Blasphemy (I know, I know ...... but ?????)

[SamuraiCrow]

RAMBUS memory isn't the only memory that will work with the Cell processor as Mercury Semiconductor is trying to make DDR memory work with the Cell as well using a custom northbridge.

[melgross]

They can try as much as they want. It isn't worth the effort. The memory scheme is responsible for much of the chips performance. Once that's gone. Poof! As of now, their efforts haven't produced a working model.

They want to change, because the memory is expensive, and programming the Cell for anything other than games, is extermely difficult. They hope that by simplifing the memory model, it will take less work. It's a waste of time.

The Cell is good for what it does because of the entirety of its design. Alter one part, and you have to alter another.

As I said, a waste of time.

SamuraiCrow wrote:
RAMBUS memory isn't the only memory that will work with the Cell processor as Mercury Semiconductor is trying to make DDR memory work with the Cell as well using a custom northbridge.

[melgross]

What I'm trying to do, now that I've been a member for a while, and have read many threads, and posts, it to shake things up.

It must be realized that the community must get up off its collective arse, and make known its opinion. That opinion should be that all of these incompetent concerns that are supposedly working towards the day when the Amiga will again rise, are doing nothing more than squabbling like children.

Projects that will never get off the ground have to be abandoned, and the efforts put into those that have some chance of being completed.

But, the truth is that, in here, and in all the other places I've visited, other than the help groups, all I see is complaining and whining.

The people who run these groups have got to get together, pool their members and resources, and then, as a group, make it clear to those morons who have been screwing around for so many years, what it is that is expected.

And then, support for those who don't seem to understand, should be withdrawn.

The most realistic route has got to be taken. I've looked at this for a long time, and I truly can't find any better idea than to move to x86 at this point.

What does the community really want? Does it want an updated OS that they can actually run? Or do they want to keep their fingers crossed in the hope that maybe SOMEDAY, someone will finally release something useful?

As the OS really doesn't seem to be going anywhere, and the hardware is going to fewer places than the software, someone has to say; Enough!

The longer it takes, the fewer people who will wait around and care. It will get to the point that it will never be finished, because they see a smaller market each time they look. It's a downward spiral. Let it go on too long, and all will be left is the one or two sites that have almost no costs.

When I see boards that cost absurd amounts of money for what are basically obsolete products, I feel disgusted.

When a Mac Mini, or cheap Dell can run rings around these products, I see doom, and I don't mean the game!

[_yak_]

I must agree, the whole Amiga world has shrinked so much that thinking of a proprietary hardware sounds insane. Dave Haynie once said the same thing, common hardware (x86) is the only way out.

[DonnyEMU]

The problem I had when it was announced that the Mac was heading onto Intel is that it's the obvious writing on the wall.

Do you know how much it costs and the time it takes to churn out your own specialized motherboard and chipset etc? It costs a lot. I was suprised when the AmigaOne made it to production even for the time it had.

The point people need to understand from the fact that they moved the Amiga from 68K to powerPC is that at this point the underlying hardware really doesn't matter as it's a superset of the original amiga's capability anyway. I am processor and instruction set agnostic anymore. Whatever works the fastest and cheaply is available. Mostly because anything out there now can emulate anything Past available with decent enough speed.

The community needs to stop and smell the roses and realize that the concepts of the Amiga are still with us long after the original platforms death and people like em enough to carry them over to x86 and PPC and even ARM..

So in this case the platform has been VERY successful and continues to be despite company after company's effort to market the technology unsuccessfully. It's the community it's the standards basis for the technology and it's ulitmately the people that are using it that are carrying it forward and that will continue into whatever hardware dominates the scene into the foreseeable future.

I actually prefer AROS on an Intel box to the other PowerPC based implementations that I have seen. All saying they "improved" on the base 3.1 system that commodore produced. Who would have thought when Commodore died that we'd still be talking about this today..

The point I am making about Aros is it's an outgrowth of the community that's community supported and that stands taller than any commercial firm could. It's the same kinda movement that made open source systems like Linux so interesting and available. It's time for the community to get behind this effort and stop worrying about motherboards that can't be custom made cheap enough..

[Waccoon]

Fransexy:  You are wrong.Sony not only wants that other OS´s run on their CELL based Playstation but to made the cell the next multimedia chip.  Sony, toshiba and ibm wants that their cell be used in all types of devices from computers to wasihg machines.  So it will be not difficult to abtain cell processors

That's what the marketeers say.  The vast majority of Cell applications boil down to a math co-processor or programmable DSP.  The "computers" proposed are workstations, not desktops.  Apple also outright rejected both ideas of using Cell for Mac, as well as porting OSX to PS3.

Every time a console manufacturer says their system is not just a game machine, but a "multifuncion" device, how often are they actually used for things other than games?

Also, I'm sure Sony et al want Cell to be used in consumer devices, as all hosts will have to be developed not just with Cell, but Sony software tools.  You can't buy a custom processor based on a more generic design, and not expect to be locked in somehow.  I wonder how many of those washing machiens will be forwards compatible with next year's model. :roll:

DonnyEMU:  The problem I had when it was announced that the Mac was heading onto Intel is that it's the obvious writing on the wall.

Exactly.  What does Apple know that Amiga doesn't?

A:  A lot.  Note that Apple also makes a lot of ARM-based devices.

melgross:  The most realistic route has got to be taken. I've looked at this for a long time, and I truly can't find any better idea than to move to x86 at this point.

That would be especially easy NOW, since OS4 apps are still fresh and developers can make the ports.  Older apps from the classic Amiga are pretty much abandonware, and will never be ported, so emulation is the only way out.

Of course, the OS is supposed to provide the tools for proper CPU abstraction.  If Hyperion doesn't care about x86, hard-codes for PPC, and doesn't bother making the proper tools, porting apps to x86 will be difficult.  So far, it looks like that's what Hyperion wants.

yak:  Dave Haynie once said the same thing, common hardware (x86) is the only way out.

He should know, as he tried to make his own PPC motherboard.  Funny how the input from even the most experienced Amiga experts is often brushed away.

DonnyEMU:  I was suprised when the AmigaOne made it to production even for the time it had.

Well, it was a fairly raw MAI Logic reference design.  Nothing special, but not much had to be done to get it to work.

DonnyEMU:  The community needs to stop and smell the roses and realize that the concepts of the Amiga are still with us long after the original platforms death and people like em enough to carry them over to x86 and PPC and even ARM.

In the long term, custom hardware could creep its way back into the platform.  Today, it's not feasable, and will only reduce the number of developers that can access the platform.

[Oliver]

So, does anyone think anything could really be done to influence the direction of OS4 hardware at this time?  IIRC, all these arguments had already been voiced before OS4 was even commenced.  The arguments made sense then, and they are just the same today.  It's all been discussed many times in forums, and opinions have been voiced to the various parties involved, but the path of OS4 has been set in stone.

Maybe AROS has more potential long term, and certainly doesn't suffer the same separation from the users that some other projects do, but until now, I have haven't found any really good reason to use it.  Am I wrong in thinking there isn't much you can really do in an AROS environment as of yet?

@melgross  You were talking about making some sort of action to influence OS4 development, right?  What do you think would be effective at this point?  After all that has been said and done already, and particularly as there are multiple parties involved, each with their own interests at stake, I find it hard to see any major changes being made.

[melgross]

Unfortunatly, I don't know the parties involved. If it were Apple...

This is why I suggested that those who do have some influence, and who are known, the site operators, and such get together on this. They have to agree about what a common goal should be.

I know that everyone has their favorite version, distro, or whatever anyone wants to call it. But that has to be worked out. People have to bow to the common good, even if it doesn't meet their own private wishes. A consensus.

A forum about it on each site would help. User groups have to be involved. But, people have to decide what has a best chance, and build from there. The entire community has to speak with one vioce, at the same time, with one organization.

In other words, if the "best" version is run by a group that simply usn't interested in cooperating, then tell them; Screw you. Then go to the next. but, of course, first everything has to be explained.

The other problem is to keep calm in discussions, and not get frustrated if most people don't want your choice. That's going to happen.

This isn't something that will take a month. It might take a good part of a year. But it has to start somewhere, and the sooner the better.

I see things slipping away.

[irishmike]

Wow Tonight seems to be my night for adding my .02 worth.

I am a lover of Macintosh and one of the Apple Faithful ... Apple ticked me off in 1995 when they didn't seem to care that Classic MacOS (that is OS 7.x -9.x) was just really a bunch of spaghetti code and it looked like they were in death throws much like Commodore went through.  I like to think that the Mac community would have pulled together like the AMI community did when C= went under.  

Anyhow, I switched to Windows and then came back to Macintosh in 2001 and do use OS X (10.4) on a first model Mini as well as my Dell GX-150 I bought to run Windows XP and hopefully soon Linux.

All that is to give background:  I think it would be great if MacOS was available for any Intel machine... I think that would be the best course for Apple.  They consistantly state that they wish to get out of the hardware business, yet they never do.  Mr. Steve Jobs is very much about doing things his way and darn the torpedoes if someone disagrees!  Apple has made a great comeback with the decision to develop OS X.  I believe Microsoft is losing favor amoung home users and I think that Amiga Inc perhaps should consider making OS 4 run on Intel processors and standard PC hardware, the main problem with this dream (and I admit it is a DREAM)... is that the reason MacOS classic and even the BSD based Darwin kernel MacOS X are so stable is the hardware is selected and it is not meant or even disirable to write drivers for all available hardware because there is just so many different variations you need to make that work.  Windows really is good at working with whatever hardware you would like to throw at it.  MacOS X is becoming better at this.  But Amiga  Inc would have a lot of driver writing to do to make this work, possibly even would have to trash all development and start over to accomplish OS 4 running on Intel based hardware... which would be way to costly.  There are plenty of PPC processors out there.  And lets not forget that what makes AmigaOS so cool is the fact that it is so small and is stable because it also has the kickstart ROMs to hold a lot of the OS.

This would be great to implement in a modern OS... IMHO.

Anyhow, I think Microsoft's heyday and stranglehold on the market is fading these days.

[Sparky]

melgross wrote:

The G4 is totally obsolete, useful for nothing.

Aww crap .. you mean I've taken to many happy pills lately and I'm not really ripping a CD (and listening to it), re-encoding a video and reading Amiga.org on a G4 CPU'd computer ?

Bugger!

;-)

[melgross]

Nope! I have three G4 towers here at home, along with two G5 towers.

By obsolete, I don't mean that they can't still be used if you have them. I mean that we won't be seeing anything new using those chips.

The question is; Do you always want to be about two generations behind in everything?

Do you expect a G5 model anytime soon? How about dual core?

Nvidia 7900, or ATI 1900 boards?

Should I go on?

Even running in virtual mode on a new machine, the OS will fly.

The new machines are so much faster that all of the specialty chips can be emulated in software, and STILL be faster.

Sparky wrote:

melgross wrote:

The G4 is totally obsolete, useful for nothing.

Aww crap .. you mean I've taken to many happy pills lately and I'm not really ripping a CD (and listening to it), re-encoding a video and reading Amiga.org on a G4 CPU'd computer ?

Bugger!

;-)

[Fransexy_]

The question is; Do you always want to be about two generations behind in everything?

On x86 world running windows you always have the perfomance of two generations behind.To run the current version of windows at happily speeds you need the processors of tomorrow and then you will be forced to run a new version of windows that need the next generation chip to run at reasonable speeds and then...........So what´s the point

Linux has become as bloatware as windows in the lastest years so........

And onother os on x86 is only another win for windows as every pc sold is money for microsoft  :madashell:

[dammy]

On x86 world running windows you always have the perfomance of two generations behind.To run the current version of windows at happily speeds you need the processors of tomorrow and then you will be forced to run a new version of windows that need the next generation chip to run at reasonable speeds and then...........So what´s the point

Because running non-M$ OS, you can take advantage of the awesome hardware capabilities.

Linux has become as bloatware as windows in the lastest years so........

Yet I don't see anyone crying over Linux if it's running on a out of date PPC?  Bloat in Linux means the distro screwed something up.  At a old PC and kill off xorg and then tell me how slow Linux (or BSD) is.  Slap in a AROS-Max CD and then tell me how slow the old box is.  That should give you a yardstick when comparing these modern x86/x86-64 boxes running some OS as light as AROS is.

And onother os on x86 is only another win for windows as every pc sold is money for microsoft  

More bull cookies!  You can buy a PC with Linux or buy a Mac without the M$ tax.  The only PCs I've bought from a OEM are laptops.  Build your own system, like you would with a Peg or A1 mobo!  I could go on an cry over the Apple tax on every PPC box, but I would be as wrong as you are over x86 and M$ tax.

But your looking for unreasonable and silly reasons to continue on being a ludite, don't let reality stop you from your mission.  
 :horse:

Dammy

[_yak_]

@ irishmike

But Amiga Inc would have a lot of driver writing to do to make this work, possibly even would have to trash all development and start over to accomplish OS 4 running on Intel based hardware... which would be way to costly.

I don't understand why people think that x86 version of AmigaOS would have to contain drivers for all available PC hardware. Let it be only 1 commonly available motherboard with 1 commonly available gfx card and a couple of other needed add-ons. That would be far more better than what we have now (drivers for not-manufactured-and-expensive A1 only).

Support for other boards and cards could be added later. Take a look at Linux, it didn't support all of the HW at the start, today the support is very good.

[Fransexy_]

Because running non-M$ OS, you can take advantage of the awesome hardware capabilities.

That´s is what i want to say, AmigaOS on "outdatet" PPC will perform as updated as and awesome ultra modern PC running the ultimate windows

And yes i can run non-microsoft OS but not all OS´s has drivers for all, for example on my notebook neither linux,Beos, qnx or solaris recognize the modem.So in the end you ended searching for a specific solutions for run another operating system

But your looking for unreasonable and silly reasons to continue on being a ludite, don't let reality stop you from your mission.

Are my opinions.Are you saying  that I cannot give my opinion?? Because that is the impression that you gives me with your words

[Waccoon]

melgross:  By obsolete, I don't mean that they can't still be used if you have them. I mean that we won't be seeing anything new using those chips.

Well, technically something is obsolete, or outmoded, when it is no longer useful.  :-)

Fransexy:  On x86 world running windows you always have the perfomance of two generations behind.To run the current version of windows at happily speeds you need the processors of tomorrow and then you will be forced to run a new version of windows that need the next generation chip to run at reasonable speeds and then...........So what´s the point

I think you're still stuck in 1995.  Try running Windows98 on a 1Ghz Celeron.  Then replace it with WindowsXP.  You should notice a huge improvement in performance, even without much more memory usage.

Windows isn't the klunker it used to be, even if the amount of hard drive space it requires is crazy.  All of this is the hardware's fault, of course, especially since x86 code is more compact than PPC code.  :roll:

Then again, my Mac mini clearly shows that MacOS X alone uses 12GB of space.  Windows is far smaller than that.  Does anybody complain that MacOS is bloatware?  Nah, let's all skewer evil M$.

yak:  I don't understand why people think that x86 version of AmigaOS would have to contain drivers for all available PC hardware.

Probably because that's the mistake made by pretty much every commercial OS creater that tries to break into the market.  With all the hundreds of OSes out there, you think some companies would figure this out.  But no, Microsoft still enjoys its monopoly.

Look at Be.  They were selling a proprietary PPC machine for $5,000+, which nobody could afford.  Then, they went to Mac clones, and once Jobs killed all of those systems, Be went to "stock" hardware.  Why didn't they make a new BeBox using an x86 board and chipset?  Why did they waste so much time making drivers?  Why did they announce they were going to the "information appliance" market at the very end?  Why don't people learn from the mistakes of others?

Fransexy:  That´s is what i want to say, AmigaOS on "outdatet" PPC will perform as updated as and awesome ultra modern PC running the ultimate windows

AmigaOS isn't as robust.  AmigaOS doesn't have even a fraction of the capabilites of Windows.

It would be more fair to compare AmigaOS to another largely underdeveloped OS, like a heavily stripped, old version of Linux.  Yeah, the old version of Linux runs nice and fast, too, but nobody uses it.  Guess why.