How much would it cost to port AmigaOS to x64?

[takemehomegrandma]

Operating system success has nothing to do with most of the things people talk about. It has everything to do with marketing.

...and the science of marketing isn't about what most people thinks it is (advertisements etc), but identifying a need on a market and provide a way to satisfy that need with the right combination of Products, Price, Place and Promotion! If your product doesn't satisfy a true need, it's redundant, and it won't matter how much you advertize...

[runequester]

...and the science of marketing isn't about what most people thinks it is (advertisements etc), but identifying a need on a market and provide a way to satisfy that need with the right combination of Products, Price, Place and Promotion! If your product doesn't satisfy a true need, it's redundant, and it won't matter how much you advertize...

If the need isn't there, you can create it. Happens for luxury goods all the time.

And if you can control the market, marketing doesn't stay important of course.

[commodorejohn]

Which GUI are you talking about?

The clusterfu¢k one where no matter what desktop environment you select, every application uses one of half a dozen UI toolkits that all operate in subtly different, mutually-incompatible ways, and each application introduces its own inconsistencies on top of that, and eventually you snap and shoot up a Post Office?

[takemehomegrandma]

If the need isn't there, you can create it.

No you can never create a need, but you can educate people about needs they thought they never had!

Happens for luxury goods all the time.

Most of us have many needs that makes us want various more or less "luxury" (unnecessary for our survival) goods, they are what has been driving the western economy the last 100 years...

[desiv]

The clusterfu¢k one where no matter what desktop environment you select, every application uses one of half a dozen UI toolkits that all operate in subtly different, mutually-incompatible ways, and each application introduces its own inconsistencies on top of that, and eventually you snap and shoot up a Post Office?

So you've used OpenSuSE...  :banana:
desiv  :razz:

[startup-sequence.bat]

every application uses one of half a dozen UI toolkits that all operate in subtly different, mutually-incompatible ways, and each application introduces its own inconsistencies on top of that

amigaos.txt

[runequester]

No you can never create a need, but you can educate people about needs they thought they never had!
 

Same thing effectively. I guess if you want to do some sort of pedantic "well, people didn't know they needed ipads before it was invented" then sure.
 
 

Most of us have many needs that makes us want various more or less "luxury" (unnecessary for our survival) goods, they are what has been driving the western economy the last 100 years...

Yup. An economic system based on perpetually increasing consumption.

[Methuselas]

So, since I'm hoping beyond hope to win the 640 Million Mega Million Jackpot tonight, does anyone out there have a good idea of what it would cost to port/recode AmigaOS 4.x to run on x64 processors? I'd really love to see my beloved AmigaOS running on completely modern hardware.

On top of that how much would it take to fund a driver initiative to keep support for modern video cards, sound chipset, network chipsets, printers, scanners, etc.

Ok Trolls, I know the first answer you'll give is more than it's worth and the second is why would I want it without the custom chips it's not a real Amiga. So why not skip it and dream a long with me. I have millions to spend and just for fun, why not dream a long with me to be able to see AmigaOS running on almost any modern box out there with custom UAE support for running old applications.

Last I heard, Rogue wanted 2 fatty cows, 2 quarts of pork, fried rice and 10 cases of Kools......

[edit] - If you *DO* actually win, promise me you'll buy Piru an AX1000 (or whatever they're called). I think he'll start porting MorphOS, just to spite us.

[runequester]

The clusterfu¢k one where no matter what desktop environment you select, every application uses one of half a dozen UI toolkits that all operate in subtly different, mutually-incompatible ways, and each application introduces its own inconsistencies on top of that, and eventually you snap and shoot up a Post Office?

lol, It's gotten a lot better in recent years at least. Seems to be a lot more of a Gnome issue than KDE though, at least lately.
With KDE4 at least, apps behave remarkably consistently. GTK integration can be hit and miss, but it's hit a lot more than miss lately.
 
 
I guess it sort of comes down to "you can have these options or you can have us pick one for you" though.

[commodorejohn]

Well, if you only use KDE applications, maybe, but good luck with that...

[runequester]

Well, if you only use KDE applications, maybe, but good luck with that...

Well, now that you mention it, almost all of the app's I use are KDE specific stuff. I mostly liked the default stuff that comes in Kubuntu (just installed Yuk and VLC) so I guess I never noticed a ton.

[A3KOne]

No valid reason for OS4 to go to commodity hardware.  The market isn't there - niche OS's are free/open source on commodity hardware, Hyperion would have no business model.

It's be just another offshoot hobby OS that could once make a meager earning on the PPC side that is now on commodity HW where there's a plethora of free OS'es for every niche market.  Another OS I'd have to run an emulation layer on to run legacy software.  Why should I run OS4 x86 vs. AROS, vs. UAE/Amikit/Amithlon?

There is also the fact a small team could never support the vast range of PC hardware.  This is the same problem that hampers AROS.  A small team cannot support every chip made for a mobo, or every gfx card released in the last 10 years.  The same reason Apple locks hardware to software - no ****ty coded 3rd party drivers on core HW.  Same reason MS doesn't do drivers themselves and why they have WHQL.

I'd love to run AROS, but it simply doesn't run on the hardware I own.  AROS for SAM 440 is absolutely unfunctional.  That being said, I don't expect a hobby OS to support my dual 590 GTX's.  Either would OS4.

Now OS4 for PPC Mac, that's something I could go to bat for.

Beh.  Wrong.  The market isn't there to sell 10 copies of an OS to the 10 people willing to pay $1000 for a motherboard built around 10 year old tech that represents bleeding edge in the Amiga world.

I would pay $100 usd for AmigaOS to use on PC hardware, and I am sure I am not alone.

I think it would be safe to say the number of people who would pay for AmigaOS that they could install on PC hardware is so much greater than the number willing to pay for underpowered and overpriced PPC hardware as to make a comparison laughable. The number of copies sold to PC hardware owners would surely number in the thousands or tens of thousands from day one...and custom built to spec machines bearing the logo and OS discounted for OEM bundling would only increase that number.

I went the overpriced PPC hardware route years ago with my A3000 68060 & A4000 + 0600/PPC+CVPPC loaded to the gills. Many Amiga users never went as far as I did.  I left in 2001.  For general computing it is no longer viable, but I still love the OS and would gladly purchase it for installation on commodity hardware.  

Support one family of motherboards and one family of graphics cards.  For printing, maybe CUPS could be ported?  I am not a programmer, but I know that Mac uses CUPS.

If AmigaOS was on PC hardware, the potential for platform growth would exist.  On PPC hardware that is 10 years behind the current x68 in terms of performance, and twice the price, there is no market outside of a handful of fanatics.  The PA6T-1682M CPU cranks out what??? 3,000 MIPS give or take?  That is slower than my Athlon 64 from 2004.  I know there are other variables to consider...but that is 1/3rd the MIPS rating of my Athlon 64 from 2004. ONE THIRD!  This doesn't even address availability of the processor, as Apple owns PA Semi and keeps them alive because the US Government uses them in embedded applications...and that is the current HIGH END custom Amiga CPU, and other than memory speed it is slower than 8 year old x64 hardware.  The I5/I7 is so much faster still...

I am writing this post from a dual-boot Windows/Mint laptop with a 2.53 Ghz core2duo cpu (30,000 MIPS), 6 gigs of ram, 500gig HD, and Nvidia GT260M with 1 Gig dedicated video memory and a 17.3" screen.  I bought it 2 years ago and paid $800 for it - $300 less than I paid for my CVPPC/CSPPC in 1999 - and I got a "good deal" on the miggy upgrades.  I rarely use Windows, and I would love to ditch Mint and use AmigaOS - or install a drive in my second bay as a dedicated AmigaOS drive.

Of course, AmigaOS on x64 will never happen.  The priests make sure of that...

Eddie Izzard could do a good bit on this scenario. Oh look, a shotgun...BLAM! oh I just shot myself in the face! Well of course I did. I wanted to shoot myself in the face. Shooting myself in the face is so much better than not shooting myself in the face... Amiga logic. Its no wonder it is dead with so many adherents who believe that face shooting is the way to go.

[runequester]

The question noone seems to have answers to is..

okay. Now you got amiga OS on an I7.

What difference does it make when Quake 3 is the most you can put it through?

[huronking]

The question noone seems to have answers to is..

okay. Now you got amiga OS on an I7.

What difference does it make when Quake 3 is the most you can put it through?

At least it wouldnt need to be recapped and the battery damage repaired.

But the comment about paying $100 for OS4 that runs on modern Intel hardware hits it on the head- after shipping it costs about $80 for Amiga Forever(deluxe with the DVDs and C64)... Which has sold more copies?

I'm no engineer, but hardware abstraction is a facet of all modern operating systems- the MOS fab is no longer at the Amiga's disposal. Most of us will never see OS4 if it does not evolve to support hardware that makes sense. It really is that simple.

[A3KOne]

The question noone seems to have answers to is..

okay. Now you got amiga OS on an I7.

What difference does it make when Quake 3 is the most you can put it through?

Web content, video and audio encoding and converting, digital photo editing... lots of stuff that having more CPU power would be beneficial for.

With a teensy user base that isn't going to grow with overpriced PPC hardware sales, Quake 3 is about the greatest thing you can hope to put through it.

(edit)  Not only is the user base not going to grow, it is going to continue to shrink.  PPC - the current model - is nothing more than slow suicide.

With access to AMD or Intel CPU power for pennies on the dollar v/s PPC, and the possibility of purchasing a new OS to run on your machine, there would be new users. Thousands on the conservative side.  Tens of thousands in all likelihood. From there you have a seedbed for forward momentum.  Embedded CPU's in limited quantity is not a viable upgrade path, no matter what the zealots say.

[runequester]

With access to AMD or Intel CPU power for pennies on the dollar v/s PPC, and the possibility of purchasing a new OS to run on your machine, there would be new users. Thousands on the conservative side.  Tens of thousands in all likelihood. From there you have a seedbed for forward momentum.  Embedded CPU's in limited quantity is not a viable upgrade path, no matter what the zealots say.

Why didn't AROS make this happen already then?

It's tough enough to get developers to support apple, harder still to get them to support linux, and we're banking on a sudden renaisance for an OS most people today haven't heard about, which would have 20 years of catching up to do, and which would start with zero software support ?


People love to moan about PPC but it's not a difference of "path forward" versus "dead end". THey're all dead ends here.