[UserReview] Vampire V2-128 received and it's just pure p0rn.

[guest11527]

3.X will not be developed because no sources, P96 is supported by a driver but nothing else

Err, what? Of course the sources for 3.X exist. It's not developed because everybody here tells me "go away, we have no interest in it". That's a difference.  Again, I've no problem if people prefer AROS - that's a choice everybody can make - but don't tell me that there are no sources for 3.X. There most certainly are, and they would be most certainly be used if there would be interest in a - albeit closed source, paid - development.  So please, let's be honest about this. If you prefer Open Source - good. But that doesn't mean that the closed source sources are lost in time and space and that there would be nobody that would work on them.  

I hope all was correct

I afraid not quite so.

[wawrzon]

Err, what? Of course the sources for 3.X exist. It's not developed because everybody here tells me "go away, we have no interest in it". That's a difference.  Again, I've no problem if people prefer AROS - that's a choice everybody can make - but don't tell me that there are no sources for 3.X. There most certainly are, and they would be most certainly be used if there would be interest in a - albeit closed source, paid - development.  So please, let's be honest about this. If you prefer Open Source - good. But that doesn't mean that the closed source sources are lost in time and space and that there would be nobody that would work on them.  

I afraid not quite so.

cmon. thomas, its not like those sources werent there all this time. has anybody developed anything amiga upon them? nope. you are the only one who ported over some of your own improvements just lately. i dont know on what deal. the people have been approached before with proposintions and there was only one replay if any: they are not interested in supporting or letting others support amiga, come over to os4/ppc. i was banned from amigans sharing some experience because i was simply mentioning 68k in the context.

above all else you yourself said, you had no time to work on amiga, so who would be those people who would? maybe now, seing interest in vampire someone suddenly woke up somewhere there sniffing cash, but we had no any positive experience let alone support from whoever claims the access to the sources for te past years except olsen (who commercially releaed his rapid road for amiga) and you.

this is the result.

[ExiE_]

Err, what? Of course the sources for 3.X exist. It's not developed because everybody here tells me "go away, we have no interest in it". That's a difference.  Again, I've no problem if people prefer AROS - that's a choice everybody can make - but don't tell me that there are no sources for 3.X. There most certainly are, and they would be most certainly be used if there would be interest in a - albeit closed source, paid - development.

Err, what? From your answer is unclear (at best) who is interested and who is not. I suppose users are interested for quite a long time. They proved it by buying OS3.5/3.9/AmigaForever/on forums, many many times. Parties who are NOT interested are copyright owners and developers (yes developers too, if we agree that there is the way how to reach the license and sources).

[Kremlar]

Err, what? Of course the sources for 3.X exist. It's not developed because everybody here tells me "go away, we have no interest in it". That's a difference. Again, I've no problem if people prefer AROS - that's a choice everybody can make - but don't tell me that there are no sources for 3.X. There most certainly are, and they would be most certainly be used if there would be interest in a - albeit closed source, paid - development. So please, let's be honest about this. If you prefer Open Source - good. But that doesn't mean that the closed source sources are lost in time and space and that there would be nobody that would work on them.

Please... of course people want OS 3.x 68K further developed, especially with new/fast hardware becoming more and more available.  If a new version with significant updates was done it would surely sell more copies than OS 4.x (assuming it was priced reasonably).

[guest11527]

cmon. thomas, its not like those sources werent there all this time. has anybody developed anything amiga upon them? nope. you are the only one who ported over some of your own improvements just lately. i dont know on what deal.

Unpaid, actually. Released with permission of the owner, no other strings attached. Only done because I had some hope in new developments, new developments that would be triggered by the arrival of new hardware.  

the people have been approached before with proposintions and there was only one replay if any: they are not interested in supporting or letting others support amiga, come over to os4/ppc. i was banned from amigans sharing some experience because i was simply mentioning 68k in the context.  

A company has to work on a profit basis - they saw the market in the PPC area. If you ask me, a stupid decision in first place, but that was their decision. Whether *I* invest my time into PPC is again my decision. I decided against it - as it seems, a wise decision.  

above all else you yourself said, you had no time to work on amiga, so who would be those people who would? maybe now, seing interest in vampire someone suddenly woke up somewhere there sniffing cash, but we had no any positive experience let alone support from whoever claims the access to the sources for te past years except olsen (who commercially releaed his rapid road for amiga) and you.  

You call it "sniffing cash", I call it "a business opportunity". What exactly is wrong with working for money, and earning money? There's a new interesting product on the market that triggers interest in users investing into the classics. Of course that also means that now the owner of the Os sees some interest in investing into the classics. It also means that some developers show again interests in the classics.

Of course, nobody would be getting rich by this development, but in end, everybody could have had what wasn't possible before , a renovated Os, a renovated hardware, new software. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

this is the result.

Yes, it is. Look, if OpenSource should be it, then please do that. No problem either.  

But again, then it should be *really* OpenSource. That is, the FPGA should be OpenSource, the interface should not depend on legacy interfaces that are not open. You cannot first negotiate with the owners on licensing the rtg graphics interface, and later on work around this negotiations and ignore the owners and forget the negotiations just because it now suddenly fits better to the plan to do so.

[Gulliver]

@Thomas Richter

So stop complaining and get your act together:

Build and sell a new AmigaOS for 68k and compete with current Aros 68k offerings.
I am sure I, like many other over here that complain, will still buy yours, and try Aros.
 
I am pretty confident you will get a few thousand sales if you hurry up and deliver a good product at the right price. The more you wait the stronger your competitor gets (Aros).

So in the end it is up to you to stop this wishful thinking and debate of further AmigaOS 68k development (it has been going through a few years already), and start delivering, or your market will migrate to other offerings (Aros).

Competition is always a good thing for the consumer (but not so good for the entrepreneurs).

Good luck!

[guest11527]

@Thomas Richter

So stop complaining and get your act together:

....

Good luck!

Are you suggesting or are you sarcastic? I *personally* believe it stops making sense at this time. There is a clear indication now, and a clear decision has been made that this is not wanted nor desired.

In the end, nobody trusts Hyperion at this point, given their past decisions. Do I trust them? Honestly - possibly not. The only thing I know is that it cannot work without them, so I personally considered it would be at least worth a try. Unfortunately, as it seems, it neither can work with them.

So here we are.

[wawrzon]

A company has to work on a profit basis - they saw the market in the PPC area. If you ask me, a stupid decision in first place, but that was their decision. Whether *I* invest my time into PPC is again my decision. I decided against it - as it seems, a wise decision.

same as mine. well, they decided, they were stubborn and aggresive about it, now its their problem, not ours.

You call it "sniffing cash", I call it "a business opportunity". What exactly is wrong with working for money, and earning money? There's a new interesting product on the market that triggers interest in users investing into the classics. Of course that also means that now the owner of the Os sees some interest in investing into the classics. It also means that some developers show again interests in the classics.

but it is not their product, they want to cash upon, ist someone elses. looks rather typical. if you ask me they are free to deliver commercial product supporting it, the market will show how succesful it would be. but demanding funding up front has proven wrong with os4 and everything else it was associated with. dont count with me on that.

Of course, nobody would be getting rich by this development, but in end, everybody could have had what wasn't possible before , a renovated Os, a renovated hardware, new software. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.

in contrary to you os4 team has not very good track report of delivering what has been promissed.

Yes, it is. Look, if OpenSource should be it, then please do that. No problem either.  

But again, then it should be *really* OpenSource. That is, the FPGA should be OpenSource, the interface should not depend on legacy interfaces that are not open. You cannot first negotiate with the owners on licensing the rtg graphics interface, and later on work around this negotiations and ignore the owners and forget the negotiations just because it now suddenly fits better to the plan to do so.

seriously, i dont care. im working on aros which is open source. whether the hardware is open source is another matter as i really am not associated with it. so far i really only sypmathize with it. what everybody else does is not my affair.

[Aegis]

Honest question here - not trying to be snarky or incite a flame war: do people honestly believe that potential Vampire 2 owners are more interested in running AROS on their Amigas than 3.x?

I've tinkered with AROS (68k and x86) out of curiosity and I commend the devs for their dedication to the OS and the countless hours they've invested in making it *but* from my perspective the user-base seems tiny even in comparison to OS4 and MorphOS - having used it, I can't think of a single reason to run it on a classic Amiga - even one accelerated by a Vampire.

I can't help but think that those in the Amiga community that don't consider either AmigaOS 4.1 or MorphOS as 'true' Amiga successors would  feel exactly the same way about  Vampire/AROS. If and when I do buy a Vampire, It'll be to run 3.9 - and if Cloanto, Hyperion or whoever wants to restart development on AmigaOS 3.x then I'd be more than happy to pay for that.

[wawrzon]

I can't think of a single reason to run it on a classic Amiga - even one accelerated by a Vampire.

so what do you need an updated os on 68k? aros has smaller foorprint than os4. difficult to judge if its slower or faster. its likely more buggy on68k, as most devs are on the x86 side. its has potentially more functionality. and it has developers interested in vampire as it occures. very skilled ones. the question is for how long.

I can't help but think that those in the Amiga community that don't consider either AmigaOS 4.1 or MorphOS as 'true' Amiga successors would  feel exactly the same way about  Vampire/AROS. If and when I do buy a Vampire, It'll be to run 3.9 - and if Cloanto, Hyperion or whoever wants to restart development on AmigaOS 3.x then I'd be more than happy to pay for that.

people who think anything that comes from hyperion is the only legitimate are lost no matter what. others will simply use their rom or buy one with cloanto. others may try aros. doesnt matter, as long as it runs amiga software if you ask me.

[Gulliver]

Are you suggesting or are you sarcastic? I *personally* believe it stops making sense at this time. There is a clear indication now, and a clear decision has been made that this is not wanted nor desired.

In the end, nobody trusts Hyperion at this point, given their past decisions. Do I trust them? Honestly - possibly not. The only thing I know is that it cannot work without them, so I personally considered it would be at least worth a try. Unfortunately, as it seems, it neither can work with them.

So here we are.

No, I was not being sarcastic.

Hyperion may suck, but at the end they want money, as much as you  or whoever else might possibly be involved. So this is a simple common ground that can be agreed upon all parties. better have some $$$ than nothing

There is still a market for AmigaOS 68k, dont let your hurt feelings get in the way.

We, as users dont need to trust on Hyperion, we need to trust on the developers, like you or whoemever they might be (Olsen?) and their resulting efforts. See it this way: Have we trusted Amiga Inc. in the past when they delivered 3.9? Not by any chance, but we trusted the developers, the resulting work, and bought their products (hey, we are even still buying 3.9 cdroms more than a decade after).

So, you felt you got screwed on Picasso96 and the Apollo Team. Get back to the drawing board, something failed, and it is not the first time, just remember Elbox and their Mediators drivers. Maybe you need to change tactics.

There is still money to be made and customers to satisfy, but as good as you probably are as a software engineer, is that you are flawed in some business related things. Dont get your emotions to be the ones that define your business desitions.

Amiga is my hobby, like probably all of us here, and I just want a better experience with it. So if you have something that will enhance my hobby experience, I will still buy your product even if it was backed by Hyperion (which I really dislike).

Think it over

[Kremlar]

We, as users dont need to trust on Hyperion, we need to trust on the developers, like you or whoemever they might be (Olsen?)  

...

Meh.... if money goes through Hyperion to the developers, and they don't get paid, development stops.

I'd prefer to see AmigaOS 3.x in other hands.  Does Hyperion truly own AmigaOS 3.x with rights to sell?

Then again considering they wanted $10K to license P96 for use with the Vampire I'm sure their asking price would be ridiculous.

[Aegis]

so what do you need an updated os on 68k?

Well, we don't 'need' an updated OS but sure, I'd be happy to see some of the functionality of OS4 back-ported into 3.x - display stuff would be good (making the the OS more HD and RTG-centric) - basically bringing as much of 68k up to OS4 spec as is feasible.

I'm no programmer, but I'm guessing there's stuff that could be brought across from OS4 to make porting from 3.x to 4.1 and vice versa easier. Perhaps even officially acknowledging UAE as part of the Amiga family and making things like Wazp3D and native code supported out-of-the-box (more integration with the host OS/hardware?).  

people who think anything that comes from hyperion is the only legitimate are lost no matter what. others will simply use their rom or buy one with cloanto. others may try aros. doesnt matter, as long as it runs amiga software if you ask me.

There's plenty of users that choose Hyperion/A-Eon's offerings and are happy with them (more or less) - if the rights holders were to look at improving the ageing 68k OS I can't see that as being a bad thing (note: I doubt it'll happen unless Cloanto instigates it).

And of course, you're right - what people choose to run on their hardware is their business and I hope Vampire users are well catered for irrespective of their choice.

[OlafS3]

Honest question here - not trying to be snarky or incite a flame war: do people honestly believe that potential Vampire 2 owners are more interested in running AROS on their Amigas than 3.x?

I've tinkered with AROS (68k and x86) out of curiosity and I commend the devs for their dedication to the OS and the countless hours they've invested in making it *but* from my perspective the user-base seems tiny even in comparison to OS4 and MorphOS - having used it, I can't think of a single reason to run it on a classic Amiga - even one accelerated by a Vampire.

I can't help but think that those in the Amiga community that don't consider either AmigaOS 4.1 or MorphOS as 'true' Amiga successors would  feel exactly the same way about  Vampire/AROS. If and when I do buy a Vampire, It'll be to run 3.9 - and if Cloanto, Hyperion or whoever wants to restart development on AmigaOS 3.x then I'd be more than happy to pay for that.

Aros is a reimplementation of the 3.1 API including intuition, gadtools and many others.

Upon it you can use not only the limited default desktop but also Scalos and even Magellan (both old one and new one). When using Magellan you can even use MUI 3.8 on it (what I did). It includes additional several patches by default, moving screen out of window, AHI, CybergraphX and so on, there is PCI support and USB-Stack (Poseidon), both on 68k untested but potentially working, network stack and so on. Wawa managed to get MESA/Gallium working on 68k (though slow but who knows what future brings). I do not make judgements about X86 because I am mainly interested in 68k so I cannot say anything. On 68k what did you use? If my distribution then I tried to include as many features as possible, I orientated at Amikit not 3.1. I know that not everyone liked that but because I do not get money for it I try to do what I like. For me my distribution was a testing field what can be done with Aros 68k. For real hardware and FPGA that would be too much of course. I use the old Magellan on it so where is the difference between Aros and 3.1 if you configure it the 3.1 way? But of course it is called competition, Aros is a offer, you can use it or let it.

[OlafS3]

Well, we don't 'need' an updated OS but sure, I'd be happy to see some of the functionality of OS4 back-ported into 3.x - display stuff would be good (making the the OS more HD and RTG-centric) - basically bringing as much of 68k up to OS4 spec as is feasible.

I'm no programmer, but I'm guessing there's stuff that could be brought across from OS4 to make porting from 3.x to 4.1 and vice versa easier. Perhaps even officially acknowledging UAE as part of the Amiga family and making things like Wazp3D and native code supported out-of-the-box (more integration with the host OS/hardware?).  



There's plenty of users that choose Hyperion/A-Eon's offerings and are happy with them (more or less) - if the rights holders were to look at improving the ageing 68k OS I can't see that as being a bad thing (note: I doubt it'll happen unless Cloanto instigates it).

And of course, you're right - what people choose to run on their hardware is their business and I hope Vampire users are well catered for irrespective of their choice.

As I understand it you are not interested in buying a Vampire anyway. If yes and you have a 3.1 license you get 3.1, simple as that. But you get it how it is. They will try to support it with drivers like the P96 driver when it is possible legally but thats it. There will be no new 3.1, and expecially no 4.X for 68k how some (you?) seem to fantasize. Hyperion wants to sell 4.X on real PPC hardware, even the many emulation customers are officially not supported. All that "they will backport 4.X to 68k" are wet dreams distant from any reality. What you might have got (at best) a slightly improved 3.1. Regarding Thomas, I never claimed that the sources do not exist anymore but there is no chance for people outside Hyperion to access or change them. What if Hyperion really goes bankrupt? OS is not really that unimportant for hardware. Aros offers security and the sources are free accessible, that it is free of charge and no license fees is only one part of the picture and Aros devs are even happy if it is used by people even if they get no money. We will see how the cooperation between Vampire devs and Aros devs will develop, I think both sides will benefit from it.

[Aegis]

As I understand it you are not interested in buying a Vampire anyway.

Just as soon as they make a CD32 version

There will be no new 3.1, and expecially no 4.X for 68k how some (you?) seem to fantasize. Hyperion wants to sell 4.X on real PPC hardware, even the many emulation customers are officially not supported. All that "they will backport 4.X to 68k" are wet dreams distant from any reality. What you might have got (at best) a slightly improved 3.1.

Hyperion wants to sell products that make money - PPC is simply where they've ended up (unfortunately) - and the copyright scenario has changed drastically since the days of the Pegasos. Now the classic hardware market's getting a shake-up that couldn't have happened until products like the Vampire appeared so opportunities are presenting themselves that weren't viable before due to licensing and commercial viability.

That doesn't mean you're wrong - just that if the rights-holders wanted to exploit OS 3.x to make some money, the chances of creating a product that sells are potentially greater now than they've been in a long time (since the Vampire is the first classic Amiga product to come along that's *vastly* more capable than anything we had before).

Clearly there's some will from Cloanto since they've been making minor updates to 3.x for distribution on disk, ROMs and as part as Amiga Forever. I've already stated I highly doubt any of this will result in an updated 68k OS but perhaps if there's a demand for it (due to a product like the Vampire) then it will (and clearly devs like Thomas are open to the idea and as a user I'd be interested in buying it).

Aros is a reimplementation of the 3.1 API including intuition, gadtools and many others.

Upon it you can use not only the limited default desktop but also Scalos and even Magellan (both old one and new one). When using Magellan you can even use MUI 3.8 on it (what I did). It includes additional several patches by default, moving screen out of window, AHI, CybergraphX and so on, there is PCI support and USB-Stack (Poseidon), both on 68k untested but potentially working, network stack and so on. Wawa managed to get MESA/Gallium working on 68k (though slow but who knows what future brings).

Regarding AROS, I tried the Amiga Forever downloadable and it's impressive - really, really great work. But it's not the AmigaOS I grew up with and began a career as a digital artist using - and it never can be. If there's people out there using it and getting enjoyment out of it then that's wonderful and a testament to your hard work - but it's not something I'd personally choose to use - but that's just me.