Dave Haynie (lead engineer of C= Amiga) opinion on Amiga Successors

[Oliver]

Which has been proven untrue by A1 unit sales.  The "Amiga" market is not a financially viable market.  

Dammy

Actually, A3kOne only said it would be necessary to use the Amiga name, he didn't say it would be sufficient.  The AOne is not a product along the lines of what he was advocating.

[boing]

Interesting that Dave rightly complains  (about PegasOS box and Amiga Oee) "They're both just PCs with PPCs. Nothing more, nothing less" and yet he in effect argues for sticking the OS into x86.

...which would make it just a PC with AmigaOS, Nothing more, nothing less.

Oh and calling him "lead" C-A engineer is giving him a bit of a promotion. Dave did busses and memory controllers and processor interfacing, but what made the Amiga more than a Mac or ST was the exotic ASICS it was designed with.

[bloodline]

boing wrote:
Interesting that Dave rightly complains  (about PegasOS box and Amiga Oee) "They're both just PCs with PPCs. Nothing more, nothing less" and yet he in effect argues for sticking the OS into x86.

...which would make it just a PC with AmigaOS, Nothing more, nothing less.

You've missed the point of what Dave is saying!!! Why bother having all these cheap PC peripherals, and then connect them to an expensive underpowered CPU* via an expensive buggy north-bridge.

Just go the whole hog and get the whole system standard!

*You do realise the the G4 has remained architecturally unchanged for 6 years, just a few process tweaks to bump the clock speed, nothing more!! CPU technology has moved on... The Athlon64 and the new Intel Core chips are several generations ahead of even the best G5 (which has had little work done on it for 4 years).

[Legerdemain]

Hyperion said a long time ago that they were moving the OS to a much more portable language. It was said that porting to other architectures would be easy.

Yes... and, really, how small are the chances that they haven't tested to compile OS4 for x86 machines already? Would you have tried it if you were Hyperion? If yes, you know, they are human too...  =)

To be honest. I think that everyone that objects against AOS4 being released on x86 would change their mind the minute they would see it outperform their PPC machine. And, really, releasing it for x86 wouldn't have to mean a cancelation of the PPC releases.

[T_Bone]

bhoggett wrote:
The Amiga is a drug, This thread is proof positive if it.  :lol:




If you want to read people ranting on ad-infinitum about things they know absolutely nothing about, read an Amiga forum. Nice to see some things never change.

lol!

@thread

If I hear one more "...but the x86 has too much hardware for it, that means we'd have to support it all" comment I'll have to start knocking some heads, screaming doesn't work anymore!  :lol:

THE PPC AMIGAOS DOES NOT SUPPORT ALL PPC HARDWARE EITHER...

THEY PICKED WHAT THEY WANTED AND SUPPORTED A SUBSET. Why, oh why, oh WHY would this be any different than AmigaOS on x86?

[Waccoon]

Oliver:  If an OS seriously outperforms others on the same architecture, with a good set of features, it could really generate interest.

Performance takes experience.

Also, speed shouldn't be confused with performance.  What really matters is that it meets the needs of the customers.

What do Amigans want?  An OS that runs in 1MB of memory while every PC has 256MB minimum.  Does that make sense?

Start loading some *real* software on OS4, and watch the system bog down in a hurry.  Start trying to get OS4 to do things like Windows, and watch the bloat pile up in a hurry.

God, I am so mad QNX was turned down.  At least that was a *real* OS, made by people who have been doing it for years, and know how to keep bloat under control.

Boing:  ...which would make it just a PC with AmigaOS, Nothing more, nothing less.

PC hardware today is nothing like PC hardware when the Amiga was in its prime.

Amiga Custom Chip = GPU

C'mon.  Even game consoles are based on PC hardware these days, albiet with all the useful, high-level stuff stripped out.

T_Bone:  THE PPC AMIGAOS DOES NOT SUPPORT ALL PPC HARDWARE EITHER...

Thank you.  People just can't get it into their heads that an x86 OS is not legally required to support 50 different chipsets dating back to 1990.

PICK ONE NOW!  Pick another in two years!  There's plenty of them!

Sheesh.  People don't know what they want.  A realistic development philosophy and new interface guidelines whould be nice.

THEY PICKED WHAT THEY WANTED AND SUPPORTED A SUBSET. Why, oh why, oh WHY would this be any different than AmigaOS on x86?

Because x86 = Windows.  Windows is evil, therefore, x86 is evil.  EVIL I SAY!

So evil, Macs will be using it, soon.

Unfortunately, the PC industry as we know it is dying, and Amiga is convinced that they have to move to PDAs and cell phones to survive.  Just more gadgets, really.  No "Amiga" in sight.  Just "content delivery," as opposed to "having fun making your own content."

[Nitro]

Why should OS4 be ported to x86?  I think AROS has came along way.  Anyone who feels they must have an AmigaOS on x86 can use it.  It`s open source, Aros users are all for people helping to develope it.  It may one day be better than OS4.  They choices are all ready in front of everyone.  It doesn`t have a big AMIGA sticker on it.  Dave is a legend no dought about that, but alot of people have worked hard over the past years to try to keep things going.  If all the "neo-Amiga" companys said, the market is too small it`s not worth it for us to do it, we would still be sitting around with 3.1 installed.  No new hardware, no new software.  This topic has been talked about for years.  None of use have alot of say in how to make it better (Aros not included).  Dave Haynie has giving the community alot.  It would be kinda nice if Dave could be active in some future development.  Maybe a new mainboard, even a low scale 68060 would be cool. (Just for hobby users)

[T_Bone]

Nitro wrote:
Why should OS4 be ported to x86?  I think AROS has came along way.  Anyone who feels they must have an AmigaOS on x86 can use it.

So why is anyone using MorphOS or AmigaOS at all? Because Aros isn't there yet.

[Nitro]

@ T_Bone
  I use MorphOS because it is backwards compatable with Amiga 68k/WOS.  I can`t speak about OS4, because I don`t have an A1, but if I did I would say the same for it.  If more boards go into production I will buy one.  If someone writes a PPCAmiga emulator for x86, I`ll download or buy it, because there are still some cool Wos/Mos apps out there.

[T_Bone]

Nitro wrote:
Sony doesn`t seem to want to switch.  They seem to produce tons of PPC machines that sell less than $150.  One word "CELL"  

Sony isn't selling an OS, or a computer. It's a videogame console. CELL is a lousy tool for a desktop OS.

Tools for the job.

[T_Bone]

Nitro wrote:
@ T_Bone
  I use MorphOS because it is backwards compatable with Amiga 68k/WOS.

I'll be getting one as a last resort, if nothing else works out, or I get sick of waiting, whichever comes first... ;-)

[Nitro]

@T_Bone
Yes Sony does not sell an OS or a computer.  What I never understood is everyone says that the cost of PPC is so high because there isn`t a large demand for PPC.  Yet there are millions of Playstations out there alone without PPC computers put in these numbers.  Each with a PPC inside.
Intel was not always a cheap way to go.  It wasn`t until years of progress from AMD that lowered the price.  IBM will still have Apple as a partner a while longer.  They sold their PC divison.  There is not that many PPC mainboard companys out there.  Could this be the time the IBM looks to Amiga?  Maybe not, but MorphOS has about 2000 users or so.  Now from the BBRV blog"It is hard not to look ahead to 2006 with a little excitement. We closed out the end of the year with our first orders for the Open Server Workstation and our first big (50,000 units)"  That`s alot of MorphOS compatiable computers is it not.

[coldfish]

@Nitro.

As of right now there are a total of ZERO playstations with a PPC CPU.

The PS1 had a MIPS R3000A-compatible (R3051) 32bit RISC chip running at 33.8688 MHz.

The PS2 has a MIPS R5900 CPU core, 64 bit.

[Nitro]

Ok correction noted.  I was thinking RISC for some reason
(Just a little general information, what is the chips that are used in the Mac's?


Unlike windows computers and the old Mac's that use CISC (Compressed Instruction Set Computing) chips, todays current Macintoshes use RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing) chips. Hence we have the difference between the old CISC 680x0 Macintosh computers, the Quadra's, II's, LC's and early (three number) Performa's, and todays new Power Mac's, Performa's and clones. Today software is being written that is "Power Mac Native", so what's the difference?)

[bloodline]

Nitro wrote:
@T_Bone
Yes Sony does not sell an OS or a computer.  What I never understood is everyone says that the cost of PPC is so high because there isn`t a large demand for PPC.

Ok, lets get something straight... PPC is not a CPU. It's an "Instruction Set Architecture" (ISA for short). This is simply the language the CPU "speaks" nothing more nothing less, it's a compiler option. What is FAR FAR FAR FAR FAR more important when thinking about running an OS is the PLATFORM architecture, this is what Operating systems are written for.

What you must remember when someone says PPC, they could mean any CPU that "speak" PPC. The ISA has little to do with performance (I know there are some issues here, but I'm talking about the overall picture). For example the G4 and the G5 are architecturally totally different beasts, nothing like each other in any way... they just happen to use the PPC ISA.

Now with all this in mind, the idea of porting an OS (lets say AOS4 for sake of example) from the A1 to a Normal PC woudl be much eaiser than porting AOS4 from the A1 to a Playstation3. The reason is that the A1 and a standard have a very similar platform architecture... the PS3 is something totally different, no one knows what's going on inside there and that's how Sony like it.

In the mid 90's the 603 and 604 line of CPU's were really great (they happen to use the PPC ISA by the way), but that was 10 years ago, and the G4 is still based on the 603!!! intel and AMD has pushed ahead using the latest ideas and developments to make new architectures which give better performance and use less power... Now IBM have no intention of investing in the G5 and Freescale are more than happy with the G4 (744x), ther are currently no CPU's using the PPC ISA which is suitable for a modern laptop, and with no developement from IBM or Freescale their usefulness on the desktop has come to an end.

[Nitro]

@bloodline
Ok there is enough logic in your post, that even I can see that the only future for now is x86.  Scary.