A-EON Technology & Ultra Varisys sign $1.2M agreement for new PowerPC hardware

[takemehomegrandma]

It looks monsterous expensive, but please point me out to any other dual core PPC board anywhere in the world?

OK, here is twenty of them: :lol:

G4 machines with 2 CPU cores (dual CPU):
   1. Apple Power Macintosh G4 450 DP (Gigabit)
2. Apple Power Macintosh G4 500 DP (Gigabit)
3. Apple Power Macintosh G4 800 DP (Quicksilver)
4. Apple Power Macintosh G4 1.0 DP (QS 2002)
5. Apple Power Macintosh G4 867 DP (MDD)
6. Apple Power Macintosh G4 1.0 DP (MDD)
7. Apple Power Macintosh G4 1.25 DP (MDD)
8. Apple Power Macintosh G4 1.25 DP (FW 800)
9. Apple Power Macintosh G4 1.42 DP (FW 800)

G5 machines with 2 CPU cores (dual CPU)
   10. Apple Power Macintosh G5 2.0 DP (PCI-X)
11. Apple Power Macintosh G5 1.8 DP (PCI-X)
12. Apple Power Macintosh G5 1.8 DP (PCI)
13. Apple Power Macintosh G5 2.0 DP (PCI-X 2)
14. Apple Power Macintosh G5 2.5 DP (PCI-X)
15. Apple Power Macintosh G5 2.0 DP (PCI)
16. Apple Power Macintosh G5 2.3 DP (PCI-X)
17. Apple Power Macintosh G5 2.7 DP (PCI-X)

G5 machines with 2 CPU cores (single CPU)
   18. Apple Power Macintosh G5 Dual Core (2.0)
19. Apple Power Macintosh G5 Dual Core (2.3)

G5 machines with 4 CPU cores (dual CPU, QUAD CORE)
   20. Apple Power Macintosh G5 "Quad Core" (2.5)



Of course, the last one isn't dual core, it's Quad Core, but anyway... :lol:

Not that it matters much though, since Amiga isn't (per definition, per design) SMP capable. And it will never be. It can't be, it's simply not possible.

The only way you could make it truly SMP capable would be to break Amiga binary compatibility, and this goes completely against the very founding idea of both OS4 and MorphOS.

Personally, I wouldn't mind if MorphOS would do just that at this point in evolution; abandon the Amiga binary compatibility ambitions, and introducing true SMP/multithreading with real memory protection, making MorphOS a real 64-bit platform, and abandon the 31-bit limit on RAM addressing, etc, etc, etc. But if you are breaking the Amiga anyway, it would be mad to remain on the dead PPC architecture, because then it could *easily* (and relatively fast) be ported to real, 2013 level desktop/laptop HW! This is why all these multicore discussion in an Amiga/PPC context is so darn pointless! The day it will have true SMP, then it's nothing that really prevents it from running on x86 or ARM (or on whatever with a pulse)!

And BTW - "Multicore Support" in the sense of PowerUP or a simple way of using a second core as a dumb numbercruncher by special applications written explicitly for this, is not at all the same as real SMP. It's real SMP people want, and this is what people generally mean (it's understood without saying) when talking about "Multicore"...

 

It can only be compared to its relatives, other OS4 systems

Nonsense, it can (and should, of course) be compared to any and all systems it's technically capable of running on! This because the only single reason to why you will have to amortize your "X1000" to 2018 as you said in another thread (I really hope you joked about that, BTW), is because of a political decision made by a single or a few people, thus resulting in a HW route for OS4 that insane in so many ways. That's the only reason, nothing technical about it!

OS4 could very well have been running on G5's and PowerBooks since a long time ago. Instead you are forced to pay $3,000+ for a system with features that nobody needs or wants (all the "X" crap that just sits there like an inflamed appendix) and features you can't use (multicore) that performs *far worse* than any regular 2005 level Mac desktop system.

Comparisons to other systems that OS4 could technically run on (and should have run on, weren't it for stupid decisions) illuminates this problem, and it is the only hope of making them think differently some day.

[Terminills]

AROS dominates the x86 scene. MorphOS dominates the PPC scene and AmigaOS dominates 68k scene. Where you see OS4 in this picture, I dont know.

+1

But you forgot AROS also dominates the ARM scene in this context too(sure it's the only amigaoid OS on ARM but that's not the point) lol.

[psxphill]

OK, here is twenty of them: :lol:

I think it's obvious he was talking about new boards.
 
AROS could take over PPC as well, if anyone could be bothered. I can't see the point in buying an old Mac.
 
A PPC emulator would be good though, then you could run 68k & PPC software on new cheap hardware.

[bloodline]

+1

But you forgot AROS also dominates the ARM scene in this context too(sure it's the only amigaoid OS on ARM but that's not the point) lol.

And with AROS68k coming as the default OS for WinUAE, my guess is that AROS will eventually (once compatibility has improved) dominate the 68k scene too!

[wawrzon]

And with AROS68k coming as the default OS for WinUAE, my guess is that AROS will eventually (once compatibility has improved) dominate the 68k scene too!

id hope so, but still there is not enough attention about how to actually attract the genuine amiga users and fix the bugs. if aros was actually usable on (higher end) amiga hardware as substitute for the original system without all these caveats i must spell when introducing it, it would definitely be quite popular by now. alas..

[cha05e90]

AROS dominates the x86 scene. MorphOS dominates the PPC scene and AmigaOS dominates 68k scene. Where you see OS4 in this picture, I dont know.

I don't know what this OS4 Linux thingy is, but it is quite clear that all variants of AmigaOS from 1.x to 4.x dominate the AmigaOS scene.

It seems that after the migration of AmigaOS from 68xxx CPU to Power architecture it is said to die or already was dead. All the time. I'm a late adopter and jumped from AmigaOS 3.9 to 4.1 around 2009. It was to be said dead then. And it's still dying. Whohooo. And AROS dominates since then. Or will dominate. Some day. All platforms. Except those, where MorphOS dominates. Or was it vice versa?

Back to topic: Wow, very commited, Trevor. I wish you all the best and hopefully a somewhat calmer trip with this project(s) - especially regarding CPU availability.

[cha05e90]

And with AROS68k coming as the default OS for WinUAE, my guess is that AROS will eventually (once compatibility has improved) dominate the 68k scene too!

x86-WinUAE will dominate the 68k scene? WTF? No Wintel machine with some emulator will ever "dominate" my "68k scene". Phew.

[Amiga_Nut]

Hmmm never knew about this, may hold off on the x1000 purchase to get whatever the 'latest thing' is when it is released.

It's probably a bad business move to hint about an x2000 this early on in the design process as their tiny market will now fracture into 'want one now' and 'wait for the actual fastest OS4 machine whenever it appears' however

[bloodline]

x86-WinUAE will dominate the 68k scene? WTF? No Wintel machine with some emulator will ever "dominate" my "68k scene". Phew.

I said nothing about WinUAE dominating the 68k scene (though I would wager there are many thousands more UAE users than real or "next  gen" Amiga users

My comment was related to AROS, which will eventually be better than a real 1.3 or 3.x rom for real Amigas

[itix]

I said nothing about WinUAE dominating the 68k scene (though I would wager there are many thousands more UAE users than real or "next  gen" Amiga users

My comment was related to AROS, which will eventually be better than a real 1.3 or 3.x rom for real Amigas

In the future when AROS boots from a single 880 kB floppy I am going to try it on my Amiga 500 ;-)

[takemehomegrandma]

@cha05e90

AROS was first in the NG scene and has the benefits of being open source and available for platforms such at x86 and ARM. Then came MorphOS and while it only runs on PPC it has the benefits of being Amiga binary compatible, it has a great and very diverse HW base, it's very mature and has the best features of all Amiga NG options. The last one (in all aspects, not just its late introduction) is OS4. It's like MorphOS in the sense it strives for Amiga binary compatibility (at least on paper) and is only available for PPC, but it falls short in practically every single aspect, like maturity, stability, performance, features, availability, Amiga compatibility, price, HW base, etc, etc.

Hence the "this OS dominates that platform" comments above, and the finding that OS4 doesn't really fit into the picture anywhere. Well, one could (as you say) perhaps say that OS4 dominates the "AmigaOS 4" *name*, but that's it!

[nicholas]

In defence of OS4 it has to be said that OctaMED works flawlessly on the AnigaOne boards and OS4 for Phase5 hardware allows more 68k stuff to run than the old MOS-PUP did.  It even has working Mediator drivers.

[smf]

@Takemehomegrandma

AmigaOS4 dominates your and many other fanboys minds so there must be something really fantastic about it, I can't find any other explanation to why you and some others spend so much time talking about os4 on the forums, irc etc...

@All

Fantastic news from A-eon. Who could have believed this a few years ago.

[nicholas]

@Takemehomegrandma

AmigaOS4 dominates your and many other fanboys minds so there must be something really fantastic about it, I can't find any other explanation to why you and some others spend so much time talking about os4 on the forums, irc etc...

@All

Fantastic news from A-eon. Who could have believed this a few years ago.

Ooh look the libelous troll has graced us with his presence.  What an honour!

[smf]

Ooh look the libelous troll has graced us with his presence.  What an honour!

Do you have any other explanation or what?

[nicholas]

Do you have any other explanation or what?

Perhaps the people you refer to suspect OS4 is stolen? What other explanation could there be?