AmigaOS and The x86 Question

[freqmax]

Yeah, lowperforming stuff to hillarous prices won't work in the current market. And the x86-pc have caught up in some ways with cpu caches, pci bus, s-ata etc..
Something that is lacking is the performance bottleneck from protected mode/mmu, In conjuction with badly written operating systems.

boinger, Intel 8086 and compatibles

[Trev]

What are you talking about? The SAM440ep is teh hawt. And you know everyone that just bought one from the latest batch is just *thrilled* with the 100 Euro price drop on the soon-to-be-shipped-and-faster-than-a-SAM440ep SAM440ep-flex.

[krize]

x86 wont happen... Who got the money for the work/or even the license ? The only way "forward" as I see it is the mac ppc ports.. For both Mos and os4..

There are quite many used ppc macs and it wont take years to port it...

[mschulz]

The only way "forward" as I see it is the mac ppc ports.. For both Mos and os4..

Porting to a dead hardware line (Mac PPC) is "forward"?

[krize]

Thats why i write "forward"... Forward to more users than the ever shrinking community now... Its just a transition between solutions, mac ppc is really not the solution wanted... But its a possible one, realisticly.

[shoggoth]

freqmax wrote:
Yeah, lowperforming stuff to hillarous prices won't work in the current market. And the x86-pc have caught up in some ways with cpu caches, pci bus, s-ata etc..
Something that is lacking is the performance bottleneck from protected mode/mmu, In conjuction with badly written operating systems.

How does protected mode and MMU constitute bottlenecks?!

Can you elaborate that further?

[persia]

Oh wow, some new American words, it helps to have Google to look things up

The problem with Sam is that it's price to performance ratio is horrible when compared to a PC box.  Yeah, us Amiga Fanboys might buy it but nobody outside of this community would.

Is it possible that most of us like the exclusivity of the price?  The price keeps the outside riff-raff out and the community remains a small devoted cult of believers.  

[ffastback]

terminator4 wrote:
@billt
I agree.  There are dealers and users that demo OS4 all the time.  Even if they aren't an invite to a show is all that is needed.  I think there are many people that are simply so broke and so used to picking up cheap peecee that Amiga OS is not really for them (small market, small economies of scale).
And that goes without saying also for some old classic hardware for Commodore Amigas.
I'm simply calling a spade a spade, not beating around the bush.

Where?  Is this Europe you are refering to?  Because in NYC in the USA the local Amiga club is now down to meeting about once every three months in a sandwich shop for two hours.  And there is no storefront to go see a dealer for such.  And this is a city known for having access usually to most things.  What would some guy living in Vermont do to see the OS live before buying if someone in NYC can't in any good accessible form?

[ffastback]

persia wrote:
Oh wow, some new American works, it helps to have Google to look things up

Never have I heard that on the East Coast.  I would not peg that as a new American "work", which I think you mean to say in the Queens English instead as "word(s)".   :lol:

[warpdesign]

What AmigaOS has over other OS is Speed! and small resource need. Let's compete with the strong sides, and not bother to compete where AmigaOS has it's weaknesses.

Well, I'd rather say: let's fix/improve the weaknesses, while keeping the (very few) strong sides... That's why I keep on pointing weaknesses. There's no way you may attract people with current weaknesses... But if you manage to address it while keeping the strong sides, now it can become interesting.

So knowing that, I find it useless keep on repeting it's fast, etc...

[takemehomegrandma]

krize wrote:
x86 wont happen... Who got the money for the work/or even the license ? The only way "forward" as I see it is the mac ppc ports.. For both Mos and os4..

There are quite many used ppc macs and it wont take years to port it...

The PPC architecture is kind of dead, at least when it comes to future developments and advancements of CPU's that would be interesting to "us". OK, second hand Mac hardware will keep some community members happy for a while, but at some point further down the road, both MorphOS and OS4 will simply have to jump to either ARM or x86. But if I understand things correctly, this will probably also mean starting over with a clean slate when it comes to backwards compatibility. Anubis anyone?

[Flashlab]

@takemehomegrandma

The legal obstacle in that they can only port OS4 to PPC hardware. So that rules out x86. I don't know what the exact words in the contract are but if it states PPC architecture instead AmigaOne or any other specific computer model Hyperion did nothing wrong. But I'm not the judge here and neither are you sadly.

And, yes, I think that anyone whining about OS4 on x86 should switch AROS, Icaros or Anubis. These are open source, run on x86 and you have your cheap available, powerful hardware. And if you want you can actually contribute to it in development; that's a lot better than whining on forums about OS4 on x86.

[persia]

What if Amiga Inc were judged to be insolvent before the sneaky handoff to KMOS?  Would Hyperion then have all rights to OS 4 including the right to port to X86?

[dammy]

by mschulz on 2009/4/3 8:50:08

Porting to a dead hardware line (Mac PPC) is "forward"?

Forward as in forward to the grave.

Dammy

[takemehomegrandma]

Flashlab wrote:
@takemehomegrandma

The legal obstacle in that they can only port OS4 to PPC hardware.

According to the contract they couldn't port it to new PPC hardware either, but now we have both a Sam 440 port and a Pegasos2 port and presumably they are working on something else (that presumably concerns an OS4 port). They have clearly showed that they don't give a rats ass about the Amiga Inc contract, and if I recall things correctly (didn't follow the developments in detail) they even argue in the court process that they consider the contract dead because Amiga Inc went bankrupt or whatever, so they are now the rightful owners of the. Didn't they even try to get the Amiga trademarks in a separate lawsuit? Anyway, the "legal obstacles" argument against a x86 port simply isn't there anymore in Hyperion's current position.

[persia]

Is Amiga Inc dead yet?  Their chief benefactor gone, two press releases in a year, one of which was for a "tip calculator," no new hardware, no new software, a website where many of the graphics are missing, etc.  Anyone in Seattle care to check out their "headquarters" over the top of a furniture store to see if they are sittll there?