Interview with Trevor Dickinson

[spihunter]

Wow! click on the pictures links for his harware collection! That's some serious Commodore porn!!!!

[Fats]

I wonder if a PAE kernel is in the pipeline to bridge the 32->64-bit gap? OS4 native apps that rely on MEMF_PRIVATE for most of their needs could presumably benefit from it.

AFAIK PAE is something x86 specific.
Staf.

[Karlos]

AFAIK PAE is something x86 specific.
Staf.

I did wonder about that, I thought it might have been a "general" method of large memory model support for 32-bit systems. It's been a while since I've looked into this sort of stuff.

[EDanaII]

That's one way of measuring it. Not necessarily the one I was looking after. Computer value doesn't exactly follow the same pattern as house prices. ;-)

I'm afraid the only comparison anyone is going to make is to comparable modern hardware. Comparing it to hardware of the time, or even houses, isn't going to drive sales. Period.

Ed.

[clusteruk]

The reality is, £1500 is not a lot if it earns its keep somehow doing things better or differently than other platforms.

You cannot compare a small scale custom machine like this, built for a low volume market of users that have almost begged for this kind of machine and performance for there favourite AmigaOS4 that HAS to run on PowerPC, soon you will have it, get your credit cards preloaded with some cash.

This price is fair for what you are getting, not in a cost comparison with commodity hardware but with high end kit. Mac Pros start at this kind of price and they are mass market pro end kit. Check out a high end Games PC and you are looking well over a £1000.

Bottom line is forgetting, can I afford one which personally is not yet, I believe they are worth the money and they will please there new owners no end with a huge smile on there face. Plus they will once the potential starts to be realised, offer some great new features for a personal computer. Look at the A1000, only 4096 colours, then DCTV with 24 bit just by encoding a 16 colour images through some custom electronics and outputting to a composite output, genius. Mine then reverts back to RGB so my 25 year old A1000 has 24 bit animation.

I for one will save up, sell some old kit, part ex the girl friend and may even sell my Alfa to buy one. Well maybe not the Alfa :-)

Steve

[Karlos]

I'm presently facing the possibility of being made redundant in the near future, so I won't be buying any new hardware until that's clearer.

[clusteruk]

@Karlos

Understood, but the point is, is this a lot for a high end computer.

http://store.apple.com/uk-business/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_pro

From £1940, I know which I would prefer and it is not named after fruit.

[Piru]

The reality is, £1500 is not a lot if it earns its keep somehow doing things better or differently than other platforms.

The thing is it really doesn't. Not on any level to justify such a price tag.

The truth is that Windows, Mac OS X and even Linux beat the crap out of any NG amigoid system in any given task.

£1500 is a lot of money for just a "feel good" hobby system.

[EDanaII]

Yea, this is really a bird in hand/two in bush argument, with dreamers talking about how awesome the new amiga is gonna be but never having seen how awesome it is (or isn't). Sigh...

Amigans have learned nothing after all these years.

Ed.

[Karlos]

@Karlos

Understood, but the point is, is this a lot for a high end computer.

http://store.apple.com/uk-business/browse/home/shop_mac/family/mac_pro

From £1940, I know which I would prefer and it is not named after fruit.

Quad-Core

One 2.66GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon "Nehalem" processor
3GB (three 1GB) memory
640GB hard drive
18x double-layer SuperDrive
NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 with 512MB

That's disgraceful. Aside from the CPU/memory specs, my current PC stands up well to that and cost considerably less almost 2 years ago.

Comparable specs, when originally built:

2.66GHz Quad Core Q9450 processor
4GB DDR3 (dual channel rated 6-6-6 at 1600MHz, running at 1333MHz (CPU FSB) with 5-5-5 timing)
500GB SATA 2 HD
24x DVD RW (not blu ray though)
NVidia GTX260 with 896MB

Total cost was just over half the cost of the above Mac and that includes the Coolermaster Cosmos-S case, 850W CoolerMaster ultra-high efficiency modular PSU, Gigabyte GA-X48T-DQ6 motherboard (intel express X48 chipset, 2x PCIe 16 - both capable of full speed operation when occupied simultaneously) as well as the fact the CPU and graphics card were virutally fresh out of their respective stables at the time. Never mind the cost of DDR3 then!

Since then, I've replaced the gfx card (the hazard of buying bleeding edge) and added more storage and it still doesn't put much of a dent in the remaining price difference.

[guest7146]

The thing is it really doesn't. Not on any level to justify such a price tag.

Whether you're willing to pay >£1500 for an Amiga, and whether the price tag is justified, are two different things.  Clearly you're not willing to pay >£1500, but that doesn't mean the price tag is not justified.

The price is justified because the target market is so small.  I think  it's unfair to compare the cost of this system to that of modern PCs  because the market conditions are totally different.  Given that AEON were never expecting to sell high quantities of these systems, and that they've had the motherboard designed from scratch (not just based on an existing design), I think they've done well to keep the price tag below £2000.  It's economies of scale unfortunately!

If we compare it to second hand Blizzard (or Cysberstorm) PPC cards selling on Ebay, then the price tag suddenly becomes very attractive indeed.  Recently I saw a Blizzard PPC card go for over £600 on Ebay! Granted it was the top spec card, but it'll have nowhere near the performance of the X1000 and also it's second hand, over 10 years old.

I'm not sure if I'm going to buy one yet.  I think I'd be willing to part with the money for the X1000, so if I had plenty of money in the bank I'd definitely be getting one, but the question is whether I can justify the purchase of the X1000 in the face of some important jobs that need doing around the house and stuff like that.   I'm hopeful that I'll be able to get one but I think I'm going to have to wait until the latter part of the year before I can save the money.

[Karlos]

The truth is that Windows, Mac OS X and even Linux beat the crap out of any NG amigoid system in any given task.

Are you sure you didn't you mean:

The truth is that Linux, Windows and even Mac OS X beat the crap out of any NG amigoid system in any given task.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

[Karlos]

Talking about the justification of the price tag is a bit misleading. Unless someone is trying to assert that the manufacturer of the system will be making a huge profit on each unit sold, there isn't really much to justify, only something to explain. A minority platform using non-mainstream hardware is subject to cost escalation that common mainstream hardware is not. With those factors taken into account, the system will cost whatever it costs.

Precisely why, I might add, the cost of the Mac system above does need justifying since it is now using "mainstream" hardware. The Xeon processor is phenomenally expensive for x86 hardware and, unless you are running a server, it's hard to see what specific advantage it gives you for desktop computing over say a Core 2 / Core i7, both of which are significantly less expensive.

[Piru]

If we compare it to second hand Blizzard (or Cysberstorm) PPC cards selling on Ebay, then the price tag suddenly becomes very attractive indeed.

If we compare it against second hand PowerPC Macintosh hardware selling on Ebay, then the price tag suddenly becomes extremely unattractive indeed.

I've gotten two Mac Minis (one 1.5GHz with 64MB Video Memory) and a PowerBook 1.67GHz 2GB RAM etc for about half of that £1500 (granted that doesn't include the OS license, as obviously I don't need to pay for those).

[guest7146]

I've gotten two Mac Minis (one 1.5GHz with 64MB Video Memory) and a PowerBook 1.67GHz 2GB RAM etc for about half of that £1500 (granted that doesn't include the OS license, as obviously I don't need to pay for those).

Okay, yes I can see why you'd use that argument and it is a perfectly valid one.  I can't say I disagree with it because I myself am going to struggle to find >£1500 for an X1000 and if instead it were available for old MAC systems then I'd probably jump on that band wagon as well.

The only issue I see with the second hand MAC idea is that I'm not sure for how long the prices would stay low, nor for how long they'd still be widely available.  If OS4 were released for old MAC systems then potentially there could be a "mad dash" for them on Ebay and that itself would push up the prices, especially if the MAC people got wind of their new-found desirable status.
There is also the issue that the MAC systems are less powerful than the Amiga machine we're likely to see from AEON and a lot less expandable.  So the MAC systems would be a good temporary move, but I remain unconvinced that they'd be a good permanent move.  At some point we'd still need a new (high end) system, and the X1000 satisfies that right now.  It's a lot of money to spend, but it's going to remain a very useable system for AmigaOS for *years* to come.

Also, if the X1000 turns out to be well accepted by the Amiga community, it could be securing future hardware developments.  So that's a good thing as well.

AH.

[Piru]

The only issue I see with the second hand MAC idea is that I'm not sure for how long the prices would stay low, nor for how long they'd still be widely available.

They'll easily outlive any custom amiga HW offerings. Try to find AmigaONE from Ebay. Now try to find Mac Mini G4 from Ebay.

See?

If OS4 were released for old MAC systems then potentially there could be a "mad dash" for them on Ebay and that itself would push up the prices, especially if the MAC people got wind of their new-found desirable status.

The number of PowerPC Macintosh hardware easily outnumbers any potential userbase for AmigaOS4, and thus the prices would stay reasonable.

There is also the issue that the MAC systems are less powerful than the Amiga machine we're likely to see from AEON and a lot less expandable.

That remains to be seen. 1.5GHz G4 isn't to be sneezed at, especially when MorphOS is so much faster than OS4 on the same HW. Later MorphOS is probably going to support even faster Macintosh hardware (I have a 1.67GHz powerbook running MorphOS already... but when that will be available for end users remains to be seen).

Also, the initial OS4 will use only one of the cores, and is likely to run in 32bit mode, and there won't be 3d acceleration for the included ATI card. That's somewhat of a bummer if you compare it against the Mac MorphOS offerings.

Expandability isn't much of an issue since the HW driver support for all amigoid systems is abysmal anyway. OS4 still lacks proper USB2 drivers for example.

Also, if the X1000 turns out to be well accepted by the Amiga community, it could be securing future hardware developments.

Even if the whole remaining Amiga community would get one it'd still be highly debatable if the project would be profitable. Yes, it really is that bad. HW projects are insanely expensive to pull off.