Merlancia Industries Announces the MCC 1000 and the MCC 1200

[Seehund]

@Ole-Egil:

I don't think Eyetech has any say in the matter.

They shouldn't, but some things really make you wonder...

(OS4 on the Peg with a proper licence kinda WOULD prick a hole in the balloon of a certain petitioning Swede, though).

How so?
(I assume you're referring to me, or any of the other Swedes, who are petitioning AInc on this matter.)

I mean, what has changed?
Has the compulsory trademark licensing + OS bundling + hw-vendor supplied dongle requirements been revoked? If that had happened, it'd be a GOOD thing, and it'd show that AInc listened to its market. No popped balloons in that case, maybe popped champagne bottles. But this hasn't happened.


If anything, this farce serves to yet again illustrate how absolutely worthless and counterproductive this supposed "customer protection" and "quality/compatibility assurance" nonsense really is.

It would mean that the freakshow ran by that kid Ryan, Merlancia(!!!), arguably the company with the worst track record (vapour-ware wise, legally, and so on...) in the silly former Amiga market, is considered Good Enough for us stupid customers by AInc, that this parody of a company (Merlancia, not Ainc this time) should be trusted to wield the "Amiga" trademark, that their vaporware product has passed through AInc's strict quality assurance procedure, that AmigaOS4 has been found to run flawlessly on the Pegasos mobo that this vapourbox allegedly would contain...

"From the top of the company to the bottom, we are committed to championing the cause of quality for the consumer and will ensure that substandard products do not make it into the Amiga market where they can do irreparable damage to the reputation of the platform. Licencees will have to develop and resource a full customer solution, with guarantees on product quality, delivery, and most important of all post sales support, with firm commitments to repair, replacement and turnaround, elements that have blighted the platform over the last five years."

In light of what we all have seen, all of that is nothing but a sick joke.

Let's see what reputation the "Amiga" trademark has gained with AInc's trademark licensing.
AmigaDE: It's been three years, and it does not yet exist. It hasn't been demoed. No product has ever ran it. The company behind the licensed technology has said it can't be used to build what AInc announced.
AAPlayer/AACE/whatever: A whole lot of former "partners" with changed minds. Two sets of games from third parties that only run on embedded Windows versions, and that mostly are of worse quality than the Java games that people download for free.
AmigaOS: First discontinued ("it's dead, DE is the future"), then luckily picked up by a third party. When it's released people won't be allowed to buy it, unless they at the same time buy overpriced hardware from a restricted subset of a third party market, for no other reason than to artificially create a source of income from trademark licenses.
"AmigaOne 1200": Discontinued vapourware, while promised to be "on schedule and r...". Oh well. You all know Dammy's favourite.
Teron CX/"AmigaOne SE": Flawed hardware and firmware, severely overpriced by the licensee, never ran AmigaOS, never tested by AInc, was never meant to be a consumer product, discontinued right under the nose of the licensee.

The "Amiga" trademark has so far been haphazardly slapped on ONE functional, useful and released third party product - The Teron PX ("AmigaOne XE"). But AmigaOS still doesn't run on it (yet it's passed AInc's compatibility tests), nobody at AInc has even seen a board (yet it's passed their quality certification, even though it didn't even have Gerald Carda's "wire-fix" at the time it was first sold as an "AmigaOne"), it's never been sold with AmigaOS nor a firmware dongle as required, there are obvious delivery problems, it costs $300 more from the licensee than what another more reputable dealer was going to charge before they changed their minds during their hardware testing, the licensee has no control over the future of the product, and customer support seems to mean "there's a Debian manual with the latest boards, and haven't you been signed up to that customer-created Yahoo mailinglist yet?".


And at the same time, another license applicant (apparently very capable, experienced and with a good track record) has been turned down or plain ignored, while judging by this story Merlancia (a clown operation that most sane people wouldn't trust to supervise the drying process of a newly painted wall) would have gotten a license!? I know it's been said that Merlancia has borrowed money to AInc, but COME ON!

If you'd want to buy AmigaOS for a Pegasos(II), you'd not be allowed to buy your hardware anywhere but from Merlancia[/i]! How wonderful...

Oh yeah, I feel great being protected like this!

[starbird80]

>this should be added to the current poll

Actually, the (original) MCC was my reason for answering "other" on the poll.

I'm firmly in the "see it to believe it" camp.  I won't seriously consider an AmigaONE without seeing one, running AmigaOS4, in a dealer first either.

[Varthall]

From what I have read about Merlancia in the past
month, my only comment would be

Iwin 2 - The Revenge

 :-)

Varthall

[olegil]

Don't expect a full reply, Seehund. Way too much text there for a friday ;-)

But those who bought the SE while it was still shipping will be able to run OS4 on it when it is ready. I don't see what you're on about the firmware about either. What's wrong with it? I have mine right here, just so you know. Yes, there's been updates, but surely you don't expect there to never be firmware updates?

Or did you not hear about the lack of 82c686B support in the Softex firmware, which is the REAL reason the developer SE version shipped with the wrong firmware compared to the end user version 3 months later?

[PMC]

I quite liked the MCC style case, it could have popularised Amiga once again with it's cool aesthetics in much the same way that Apple did with the IMac.  However, the hard part is designing the hardware inside, and the MCC was probably nothing more than a lump of hand-crafted clay - much like a static concept car at a motorshow.

Back to Merlancia though, before we all get too cynical, we should at least give them the benefit of the doubt and see what happens in September.  

In all honesty, I don't really trust A.Inc (please note, as distinct from Hyperion, Eyetech, MOS etc) any more than Merlancia, so I'll be interested to see what happens.

[magnetic]

@fnord

Merlancia is not listed as a reseller for Genesi. Not anyone can just be a reseller it must be approved. Judging from their trackrecord, I doubt Ryan and Merlancia would qualify.

magnetic

[JoannaK]

olegil: There is also another alternative to PPC board. I have not
followed Mai as closely as I used to but didn't they announce
some micro-atx variant? Was is something like Aone-lite? If Merlancia
woudl get those (assuming those boards are available) there could be
way to get OS4 ...

Neat, easy and...Well, there would be no problem with names etc..

[downix]

@JoannaK

I remember Ben H discussing Mai's MicroATX board design at Amiwest.  If Ryan has partnered with Mai for using this or even Mai's Mini-ITX motherboard, then he's taken a good step in the right direction to establishing himself as a serious business.

[Waccoon]

BHoggett:  (I love the bit about purchasing all the IP associated with the MMC. It sounds like special carpentry skills were used when they made that pathetic mock-up model)

Not only that, but the photo of the MCC on Merlancia's website is one of the original photos from when Gateway was in charge.  Do they even have a real mock-up?  ;-)

[olegil]

The MicroATX and the AmigaOne G3-Lite are not the same board. The MicroATX is an XE shrunk to mAXT, the Lite is an SE shrunk to double-eurocard (220x160mm or so, I believe). Details are furry, but don't think the mATX will be sold by Eyetech.

[JoannaK]

Hmm.. so Mai mATX board could be available to others willing to make
compatible systems? Would fit to MCC-box and should be easy to port
OS4 too cause it's essentially identical on chip level to current
Aone.

[MarkTime]

@olegil&@seehund

olegil, the only reason I can see that you just say 'it's too much text for a Friday' is you just don't have a better response.  Seehund's talk of the discontinued SE product, was just part of his larger discussion of the licensing program.

His letter was a very detailed, very appropriate response the earlier person who took a potshot at him for his petition efforts.

I have to say, it is so overwhelmingly obvious that the 'quality assurance' reasoning that was publicly given by Amiga, Inc. as a defense for the licensing program, is very clearly wrong.   All the licensee's, all 1 of them, got their licenses before products were ever tested on OS 4 (which has not yet every booted on these products)...and many of the licensed products never made it to market or were yanked unexpectedly....they were never tested for quality by Amiga, Inc.

I didn't sign Seehund's petition.  The reason was simple, Amiga, Inc. should have the right to have a licensing program.  The reason for this licensing program is to generate money for Amiga, Inc.

Unfortunately, Amiga, Inc. forgot that its OK to just tell the truth, and in the long run, thats the best policy.  This particular lie, (just one of many)....hasn't done anything but hurt them.  Their fans would have approved of a purely income driven licensing scheme...but some of their fans, now former fans, got tired of all the misdirection and lies.

BTW, when Apple's Steve Jobs pulled the Apple clone licenses the reason was 'It doesn't generate enough REVENUE'

He made up no bull@##$# reason about it being for quality assurance.

I point this out, because the hero worshipper's who are worshipping business FAILURES (I won't say the name for fear of 'trolling')....should actually take a look at business SUCCESSES for once.

They are not 'pragmatists' who will do 'anything' to survive.  They conduct themselves with honor.

I sincerly hope that our business leaders Bill McEwen and Bill Buck realize (someday) that some very successful business folks, like Steve Jobs and yes, even Bill Gates, are not pragmatists who will do anything for a dollar.   No, they are very tough people, and with very clear visions, BUT they have LIMITS.   Steve Jobs and Bill Gates both will honor a contract.  They both can enforce a EULA with a clear conscious knowing they do their best to respect the EULA's of other companies.

I know for a fact, with direct knowledge that some of our business leaders will violate a EULA in a heartbeat at the same time they will attempt to enforce their own IP rights...its called hypocrisy, and  its really not necessary, even if they believe it is...and the worst crime of all....it's not even going to make them a business success, ...worse, it will ensure they fail.

[olegil]

@MarkTime:
I've been in and out of doctors offices and hospitals trying to find out what's causing my pains this week, yesterday was NOT a good day for long texts. Today hasn't been much better.

Also, it is NOT my job to defend Eyetech/Hyperion/Amiga Inc. I just don't happen to disagree with Hyperion in this case. Also, much of the argument falls flat on its face when you consider the fact that OS4 hasn't even been released for ANY platform yet. Not much point in yelling about lack of support for other systems when it doesn't even support the targetted system, no?

[Floid]

JoannaK asked,

Hmm.. so Mai mATX board could be available to others willing to make compatible systems? Would fit to MCC-box and should be easy to port OS4 too cause it's essentially identical on chip level to current Aone.

Yes, that's the whole point, *BUT* Eyetech is also Mai's official sales partner for the Western market, sort of.  See http://www.mai.com/news&events/PressRelease070902_2.html, though I think the release was 'softened'/'clarified' slightly after the initial announcement.  If you ask Mai *where else* you can buy a Teron, at least when "the Amiga scene" has ever been mentioned in communication, they point you to Eyetech.

So it depends whether Mai releases the mATX/ITX(?) designs as references (the 'Teron mPX' or whatnot does make it sound like *that* design will be 'open'), how many after-the-fact tweaks will be needed to make them runnable (Eyetech's runs presumably have the few subtle improvements routed in, and Eyetech probably footed the bill for the manufacturing changes, while Mai are happy to point back to the slightly-bugfixed product as a Teron), and how many other companies are interested.  Not necessarily in that order.

After that, to boot OS4 it'd need two basic things:

*RDB support in the firmware - IIRC, I brought this up to a Terrasoft representative I was quizzing, and they seemed a bit surprised...  Though maybe I only got as far as the history of the BoXeR name with the rep, and I'm thinking of the side thread I had going with Thomas (Frieden.. gah, can't keep track of the avatar names!) as per his involvement in U-Boot...  An independent project not thinking of the Amiga scene probably wouldn't bother including that support in their ROMs.

*Whatever dongle code/mechanism/??? is supposed to exist to prevent this from happening without AInc.'s sanction.

[olegil]

@Floid:
The official firmware for the Teron is UBoot, which Hyperion wrote. They included RDB support (I'm booting Linux from a boot partition in an RDB right here), and thus all Terons got this ability. It's not like each and every reseller of Teron boards has to write their own firmware...

The dongle code is another matter. That isn't part of UBoot, it's just code placed in the same flashrom by an external program...

I actually believe that someone who buys a Teron to run Linux on it would do himself a favour by looking into using RDB instead of MBR. I've been trying to improve amiga-fdisk so it's easier to create a valid RDB, and Sten Luther (has a Peg, does Linux work) is including the v50 (OS4) bootloader extensions in libparted, the partitioning library used in the upcoming Debian Sarge installer. Now all I have to do is finish my changes to "kernel-package" and submit them. Then we port the AmigaOne "boot-floppies" changes into "debian-installer". From there on, anyone who installs Debian Sarge on a Teron/AmigaOne will have the option to use RDB :-)

(remember that they would have to use the amigaone linux kernel as well ;-) )

Edit:
Ok, they didn't _write_ UBoot. They ported it and added x86 emulator, menu, RDB support and CatWeasel keyboard support. Possibly more.

[Ni72ous]

@Varthall

Iwin 2 - The Revenge

lmao

I remember that Iwin hoax :-)