Linked by Mike Bouma on Wed 9th Jun 2004 18:35 UTC
Core AmigaOS 4.0 developer Hans-Jörg Frieden has written a status report with regard to the current state of AmigaOS. Various advances have been made since the Developer Pre-release version of AOS4 was completed. Meanwhile AmigaWorld.net has launched a new File Depot portal dedicated to providing and hosting Amiga OS4 files and related resources.
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The biggest problem here, is that all current amiga software exist in either 68k or ppc, so if you ported it to x86, you would not be able to use any existing software! You would have a OS that you cannot run anything on...
I reconize this problem and there is not much that you can do about it except running an embedded emulator such as UAE. But they (AmigaOS 4 guys) must be carefull and should use from now on portable libraries to which a programmer will link. This will avoid any future problems.
And if the applications and the OS are portable as many GNU/Linux applications are, you can basically choose any CPU for a device. Lets say that Amiga wants to build something from this list: DVD players/recorders, set-top boxes, smart displays, portable entertainment devices, DTVs, residential data/media gateways and networked media adapters.
Well you could stick to the powerpc or build something around the: Blackfin eMedia Platform http://www.analog.com/processors/platforms/blackfin_eMedia/ which cost about $7 to $25 per 10k units.
Point being that Amiga shouldn't be to PowerPC orientated as there are many embedded processors that are very well priced. But yes for a development platform it can be great.
The ppc cpu is also faster than x86 cpu per mhz and also consume way less power and runs very cold compared to x86 cpus..
I'm not saying that the powerpc is a bad choice but with the x86 you can choose from many more vendors. Also AMD makes low power x86 compatible cpu for embedded devices, Intel also has some but I don't know if they are x86 compatible and VIA has some low power x86 cpu's.
It's just when I had my A1200 and bought a Blizzard upgrade board with a M68030@50Mhz and 32MB RAM it was very expensive compared to what the PC world offered in upgrades. I still have it BTW (Anyone want to buy it?)
Thats true but one of them has 90%+ of the desktop market.
You would think that someone who is interested in the future of computing would welcome another competing platform.
I do welcome it however it must be really good before I'll dumb Windows and Linux for it. You can say that AmigaOS4 is modern but what true advantages does it hold over the other OS's?