SAM 440 - What would owning one mean to you?

[takemehomegrandma]

@KimmoK

Efika needs a display card (PCI or AGP card on a riser) which power/performance ratio is hardly any better than ATI M9.

With an AGP slot you have the *option to choose* based on your own preferences regarding price/performance. Maybe you prefer low cost in favor of 3D performance for instance?

And more important than the GPU version (after all, no Sam/Efika is going to be used as a PS3 replacement any day soon anyway ;-)) is the amount of memory! At least in the case of MorphOS, thanks to its "Layers 3D" functionality, you know where the GUI is handled by the 3D GPU (somewhat like in MacOS X and Windows Vista). This consumes a lot of GFX card memory. I've heard that 64MB is a *bare minimum* (and *not* recommended), 128MB is better, and 256MB "let you use your machine without worrying about the mem consumed by l3d" (to quote jacadcaps).

Efika needs 2.5" hard drive (they are very slow on all laptops that I've used).

That's probably because you have only used slow laptops with low RAM and bulky OS's which makes heavy use of the HDD (for virtual memory and other stuff). As you know, this is not the case on any Amiga environment, where the system boots in an instant, programs are tiny and loads in a flash, etc. And on the Efika the HDD will not be the weakest link in the IDE chain anyway, so...

SAM has two times more RAM, 4*SATA IDE interface

Sure, the Sam has more desktop alike controllers, which undoubtedly is much appreciated by people wanting to use it as a desktop. At the penalty of an insane price, of course...

FREE PCI slot

...that shares the same PCI bus as all the other controllers (including the GPU).

a lot faster CPU

No, definitely not a lot. To be honest, I haven't seen any real life comparisons, but given the higher clock frequency I'd say it's probably a bit faster, although you can certainly *not* call the Sam CPU *fast* in any way, especially not for serious desktop usage. A lean OS like the "amigoid" OS's makes the experience pleasurable on low power CPU's as long as you're not doing anything particular with it, but as soon as you start doing *demanding stuff* you should know the difference. I'd say that both Sam's and the Efika's CPU can be categorized in the same class of "embedded" CPU's.

DVI out

DVI out has been on every graphics card for ages, haven't it?

So, IMHO SAM is worth the "extra" price.

That's great then! :-)

(I will order MOS board someday, I just desided to go one at a time.) :-)

Maybe the MacMini version of MorphOS is ready when you are ready for MorphOS? Then you could get the fastest Amiga ever (1.58GHz 7447A G4), at a really low cost! :-)

Sure, also I spotted the redtail board in bbrv's web blog. It looks interesting for a desktop/laptop/kiosk "Amiga". Perhaps MOS and/or AOS4 will be available for something like that someday,

The 8610 is the latest and definitely one of the fastest e600 based CPU's. Its integrated display controller and north bridge functionality makes it possible to build a system with a very good bang for the buck ratio.

now when they are not tied to any single HW manufacturer.

Well, that remains to be seen (in both cases!) ;-)

[takemehomegrandma]

TiredOLife wrote:

takemehomegrandma wrote:

Amithony wrote:

Imagine getting the formula right enough to re-spark an Amiga resurgence!

Jahc likes to call his OS of choice AmigaOS4.1, and so does Hyperion. However, Amiga Inc (the IP owner) doesn't agree, and that's why they have submitted the lawsuit for trade mark infringement. Let's see what comes out of this law suit before speaking too much about Amiga resurgence based on Hyperion's OS, chances are you only will be disappointed if you invest too much hope in this one...

That's a pretty bold statement.

Not a bold statement in any way (other than that I wrote Amiga in bold ;-)).

Hyperion are under the impression they are the IP owner.

If there was no dispute there would be no court case.

They can be under whatever "impression" they like, it's not like it's their "impression" that makes facts!

I could be "under the impression" that I own the right to use the name "Windows Vista" for my own products. It would certainly boost my sales. And when Microsoft sue me for trade mark infringement, I could simply call that "a dispute, that's why there is a court case", call *you* in to call MS lawsuit "a bold statement" and simply continue to sell my products under the name "Windows Vista". For a while at least. Until the court proclaim its verdict.

I like this Hyperion quote (Ben Hermans):

"The failure of Amiga Inc and the MorphOS team to come to terms is in part due to the fact that Amiga wants to assert their ownership and intellectual property rights over the Amiga OS (for which they paid 4.5 M USD) whilst the MorphOS team happily continues to refute those claims"

Now replace all instances of "the MorphOS team" with "Hyperion" and read it again for some laughs! ;-)

Can't see where the disappointment is coming from.
One you have bought Sam and OS4.1, nobody from Amiga Inc will be round your house to take it back (Should they win)

The future would disappear in an instant, the OS development would stop, all interest would go away, and with that all SW development, etc. It could very well turn out to be a still born project. I'm *not* saying it will, but the risk is clearly there until all legal issues are settled. That's where the disappointment could come from. And no, there is nothing bold about that statement.

As for Sam and 4.1, nobody who has bought the combination has been disappointed with it as far as I am aware.

I bet!

Anyone who thinks it isn't an Amiga, my advice is to try it for yourself.

If it looks like an elephant, sounds like an elephant and acts like an elephant, then chances are it is an elephant.

Exactly, and we have AROS/x86/PPC elephants, we have OS4/A1/Classic/Sam elephants, we have MorphOS/Pegasos/Efika/Classic/MacMini(soon ;-)) elephants, and of course *the elephants* (the A1000-A4000/1.0-3.9 elephants)! ;-)

[takemehomegrandma]

Varthall wrote:
@takemehomegrandma

Instead of making assumptions, why don't you just ask ACube (publically or in private form) how is Sam selling in the industrial market?

You just did. As has other done in other threads on other forums. Many times.

So I guess we just sit down and wait for Acube to give us some exact and correct numbers now?

Ah, come on! Why on earth should they comment on that to any outsider, be it in public or in private? Of course they won't! And they shouldn't!

[zylesea]

Amithony wrote:
 I think that the SAM is going to out perform my 68060 when I put it next to it.

A shame if it wouldn't. Even my current pocket calculator is faster than a 68060 ;-).

[KimmoK]

@takemehomegrandma

Both Efika and SAM are laughable if one compares their HW specs to a mini-ITX Atom system that I can build under 99$ to run AROS and UAE, so there is not much point in arguing...

But one gets a lot more in SAM+AOS4 than in Efika+MOS2, both cost too much if one compares to the world of x86 ((and are light years behind in specs))


another point for our niche machines:
If I keep my Athlon box running 24H/365d/year it costs me 70€ more in electricity per year than SAM or Efika. So our niche boards would earn back their extra cost sooner or later.

[zylesea]

takemehomegrandma wrote:

And more important than the GPU version (after all, no Sam/Efika is going to be used as a PS3 replacement any day soon anyway ;-)) is the amount of memory! At least in the case of MorphOS, thanks to its "Layers 3D" functionality, you know where the GUI is handled by the 3D GPU (somewhat like in MacOS X and Windows Vista). This consumes a lot of GFX card memory. I've heard that 64MB is a *bare minimum* (and *not* recommended), 128MB is better, and 256MB "let you use your machine without worrying about the mem consumed by l3d" (to quote jacadcaps).

With 64 MB L3D just does fine, I even used it on a 32MB card and it was surprisingly okay. For the OS4 composting engine it will be similar, I assume.
But still, 128 MB VRAM are indeed better and the limitation to 64 MB VRAM is as stupid as the 128MB RAM on Efika.
Rule of thumb for all computers: the least you should be stingy with is RAM, be it VRAM or "normal" RAM.
Violation of that rule of thumb leads to some unpleasant PITA.

[TheMagicM]

framiga:

 uh! didn't you sold it?  and sorry but "Efika" and "awesome" can't fit in the same sentence

yup.  waiting for a Mac Mini port of MorphOS.

[Amithony]

zylesea wrote:

Amithony wrote:
 I think that the SAM is going to out perform my 68060 when I put it next to it.

A shame if it wouldn't. Even my current pocket calculator is faster than a 68060 ;-).

Courses for horses. Id happily swap my calculators for your amigas if that's where you're going.

[zyphoid]

hopefully running a faster machine than ef. you can't surf and listen to mplayer/songplayer simultaneously, can't play a game and listen to music, ram issues, damn.. can't multitask... now i know i saw videos of this being done!!

[zylesea]

Amithony wrote:

Courses for horses. Id happily swap my calculators for your amigas if that's where you're going.

Nothing left to swap, sold my 68k maschines many, many moons ago (except one A600). Once used to the ppc speed suddenly I didn't felt comfortable on 68k anymore.
Or to put in a nutshell: You'll be amazed by the speed of a ppc Amiga.

[Amithony]

zylesea wrote:
Once used to the ppc speed suddenly I didn't felt comfortable on 68k anymore.
Or to put in a nutshell: You'll be amazed by the speed of a ppc Amiga.

I suspect this will be the case when i get my sam440. Who would be the best supplier I wonder?

[takemehomegrandma]

Amithony wrote:

zylesea wrote:
Once used to the ppc speed suddenly I didn't felt comfortable on 68k anymore.
Or to put in a nutshell: You'll be amazed by the speed of a ppc Amiga.

I suspect this will be the case when i get my sam440.

You should definitely notice difference from a 68k system, shame otherwise!

But with "You'll be amazed by the speed of a PPC Amiga" maybe zylesea meant a G4 with Altivec?

Who would be the best supplier I wonder?

Many people seems to be very happy with Amigakit.com, so why don't you try that one out? :-)

[Amithony]

takemehomegrandma wrote:


Many people seems to be very happy with Amigakit.com, so why don't you try that one out? :-)

I was thinking of them, but i am based in Australia, so i was hoping there would be a local supplier. There may not be one, so amigakit may be the only way to go.

[redfox]

@JJ

what sort of speeds do you get running on euae on the micro A1 ...

I can't really answer your question directly, because I'm not really going for a maxed out emulation and I don't use euae to play fast games.

I am using E-UAE to emulate a very basic 68K system, similar to Amiga 2000HD with no accelerator card.  This means 68000 CPU and I have chosen AmigaOS 3.1 because that is what I had on my old machine.

Just for fun, I gave it 2 MB of ChipRAM, 4 MB of FastRAM, ECS chipset, full screen amiga graphics and I set the cpu speed to maximum allowable by e-uae.  I use a drawer on my OS4 system parition as my Workbench partition for the emulated Amiga.  I can also mount ADF files as floppies.

So, speed wise, I'm set to max allowable clock rate, but I'm emulating an 68000 CPU.

When I launch E-UAE, it loads way faster than my old A2000HD.  It is also a very responsive system.

I use E-UAE for a few old favourites ...
Lore of Conquest (a very old two player space war game), Shanghai © 1986 by Activision, Inc., MegaBall v4.0, Microfiche Filer and Amiga Vision.

Sometimes I feel a slight slow down in MegaBall v4.0.  It is probably faster on a real classic Amiga system.

I also used E-UAE to install TVPaint and Real3D on my OS4 system.  This was an interesting exercise, because both of these programs come with an installer script that depends on the older installer program available in AmigaOS 3.x.  I used OS4 and IBrowse or AWeb to download the lha files and the OS4 unarc program to unarchive the lha files into ADF files.  Then I launched E-UAE and used the emulated Amiga system to mount the ADF files as floppies and install the programs onto my emulated Workbench harddrive.  Then I quit E-UAE and used OS4 to drag the TVPaint drawer and Real3D drawer over to their final destination.  This was the easiest way for me to do it all on the same machine.

BTW, I can run IBrowse, Final Writer 97, PPaint, TVPaint, Real3D, MakeCD, AmigaAMP, KingCON, MicroRexx, and other system friendly programs directly from my OS4 Workbench without going into E-UAE first.

Amiga Vision also runs directly from OS4, but also needs to use some things from the older systems.  I'm not sure if it is occasionally touching the chipset or needs some older file formats or datatypes that I do not have installed in OS4.  E-UAE seems to be able to satisfy its needs.

---
redfox

[recidivist]

 Well,I have done it!

 Just placed the order for an efika for this coming winter's computer project.(ok, one of this winter's projects....)
 Will be watching for video card at hamfest tomorrow,along with the odd bit of C= stuff like $1 1541 etc.

 I hope MorphOS is not too pricey,suppose I should have checked that first?

[Amithony]

Here's looking forward to SAM, as pricey as he is.