AOS4 & Amigaone

[Seehund]

Tigger wrote:

I would agree with you except for one thing, Ben works/worked for Hyperion, and Ben bragged about writing the contract.  If one of your directors writes you a bad contract, and you sign it, saying its not your companies fault is an incorrect premise in my belief system.

I agree with that reasoning. I should have written "the developers which I've seen speaking on the matter" instead of just "Hyperion".

[Tigger]

Paul wrote:

Everything you so conveniently blame on the Articia isn't even because of the Articia. THe sound has been traced to a problem in the Via southbridge and is now fixed in AHI.

Sorry Paul, I'm not wrong, as has been pointed out by me, and half a dozen others who actually design hardware for a living half of the things that Eyetech blame the Via chip for, don't even go through the southbridge.  It would be more correct to blame Paula for a blitting problem on a classic Amiga then it would be to blame the southbridge for most of the issues on an AmigaOne, we finally even have Ben fessing up to that, so lets get out of the backpedal to blaming Via again.

On the other hand, you're claim that there will be no more manufactured is rumour and conjecture, like so much else that you write.

Chips are EOL, what exactly do you think they are going to do about that??  Alan basically said he wasnt going to make more in his interview months ago.  What exactly do you think is going to happen in this situation.
 

But I do know this: As a complet Linux newbie, I had my A1 up and running and taking care of my email and web surfing from day one. I played around a litle with GIMP and Abiword. I think it took about four months from delivery before OS4 pre1 was released. I didn't know I was suposed to turn off DMA until about the last three weeks of Linux use. I didn't have any trouble even with DMA on. . .  Not even while I was online.

Which means you didnt use anything that used DMA, or you didnt really have DMA on, because the DMA problem is there, thats not my opinion, thats the opinion of everyone who uses the chips, that even Hyperion's opinion now, thats why they fixed there driver to cover the problem, thats why the Terrasoft people didnt sell the board, thats why all the Linux builds abandoned the board, you think they are all wrong and you are right??

So, after all this long rambling, I can only say that Tigger is taking some known flaws and making mountains out of molehills. Tkae his rant with a grain of salt.

No Tigger is pointing out that the current OS4 hardware has flaws and isnt currently being manufactured, thats all true.
    -Tig

[Tigger]

MskoDestny wrote:
Done seems to be a rather arbitrary metric at the moment. It seems that OS4 is complete enough that Hyperion can declare it done whenever they feel like it. Besides more 3D drivers, I don't particularly see what's not done at the moment.

Its not my metric though, its Hyperions.  Hyperion constantly says they are not done yet.  I personally believe thats a business decision, because once they are done, they have lots of checks to write, as long as its "not done yet", they dont have to, and plus if something isnt working they can go on that its not done yet, and its unfair to compare us to xxx, because we arent dont yet.  Right now, completing OS4 would be a huge financial burden to Hyperion, they can't sell anymore because there is no hardware, but they owe CDs to 1000 users (I believe final CDs are going to be shipped right), plus money to all the developers, and may owe money to AI and/or Eyetech.   So we aren't going to see OS4 done, until they can make money selling it, and I unfortunately think that means new hardware, not already available hardware (ie Macs).
    -Tig

[Waccoon]

Mangar:  Why are the developers of AOS4 tying the OS to specific hardware. This is how the Amiga got in this mess in the first place by not allowing Amiga-Compatible computers.

I guess they're trying to mimic Apple, but with little success.  Apple stays in business by selling apps, services, and other goodies with their computers, not just hardware and a raw OS.

Hyperion also mentioned piracy as having a major role in the decision.  By avoiding x86, the likliness of getting OS4 running on unlicensed hardware is less.  Of course, any platform developer will tell you that by restricting the volume, you almost guarantee that critical mass cannot be reached.  Everyone pirates Photoshop and Flash, yet, these are the kind of world-standard applications that drive the Internet.

Let's face it.  Flash is the greatest media format invented so far this century.  It runs on anything, and far, far better than Sun ever promised Java could.  It includes a good scripting system that may evolve into a real programming language, and it's only a matter of time until Macromedia adds 3D graphics to replace all those "fake" 3D tools people have already been using for years.

Mangar:  They could make a lot more money off the OS than with hardware. Palm realized this when they started to license their OS to Sony and other PDA manufacturers.

Again, I find it amusing that Hyperion is looking towards other PPC platforms to make money.  OS4 may be lean on resources while operating, but it's also lean on capabilites.  My brother-in-law works on Java-powered cell phones, and I can tell you right now that OS4 doesn't have a chance breaking into markets where such a low-porformance, resource-hungry platform like Java running on Linux is making an explosion.

Interoperability is more important than resources, and always has been.  Make a 200GB hard drive, and software developers will find a way to fill it up.  Apple makes an OS that has a 12 Gig installation and runs poorly with less than 512MB of RAM, and people are buying in excess of "1,000 a day."

Seehund:  As for AInc, they don't seem to have given a {NRRRT!} about AmigaOS when they accepted Eyetech's compulsory licensing idea

Why bother with a new AmigaOS when intent already runs fine on Linux?

Seehund:  Officially AInc do claim to welcome new hardware vendor licensees. In reality, everyone who so far has enquired and even negotiated (even to the point of a missing signature on the licensing agreement!) has been ignored or eventually turned down.

When I bought my SDK, I found it impossible to contact Amiga Inc. to register.  After a month, I gave up.

This was about the same time their phones were shut off.  :-)

Tigger:  If one of your directors writes you a bad contract, and you sign it, saying its not your companies fault is an incorrect premise in my belief system.

I feel this way about the hardware issue.  If everyone had tested things more thouroughly first, or bought from a reputible manufacturer, maybe these problems wouldn't have been so severe.

That's the way it is in small, proprietary markets, as my experience with using Kodak photographic workstations shows.  $5,000 for a 400Mhz dual-Xeon workstation with striped SCSI drives, which is less powerful than my $1,000 single-CPU 2.4Ghz P4 with a Western Digital SATA drive?  Oh, please -- enter the 21st century!  Also, that workstation price is only for the hardware, not the additional $35,000 software license, which was based on WinNT 4 (the company claims their software wouldn't even run on Win2000).

Tigger:  Sorry Paul, I'm not wrong, as has been pointed out by me, and half a dozen others who actually design hardware for a living half of the things that Eyetech blame the Via chip for, don't even go through the southbridge.

While I haven't bothered to research any of the causes of the AmigaOne issues, I can say that it's all too easy to blame VIA due to their reputation.  People blame VIA for hardware issues like they blame Microsoft for software issues.

Given that Mai Logic's website hasn't been updated in a long time, and has lots of b0rken links and images, it really looks like their venture into PPC chipsets hasn't gone too well.  That's all I really need to know to avoid the company.

Tigger:  ...thats why the Terrasoft people didnt sell the board, thats why all the Linux builds abandoned the board, you think they are all wrong and you are right??

Either that, or they don't want to bother.  There's other plaforms to support, now that Mai seems to be MIA.

[dbalaski]

SamuraiCrow wrote:

For a cheap AmigaOne alternative that will be out soon see the Troika website.
asking.

Hmmm   Seen the posting about the AMY'05 for a while now..
Until they have a product on the shelves,  it's vapour IMHO  
hell -- their website still doesn't have a hard price -- only speculation on it:

Q What is the price of the Amy'05 motherboard?
The price of Amy'05 is dependent upon country: local taxes, shipping etc. We released a highly cautious, conservative estimate of less than £400 in the UK . Amy'05 will be priced for high volume production and availability. We can manufacture Amy'05 in Asia, the US , or Mexico, and ship worldwide from the US or Canada. Depending on volume, hypothetically Amy'05 could retail at an estimated price of $400 US which of course would greatly reduce the price in other currencies (such as Euro or Sterling ).

I wish them all well and hope they do well.. but I am not putting too much faith in it until i see at least something more concrete.

dB The DBA

[jahc]

whoa, Tigger is on a rampage.

well, I'll just add/reemphasise (sp) these points:

1. Pegasos2 is cheaper and more highly specced than AmigaOne hardware, and is currently available

2. MorphOS and AmigaOS4 software bases are nearly identical, but with some very noteworthy exceptions such as (but not limited to) early versions of Blender, Pixel32, and soon KHTML!.. thats a good bit of software I reckon.

3. MorphOS is reputedly more compatible with older amigaos3.x software.

I have an AmigaOneXE. I wanted to go with the official direction, and I dont regret it at all. This is my first "kickass Amiga". It's the A4000 I could never afford back in 1994 and I absolutely love it.

OS4 feels very complete. The only thing I miss is AmigaInput support. Software wise, I'd love a more modern browser. The hardware has flaws here and there.. they're well known.. but they dont affect my daily usage in the slightest, which others have mentioned here.

My opinion, the MorphOS platform has the edge atm. But I enjoy OS4 nonetheless.

I know theres been a lot of political squabbling in the past, and a lot of important people in the scene may never get over it. I wont hold that against anyone. But I wish we could kiss and make up, and get OS4 going on hardware such as the Pegasos2. I know, liscenes blah blah blah. But someone somehow needs to make it happen.

In my opinion, the day of the Amiga branded computer is over. For me, anything that runs AmigaOS natively will be an "Amiga". I say "Amiga" because what defines "Amiga" is different for everyone, and I dont like to force my defination on others.

[Savan]

I am bitter because the companies involved in the AmigaONE and AOS4, have lied and stringed along the users since the very start. Despite being a user since the late 80s, i refuse to give money to anyone of those companies.

@drHirudo

It has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not somebody can or can not afford a Amigaone board, but more like people will not give money to rotten liars and cheats.

Everything in Amigaland is SOUR and the companies trying to save the Amiga and its OS are the worst of the bunch :-(

[dammy]

Everything in Amigaland is SOUR and the companies trying to save the Amiga and its OS are the worst of the bunch

Which is why I champion the Open Source version of AmigaOS.  

Dammy
TeamAROS

[drHirudo]

Which is why I champion the Open Source version of AmigaOS.

This is not a version of AmigaOS. From the site you are linking:

AROS is a portable and free desktop operating system aiming at being compatible with AmigaOS 3.1,

It's a standalone operating system aimed at being compatible with AmigaOS, but it's not AmigaOS, like MorphOS is not an AmigaOS, despite it's also AmigaOS binary compatible (at some level). They don't belong to the AmigaOS version tree.

If I write an OS for university project, which is source or binary level compatible with Windows (at some degree) would that mean that I would write a version of Windows then?

[dammy]

by drHirudo on 2005/11/6 10:54:43

It's a standalone operating system aimed at being compatible with AmigaOS, but it's not AmigaOS, like MorphOS is not an AmigaOS, despite it's also AmigaOS binary compatible (at some level). They don't belong to the AmigaOS version tree.

Of course it's not AmigaOS, that's owned by someone else.  It is a open source version of AmigaOS and even MOS is based on AROS.  That does not make it a foriegn OS, but a very fimliar one to all of us who have owned Amigas over the  years.  No where did I say that AROS should be in Hyperion's CVS, but Hyperion is free to do so, if they so wished, since it is under a open source license.

If I write an OS for university project, which is source or binary level compatible with Windows (at some degree) would that mean that I would write a version of Windows then?

Sure.  I would say that is a drHirudo version of windows then.  Wether you open source it or not is another matter.  

Have I connected enough dots for you, or do I need to go into further detail why AROS is an alternative to closed sourced AOS/Amiga-likeOSs?

Dammy

[wonea]

You guys don't make it easy for me!

The points I've seen are;

MorphOS looks great
Available hardware, at a price which I will buy

AmigaOS4 is the official way which I like, looks interesting.
AmigaONE is ridicously expensive, new boards will be out when AOS4 arrives if ever?  Been waiting for over a year!

AROS has a great philosophy, but highly doubt it will be finished for a couple of years

[Tomas]

wonea wrote:
Why exactly is the AmigaONE twice the price of a more powerful Pegasos?  Who can afford those prices?  I want an AmigaONE.

Very good question... I personally want one too, but cannot afford it at this price. I hope the troika is not vaporware and will have a OS4 license. It will be much cheaper than the current aone according to their faq.

[Tomas]

OS4 is not done, AmigaOnes are not available and there is a good chance they won't be available again, so I think AmigaOne with its hardware flaws is a bad idea. Troika is supposed to be coming, it gets away from MAI's flawed part, so it should run better then the AmigaOnes, however the OS is still not done, why buy a computer to run an incomplete unfinished OS thats 3 years late at the moment.

But according to those who have aones, the OS4 prerelease is fully usable even now, even though it misses some features of the planned final version. If he is ok with how the pre release now runs, then why should he not want it?

[reflect]

The thing that strikes me as funny when people are comparing prices are this;

They take a commodity motherboard with equivalent or better specs, then compare the prices and come up "the A1 is overpriced!". Now, have you ever considered the other costs, apart from manufacturing?

As in, licensing/buying the schematics for the design you're going to use? Paying someone to make changes to that design .. cause, no matter what some people say, the original Teron and the A1 aren't exactly the same. They have evolved over time, and that's not cause someone was nice enough to just update them for free.

Let's take an example.. someone spends 50k USD on design. That same someone spends another 50k USD on producing 100 boards.

Now, production costs alone reach 500USD per board, but that's without counting the previous 50K USD used in design. It's also without adding the price for the operating system (let's face it, Hyperion have spent 3+ years on this and they've done a pretty damn good job). Big question is, do you support this someone spending *alot* of their hard earned cash in giving you a new platform, or don't you? Is it unfair to charge alot more than what it costs to produce? I'd say it depends on the other, hidden costs that most people don't have a clue about - often the same people handing out long rants about how boards are overpriced and obsolete.

Wake up and smell the coffee, this isn't about being state of the art, it's not about being the cheapest on the block either. It's about bringing people something so that they can run their favourite operating system.

[bloodline]

reflect wrote:
The thing that strikes me as funny when people are comparing prices are this;

They take a commodity motherboard with equivalent or better specs, then compare the prices and come up "the A1 is overpriced!". Now, have you ever considered the other costs, apart from manufacturing?

As in, licensing/buying the schematics for the design you're going to use? Paying someone to make changes to that design .. cause, no matter what some people say, the original Teron and the A1 aren't exactly the same. They have evolved over time, and that's not cause someone was nice enough to just update them for free.

Let's take an example.. someone spends 50k USD on design. That same someone spends another 50k USD on producing 100 boards.

Now, production costs alone reach 500USD per board, but that's without counting the previous 50K USD used in design. It's also without adding the price for the operating system (let's face it, Hyperion have spent 3+ years on this and they've done a pretty damn good job). Big question is, do you support this someone spending *alot* of their hard earned cash in giving you a new platform, or don't you? Is it unfair to charge alot more than what it costs to produce? I'd say it depends on the other, hidden costs that most people don't have a clue about - often the same people handing out long rants about how boards are overpriced and obsolete.

Wake up and smell the coffee, this isn't about being state of the art, it's not about being the cheapest on the block either. It's about bringing people something so that they can run their favourite operating system.

Your argument only holds true if you discount the fact that Eyetech could very easily bought a Commodity x86 board and used a Custom BIOS (for the OS 4 lock in) on it, called an AmigaONE and sold it very cheaply.

[dammy]

by reflect on 2005/11/6 14:15:16

They take a commodity motherboard with equivalent or better specs, then compare the prices and come up "the A1 is overpriced!". Now, have you ever considered the other costs, apart from manufacturing?

But that is not the consumer's problem, it's Eyetechs.  Consumers want quality for their hard earned money.  Things get even worse when the prices are far too high and quality is far too low.  Hell, it's pushed A1s into laptop pricing, and not too many people are going to spend that type of money for an OS not out of beta running on a buggy mobo.  Let alone the other items you need to buy to make the mobo/cpu into a computer.

The A1 series is a flop, get over it already.

Dammy