AmigaOne based WebServers

[DaveP]

"a) you are being managed by a bunch of retards at "architecture" stage"

which may or may not be the case ;-) But what I meant to add here was that given the syntax and semantics ( the implicit contract ) of the OS exposed to application programmers are well known and well documented ( if nothing but through simulation by running OS3.9 ) that the only big concern would be whether or not Petunia works properly in this context.

[Madgun68]

Hyperion already was wrong the last time they said
that there are no bugs in Articia. So why should
somebody trust them this time?

Please! As if Genesi were innocent with that dubious "No Mai without April" FUD when they KNEW that the problems with the chipset were being corrected.

Psst - Your motives are showing.

[DaveP]

@JoannaK

www.iti.fi looks like it needs a bit of a web page update! Any customer testimonials for download? I'd like to understand your target market a bit more.

You seem to be a collection of different people probably just doing stuff that you enjoy but that is reading too much into the site ( embedded technoilogy, internet consulting ( education ), web stuff and linux support ) .

Interesting but it doesn't exactly say to me large scale pro development operation.

Don't want to sound offensive here because it is actually quite interesting - but in the context of what is being discussed and claimed by you on these forums in the assertions that I have underlined with a response recently and further back in the past - you will forgive me if I continue to ask you to back up assertions rather than take your opinion as gospel.

Good luck with it, Id like to get onto doing something that I enjoy rather than being a wage slave.

[DaveP]

@T-bone

An AmigaOne would be a crummy choice for a webserver, you can get a doorstop pentium practically free for this purpose as they litter the earth, why spend all that on an exotic piece of Amiga hardware just to run a mundane webserver that any old $0.02 discarded PC can do?

Well if you wanted to support the platform against the odds I guess ;-) I have to agree with you. The only reason my 43p is sitting there on the T1  is because the OS it runs is probably my favourite and secondly because I have a lot of SCSI devices attached to it.

If I were buying from scratch for it I would probably not buy an old mini or micro ATX PC because of the power problems trying to run so many networking cards and devices micro-ATX presents - it would probably be a second hand netfinity or something for a couple of hundred quid.

I would not personally consider the A1 SE or XE boards as a logical step up from where i am and not a logical first buy for a web server.

So... agreed.

( actually therein is a good reason to consider an ATX based board over a Micro-ATX based board - I wouldn't even be able to get all my network cards into a microATX ).

[Rogue]

JoannaK wrote:

Well.. It's good to see that there are experienced Hw professionals on making that system too. But I allways thought you at Hyperion were only supposed to do game ports, not to be specialized on designing and testing hardware?  :-D

I didn't study game porting at university. Actually, my main focus was logic minimization and operating system design. I wouldn't want to continue porting games for the rest of my life, anyway - making your own games is much more interesting :-D

I also didn't study BIOS making at university.

I consider myself a man that is capable of picking up a book or browsing some web sites and actually learn from that.

I also consider myself capable of recognizing when people actually know what they are talking about, and I most definately get this impression when talking to the techs at MAI. And contrary to most people reading here, I've already seen some AmigaOne boards...

My actual point being, these boards are under continuous testing at MAI's, so saying they are untested is rather unfair.

My actual point being, these boards are under continuous testing at MAI's, so saying they are untested is rather unfair.

and the ALI Magic chipset is constantly bieng tested by ALI... does that make it stable?


I want to see the results... unbiased... non zealous... out in the open results... that would be a good thing...

[Rogue]

zacman wrote:
Hyperion already was wrong the last time they said
that there are no bugs in Articia. So why should
somebody trust them this time?

Actually, I claimed there would be no bug in the Articia's that get delivered. That there was a bug was known. But the consumers never got these chips.

The only difference is that MAI didn't give a fancy name to a bugfix.

[Rogue]

mips_proc wrote:
and the ALI Magic chipset is constantly bieng tested by ALI... does that make it stable?

I don't get it. First people say that it is untested and hence unsuited as a web server, then you say that testing doesn't mean that it is suited for a web server? Doesn't that sound like FUD to you? Nooooo, of course not... :-D

What is the point? You will find bugs in about any hardware. That doesn't mean that the AmigaOne hardware is unsuited for a web server, as was claimed here. It means that it is equally suited to be a web server as anything else.

Results? What results? The best thing I can tell is that one test was running two web browsers under X with flash anims and some stuff in the background for about a week, without crashes, data loss, or anything else. What other "results" do you want, other than that it didn't crash or destabilize in long-term tests?

I run my kernel builds on my machine, too. I don't do backups any more frequent then on another machine, because it never crashed on my once.

[bbrv]

Actually, Hans-Jörg customers did get these chips, they were and are on every Betatester and Pegasos delivered to date – some with April and some not (we are replacing those without at no cost to our users).  We are all waiting to see what the result of Gerald Carda’s direct efforts with Mai will produce when the next Articias arrive.  In the meanwhile, we will continue to use the old Articias with April as long as supplies are still available.

For the record Madgun, we have resolved our differences with Mai, but lets be clear about something: until the “No Mai without April” announcement we never made any public statements about Articia “bugs."  Our announcement came as a result of the TerraSoft announcement which was timed in the week JUST BEFORE the launch of the Pegasos.  We knew this was a ploy and we took action with facts – which are NOW well documented and known to be accurate.

Finally, this thread is about the Amiga One (or the Pegasos) running as a web server.  We hope no one is confusing that with OS4 or MorphOS operating in that capacity.  As for MorphOS and without memory protection, we are not targeting that market -- with the Pegasos, yes, but with a different OS.  Is there a change now in the marketing plans of the AmigaOne?  Just curious…

DaveP and Joanna, it is great you have sorted that out nicely and further “qualified” yourselves.  Hopefully, your examples will give those less knowledgable pause before they rant. ;-)

Best regards,

Raquel and Bill :-)

Rogue

my point is...no company is going to say 'our stuff is buggy and unstable and unsuitable for your tasks' they have a vested intrest in selling their product...and with good reason.
thats why hardware review sites excist... because everyone 'claims' to be the best... but thats just not the case.

I would like to see a honest review of the A1 (or Pegasos for that matter) doing some common server oriented tasks...

and 'it never crashed on me once' isnt what I call a review ....

[zacman]

>Actually, I claimed there would be no bug in the
>Articia's that get delivered.

Did you already get samples of this new revision and
did test them?

[bbrv]

Lets all wait and see what happens next...;-)

R&B :-)

[Rogue]

mips_proc wrote:

and 'it never crashed on me once' isnt what I call a review ....

I wasn't trying to give one. You wouldn't believe me anyway.

[Rogue]

zacman wrote:

Did you already get samples of this new revision and
did test them?

Yes. I do have an AmigaOne XE with the latest Articia S revision here (no more fix on the board), with a rather nice selection of CPU modules (currently running the 7451@800Mhz, but I also have a 750FX and some other single and dual G4 modules).

It had been compiling stuff for hours on friday. Mostly the kernel, and one of our linux games, but over and over.

[Ami603]

@Rogue:


If you have one of these dual G4 spare module...
Remind me please. :-D:-D:-D:-D

[Casper]

I wouldn't recomend using a Pegasos or an AmigaONE as a web server if you plan to host anything more serious than a small web site. I wouldn't recomend using a desktop PC as a web server either. If you plan to use a dynamic site with a database behind it, then forget about it. They're just not up to the job. I have personal experience with how badly a desktop PC performs as a webserver, and I'm guessing the Pegasos and the A1 won't fare any better in this regard.

A decent web server should be able to support dual hot-swappable PSUs, hot-swappable PCI and hot-swappable HDs.  That way you don't have to stop your server to replace parts that break.
It should also have SCSI RAID  to be able to sustain the data transfer required, especially if you have a database. RAID is needed to use disk mirroring on two (or more) drives so that if one hard drive fails, the server will still be running.

Both the Pegasos and the A1 lack these features.

I don't know about the AtriciaS, but in standard desktop PCs the chipsets just can't handle the amount of data transfers that a decent server chipset do. I've seen a dual 600Mhz PIII server kick a 2.0GHz PIV desktop PC's behind in terms of speed when they were both used a webservers.