Hans_ wrote:
Disingenuous? In what way is anything that I said disingenuous? I simply stated my personal preference. The comment in brackets is because I know that it's kind of hard to get OS4 if you don't already have a PowerPC classic Amiga or an Amigaone.
You misspelled pointless.
I do however apologise, it wasn't clear from your original post that it would simply be personal preference.
Hans_ wrote:
BTW, I have one of those "piles of cack" (sic) that you speak of, and for a "pile of cack," it works pretty darn well. You clearly have no idea what state OS4 is in, or the hardware.
"clearly not knowing what state OS4 is in", HA!
It's more stable then it was, but still less stable then 3.9 on classic hardware, though better on an A1, however, the number of working A1's continues to decline at a fairly steady (read, ludicrous) rate.
It's not as stable as MorphOS from my own testing, has nothing on even BeOS, which ceased development in 2001, and certainly not Zeta (the BeOS derived OS that was killed off last year).
Consider yourself lucky, having been to several amiga shows and in constant contact with a great many people who bought A1's of all different types, I can tell you that their failure rate is obscene, no product that poorly produced should ever have left the shop floor, power regulator issues, fouled IO, borked sound.. The list goes on.
My all time personal favourite though was the constantly resetting Uboot issue many microA1's had, every time you boot, you have to re-edit uboot, even after replacing battery after battery, nice.
I could probably quote you a couple of snippets I've gleaned about the snafu that is OS4's revised memory model from Karlos, but I seriously doubt you want to hear it.
Hans_ wrote:
there's also a group that want Amiga to remain a retro machine.
Hans_ wrote:
What would be neat is if a next-gen API could be collectively agreed upon, and then implemented on all the next-gen Amiga systems. That is, however, unlikely to happen.
It's also unfeasable to push a single user, non memory protected, non smp capable OS into a new device without starting from scratch, simply adding an new API won't cut it.
Wrong. It's not
adding an API, it's creating/using a
new API. The new API would be incompatible with the old one, so old software would run in a legacy environment. Apple did it with Mac OS X, so it can be done. Except, with Amiga OS, the difference between the two APIs needn't be so drastic. Just because you don't know how to do it doesn't make it unfeasible.[/quote]
It was called BeOS.
Worked a damn sight better then OS4 ever did too. But going back, it is unfeasable, because simply "creating a new API" with the sorts of fundamental changes you would need, with the current limitations means you would basically have to re-write the thing from scratch, whilst at the same time breaking compatability with all previous software, at which point, why bother? There are off the shelf solutions out there that would probably be better suited, hell, Haiku - the opensource BeOS clone with a UAE sandbox integrated would probably give you everything you needed and give it to you in an identifiably AmigaOS like way. Aros is another potential way forward...
Hans_ wrote:
The best you could possibly hope for is some heavily patched beast running on something like an EeePC or mini itx board, because anything else would litterally be wasted on AmigaOS - it simply isn't capable of utilising anything more complex or capable.
That's the best that you could hope for, not everyone else. There is no technical reason why Amiga OS could not utilise something more complex or capable.
I don't deal in false hope, it always ends in bitter dissapointment. Reality is my prefered choice, and the reality is that the best you really could hope for is something like an Amithlon/Aros hybrid running on X86, or maybe NatAmi if you want something really cool.
Hans_ wrote:
BTW, no, I do not expect Amiga OS to suddenly catch up to the rest of the computing world; I just happen to enjoy pushing it forward beyond what it was originally designed for. That's pretty similar to the Natami guys, who are pushing the original hardware design forward, instead of the OS. I think that the Natami project is pretty neat.
Hans
I happen to agree with that, in the same way I thought the C=One project was an outstanding piece of ingenuity, indeed my first thoughts when I saw it was, the Amiga community would have been better served with a beefed up one of these over the A1.
