Ben Hermans still staunchly against x86

[Fransexy_]

@desiv

As for 486 vs 68k performance, I have an A1200 with a 68030 accelerator (CSA 1250 12-Gauge) clocked at 50 Mhz and ran benchmarks against a 486DX 33.  Performance is about equal even with the huge difference in clock speed.  So paolone's remarks are spot-on in spite of all the irrational remarks that will be made about the 68k family and how it's "superior".  It certainly is NOT superior.

It's fair compare an 386 against 486? because 030 was made to compete with 386.and you are comparing with an 486. 040 is the competitor of the 486, and i suspect that if the 030 is almost in par with the 486 then 040 is faster than 486 at the same clock speed.The 060 was made to compete with pentium when the fastest pentium was 100 mhz.I do not have benchmarks but i think that 060 50-66 mhz is as fast as pentium 100 or more in some operations.Of course we are talking abot raw CPU power because overall speed of the system the Amiga sweeps common PC of the era.What made me decide definitely for an Amiga was look a 486 in action,  it was in ridiculous compared to the unexpanded Amiga 500 so i definitely bought an Amiga 1200

[jj]

But again the time to move across to x86 or X64 is long long long gone.  It does not make any senese at all now.  none.

[Fransexy_]

Thanks, but I frankly doubt I will be moderated or even censored for this.

Let me be a little more verbose.

I just got sick of listening the same anti-x86 rants for 20 years by the same people who can't simply understand that processors are just like engines. They don't have a soul and are made of silicon. The best processor is not the most optimized/alternative, but the most popular, eve better if this means it's also the cheapest in the cost/performance ratio. A 2,8 GHz 64-bit quad-core CPU like the Phenom II X4 630 from AMD costs (here in Italy, for the END USER) less than 80 euros! Which should mean little more than 100 dollars. How much does ANY hi-performance (with hi-end meaning up to 2 GHz) multicore PPC processor cost? And how much will cost the motherboards to support them?

68K was choosen at the time because it was already popular and reasonably cheap, and able to bring the necessary degree of performance the original Amiga models required. It wasn't chosen because 80286 were scary, plagued or weirdly ill. Nor Intel was seen by original Amiga engineers like an alien devil from the 8th dimension! Would Commodore be alive today, they'd use x86 for the very same reasons (well, now that I think about it... Commodore does exist today... and they are using x86... ;-) ). Or maybe ARM, but surely no PPC. This anti-x86 crusade from Amigans is something that came up from Amigans themselves, and while most people just grown up and understood that's plain stupid, others are still fighting for... what reason exactly? To have a "different product" on the market nobody needs or cares about? Do these clever people really think x86 prices are low thanks to a few PPC processors still surviving on the market?

Please try to understand me: I have nothing against alternatives, I am always happy when some alternatives exist (I'm happy for ARM's success, to be clear), but not if their adoption acts like a boomerang, and becomes counter productive for adopters. There's a boundary between "being different" and "being masochistics" amigans have surpassed long ago.

If jay miner developed the Amiga today, he would choose an ARM processor almost certainly and not a x86 IMHO

[paolone]

If jay miner developed the Amiga today, he would choose an ARM processor almost certainly and not a x86 IMHO

Thanks, the day I'll need a medium I'll call you. In the meanwhile, I can only answer that in the early 80s Jay Miner created a straordinary media computer system when regular computer systems and workstation were mute and monochromatic, adopting an amazing revolutionary graphic interface with a RAM drive, when others relied on DOS, floppies and costy hard drives.

Would he be alive today, maybe he wouldn't even care about creating a computer, all in all any regular PC can do everything and more. He would have created something else, but not less extraordinary and amazing, that would have foresaw and revolutionized its market.

[jj]

He said in his opnion which you then go on to give telling us exactly what he would have done

[paolone]

What made me decide definitely for an Amiga was look a 486 in action,  it was in ridiculous compared to the unexpanded Amiga 500 so i definitely bought an Amiga 1200

Strange. It was looking how a good 486dx/2 66 MHz PC performed with DOS and Windows applications and games (DooM anyone?), that I took the exact opposite decision, switching from my 68030-accelerated A1200 to a Pentium 90 machine. And, well, at the time I realized that if you wanted to have a PC that looked well in graphics and sound, you'd have to spend a lot more than on a Amiga, but if you wanted to have an Amiga with the same processor power of a PC, you wouldn't have to spend less: even more.

[paolone]

He said in his opnion which you then go on to give telling us exactly what he would have done

That's exactly what I meant to do...

[jj]

That's exactly what I meant to do...

Arse

[persia]

Nobody knows what Jay Miner would have done, but my personal belief is that he would have gone to the tablet world, it should be possible to beat both iOS and Android, they both feel like they lack something, but I can't put my finger on it.

[Iggy]

Everyone has an opinion about future directions. ARM processors, tablets, advanced cellphones, etc all have been repeatedly posted.

Personallly, I can't type on a pocket device and tablets usually offer little in thw way of keyboards other than screen based touch keyboards. Frankly, I'm so o;d fashioned I still prefer old click style keyboards with keyswitches from companies like Alps. That's why I still have a couple of old IBM and Tandy keyboards around. Good keyswitches+better feedback and less typing errors.

I may eventually even get around to adopting a laptop, but I'm not giving up my PC yet.

[Akiko]

Oh, come on! OS4 has been a pure pro bono development project for years. A hobby. So don't suddenly try to add money to the equation; since those doing the developments are doing it free of charge anyway, it's more a matter of what they spend their time doing. They could work on PPC, or they could work on something else, and the cost would still be $0. But the thing is, on x86 they would at least have *a chance* of reaching 13,000 sales (but still highly doubtful). With "X1000" I'd be surprised if they reached 130.

Are you suggesting the Frieden brothers have been working for free of all along,  how could you possibly know? The figure of 130 sales seems a little pessimistic, a recent survey on Aw.net shows 275 members intending to buy the X1000, and of course this doesn't include others from non english websites or those that never participated in that particular poll.

[desiv]

And, well, at the time I realized that if you wanted to have a PC that looked well in graphics and sound, you'd have to spend a lot more than on a Amiga

Although I think I held out a bit longer, it was the same for me basically.

Part of it was the fact that everything I did that I was paid for was PC. (and some Mac)

But most of it was the cost of an accelerator with RAM for my Amiga.  For that, I was able to piece together a PC (I think it was an IBM blue lightening chip, which was what, a 486/40 or 50??) with a CDRom (1X, whoo hoo!) and a cheapo sound card.  I'm sure the hard drive was a hand me down from someone's upgrade.
(I was able to repair a VGA monitor (bad cable) that I got for free, which helped.)

Except for DOOM types, I really missed the Amiga games a lot, but I was starting to do a lot of Foxbase (and a bit of FoxPro for Windows, can't remember exactly when that started) and needed a machine to do that...

I don't remember thinking VGA was better than Amiga AGA.  Not until a video card upgrade or 2.  But that's when I realized that the lack of upgradable video in the Amiga 500/1200 was a killer..  Mac owners were totally fine with buying a new Mac when a faster one was available.
PC owners could upgrade as long as they could.  As a tinkerer, I liked that.
And as someone working multiple jobs, I couldn't afford expensive upgrades.



desiv

[paolone]

Are you suggesting the Frieden brothers have been working for free of all along,  how could you possibly know? The figure of 130 sales seems a little pessimistic, a recent survey on Aw.net shows 275 members intending to buy the X1000, and of course this doesn't include other non english websites or those that never participated in that particular poll.

Gosh, if the 25:5:1 market theory I've read about longa ago (*) is somehow good and applicable, it would mean that 130 sales would be optimistic.

(*) Many years ago I read a book about product marketing (sorry, forgot title and author), and the 25:5:1 theory states that on 25 people you'll contact, 5 will show interest in your product and 1 will actually buy it. This basically means that on 275 people "willing" to buy a X1000, well... just 55 actually will.

I sincerely hope for A-Eon they will be more, many more...

[runequester]

Gosh, if the 25:5:1 market theory I've read about longa ago (*) is somehow good and applicable, it would mean that 130 sales would be optimistic.

(*) Many years ago I read a book about product marketing (sorry, forgot title and author), and the 25:5:1 theory states that on 25 people you'll contact, 5 will show interest in your product and 1 will actually buy it. This basically means that on 275 people "willing" to buy a X1000, well... just 55 actually will.

I sincerely hope for A-Eon they will be more, many more...

I've gotten 9 people to promise to vote for me for president, based on my pro-duelling policy. I guess I'll need to round up a hell of a lot more people then

[Tension]

David Pleasance wanted Amigas to run Windows NT.

That would've been pretty shit.

Thus, if Commodore UK had won the auction, we'd all have left the Amiga ages ago anyway.

We've had our PPC bed made for us, and now it's time to lie in it.

[Rogue]

Greed > user experience.

Oh dear.

If you really think that, there is nothing I can say that will make you think otherwise. This might be because you didn't think about it.

Good thing is, Amiwest convinced me that not everyone is like this.