Aos 3 -> aos 4

[SamuraiCrow]

If you are a die hard amiga fan but want... I don't know what... too expensive, I don't believe in that as a reason. I can do anything in AOS 4 that I could do in AOS 3, only better so why not? And regarding speed it's faster than any classic machine too anyway.

Let's see you try to bang the hardware and expect it to work.  What?  There is no custom hardware there to bang?  Too bad.  You can't do that on OS 4.  Maybe the Gallium drivers will allow that but AROS already lets you do that for free on nVidia GeForce graphics cards.

[HotRod]

That arguement doesn't really work because the Amiga was up to date back then. It was in par with or superior back then. People are saying it's expensive now because we don't want to spend $800-$1000 for a motherboard that is 10 years out of date technology wise.
People spend a lot on classic stuff because of the nostalgia of it.

That is kind of true I guess but it couldn't keep up for more than 5 years at most and even when it was brand new it was a lot more expensive than a PC. So the point is that the situation hasn't changed that much compared to then and a new motherboard, even the slowest one will be NEW and not old and because of it more stable. Also you get a new amiga experience that the old amigas can't give you in the same way.

[commodorejohn]

even the slowest one will be NEW and not old and because of it more stable. Also you get a new amiga experience that the old amigas can't give you in the same way.

So, the "trophy wife" approach, then?

[HotRod]

So, the "trophy wife" approach, then?

I just feal that people miss out on something really good. I could never get back to the "old wife" now other than for nostalgic reasons like playing an old game or two. But that works really well too with runinuae.

[Piru]

a new motherboard, even the slowest one will be NEW and not old and because of it more stable

New doesn't necessarily mean stable. New HW typically has trouble with drivers: Either they're missing (coming real soon now!) or are buggy. New HW can easily have small bugs in the firmware or the HW itself that only get ironed out in the later board revisions.

I'd never go for the latest HW myself, I always wait for it to mature a bit.

Now in this special case of PowerPC amigoid systems: The best bang/buck is used Apple HW. You even get great support for it still (spare parts, repairs etc). Far better than you can ever expect to get for your "new" sub-1000 production run Sam.

[Piru]

I just feal that people miss out on something really good.

If you're talking about Sam, they're not. Poor performance and overpriced.

[HotRod]

If you're talking about Sam, they're not. Poor performance and overpriced.

Better performance than any classic machine and the price is what you would expect.

[Piru]

Better performance than any classic machine

Except WinUAE.

the price is what you would expect.

Umm, let me get this straight: People should expect to pay excessive amounts of money for inferior HW? Is that what "amiga experience" is about?

[cha05e90]

Except WinUAE.

No, 'cos UAE is no classic machine.

[Crumb]

Better performance than any classic machine and the price is what you would expect.

Better performance than a 50Mhz machine... wow! amazing! wonderful! let's bring more popcorn! We would seriously have a problem if performance/price ratio wasn't much better than 7 years ago... what? did I hear you say Pegasos2-G4/1Ghz for 500€? nahhh I'm sure our wonderful 2011 brand new boing ball hardware is way faster and cheaper than that 7 year old hardware released in small batches :-P

[commodorejohn]

Umm, let me get this straight: People should expect to pay excessive amounts of money for inferior HW? Is that what "amiga experience" is about?

Let's see...AmigaOne, SAM, X1000, CUSA...yep, pretty much. (Well, I hear tell of some Amigas in the distant past that were groundbreaking, powerful, and affordably priced, but clearly that's just crazy talk.)

[HotRod]

Except WinUAE.

Umm, let me get this straight: People should expect to pay excessive amounts of money for inferior HW? Is that what "amiga experience" is about?

The "amiga experience" comes from the software you use, don't try to tell me that a mac or pc are any more speciall than the hardware available for aos 4, it's all standard components.

The question was why user hasn't moved on to the newer AOS. Some says price, some says performance and so on. The question is if it's better to use WinUAE or classic hardware? To me it isn't but hey, use whatever you want.

If you think that MOS are doing any better because you can buy second hand hardware to run it on (and G4 macs aren't exactly top modern either) then you better think again.

Let me put it this way. Everbody wants to have kick ass machines that are fast and cheap. The problem is that IT IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. Or sure, it might happen one day but... sure... wait untill your at the age 80 to enjoy it.

What's the plan from the MOS developers? To port it over to x86 hardware and meanwhile port it to macs? Otherwise I don't know what you're doing.

One can assume that if PPC hardware fails completely AOS 4 will get ported over to x86, it's allready been mention by, I think it was H-J Frieden. But really, why not enjoy what's available now? It's not like it's useless and you can't do anything on it. Fast hardware are required for Windows 7 and MacOS X, it isn't necessary for AmigaOS 4 to feal good to use. I accidently downclocked my CPU to 533MHz and didn't even notice it! It was still as fast as ever... untill I ran Quake. You can still have lots of fun AND you won't get ruined.

However, to be honest, I won't settle with anything less than the X1000 for my next amiga but my amigaone has served me well and been lots of fun during these years. Back then watching HD movies wasn't an option or very common and as usual in amiga-land you can do it in other ways (playstation 3, blue-ray player, pc, mac, cellphone etc) so it doesn't even matter much, that's how it's been since forever. I would say ever since commodore went out of business. The PPC card helped but not all that much, it wasn't a new amiga.

If you *really* wants to hack away at chipset machines that's fine, I can understand that the interest in AOS 4 isn't enough, it is about the hardware apparently but if you enjoy using AmigaOS (I guess that's what people do that use amigas, or have I missed something?) then I don't quite understand why they don't try something new and better. The improvements are so worth it. It's kind of nice to be able to use a SATA harddisk for example... with DMA... not like FastATA. They are cheap but people still buy SCSI harddisks. No issue about spending money there. You get faster RAM that are also cheaper. 2GB, good luck with that on a classic Amiga.

The harddisk controller alone are worth it if your stuck with the internal IDE controller, I couldn't stand it even with AOS 3.9 on my a4k. And even if FastATA is nice for what it's it's crap compared to a modern controller.

Macs gives you that but for how long?

No sorry, I still don't get it. I can tell you that I enjoy using AOS 4.1 more than my PC and even more so with every update that are released and I enjoy it more than I've ever enjoyed AOS 3.x. It is the same but better.

Anyway, I've gotten answers to my question and that's all that I asked for so I'm pretty much done with my thread, I just don't agree with all the answers while some are valid.

[TheGoose]

I have used AOS4.x a little bit on the "classics" and could tell you that (forget about price and all those issues) the good news is that they did a remarkable job of making an 3.9 + Visual Prefs, Birdie2000 and MUI type of system work a whole lot easier, stable and quick, even on these old PPC machines.

The bad news is they did a remarkable job of making an 3.9 + Visual Prefs, Birdie2000 and MUI type of system work a whole lot easier, stable and quick, even on these old PPC machines.

Meaning, they would not break ranks and move on to offer something very new and different. And that is partly all our fault, sending the wrong messages that it should be a very 68K AOS but just faster and with more Aminet junk added on.

So, to me, they did a good job giving you what you asked for, as a 'community' voice / consensus.

I will never really go for the rabble of "NG Amiga" banter. They are lost. Amiga 68K however is finally picking up steam like the C64 scene and I'm reading about Assembly language! That crap is hard...

[Cammy]

I would happily use AmigaOS4.1 on a Sam or X1000 alongside my classic Amigas running OS3, PCs running Aros and Efika running MorphOS, but I just can't afford it at all because I have no income. All my current hardware was pretty much given to me or found at a very good price, second hand. MorphOS users and developers were so appreciative of my interest to use and develop for MorphOS that I was given the Efika to use.

So I expect to be an AmigaOS4 user at some point, after I have come up with a way to start earning money online so I can stay at home and continue to learn how to develop Amiga software.

There are also things that OS4 does better than any other OS which I'm really looking forward to. It handles screen dragging better than OS3 and Aros (and MorphOS misses out on it completely), you can drag and drop files between screens in OS4! There are probably other good things about it too!

I don't see a problem with running multiple computers and OSs if you have enough room, which I guess I do. Variety is the spice of life they say, and OS4 would add some extra flavour if only I could afford to get it.

[commodorejohn]

If you think that MOS are doing any better because you can buy second hand hardware to run it on (and G4 macs aren't exactly top modern either) then you better think again.

What? That's absolutely the case. You can quite cheaply acquire Mac hardware that competes with basically any PPC Amigoid board except maybe the X1000, and stomps all of them into oblivion where price/performance is concerned. It's not even like there's a shortage - there's still tons of the things popping up on eBay and second-hand retail sites. G4/G5 Macs might not be all that great compared to new PC hardware, but if you want PPC hardware, you can hardly do any better (at least now that the PS3's OtherOS option is gone.)

What's the plan from the MOS developers? To port it over to x86 hardware and meanwhile port it to macs? Otherwise I don't know what you're doing.

One can assume that if PPC hardware fails completely AOS 4 will get ported over to x86, it's allready been mention by, I think it was H-J Frieden. But really, why not enjoy what's available now?

This is true, but it hardly helps your point - OS4 is just as tied to the PPC architecture as MOS, but is confined to an even narrower range of hardware. If you really think PPC is a dead end, why the hell would you pay that kind of money for a machine you think is going to be useless in the near future?

Macs gives you that but for how long?

Case in point. Yes, PPC Macs are going to be dead and gone eventually - but so are the OS4 specialty boards.

[HotRod]

What? That's absolutely the case. You can quite cheaply acquire Mac hardware that competes with basically any PPC Amigoid board except maybe the X1000, and stomps all of them into oblivion where price/performance is concerned. It's not even like there's a shortage - there's still tons of the things popping up on eBay and second-hand retail sites. G4/G5 Macs might not be all that great compared to new PC hardware, but if you want PPC hardware, you can hardly do any better (at least now that the PS3's OtherOS option is gone.)

Oh please... I got 256 MB VRAM on my ancient Radeon 9250 and the best macmini got 64 MB VRAM. The old macs are not all bad but they are just that, old. I as a user want to be able to have an option to buy something new if I'd like to. My powermac is very nice and all but... come on... this is a sad future I would say. "So what do you run AmigaOS on?", "Well I got this old mac that I bought from ebay", "But you can buy it new like if I'd like to get one?", "no, but check ebay, you can get cheap used macs there"... does it sound good to you?

This is true, but it hardly helps your point - OS4 is just as tied to the PPC architecture as MOS, but is confined to an even narrower range of hardware. If you really think PPC is a dead end, why the hell would you pay that kind of money for a machine you think is going to be useless in the near future?

The thing is that my amigaone hasn't been useless and still isn't. I can't help what you're thinking but maybe your thinking is the whole issue? Regarding tied to, the one of the Friedens wrote that it would take them about two weeks to do the inital port to x86 hardware and I don't remember how many months for it to be usable. Now they don't make false statements, at least none that I've read during all those years so I believe it's true. I paid that kind of money because my a4k was coming to an end and I wanted to continue using AOS. Guess what, I haven't regreted that for a second. Maybe if you had something to run it on you would know?

Case in point. Yes, PPC Macs are going to be dead and gone eventually - but so are the OS4 specialty boards.

True, I haven't said anything else. You and I will be dead and gone eventually too so I don't really know what your point is. I've made my point above, read it.