

Madgun68 wrote:

Those figures aren't realistic. Nothing in the Amiga community is going to sell 10,000 copies.

Straying a bit from the original topic here, but whatever...

If the current Amiga users ("community" :-P ) is the sole target of AmigaOS/MorphOS, then they're dead projects. Might as well give up right now and stop wasting money. In the nonsense zealot "MOS/AOS wars" I sometimes see something along the lines of "but the market is too small to have two competitors!" You bet it's too small - but only if current Amiga users is the only intended market, and that would really be the end of it all.

By only selling a "new" little OS bundled with "new" hardware, and only when it's sold by a "licensee", and thus ignoring the rest of the "normal", "unlicensed" hardware market, you raise the bar of entry for any new users. This is patently Not Good. Your potential market is to a large extent limited to a subset of the current Amiga-users who are prepared to pay extra to simultaneously buy this hardware that's been made "special" through the distribution/licensing situation.

Hyperion is the only licensee for porting AmigaOS to "new" hardware, and they chose PPC for whatever reasons, and they seem quite stubborn about that. Likewise MorphOS seems to be PPC-only for any forseeable future. It seems like we need another developer for an Amigaish OS on cheaper, better, faster and more abundant x86 hardware. For the time being I'm keeping an eye on AROS for that. AmigaOS 4 by Hyperion and MorphOS will not run on anything else than PPC. Period. Let's just hope AInc change their minds to actually try to make the best out of the current PPC situation and allow for actual sales of AmigaOS to a broad(er) hardware and customer base - in addition to the bundled/licensed thing.

I see that JurrassicCamper brought up the tired old "but if it runs on x86 it'll have to support a bazillion different mobos". Why? What's preventing the maker of an x86 OS to publish a hardware compatibility list, clearly showing the supported hardware? And who says that it's impossible to implement and announce more and more supported hardware as time goes on (provided that there's no "hardware licensing" requirement and that there are separately sold OS copies) after the first release version of the OS? What about third party driver development? How many drivers for expansions and peripherals were made "officially" by Commodore back in the Amiga days? All this is no different from the PPC situation. "Hardware requirements: This version of AmigaOS runs on TeronCX/PX ("AmigaOne" SE/XE), Pegasos G3/G4, PowerMac QuickSilver G4, PowerBook G3 "Wall Street" and "Lombard", PowerBook G4 2002 ... ... Please see our web site for new additions to this list."

Regardless of CPU architecure you don't need to run on more hardware than you say that your product will run on!

I don't expect WinXP to run on that old home-built P90 hodge-podge from ca 1994 standing in the corner, because MS says that this is not supported. I could try and fail, but it would be my own fault and nobody would be angry at MS if I whine in forums about my failure with officially unsupported hardware. I do expect Debian to run on it without X11/GNOME/KDE, because Debian lists it as supported.

[Seehund]

ne_one wrote:

You're missing the point.

Kronos is claiming that even a small percentage of an established market base is significantly larger than one that doesn't yet exist. Investing in a USD$200 software solution is likely to be more appealing than USD$1000 in new hardware.

There are 600 million PCs out there. Even if .001% of these were capable of running an x86 version of OS4 and some of these users were willing to pay for it, the install base would be huge.

Too true. The same principle naturally applies to PPC as well. Imagine AmigaOS being ported to "New World" G3/G4 PowerMacs only.* Let's say that there are currently 2 million such machines out there. An already existing hardware base of 2 million, with a vivid second-hand market and new machines pumped out by the truckload daily. This number does naturally not equal the potential userbase, but it's a hugely better situation than only allowing bundled sales of the OS with $600 (minimum) Teron boards via only one particular distributor.
Add to the above PowerMac hardware base the licensed and unlicensed Teron boards, the Pegasos and a few more Mac/PowerBook models and there's at least some potential, unlike today's situation.

* Edit: By "only" I meant "for this example just one of the Macintoshes", not that Teron versions or anything else would/should be dropped/excluded.

[iamaboringperson]

probably the main benefit to goin ppc, is the fact that its big-endian, this will make porting the os and applications so much easier!!
especially since apps access the system structures direct
it might seem a bit trivial, but this is a good enough reason for keeping the amiga big-endian

[Madgun68]

You're missing the point.

There really is no point to this argument.

Kronos is claiming that even a small percentage of an established market base is significantly larger than one that doesn't yet exist. Investing in a USD$200 software solution is likely to be more appealing than USD$1000 in new hardware.

Quoting ~1700 copies of Amithlon sold is a piss poor way of going about it. That's a pathetic number.

There are 600 million PCs out there. Even if .001% of these were capable of running an x86 version of OS4 and some of these users were willing to pay for it, the install base would be huge.

Who's willing to do the work in the same manner as Hyperion is doing? I don't recall ANYONE offering to do the work. Unless there is someone willing to do this, all these "x86 is a better choice" discussions are pointless, because the product won't be a reality.

[Madgun68]

Hyperion is the only licensee for porting AmigaOS to "new" hardware, and they chose PPC for whatever reasons, and they seem quite stubborn about that. Likewise MorphOS seems to be PPC-only for any forseeable future. It seems like we need another developer for an Amigaish OS on cheaper, better, faster and more abundant x86 hardware. For the time being I'm keeping an eye on AROS for that. AmigaOS 4 by Hyperion and MorphOS will not run on anything else than PPC. Period. Let's just hope AInc change their minds to actually try to make the best out of the current PPC situation and allow for actual sales of AmigaOS to a broad(er) hardware and customer base - in addition to the bundled/licensed thing.

DING DING DING! We have a winner!

The whole issue about what is and isn't supported revolves around Hyperion. It doesn't really matter what can/can't be supported.. Because you aren't being offered the choice. Simple as that.

The only option you really have open is the option to either like what they offer and purchase it, or not like it and spend your money somewhere else.

[Seehund]

Madgun68 wrote:

Quoting ~1700 copies of Amithlon sold is a piss poor way of going about it. That's a pathetic number.

I don't think so, considering the circumstances that Kronos mentioned. Amithlon hasn't really been talked about or marketed outside the current AmigaOS userbase, actually I can't recall that I've seen any advertising for it even to the current AmigaOS userbase. Yet it has sold more copies than there are preorders for AmigaOS for Amigas + AmigaOS bundled with a Teron board. Those preorders and the OS+Teron bundles have OTOH been widely mentioned all over the net, on sites like Slashdot, CNet, OSNews, and so on. Sometimes it's even been described as "a new Amiga" by the more clueless "outside" journalists.

Now imagine if you had to buy a "special" PC from a "special" vendor together with Amithlon. How do you think that would have affected Amithlon sales numbers?
Or how about a properly marketed and cheaper Amithlon?

People want Cheap, Fast and Good. PPC is more expensive, slower and less abundant (these factors are dependant on eachother, but the consumer doesn't care about the "whys" so spare me the "but it's lower volumes", please. We all already know that). So AmigaOS went PPC-only anyway, as far as Hyperion is concerned at least. All we can hope for now is that what's been announced will change, so that the PPC route doesn't get EVEN MORE expensive and rare than it already is...

[Panthro]

MOAN

there are heaps of other kinds of Os for the X86 boards. :roll:

I still can't get past people not getting that it is the FIRST amiga boards, the A1 that is.... :whack:

BTW an X86 mobo is a big fat dongle so you cant
run M$ on your lurvely new A1 ...... lets all winge to M$ :roflmao:


some proly' will now :shocked:  :nervous:  :crazy:

PS lets all complain some more about how we are finally getting a new product in YEARS :rtfm: