Amiga Platform

[NewRevolution]

@ Psy

Don't we all love politics... :-P

The idea concept for the alliance might have seemed good in the begining - and then they probably signed contracts. Amiga Inc. is shipping AmigaOne with Linux. And what is that? Just another computer with Linux  - why call it AmigaOne? Amiga is the OS, not the wrapping.
And doesn't Eyetech have any other customers? Or are they betting everything on one horse? In that case, I think the alliance will be split sooner then they hope.

I still think Amiga Inc. has taken the wrong approach to OS4. I daresay that what Amiga Inc is facing today, is what M$ was facing in the 90s, when they changed from Windows 3.11 to Win95. Such a drastic change is something Amiga Inc. should be looking at. Develop a new platform, but yet have the essence of the good old workbench (3.1)

Of what I have surmised so far, both MorphOS and OS4 will be hardware dependent. That means I have to buy that exact motherboard to make it run. And if the motherboard producer is just a small timer - those boards will cost a fortune , have bad support and be difficult to get a hold on. It's not like all computer stores will start importing them :-(

[downix]

@NewRevolution

Well, a G3 Pegasos rev 2.0 is slated to retail for $299.  The G4 for $499.

And yes, I agree that AInc took the wrong approach to AmigaOS.  They should have let the MorphOS team be the official OS rather than force so many terms on them that the license would have resulted in a horrid mess and cost years of development time.  (Yes, they were negotiating for this at one time, but could never come up with a solution for the requirements that was agreeable to all parties)  This hurt AInc, rather than MorphOS, in the end.  MorphOS simply allied themselves with AROS to provide the AmigaOS-API compatable system, showing that the source code to AmigaOS itself is not as useful as some might think.  The result, however, is this further schisming of the market, no different from a few years ago when WarpUP stepped in to hurt PowerUP, and did nothing but kill the PowerPC'd Amiga platform by throwing multiple standards that could not be made to work together.  (Developers didn't know weither to use PowerUP or WarpUP for their solution, so in the end the critical pieces ended up split between both camps resulting in a lack of critical mass for the solution to go forward.  This ended up killing the PowerPC card company, Phase5, as not enough customers purchased the card to make a stable enough market to expand with due to the fact that there was no clear development-center in this area, leaving the original 68k Amiga a more attractive option)

Ok, there, blew off some steam.  Thanks for giving me the option here.  

[tonyw]

It's a real treat to read a thread such as this without the ann type of flamefest developing.

About the "AmigaOne" hardware - I think it might be reasonable to say that Eyetech, having paid for a hardware design and rights to use the chipset, and faced with a long wait before AOS4 would be available, decided to release the PPC boards under the name "AmigaOne" in order to get some recompense for their efforts. After all, there are plenty of people out there who would like a PPC board to run Linux, and it also made more machines available for developers to get their hands on.

So Linux is the only publicly released OS for it at the moment. No matter, those who like to fiddle have new hardware to play with. Those who are fortunate enough to be AOS4 developers have the real hardware as well. And Eyetech are gradually forming a market for these PPC boards amongst the Linux community.

tony

[NewRevolution]

Ah! So Eyetech, if they are lucky, are getting it in both sack and bag (as we say). That means non-Amiga programmers (here: Linux) can start developing HW propritary applications. Not only will they try to gather the Amiga community, but they will start attracting the Linux community as well. Now that is a pretty large user group.
PPC = PowerPC right? And PowerPC runs on the 60x/G3/G4 chipset right?

So what kind of chipset is in the Pegasos boards?

As for Hyperion and their OS4; if the OS is going to be HW dependent, how could they start without Eyetechs PPC boards?

It seems to me that Amiga Inc has been rushing a bit. Amiga has been behind the curtains for the last decade, I don't think a couple of more years would have mattered much. Especially if that would have improved the comming OS4.  But as mentioned before, it's more important to get the core functionality to work first, then spice up the OS.
I'm just afraid that OS4 might not be so attractive  when it is lounched into the business world! Mostly because it does not really contain any new features... right?

And Tonyw - you are right. It is good to have a "objective" discussion where we can discuss viewpoints without any flamation :-)
Before the start of this thread, I felt a bit lost. Now though, there have been so many quality feedback, that I feel pretty up to date.
Still, I got left to make up my mind about MorphOS and Amiga Inc. And I guess the only way to do that, is to get hands on experience......

[CodeSmith]

@Downix:

Developers didn't know weither to use PowerUP or WarpUP for their solution, so in the end the critical pieces ended up split between both camps resulting in a lack of critical mass for the solution to go forward. This ended up killing the PowerPC card company, Phase5, as not enough customers purchased the card to make a stable enough market to expand with due to the fact that there was no clear development-center in this area

The *really* scary part in all this is, that sounds like a very possible outcome in this latest stage of the game (replace PowerUP and WarpUP with AmigaOS and MorphOS).  Sure, both OSs will be compatible with AmigaOS 3.1, but who wants to code for the old systems?  I don't think any company is going to die this time (genesi has its set-top boxes, hyperion its mac and linux market, eyetech its pc hardware market and amiga has the de), but the most likely casualty will be the amiga itself.  The situation needs to be fixed, and SOON.  We're running out of time...

[NewRevolution]

I knew it! a few years ago I heard rumors that Amiga had been bough by another company. Then I read that they where gonna use Amiga technology in set top boxes (which are for TVs right) - got a bit disapointed with that. Not fully using the Amigas potentiallity.

And what is PowerUP and WarpUP?

[Psy]

Ah! So Eyetech, if they are lucky, are getting it in both sack and bag (as we say). That means non-Amiga programmers (here: Linux) can start developing HW propritary applications. Not only will they try to gather the Amiga community, but they will start attracting the Linux community as well. Now that is a pretty large user group.

Well Pegasos is doing the same thing.  The outside world already knows of Pegasos.  Here is a review from osnews

Also on Slashdot they had a huge thread about how well Pegasos could run MacOS via Mac On Linux .

It seems to me that Amiga Inc has been rushing a bit. Amiga has been behind the curtains for the last decade, I don't think a couple of more years would have mattered much. Especially if that would have improved the comming OS4. But as mentioned before, it's more important to get the core functionality to work first, then spice up the OS.

Well Amiga Inc is competing with Genesi  and Genesi has the upper hand when it comes to funds plus Genesi can afford to lose the battle with MorphOS as Genesi already is positioning Pegasos to be more then just a next gen miggy board ie porting OSs to it like BeOS.  The idea to turn the Pegasos into a next gen Atari has also flew around atlest in the community.

[Targhan]

Basically, PowerUP and WarpUP were PPC kernals for Amigas that had the Cyberstorm or BlizzardPPC cards.  

MorphOS is supposed to be portable at some point, and I believe OS4 as well.  It should be taken into consideration that these projects have to start somewhere, and the road is a long one indeed.

[Taz69]

A nasty side effect of this rivalry is that the OS you choose to run determines the hardware you buy - you won't be able to run AmigaOS4 on a Pegasos (Amiga Inc and Genesi can't reach a licensing agreement), and the MorphOS team may or may not want to support AmigaOne motherboards (since then Genesi might sell fewer Pegasos motherboards).

One thing that has been overlooked is the posibility that a 3rd party could decide to license OS4 for the Pegasos 2 motherboard. I don't know if they would need to buy the motherboards in and mod them with AOS4 complient firmware or if they could get away with providing a Pegasos version of AOS4 and possibly requiring customers to send their motherboards in to be modded.

Taking this idea further if a 3rd party went to the trouble of negotiating a deal with A Inc why stop at the Peggy 2, How about having AOS4 on a Mac laptop :idea: or any future PPC hardware if the demand for it is there.