What Amiga Inc. and Hyperion NEED TO DO (IMHO)

[rbsfou]

koaftder wrote:
AMIGA IN JOYSTIQ, PERHAPS ONE COULD SIT ON IT?

The C64, Atari 2600, and Megadrive joysticks have obviously have done well enough for someone to consider making them in first place. By taking this route, Emulation headaches could be solved as the cost of do a production run of the chips (also targeted to real amigas) could be justified by the sale of the thing as a novely.

Ding ding ding. I present you with this fine animated gif. You are teh winner. You have managed to post crap that gets posted every single day for the past 3-4 years. What the hell to do with amiga inc, joysticks and of course dongles. mmmmmm dongles. have fun with your sock puppets.

Been out of the world for a spell, am trying to get back into it - just trying to say what i would like to see done, and proposing semi-realistic business strategies to spread the word and get people buying. Sadly, we aren't going to have the luxury of having professional geeks writing quality software that runs on dirt-cheap slave-labour produced hardware

[InTheSand]

Since all these "ifs" are just "ifs", and given Amiga Inc's previous track record, the best bet IMHO would be for Amiga Inc to call it quits, and open source the Amiga IP (both software and hardware), therefore giving it to a group that cares, e.g. the community, to do something that's actually useful.

Otherwise, there will just be more announcements about yet more overpriced and underspecced motherboards running an old fashioned overpriced OS that just happens to have an "Amiga" name on it.

As for the dead horses, well, this subject has been discussed just a few times!

Realistically, A.Inc will do nothing, as before, and AROS will be the only hope.

Just my 2c!

 - Ali

[koaftder]

rbsfou wrote:

koaftder wrote:
AMIGA IN JOYSTIQ, PERHAPS ONE COULD SIT ON IT?

The C64, Atari 2600, and Megadrive joysticks have obviously have done well enough for someone to consider making them in first place. By taking this route, Emulation headaches could be solved as the cost of do a production run of the chips (also targeted to real amigas) could be justified by the sale of the thing as a novely.

Ding ding ding. I present you with this fine animated gif. You are teh winner. You have managed to post crap that gets posted every single day for the past 3-4 years. What the hell to do with amiga inc, joysticks and of course dongles. mmmmmm dongles. have fun with your sock puppets.

Been out of the world for a spell, am trying to get back into it - just trying to say what i would like to see done, and proposing semi-realistic business strategies to spread the word and get people buying. Sadly, we aren't going to have the luxury of having professional geeks writing quality software that runs on dirt-cheap slave-labour produced hardware

Your business ideas are not good. You have not given us any new ideas. You managed to post the same stuff thats been posted eveyr other day for years. In any case, A INC isn't listening. Thats the problem. People have been foaming at the mouth for 5 years *begging* amiga inc for a product and they never deliver.

There are a million obvious ways Amiga Inc could make a buck, and its all been hashed out before many times and they never do anything.

[rbsfou]

Dr_Righteous wrote:
Again with the dead horses...

Look, to everyone screaming about OS4 on X86 hardware... WE ALREADY HAVE IT!!!!!! It's called AROS. Look into it.

AmigaOS 4 and higher will, and should, remain on PPC processors untill the EOL of the architecture. Period.

I've always hated x86 ever since my first glimpse of Windows 3.0 running in EGA, so i'm with you there.

What I don't understand is why it seems to be so hard to get OS4 running. Hardware for it has existed for YEARS. There are numerous manufacturers of PPC motherboards out there. Pick one. Pick several. In fact, pick them all! Forget this product licensing BS. We don't need dongles or any other anti-piracy crap. Anyone who would even consider buying a PPC board for the purpose of running OS4 would buy it legitimately. But if that's a major concern, force registration. That'll solve most of it. Anyone else who wants to run it bad enough WILL circumvent ANY form of anti-piracy scheme. There is nothing that cannot be cracked.

Personally (and of course this is a personal opinion), i would like it to be open for all and sundry, but this can't happen under the circumstances. I would rather the dongle-plus-disc or card method than registration....I choose to give my personal details out, NOT my computer system.

If you people hate the idea of a dongle so much, how about the "real chipset reused from the non-existant joystick device" idea i mentioned before? Yes i know the chipset integration was tried before, but i've proposed a ways it could be done in a way that would seem ideal to a business (which unfortunately is what Amiga Inc. are)

The long and short of it is, OS4 is not meant for joe user. It's meant for US, the Amiga community. It should be opened up to what WE want to run it on... Like the cheap and sexy Efika.

Agree. So let me run it on one of my old macs, rather than force me to buy yet another machine...I'll be happy with a dongle or similar for that purpose (but i agree with you that not if i had bought a PPC board specifically for Amiga OS). This is what i understand the position is on the AmigaONE

[rbsfou]

Your business ideas are not good. You have not given us any new ideas. You managed to post the same stuff thats been posted eveyr other day for years. In any case, A INC isn't listening. Thats the problem. People have been foaming at the mouth for 5 years *begging* amiga inc for a product and they never deliver.

There are a million obvious ways Amiga Inc could make a buck, and its all been hashed out before many times and they never do anything.

Ok, i'm not a business man, and i don't want to be - so in this case what ARE good business ideas? Have you thought of anything better? If you are that determined, why don't you show me the posts?

This is my first thread on this site, do you REALLY expect to trawl through years worth of postings to see whether someone else has thought of them?? I'm not expecting to OWN them or anything. They are just ideas. Try finding ANY *truly* original idea nowadays. Most people don't get them.

I can understand being bitter about the whole thing, especially all the hype that Amiga Inc. where dishing out after they were formed, but at least the OS has been developed to the point where it is usable and sellable.

I'm  just trying to prod them in the right direction - games compilations are popular, novelty joysticks are popular. Would spread the word amongst the masses. Would raise some cash and potentially get OS 4 ported to lots of other PPC machines.

Gah, people like you make me not want to bother returning - why the hell does everyone always always always always always always always always always always always always always always always always always always always always always always always always always always seem to be pulling in different directions on this?

[koaftder]

I've always hated x86 ever since my first glimpse of Windows 3.0 running in EGA, so i'm with you there.

Processors like run code yo. Sure some have more registers than others and different opcodes and what not... I write almost everything in C on everything from ppc macintosh, windows pcs, a lot of 8051 microcontroller crap and unfortunately the palm pilot. Different processors, different operating systems, different libs, etc and the processor is of little concern to me. So, as a developer, if the processor means almost nothing to me, why the hell should an end user care?

[koaftder]

rbsfou wrote:

Your business ideas are not good. You have not given us any new ideas. You managed to post the same stuff thats been posted eveyr other day for years. In any case, A INC isn't listening. Thats the problem. People have been foaming at the mouth for 5 years *begging* amiga inc for a product and they never deliver.

There are a million obvious ways Amiga Inc could make a buck, and its all been hashed out before many times and they never do anything.

Ok, i'm not a business man, and i don't want to be - so in this case what ARE good business ideas? Have you thought of anything better? If you are that determined, why don't you show me the posts?

This is my first thread on this site, do you REALLY expect to trawl through years worth of postings to see whether someone else has thought of them?? I'm not expecting to OWN them or anything. They are just ideas. Try finding ANY *truly* original idea nowadays. Most people don't get them.

I can understand being bitter about the whole thing, especially all the hype that Amiga Inc. where dishing out after they were formed, but at least the OS has been developed to the point where it is usable and sellable.

I'm  just trying to prod them in the right direction - games compilations are popular, novelty joysticks are popular. Would spread the word amongst the masses. Would raise some cash and potentially get OS 4 ported to lots of other PPC machines.

Gah, people like you make me not want to bother returning - why the hell does everyone always always always always always always always always always always always always always always always always always always always always always always always always always always seem to be pulling in different directions on this?

I'm sorry if my frustration and rants make you feel unwelcome, it is not my intention. You just happened to post something that gets my "goat" and I'm sorry.

[rbsfou]

InTheSand wrote:
Since all these "ifs" are just "ifs", and given Amiga Inc's previous track record, the best bet IMHO would be for Amiga Inc to call it quits, and open source the Amiga IP (both software and hardware), therefore giving it to a group that cares, e.g. the community, to do something that's actually useful.

Otherwise, there will just be more announcements about yet more overpriced and underspecced motherboards running an old fashioned overpriced OS that just happens to have an "Amiga" name on it.

As for the dead horses, well, this subject has been discussed just a few times!

Realistically, A.Inc will do nothing, as before, and AROS will be the only hope.

Just my 2c!

 - Ali

Tried AROS on VMWare and looked quite nice - i've now got a spare PIII 600 lying around i'm going to try it for real on. It would be nice for this to be the solution, but there's a few problems for me:

1. No 68k emulation (although i've seen it mentioned it's being worked on - don't think this was on the AROS site though, so this could just be rumour)

2. No bang-the-metal apps solution - see the (i daren't say MY!) ideas presented above

3. Lots of improvements in OS4 that don't seem to be (again, i could be wrong!) in AROS like memory protection etc.

4. I don't like X86, and the OS would be ready to go on my mac in it's current form if someone wrote the necessary bits (which i guess mean Apple Partition Support and an Open Firmware bootloader).

I really didn't think i'd be opening such a can of worms with this thread, just wish i had a decent news source.

I think i'll bury my head in AROS and UAE for a while before daring to post again!

[koaftder]

There are a million obvious ways Amiga Inc could make a buck, and its all been hashed out before many times and they never do anything.

Ok, i'm not a business man, and i don't want to be - so in this case what ARE good business ideas? Have you thought of anything better? If you are that determined, why don't you show me the posts?
[/quote]

Amiga inc is probably at a point where even if they wanted to do something they wouldn't be able. The lawsuits, the licensing, the debts, etc. They are roasted. If they actually sold a mainboard and OS there are prtobably not enough market to make a profit. Look at this efika thing, which is going to run MOS. Nice, but its only possible because their main customer base doesn't care about MOS.

Amiga INC knows that, they tried to market their DE and it failed.

[rbsfou]

I'm sorry if my frustration and rants make you feel unwelcome, it is not my intention. You just happened to post something that gets my "goat" and I'm sorry.

Ok, but i just got the feeling that i wasn't L33T enough or something. I've never written a 4k intro and i've never programmed intuition. I used Octamed and Blitz a bit, but that was all...

I hate business and love Open Source, but unfortunately it took $$$ to persuade Hyperion to do what they have done.

The thing is, apart from any politics / not giving a {bleep} about the users / false announcements that is going on, there is now something out there. The people who run the company don't have an appreciation of how much what they would refer to as "the brand" (yeeuch) means to us. Just like any business they need to be saved from their own stupidity, and there are plenty of ways this could be done.

In some ways maybe they are worried that people are going to use AROS or MorphOS instead (as they are 'competitors' to their business), but don't know how to go about sorting it out (they cannot "walk a mile in our shoes")

So, what IS the best source for SOLID Amiga news nowadays? A site where i could filter in / out demos / new releases would be good (don't particularly care if there's a new point release of some MUI custom class used by 2 apps), especially one where i can find info on the hardware. I've got frustrated just trying to find out where the hell the platform stands nowadays - it sucks that the OS4 release didn't even make slashdot (seems even the larger geek world is cynical about the OS now).

[LoadWB]

koaftder wrote:

So, as a developer, if the processor means almost nothing to me, why the hell should an end user care?

End users do not explicitly care about CPU or architecture.  They care about support.

If x86 is everywhere, then as someone developing a product for which you want to gain market acceptance, you go with x86.  And if there is limited PPC software because developers are pushing x86, why would the end user want PPC?

x86 is inexpensive.  Face it, cheap is what runs the world.  And if cheap is not good enough, we will spend R&D on how to make cheap better.  IDE vs. SCSI, USB vs. Firewire, 100TX vs 100VG, parallel port devices... the list goes on.

But, to give a more pointed answer to your pointed question, many end users actually do care what CPU is in their computer.  I face it on just about every server or workstation order I take: what's AMD, is that a kind of Pentium?

So we add brand recognition to the mix.  Everyone knows what Intel and/or Pentium is, and everyone knows what cheap is.

To leave that subject for a moment and tangent over to one of my personal Amiga pet-peeves, I am really tired of reading about how OS4 should work on PPC Macs since there are so many of the old machines out there.  If you spend resources developing for old machines, you become old -- especially when it takes five years to finish the product.  Five years?!  That is a millennium in technology terms.  So to ask the question and digress to the original discussion, what do we have now that we have had for almost two decades and will surely be around for another decade or better?

x86

(ahem, I prefer x64, though :-))

[Waccoon]

koaftder:  Different processors, different operating systems, different libs, etc and the processor is of little concern to me. So, as a developer, if the processor means almost nothing to me, why the hell should an end user care?

Because assembly is, like, all of solid awesome and stuff!  Everyone wants to write PPC assembler!

rbsfou:  Release an "Amiga Classics" title for the Wii, Playstation, and XBox 360 (all ppc i think)

The problem is that Amiga Inc. doesn't have the rights to such games.  Also, the PPC CPUs are irrelevant if the original games are 68K.  Remember that Amiga titles that utilize PPC are simply using it as a coprocessor.  A 68K CPU is still required.

Rumor has it that Microsoft (of all companies) is going to be re-releasing new Amiga games.  Sensible World of Soccer is one such title mentioned.

rsbfou:  Also do a deal with nintendo to allow sale of Amiga Games for the virtual console.

The sad truth is that 3rd party developers have been all but shut out of Virtual Console.

rbsfou:  Do a deal with Opera to supply the browser (to keep Nintendo happy if this is a concern).

First, you need decent programming APIs.  OS4 is hardly sophisticated enough to drive Opera.

As for Nintendo, their version of the browser only uses the Opera rendering engine.  The actual browser itself is completely custom (and rather poor).

rbsfou:  Make sure the geeks get their X11 server, VNC client and server, SSH client and VPN client to keep them happy.

Might be difficult given that AmigaOS is not POSIX compliant.  ;-)

The reason why these apps and tools run on so many OSes these days, is becuase most OSes follow UNIX standards.  It's not easy being an alternative OS.

Now, if Hyperion had the sense to start with a good UNIX-like OS, like QNX, and simply write a new Amiga-like interface on top, that would've been truly awesome.  That's what Apple did, and look where they are today.

Amiga could've learned a lot from Apple.  Such a shame.

Continue to supply support to the "faithful" users of Blizzards, AmigaONE and Shark PPC's (give them a Cheaper OS, especially for AmigaONE owners who have the encryption hardware built in i think).

Yeah, all five of them!

Seriously, as much as I like supporting your community, it's a simple fact that Amiga has to get new customers -- lots of them.  It would be best to make AmigaOS an x86 system, and simply offer a PPC compile.

Writing drivers for all the PPC hacks would be a real pain, though.  Remember, to support a platform, the developers have to actually have the platform.  Testing hardware, and especially documentation, isn't easy to come by concerning these old Amiga hack boards.

rbsfou:  Don't bother with X86, too much work has been done on PPC, and most of the target market would have the hardware (be it a console, a possibly-now-spare-PPC-Mac as they've gone intel, or a specialized amiga system).

I was also under the impression that the whole point of an OS was so people didn't have to be concerned about the hardware.  You write against libraries that are designed to take advantage of special hardware features, thus allowing you to still utilize "custom" hardware.  DirectX is one of the best technologies ever invented, especially since it does a hell of a lot more than just graphics -- and it runs on both x86 PCs and the PPC-based XBox 360.

Game consoles programed with PC dev tools -- and developers are happy about it?  Say it ain't so!

rbsfou:  Once your "brand" is back to where it should be and you have loads of $$$, quit messing around with those lame phone and wince games!!

Frankly, I don't think Amigans really know what they want their brand to do.  Hence, there are still so many people that insist that they should have a custom PPC machine.  I don't care what hardware it uses, so long as it's a good value and does what I want.

I'll gladly rebuild a custom x86 system to get OS4, but I'm not going to pay an ungodly amount of money for a custom PPC that, if it breaks, will take months to fix and require me to ship it to another country.  Note that the AmigaOne wasn't a very well-designed board and was full of bugs, too.  That tends to be the problem with low-volume hardware (and even that was a "generic" evaluation board!)

IMNSHO, of course.

[rbsfou]

LoadWB wrote:
To leave that subject for a moment and tangent over to one of my personal Amiga pet-peeves, I am really tired of reading about how OS4 should work on PPC Macs since there are so many of the old machines out there.  If you spend resources developing for old machines, you become old -- especially when it takes five years to finish the product.  Five years?!  That is a millennium in technology terms.  So to ask the question and digress to the original discussion, what do we have now that we have had for almost two decades and will surely be around for another decade or better?

x86

(ahem, I prefer x64, though :-))

My point was that it's ready for PPC, and there are lots of macs out there. As i understand it there are Radeon drivers in OS4 (dunno about GeForce), - most macs use ATI.

All that would need to be written is the boot loader, Apple Partition Support, and support for the PCI/AGP bridge, plus the necessary lockdown hardware. Compared to the entire OS, this reallly isn't a lot to do. Perhaps they could turn it over to a third-party or some enthusiastic users?

Users like me get the OS of their dreams and don't have to buy expensive underpowered PPC hardware which we bought from cupertino once anyway

Amiga Inc. does that for me and they will get 150gbp from me.

There must be more people on this board with a PPC mac lying around surely?

[rbsfou]

Waccoon wrote:

Because assembly is, like, all of solid awesome and stuff!  Everyone wants to write PPC assembler!

Not tried it - but i agree, as far as i can tell the x86 has too few registers.

The problem is that Amiga Inc. doesn't have the rights to such games.  Also, the PPC CPUs are irrelevant if the original games are 68K.  Remember that Amiga titles that utilize PPC are simply using it as a coprocessor.  A 68K CPU is still required.

Agree, but they own the brand name, and could convince those who do have the rights to let them be used (i've covered this in my first post), and as regards CPU emulation, we have UAE which could be made into something like WHDLoad to do it transparently (see my first post again!)

No-one who is going to end up using this compilation thing is going to remember PPC specfic games anyway, so who cares?

My point was that they could use this as a way of sneaking ppc-OS4 onto people's consoles and it would provide incentive to give us the emulation layer.
[/quote]

First, you need decent programming APIs.  OS4 is hardly sophisticated enough to drive Opera.

It has a task / thread scheduler, several widget APIs all based on boopsi, portected memory (FINALLY!), truetype font support and a built in tcp/ip stack. What else could be needed?

Might be difficult given that AmigaOS is not POSIX compliant.  ;-)

The reason why these apps and tools run on so many OSes these days, is becuase most OSes follow UNIX standards.  It's not easy being an alternative OS.

Now, if Hyperion had the sense to start with a good UNIX-like OS, like QNX, and simply write a new Amiga-like interface on top, that would've been truly awesome.  That's what Apple did, and look where they are today.

Amiga could've learned a lot from Apple.  Such a shame.

No - i LIKE AmigaOS for not copping out and being another Unix clone. In many ways (and this really brings me out in a rash to say this!) it's like NT in that respect. Don't get me wrong, i use FreeBSD and Linux lots, but OSX just took the idea too far.

OS3.x had ixemul library, and most of what i mentioned before (aprt from the VPN client??) seems to be available on Aminet, so it seems to be a case of just bundling it in (to attract geeks).

Frankly, I don't think Amigans really know what they want their brand to do.  Hence, there are still so many people that insist that they should have a custom PPC machine.  I don't care what hardware it uses, so long as it's a good value and does what I want.

Fair enough - personally i don't like x86 though, but as i said before, each to their own

I'll gladly rebuild a custom x86 system to get OS4, but I'm not going to pay an ungodly amount of money for a custom PPC that, if it breaks, will take months to fix and require me to ship it to another country.  Note that the AmigaOne wasn't a very well-designed board and was full of bugs, too.  That tends to be the problem with low-volume hardware (and even that was a "generic" evaluation board!)

Fine so let me run it on a PPC Mac (now/soon) or some x86 thing (later)! Macs have decent build quality, and even the crappest x86 stuff is easily replaced.

IMNSHO, of course.

Won't help  - you'll still get childishly flamed it seems :madashell:

[InTheSand]

rbsfou wrote:
Amiga Inc. does that for me and they will get 150gbp from me.

£150/US$300 seems a high price to pay for an OS that only really runs a meagre handful of applications... (sorry for the very poor pun!)

What would others pay?

I'd pay an absolute maximum of £200/US$400 (inc taxes) for a bundle with an x86 EPIA miniITX board and OS4, if such a thing was ever to exist, but certainly no more than that...

 - Ali

[TheMagicM]

AI should liquidate whatever "assets" they have and let the bleeding stop.  The current AI managment/ownership/"future plans" is worse then Commodore + Medhi Ali.