AmigaWorld.net is hosting a translated OS4 pre-release review from the latest issue of the popular Swedish computer magazine DatorMagazin. Also Michael “The Terminator” Rozeboom has written an article for IntuitionBase.com within which he tries to explain why the PPC platform is currently a good choice for AmigaOS4.
This whole article is based on a false assumption: that running on x86 means you have to support all combinations of x86 PCs. However, this doesn’t seem to be applied to the PowerPC option: why doesn’t AmigaOS run on my PowerPC-based Apple eMac, or obscure developer board XYZ? Simple: they chose a particular motherboard and said ‘this is what you need’.
Just as has been done with the overpriced PowerPC option, Amiga would simply have to specify a particular brand of x86 motherboard/CPU, and particular brands of sound, graphics and networks cards — which is what they’ve done with PowerPCs anyway. You don’t have to support every available piece of hardware.
Further, the claim that OS4 is avoiding competition with Windows because it’s on PowerPC is plainly ridiculous. It’s still in competition, except it also has the massive hurdle of trying to convince people to buy an extremely expensive piece of hardware to even stand a change of running it.
Imagine if they’d targeted one of the many cheap Mini-ATX boards instead: more people would be willing to pick up such a board and actually give AmigaOS 4 a go, simply because it would be reasonably affordable to do so.
That said, this whole argument has already been shot down a thousand times in the past.
“there’s currently a project under work that will allow the complete emulation”
More info? Website?
@Daryl
I believe it’s called “Petunia” and it’s being developed by Hyperion for inclusion IN AmigaOS 4.0.
It is not a seperate project.
@ MarkTime
I see trolling isn’t dead.
Neither is the Amiga Platform.
Why in the world would you take glee in declaring a platform dead that obviously isn’t dead?
Is your ego so fragile that you’d wish evil on others to feel good?
The AmigaONE may NOT be the Amiga as we knew it. But, it’s the future for Amiga fans.
> The AmigaONE may NOT be the Amiga as we knew it. But, it’s
> the future for Amiga fans.
Errm… Future ? Broken Northbridge, USB doesn’t work, DMA doesn’t work, The soundchip has been removed, IDE channels doesn’t work people are told to buy a different IDE card. Several companies who starts offering fix solutions for the AmigaONE’s which people need to pay ontop of the broken hardware they bought already.
@ DruggedBunny
> This whole article is based on a false assumption: that
> running on x86 means you have to support all combinations of
> x86 PCs.
This has been the topic of many discussion within the Amiga community and I am sure the author was aware of such a possibilty.
However, for instance a small group of people did buy graphic cards that aren’t yet supported by AmigaOS4. Unlike Microsoft the Amiga partners had to write their own drivers for a small variety of graphic cards. This does result into additional support questions, requests and such, which does indeed drains resources (bug reports, conflicts, etc).
With regard to graphic card drivers, Hyperion hopes to solve such issues by integrating SciTech’s SNAP technology into AmigaOS 4.x.
http://www.scitechsoft.com/news/press/amiga_partnership.html
> Further, the claim that OS4 is avoiding competition with
> Windows because it’s on PowerPC is plainly ridiculous
Yes, it’s still competition but IMO this reasoning is not as ridiculous as it may seem at first glance. Remember that Microsoft “allegedly” pressured potential Be Inc x86 partners with their monopoly might. This also happened when Amiga was part of Gateway (PC maker). Within the PPC market Micrsoft has far less to say.
The games emulation being talked about must be E-UAE:
Website:
http://www.rcdrummond.net/uae/
AmigaOS4 screenshot running various Amiga classic through E-UAE:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/myalbum/photo.php?lid=202
E-UAE (like the OS4.0 integrated Petunia emulator) includes a JIT engine to run classic AmigaOS emulated at good speeds:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/myalbum/photo.php?lid=209
E-UAE is based on a WinUAE core:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/features/index.php?op=r&cat_id=4&rev_…
@ Anonymous
> Broken Northbridge
The Northbridge isn’t broken and works correctly with AmigaOS4. It has a cache handling similar to the classic Amigas models.
> USB doesn’t work
It does on the boards currently sold. All MicroA1 boards and fixed AmigaOne-XE boards. There was a mistake done by the far east board manufacturer.
> DMA doesn’t work
It does already work with AmigaOS4.
> The soundchip has been removed
Yes, a very long time ago regarding the AmigaOne-XE boards. However onboard sound is included on the MicrA1 boards.
> IDE channels doesn’t work people are told to buy a
> different IDE card.
Nope. That was a optional solution for AmigaOne-XE owners until they found a suitable DMA fix. There was an offer for AmigaOne-SE to upgrade to the AmigaOne-XE.
> Several companies who starts offering fix solutions for
> the AmigaONE’s which people need to pay ontop of the
> broken hardware they bought already.
GuruMeditation for instance does this fix for free for its customers. And currently sold AmigaOne boards do not need the DMA & USB fix.
> E-UAE (like the OS4.0 integrated Petunia emulator)
> includes a JIT engine to run classic AmigaOS emulated at > good speeds:
Actually, the JIT compiler in E-UAE (not AmigaOS4) is currently for x86 machines only.
Since the main use for E-UAE on OS4.0 is to run classic games (other software can be run more profitably on OS4.0 itself) the lack of the JIT isn’t much of a handycap (and, in fact, the JIT doesn’t support the 68000, only the 68020 and above, so isn’t even useful for running classic games).
Cheers,
Rich
@ Richard Drummond
Thanks for the correction. I do hope there will be JIT support some day, I greatly prefer to use WHDLoad enhanced/installed games and currently you have to go through the classic workbench to launch them.
As pointed out these issues either do not exist anymore or have been fixed regarding currently sold boards. But to be complete here the more in depth story:
> DMA doesn’t work
When AmigaOS4 DMA drivers were being developed (!) UDMA worked on VIA and Articia on AmigaOne SE / XE / µA1 MK2 (a MicroA1 prototype) boards.(At the time AmigaOne-XE boards were still being sold and marketed as a Earlybird solutions)
But when going online with the Ethernet chip it was discovered that issues did occur and there would be occasional lock-ups and thus random reboots would be required. So you could use UDMA without problems until you went online in which case you would need to switch the VIA into PIO mode. An external PCI IDE controller would solve this problem at the time (so the Northbridge and Ethernet chip were not to blame) and thus this was suggested as a possible solution and some dealers like GuruMeditaion provided free controllers to their customers.
Now a hardware VIA fix is known after lots of hard work. (VIA did not share their documentation on solving their known hardware issues) IMO these people deserve lots of credit for solving this issue with little available resources. IMO this is all part of “birth pains”.
There is an awesome Amiga theme for GNOME!
http://www.gnome-look.org/index.php?xsortmode=high&page=0
only one future for Amigans now and its called AROS (www.aros.org / http://www.aros-exec.org) wait and see :-).
There is an awesome Amiga theme for GNOME!
http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=19814
link was bad before.
Cool,
well, i`ll be buying one of those… OS4.0 looks impressive, and i can run the emulator for the classic stuff…
I have the AmigaOne-XE and The Micro Amiga. Love them both!
Yogi
You must be rich then! 😀
I would realy like to have a PPC based computer. But have to say Mac mini is a more atractive alternetive, when it comes to price and avalible software at least.
But an OS4 would probebly suit me just fine as long I get a decent browser. I mostly just use text editors anyway.
I agree that PPC is the way to go for the future of AmigaOS but I’m not sure how it will ever attract new users with the hardware being so expensive. I would love to buy the new A1 but with no:
-modern browser
-up to date office suite
-PPC multimedia apps (ex: simple video/audio/photo editing)
I just couldnt get any use out of it.
I’ll admit that at the end of 1997 I spent $700 on a cyberstorm 060 for my A4000 but back then it was justified because the Amiga still had alot of up to date apps & hardware that were very usefull to me.
@ Paul Gallant
It’s currently still a developer pre-release. Everything you state is actually already being worked on, but it will take (many) months before all these points are properly addressed.
There’s simply no way around this and a problem for all new or resurrected platforms. This process takes considerable time and energy but things are moving ahead at a good pace. At this point every new enthusiast user or developer taking the plunge makes a lot of difference to the platform. AmigaOS4 truly is a community effort done by lots of small companies and individuals specialized at specific areas of interest and competence.
OS 4.0 looks awesome, it is coming together very well. Nice job Amiga OS 4.0 developers!
Consider a Pegasos II microATX board, cheaper & and more mature. You can run almost any free OS on it.
Never! I dont buy a new computer to run linux on it. Then I simply can stick with the one I got.
@ daijo
To make a huge story short: Don’t hold your breath as in any case AmigaOS4.0 will need to be finished for AmigaOne systems and CyberstormPPC / BlizzardPPC classic Amigas first before this would be considered (again).
Basicly at a time Amiga Inc had an agreement with bPlan to support the Pegasos and even promoted the board for them. Then due to differences of opinion the deal got cancelled.
Amiga Inc also signed an agreement with Thendic Electronics mainly with the intention to support a never released WinCE based PDA product (the “Smartboy”).
Thendic and bPlan later co-operated, resulting into Genesi. Genesi then abused Thendic’s AmigaDE agreement with Amiga Inc to promote AmigaOS4 support for the Pegasos by starting a lawsuit and “mistakenly” pre-empting the wrong outcome in their favour.
Also at one point Amiga Inc was in a very bad shape financially and there was so much noise that I discussed OSNews Amiga news items more with actual Genesi employees or contracters than ordinary OSNews readers!
Genesi issues with various (ex-)partners and (ex-)employees aside IMO it’s needless to say, Amiga Inc will have to think twice to ever deal with those involved ever again.
For the Os4, there is still 3 things missing….
– A port of Firefox (and the other mozilla products).
– A port of Open Office.
– A port of Sun’s JAVA.
Unless those are there, i would not buy an Micro-A1-U.
They are under devellopment right now, yet there has been no or little code to show.
Anyway…. When they are here, i would instantly dump any pc’s except my laptop.
>I’ll admit that at the end of 1997 I spent $700 on a cyberstorm 060 for my A4000
You haven’t still got the CSPPC, have you? If so, hold onto it; as others have said, OS4 itself will run very nicely on that hardware when released, and with JIT emulation 68k apps should match the speed of the 060 – AGA screenmodes will even work! Of course, when new games and multimedia apps (like RealSoft 3D) are eventually released then it’ll seem a bit slow, but hopefully by then the cost of an A1 will have decreased.
I agree, the hardware is expensive. But right now, it is for users willing to try something new. I did pay quite a bit for both my systems, however, I think it was worth every penny. They talk about problems with the XE version, but I have owned mine for over a year and a half and it is never turned off, and I have never had a problem. OS 4.0 is a lean, mean, operating system. Looking forward to the final release!
I would wait for the final release of AmigaOS4 with working DMA capabilities before buying a Mini-ITX AmigaOne.
The DMA problems (Articia S chipset) still haven’t been dealt with. The second update still doesn’t have proper IDE drivers with functional DMA.
IMO the chipset (Articia S) is broken. Even Mai, the company that makes the Articia S, removed all traces of DMA from it’s specs/docs.
@ Ronald
> with working DMA capabilities
They are working 100% with AmigaOS4 already. Please read one of my earlier messages within this thread.
There has been so much misinformation and confusing noise flying around on certain forums that it’s understandable that you think that you think this to be the case.
@ Mike Bouma
> They are working 100% with AmigaOS4 already. Please read
> one of my earlier messages within this thread.
Then how come uA1c users have their DMA turned off?
> There has been so much misinformation and confusing
> noise flying around on certain forums that it’s
> understandable that you think that you think this to be
> the case.
It’s not misinformation and/or confusing noise flying from other forums. Anyone can see it’s clearly posted on Amigaworld.net by Amigans that own uA1-Cs.
@ Ronald
> It’s not misinformation and/or confusing noise flying from
> other forums. Anyone can see it’s clearly posted on
> Amigaworld.net by Amigans that own uA1-Cs.
Just post the link. You probably misunderstood something.
> Then how come uA1c users have their DMA turned off?
The ATA driver in the last update purposely does not allow you to use UDMA transfer modes. It’s not that UDMA doesn’t work on that hardware, but simply that UDMA support is disabled in that driver.
I imagine a future update will include a driver with UDMA support enabled.
Cheers,
Rich
I believe that one of the OS4 developers made a comment on AW.net about why DMA is disabled, but I cannot find it at the moment. If I remember correctly, enabling DMA would do nasty things to unfixed XE boards (ie data corruption), and they want to ensure that most XEs are fixed before enabling DMA, in case an XE owner gets the fix and complains that his data’s been wiped. Can anyone confirm this?
@ Alex Whittaker
Stéphane Guillard is basicly the AmigaOS4 team’s DMA guy:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=10199&fo…
“@Deniil715
Hi,
#define JOKE
to asnwer the topic, lets say 17,432%
#undef JOKE
-> “I’ve heard that PCI DMA is not enabled in OS4 yet”
Who told you such nonsense ?
PCI DMA is enabled in OS4 since day 1. We have a lot of drivers which do use PCI DMA, like Ethernet (which you are probably using), USB (which you may be using too), sound (do you use an sblive or any other supported sound card ?) and the IDE drivers, sii0680ide, sii3112ide and a1ide (but for this one, only the betatester’s version).
Why is the DMA-capable a1ide only available for betatesters ? Because it can fail on unfixed XE’s when Ethernet is active too, like said many times.
Reminder : DMA is the situation where another bus actor than the CPU deals directly with memory, without going through the CPU. This happens to be the case for the Ethernet chip, the USB chip, the sound chips, the IDE chips etc.
By the way, among those chips, only the IDE chips can be operated in another mode than DMA. This other mode is PIO, where the CPU acts as a data pump between the chip and the memory.
The A1 Ethernet and sound and USB chips can only be operated in PCI DMA.
Thus, I guess the friend who told you that “PCI DMA is not enabled in OS4 yet” must be one of those claiming that OS4 is coded 100% in photoshop (let me tell you a secret, it actually is, and that asked a /huge/ training effort for the dev team).
-> “PCI DMA is not enabled in OS4 yet which is why we don’t have overlay yet”
The friend seems to be very much aware.
1 – We do have overlay on OS4, since long, at least with the voodoo boards (I have no radeon, I cant say for radeons).
2 – There would anyway be absolutely no relationship between us having PCI DMA or not, and having overlay or not.
-> “This would also mean that the SIL680 card doesn’t do DMA to the memory, only “UDMA” between the card and the actual disks, but plain PIO between the card and the CPU.”
Wow. Now thats creative ! Tell me where would the data pumped from the disk in UDMA end up “on the card” ?
If this is yet another statement from the helpful friend, I’d suggest to start considering his opinions as questionable
Let me fix those nonsensitical statements.
1 – the sii0680 (and the other IDE drivers, for that matter) do real UDMA, from disk to memory or from memory to disk, without anything faking anything. This happens on the A1 as it happens on any other computer.
2 – there /is actually an sii0680 mixed PIO/UDMA mode/ ! Thats a scoop, tell that to friend !
But. It just happens to work the other way
It allows using older UDMA-disabled harddisks (thus in PIO mode) without using any CPU ! This is what Silicon Image (the Siixxxx chip maker) calls Virtual DMA. The chip is able to receive an UDMA command, do a PIO transfer on the disk side (ie simulating what the CPU would do if it was a PIO transfer) and store or fetch data to/from memory without requiring any CPU cycle !
So if that mixed mode was used at all, it would be all benefit for OS4, since it would give one of the two UDMA advantages (low CPU usage, the other one being speed) even to slow PIO-only drives !
But. Thats not the case, the Sii0680 acts with hdd’s either in PIO or in UDMA, depending on the drive’s capabilities, and your uboot or idetool settings. There is no more to it.
-> “This is my guess why it doesn’t perform so very well, only about 20MB/s for a 160GB UATA133 disk.”
Mmh.
1 – what benchmarck tool did you use ? Could you please state here what an OS4-native “scsispeed sii0680ide.device:n FAST NOCPU buf1=65536 buf2=0 buf3=0 buf4=0” says, where n is your drive unit number ? (os4 scsispeed can be found on os4depot, in the recent diskspeed archive).
You should expect anything between 35 and 55 MB/s.
If you are talking at file level, then please state the filesystem in use, its settings (buffers, blocksize), and for FFS2, if you run the cache plugin or not, and if you change the write cache strategy to relaxed mode or not.
2 – is that a Maxtor 160 GB ? In case it is, let me state that those drives are slow as hell, they rotate at 5.400 rpm, and I have a lot of faster drives here.
3 – Well. No 3
Kind regards,
—
Stéphane Guillard
PS : excuse the ironic tone, but those things have been addressed litterally zllion times already ;-)”
@ Mike Bouma
> Just post the link. You probably misunderstood something.
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=10748&fo…
Right now, there are a lot of claims going around that DMA is working and not working properly on the uA1-C (Mini-ITX AmigaOne).
IMO if DMA, on the Articia S chipset, works properly then Linux should work 100% without major kernel modifications. The whole deal isn’t crystal clear and people should wait for the final release of AmigaOS4 before purchasing an AmigaOne.
@ Ronald
Linux isn’t much of a priority on the AmigaOne at this point of time. Using Linux on a x86 PC is far cheaper and better supported than on any PPC platform.
And this is really Mai Logic’s job to address. Mai Logic only hired Hyperion to do the initial Linux port (there are only a few hobby maintainers). Hyperion itself has its hands full leading the AmigaOS4 project and doing Firmware updates.
A Mai guy did release some Linux driver fix (the Northbridge cache handling similar to the way classic Amiga operate) a long time ago, but they have been pretty quiet of late. But they are doing public Linux demonstrations with hundreds of different units simultaneously, so they may have better yet unreleased drivers available in-house.
So you seem to mix things up a little.
In response to the article “The Case for PowerPC”, http://intuitionbase.com/static.php?section=en_The_Case_For_PPC
“The economic well being of the Amiga market demands a system that is not in direct competition with the Wintel world. Running on Intel hardware will jeopardise the viability of OS4 by placing it into direct competition with Windows.”
The economic well-being of the Amiga market demands an Amiga OS that has no competition in Windows. Running to another architectural platform doesn’t remove what has now become the inferior nature of Amiga OS, it just puts a small fish in a small pond. What is demanded by the Amiga market (dictated by those who would purchase the products, mind you, not by the vendors or engineers or programmers) is an OS that kicks the crap out of the competition. That’s what is demanded.
“The rational for moving the next generation Amiga hardware to PowerPC architecture are primarily economic.”
If that were true, they would have gone to the much LARGER market of x86, particularly the x86-64 market that continues to rapidly grow.
“A tendency in the user community is to tolerate the shortcomings of Windows, yet blame the Amiga for any failings, regardless of their source. If Eyetech created a customized x86 board expressly for Amiga OS4, the dealer network would be placed in the position of selling a system that contains, in the mind of a potential purchaser, the same generic commodity components that he could purchase elsewhere, possibly at a lower cost.”
We don’t buy Amiga to help the vendors or those who design it, we buy Amiga because of what its capabilities are. You lessen those, you lessen your customer base and ‘niche’ yourself into oblivion. Those who tolerate the shortcomings of Windows often do so because they have ‘no choice’. If it was ever thought by those in charge of Amiga that they had something better than Windows, why don’t they match it face to face in the realm of x86? And we don’t need customized x86 boards from Eyetech, what we need is Amiga OS capable of utilizing boards like those from ABIT, ASUS, MSI…out of the box.
“The limited OS support of graphics and sound cards, determines opportunities for cost reductions or increased margins that can be achieved through substitutions. As the success of the Amiga One is directly related to the success of the retailer channel, it is very important to offer a product that doesnÕt compete with the Intel architecture directly.”
Because Amiga can’t compete anymore. So it goes off into PPC-land, where there are FEWER graphics and sound cards available, and an erroneous belief that people will follow and pay through the nose for the expensive ‘solutions’ that are still inferior to what is on the x86 side.
“PCs run windows by default. They are designed, manufactured and tested with that in mind. Microsoft sets specifications, but the manufacturer is free to implement them in any way he may see fit.”
This is nonsense. A new Amiga OS should be 64-bit for starters, and put on an exokernel for speed and greater flexibility. It could easily run on top of regular PC hardware–just that some don’t want it there, apparently. Amiga fans were told that the new Amiga would utilize off-the-shelf PC parts. There is nothing that Amiga OS cannot utilize on the x96 side of things. The much larger side, mind you.
“By running on PowerPC, the spectre of competing against Windows on the same hardware is eliminated.”
Nice. Reduce it down to PPC vs X86, instead of Amiga vs Windows. I’m sure it helps to avoid the ugly truth: Amiga OS cannot compete with Windows, because those making Amiga OS don’t know how to. (I know how to, however)
“By limiting access to OS4 by means of a PowerPC AmigaOne, there will be fewer unlicensed OS4 installs. If OS4 ran on commodity pc hardware, two issues would arise: 1 Large scale piracy, resulting in lost revenue to OS4’s publisher. Problematic installs, using a questionable copy of OS4, in turn lead to a poor reputation for OS4 amongst the general computing community. 2 Compatibility issues within the hardware combination, for which OS4 takes the blame. This would hinder sales for new Amiga software, and damage the Amiga brand name. You want OS4, you must accept the hardware too. Otherwise, OS4 installations would soon vastly exceed OS4 sales.”
That is totally misleading. It is an apologist’s commentary for lazy programmers. And, sure, putting the OS on PPC only does reduce a number of things, including money derived from sales. Remember, economics was the sole reason for being on PPC, eh? What a laugh, when it is the smaller niche market. Amiga OS will never sale nearly as well on PPC as it will on x86-64; that’s a fact. The best bet for the makers of the Amiga OS is to focus only on the Amiga OS, without care of what it runs on, or what it is put on by the customers. The company can put Minimum Requirements, as well as Recommendations for certain configurations, and Disclaim anything else–put forth their non-intention to service or warranty anything not under the recommended hardware listing. And Piracy?…It’s just a matter of time before PPC has it, too. It’s not immune.
When those who would purchase Amiga OS are loud enough for the company to hear that they want it on x86-64 architecture, we shall see what money dictates the future.
–EyeAm
@ EyeAm
> What is demanded by the Amiga market (dictated by those
> who would purchase the products, mind you, not by the
> vendors or engineers or programmers) is an OS that kicks
> the crap out of the competition. That’s what is demanded.
Remember Be Inc and BeOS? Kicking ass from a technological point of view is simply not enough. At some point Be Inc was worth over a Billion dollars (due to the hype) and still Microsoft managed to manipulate the market with its monopoly might and put pressure on x86 solution providers to prevent any fair competition.
> hey would have gone to the much LARGER market of x86,
> particularly the x86-64 market that continues to rapidly
> grow.
Exactly which x86 mobo designer would choose AmigaOS4 support above Microsoft Windows?
I guess with a desktop market share above 90% for MS Windows there would be none. That’s the monopoly might of Microsoft.
With regard to Be Inc, Micrsosoft paid just $23,250,000 (23 million USD) to settle Be’s lawsuit. Not a bad deal for a company which has over $60,000,000,000. (60 billion, or more than 2500 times this amount) to spend and is able to kill a serious competitor once worth over 1 Billion dollar (Microsoft admits no wrongdoing!).
BTW regardless of this, porting AmigaOS to x86 would still have taken Hyperion additional resources. This has been explained to great depths as well.
> we don’t need customized x86 boards from Eyetech, what we
> need is Amiga OS capable of utilizing boards like those
> from ABIT, ASUS, MSI…out of the box.
Supporting all these different boards out of the box would be an enormous task beyond to capability of just a small development team. For example, do you understand how much time and energy it costed already for the AmigaOS4 team to properly support the current AmigaOne boards properly due to a lack of hardware documentation provided by VIA? (VIA were particularly unhelpful in coming forward with documentation about what was obviously a well known and solved problem in the x86 world) Now consider the endless possible combination of chips to support!
> So it goes off into PPC-land, where there are FEWER
> graphics and sound cards available
Incorrect. You can use ordinary x86 PC targeted PCI/AGP graphics cards with the AmigaOne (provided there are drivers available).
> an exokernel
Exokernel designs are still very much a research effort and it is not used in any major commercial operating systems.
> compete with Windows, because those making Amiga OS don’t
> know how to. (I know how to, however)
Looking forward to see you take on Microsoft. 😉
(in response to Mike Bouma):
“Remember Be Inc and BeOS? Kicking ass from a technological point of view is simply not enough. At some point Be Inc was worth over a Billion dollars (due to the hype) and still Microsoft managed to manipulate the market with its monopoly might and put pressure on x86 solution providers to prevent any fair competition.”
That is bull. There is nothing, nothing that Microsoft can do to stop Amiga OS on x86.
“Exactly which x86 mobo designer would choose AmigaOS4 support above Microsoft Windows?”
Who cares? It isn’t up to them. You seem to have a strange view of how things are or can be in the world of computing, Mike. All Amiga has to do is itself choose which boards it wants its OS to run on. (yes, they’ve done that already, with PPC, I know…but I mean x86-64 boards, which make a whole lot more sense).
Exactly what does Microsoft do, in your opinion, to kill its competitors?
It’s ridiculous. It doesn’t do anything. Amiga on x86-64 architecture would be untouched by Microsoft. There is nothing it can do to Amiga.
“BTW regardless of this, porting AmigaOS to x86 would still have taken Hyperion additional resources. This has been explained to great depths as well.”
Bill McEwen (at the time the President and CEO of Amiga) said that Amiga would be ported to PPC, *initially*, and that x86 would follow. So what’s your point? Mine, after I learned more about the two markets, was that PPC was the smaller market and that it made more sense to go x86-64. This has not changed.
“Supporting all these different boards out of the box would be an enormous task beyond to capability of just a small development team. For example, do you understand how much time and energy it costed already for the AmigaOS4 team to properly support the current AmigaOne boards properly due to a lack of hardware documentation provided by VIA? (VIA were particularly unhelpful in coming forward with documentation about what was obviously a well known and solved problem in the x86 world) Now consider the endless possible combination of chips to support!”
This is a puffed-up disadvantage, and is in no way close to the truth, Mike. The problems are not so insurmountable as some die-hard status-quo Amigans would like us to believe. If they wanted it there, it would be. The thing is, they’re going to find out the hard way that the path they have chosen is not going to amount to much; it is the WRONG path for Amiga. I told them so
I told them so many times. Put Amiga on x86-64. AMD64, Abit. That’s the way to go. Exokernel Amiga OS, and utilizing Linux/drivers, in addition to WINE. The more it can do, the more appealing it will be. And it doesn’t have to be a hack job, either. In keeping with the “Elegeance Through Simplicity” motto and mantra that was first coined by Amiga’s creators, an extremely fast Amiga OS can exist on AMD64 architecture, without all the headaches some claim are there. It’s pure FUD that is being spread, to keep Amiga from truly flying free and delivering upon its original premise of an elegant design, expandability, fast responsiveness, and an OS that plain makes sense.
“Exokernel designs are still very much a research effort and it is not used in any major commercial operating systems.”
That is completely boneheaded, if you ask me, Mike. You would have Amiga FOLLOW and not LEAD? And it’s exactly something Amiga should do: be first, again, with something. It can be the first commercial operating system deployed with the idea of the exokernel (indeed, the original Amiga Exec and LibOS structure is already very close to it–just remove any remaining ‘management’ of processes from the kernel, and kernel modules within system, entirely to the user-level, and expose all hardware to the apps, which can manage themselves (or with default APIs in System)). Free up the Amiga OS so it can expand, and programmers can enjoy greater freedom than before.
Doing so will result in an Amiga OS that is 8-to-16 times faster than Windows, Linux and MAC OS; and 80-to-160 times faster than the fastest Amiga.
And it can be fully backward compatible with all previous versions of the Amiga Classic and its software. Consider a Virtual Processor Library that the AmigaDE has access to. Different/separate from the exokernel, mind you; as it should be.
“Looking forward to see you take on Microsoft. ;-)”
Not a problem.
@ Mike Bouma
> The Northbridge isn’t broken and works correctly with
> AmigaOS4. It has a cache handling similar to the classic
> Amigas models.
If you would ever read the technical documentation regarding ArticiaS (I did if you ask), you would notice, that the behaviour similiar to the classic Amiga models was never intended. Instead, the floating buffer is claimed to maintain cache coherency fully. And it doesn`t.
So yes, the Northbridge is broken. Or at least doesn`t work as expected (as advertised, as written in manual).
@ EyeAm
> That is bull. There is nothing, nothing that Microsoft can
> do to stop Amiga OS on x86.
Do you really know what it takes to make a business succeed? A small company like Amiga will need strong partnerships and surely Micrsoft can and has done a lot about that.
“Hitachi eventually shipped a system with BeOS loaded, but with no sign that Be was loaded on the system the PC booted directly into Windows and users were required to create boot floppies and install the bootloader themselves.
Compaq and Gateway declined to market dual-boot ‘Creativity PC’ systems Be had co-developed with Intel, citing the Windows license. Even when Be offered the OEMs the operating system for free.
Be alleges that Microsoft scuppered a 1998 deal with with Compaq to produce an internet appliance after Compaq boss Eckhard Pfeiffer received a personal visit from Gates as part of a Microsoft “Digital Appliances Review.” This predates the BeIA platform announcement of January 2000. A Compaq BeIA appliance Clipper eventually appeared, but only in a limited form, Be alleges.”
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/02/20/be_inc_sues_microsoft/
Remember Gateway’s Amiga/Linux plans?
Ex-Gateway Executive Says Microsoft Bullies PC Makers
“The Microsoft Corporation (news/quote) bullies computer makers by withholding discounts if they promote products that threaten its Windows monopoly, a former Gateway Inc. (news/quote) executive testified today”
“In 1999 and 2000, Microsoft reduced discounts Gateway
received for the Windows operating system when Gateway
developed an Internet-connection device and a network
computer powered by the rival Linux system, Mr. Ashkin
said.”
http://alamo.satlug.org/pipermail/satlug/2002-March/000539.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/22/technology/22SOFT.html?ex=1017804…
You really underestimate Micrsoft’s monopoly might. And when they break they “alledgely” break law the fines, lawyer costs and settlements are pocket money to them.
> Bill McEwen (at the time the President and CEO of Amiga)
> said that Amiga would be ported to PPC, *initially*, and
> that x86 would follow. So what’s your point?
Like I said that it requires more resources to port from 68k to x86 than from 68k to PPC. I am not excluding any future possibilities. First things firts.
@ Michal Schulz
> If you would ever read the technical documentation
> regarding ArticiaS (I did if you ask), you would notice,
> that the behaviour similiar to the classic Amiga models
> was never intended.
May have been *originally* the case, but this feature has meanwhile been dropped. The ‘Articia S’s aren’t broken in any way (there have been revisions). Yes there has to be SW cache coherency like is the case when running Linux on the classics.
The fact remains however it works correctly (and fast!) through proper software adjustments and the VIA was by far a bigger problem for AmigaOS4 development than the Articia ever was. And yes VIA does not sell or promote their chips used in millions of PCs as being “broken”.
You would be amazed to know all the chips and motherboards (Amiga, PC, Mac) which have been (and are) on the market and have minor to very serious flaws. Yet millions of people use them daily without knowing about these flaws due to driver adjustments.
“Remember Gateway’s Amiga/Linux plans? Ex-Gateway Executive Says Microsoft Bullies PC Makers”
That was Gateway’s fault, for entering into the contract. Any company who entered willingingly into such contracts and whine about it later have no excuse–it is their own fault.
Now, when it comes to the License, or EULA, I believe licenses-as-contracts are as illegal as making someone purchase something in order to participate in a sweepstakes (rather, there are certain laws governing sweepstakes that one can find a corollary in with regard to forcing contracts upon someone). A license is what the OS company is willing to give, as far as permissions go, to the end user; and stakes its claim to copyright. There should legally be no greater powers than that for such things–certainly not forcing someone to comply with all kinds of wild dictatorial whims beyond the scope of copyright. The extraneous stuff beyond such scope is in contract land–and you don’t need that for an OS.
If you ask me, there may yet be some unfinished business from all of the anti-trust suits. It seems that companies like Gateway, if they want to ship other OSes and make money, should be able to get out of standing arrangements with Microsoft (what, is Microsoft afraid it can’t compete on a fair playing field?)
Maybe there is something more to it.
Collusion? — A secret agreement between two or more parties for a fraudulent, illegal, or deceitful purpose.
“Like I said that it requires more resources to port from 68k to x86 than from 68k to PPC. I am not excluding any future possibilities. First things firts.”
It is no harder to have ported to x86-64, Mike, from 68k. Either way, you’re facing the changing of the same libraries. (they would have a lot less work if they went to exokernel–because so much of the stuff can run unchanged on top of it).
–EyeAm
@ Mike Bouma:
“For example, do you understand how much time and energy it costed already for the AmigaOS4 team to properly support the current AmigaOne boards properly due to a lack of hardware documentation provided by VIA? (VIA were particularly unhelpful in coming forward with documentation about what was obviously a well known and solved problem in the x86 world) Now consider the endless possible combination of chips to support!”
They probably couldn’t understand–like me–why someone would choose PPC over x86-64
But hey, they, they just design their stuff, they don’t build it. You might have been able to get it from somewhere else. Certainly, an equivalent (and maybe cheaper?) chip.
From VIA’s own website: “…does not own its own silicon wafer manufacturing and production facilities (fabs). VIA is a fabless IC design house, so works closely with silicon foundries (fabs) and testing & assembly houses (who provide the services for testing & packaging dies with the necessary equipments) to produce the final IC products. As IC manufacturing processes become ever more complex and capital-intensive, the fabless model has grown in popularity as it allows the design house to show more flexibility and react more quickly to the market. VIA’s close partnership with leading foundries and testing and assembly houses are vital to the success of this model.”
I remember that Amiga, Inc. was once going to design its own hardware and have it made by third parties. Whatever happened that?
Heck, I still have the email where Fleecy said in January 2000 that Amiga already had an OS running on PPC.
I hope they don’t release OS 4 anytime soon, and I hope they go back to the drawing board with the exokernel idea, and a plan to integrate x86-64 and PPC into a single package OS–autosensing the hardware and installing appropriate libraries (or all of them, by user option, since virtualization of processors/machines could make some things useful whereas they wouldn’t normally be useable.
The AmigaOne boards could still be used, even with the exokernel OS. But I don’t see those selling well. They are far too expensive.
–EyeAm
@ EyeAm
> That was Gateway’s fault, for entering into the contract.
> Any company who entered willingingly into such contracts
> and whine about it later have no excuse–it is their own
> fault.
I don’t like how the current tech market climate currenty is and how monopolies are abusing their market dominance. But sadly if you want to become big yourself you will often have to play along big boy’s games.
Imagine if HP and Dell sign a special agreement with Microsoft involving special discounts and Gateway doesn’t. That would mean HP & Dell could have a significant advantage over Gateway’s dealings. Windows can be quite expensive (considering sales/profits, employement/development costs) and with large volume sales the amount of money involved can be enormous and can make or break a company.
> It is no harder to have ported to x86-64, Mike, from 68k.
It is easier to transform 68K code to PPC because 68K and PowerPC both use a “Big Endian” byte order. The x86 CPUs are little-endian. Endianness has grave implications in software portability. Basicly PPC and 68k CPUs are more alike, simplifying the seamless integration of 68K and PPC modules in AmigaOS4.
Also there already was a roadmap to move 68k classic AmigaOS towards PPC, hence the PPC accelerator boards thousands of Amiga users own today and the AmigaOS4 version in beta for the classic systems.
@ EyeAm
> I remember that Amiga, Inc. was once going to design its
> own hardware and have it made by third parties. Whatever
> happened that?
AFAIK, the hardware engineer Dean Brown is still working at Amiga Inc (although I haven’t checked recently). BTW Dean Brown, Dave Haynie, Mick Tinker, and Joe Torre (four of the best and brightest Amiga minded hardware gurus) were all for a PPC based platform advance when AmigaOS4 was being planned.
The AmigaDE is fundamentally a very different technology and can make use of the drivers available for other host operating systems.
Also Mai Logic is a very experienced fabless circuits/systems design house.
Which one of these will we see first Amiga4 or Haiku?
I have been seeing hype about this Amiga4 for years now but never any product.
@ sasquatch666
> I have been seeing hype about this Amiga4 for years now
> but never any product.
Mini-ITX AmigaOne boards are currently available together with an AmigaOS4 developer pre-release to anyone who is interested.
See AmigaOS4 in action (Beta from July 2004):
http://uniweb.free.fr/os4/moovidamp.avi (native movie players)
http://uniweb.free.fr/os4/os4morequal.avi (some native and emulated software shown, the browser shown is a classic 68k application, meanwhile AWeb is already available in AmigaOS4 native PPC version)
They’re running about US$700 each, I think. Quite expensive for a motherboard.
–EyeAm
“The Amiga market is too small to sustain a company like Hyperion.–Hyperion.
@ EyeAm
Yes the tiny Mini-ITX AmigaOne boards (With onboard Radeon graphics, onboard sound, 800MHz IBM 750GX CPU, 256 MB RAM and the cost of AmigaOS4 (!) Developer Pre-release + Final when ready) is roughly 700 Euro.
http://intuitionbase.com/gfx/ma1c-pics/06AmigaOneLite.jpg
Like the article states:
Pros:
Fast, stable and neat operating system
Very interesting developer platform
Cons:
The hardware is perhaps a tad expensive
AmigaOS4 pre-release screenshots by users (for those on narrow band and therefore don’t download the videos):
http://www.cinemamagicvideo.com/ken/Screenshot_1.jpg
http://amigaworld.net/modules/myalbum/photo.php?lid=27
http://amigaworld.net/modules/myalbum/photo.php?lid=95
http://amigaworld.net/modules/myalbum/photo.php?lid=135
Is the JIT Amiga emulatio being talked about in Amiga OS 4 from the E-UAE project? http://www.rcdrummond.net/uae/
E-UAE is based on a UAE core:
http://www.freiburg.linux.de/~uae/
uae-0.8.22 ran almost everything (except just a few games), also WinUAE added a few updates.
I still don’t see the logic of what they have done.
Amiga OS runs about–what? US$150?
———————-
Option They Went With:
US$700
Mini-ITX AmigaOne boards (With onboard Radeon graphics, onboard sound, 800MHz IBM 750GX CPU, 256 MB RAM
Amiga OS included.
———————
———————
Option They Could Have Gone With:
Amiga OS: US$150
running on regular PC motherboards, such as the following…
$99
Abit AV8, powered by VIA K8T800 Pro/VT8237 performance chipsets based on AMD Athlon 64/64FX Socket 939 Processors. With SATA-150 RAID, Dual DDR400/333/266 (Max. 4GB), AGP8X/4X, IEEE1394 (100/200/400 MB/s transfer rate), Gigabit 10/100/1000M LAN PCI Ethernet Controller, onboard 5.1-channel (6-channel) audio, HyperTransport technology (delivering a 2GHz effective system bus), USB…etc.
———————
$700 vs $250, hmmmm 😉
I wouldn’t say “a tad expensive”, I would say “a tad moronic”.
–EyeAm
>Is the JIT Amiga emulatio being talked about in Amiga OS 4 from the E-UAE project?
The JIT is actually a completely new emulation core called “Petunia” – used for emulating system-friendly 68k apps that can use PPC libraries in OS4. E-UAE also exists for OS4, and that’s for things like AGA-bashing games. While E-UAE doesn’t have JIT, it’s no real issue since the programs that would need it should work under Petunia anyway.
Okay, so I left out the CPU and RAM…
$99 for the motherboard, about $90 for a stick of 1GB DualDDR400 RAM, and $250 or so for an Athlon64 CPU (2.2Ghz)…
$700 (current offering) vs. $450
🙂 Still trumps what they’re offering, even if you have to get a graphics card.
Does the AmigaOne come with a harddrive? Is it SATA-capable? You know, SATA has a throughput of over 150MB/s, with models of greater speed on the way (300MB/s,..)
–EyeAm
OK then, imagine that OS4 is ported to x86. Now there are two possible ways that this is done:
1) Hyperion decide to support a couple of chipsets for specific boards, to ensure full compatibity. They add some kind of BIOS dongle to prevent other boards working. People would constantly complain that their board wasn’t supported, or that they were just doing it out of collusion.
2) OS4 is developed primarily for a couple of recommended chipsets and works flawlessly on them. People try OS4 on their other boards and it’s extremely unstable, driver glitches everywhere, and gives a terrible impression.
This isn’t Windows or Linux – there simply aren’t resources to test OS4 on all x86 mobos. Also, remember that going x86 would prevent users from running PPC applications, or developers from easily comiling their PPC applications to OS4 native.
@Mike Bouma:
>Imagine if HP and Dell sign a special agreement with
>Microsoft involving special discounts and Gateway doesn’t.
>That would mean HP & Dell could have a significant advantage
>over Gateway’s dealings. Windows can be quite expensive
>(considering sales/profits, employement/development costs)
>and with large volume sales the amount of money involved can
>be enormous and can make or break a company.
Your logic is flawed if not because only one reason: you have a company who decides (like eyetech) that his revenue money will be from outside source then Windows… you have free will, you may not want to explore it though, but then who’s the fault?? Not Microsoft, they only say, wanna stay with us do it our way, if you doesn’t you doesn’t have to pay the ‘fees’, but then you’re already outside of M$ world… just like now, but still on x86 world…
It’s all nonsense… if you wanna pledge on the virtues of PPC by all means do it by saying what those are, but please don’t come with such aruments as a custom x86 box is equal to having a PPC one, minus the extra tag of having a less used tech against a mainstream… PPC advocates are just equal as saying, please don’t make us go to x86 route as we doesn’t understand it… which isn’t a good thing per se
A point about economics (in the sense of free-market competitive capitalism) was earlier made by EyeAm and then by Mike Bouma that I’d like to expand on.
As Mike said/implied, the whole thing about making OSs is the business, the competitive businesses and the overall economy in which the business is existing. Some good links from Mike about pressure from Microsoft.
Now Microsoft manipulates the market in several ways of which I consider two to be the most significant, with the first of these being important in this discussion:
(1). The first way is to publicly state an expensive price for your product you wish to sell (MS Windows + apps), any retailer can buy at the price (lets say $100 for simplicity), and sell at a slightly raised price on a built PC to the customer with maybe 10% profit (healthy profits).
There will be many competitive retailers/dealers so the best way they can make a profit is to willingly sign a contract with MS out of their own free will to get a lower price on the cost of MS Windows, MS may ask them as part of the contract to not reveal the price. This would lead to them getting the same Windows and they can make larger profits (say 20%).
So, the result would be that there are still lots of reatailers, but many would be in contracts with MS and be making bigger profits, whilst those retailers not in contract with MS would end up having no profits as the others would compete with them. Many retailers not in contract with MS would end up going bankrupt or really struggle to stay in the market (it is still possible!).
Again, some companies would like to make greater profits (of course – who doesn’t!), these would enter in contract with microsoft for an even lower price, in turn MS would grant them and go into a contract to say that they can sell competing OSs or products. These new contracted retailers would then compete with other retailers with different contract and deal, and overall the retailers that are under a stronger contractual grip from MS would be the remaining competitors. Thus the significant majority of retailers/dealers on the market have been effectively ‘evolutionarily-picked’ by MS to have strong contractual ties. Get it so far…? Only those retailers willing to sign contracts with MS have a higher probability of staying in business. The others fail and die.
This is also quite analogous (use your imagination!) with board makers (the hardware suppliers rather than the retailers) now that they have a stronger grip on the x86 market.
Now with OS4, as with BeOS in the past, they will find it very difficult to penetrate this market as a business operating in the wider competitive (err… kinda uncompetitive monopoly contractually controlled)
Amiga OS4 seems good, (MS certainly don’t know hot to write a good quality OS from 1980s to about 2000-ish, Win2000 was the first OK OS), and the programmers I am confident will improve and improve the OS if they can maintain the funding to do so.
(2). The second (and not exlusive) way in which MS manipulates the market is by subsidising products in other areas than the main desktop/server area, so that they can undercut the competition over many many years of trying and trying, and then once they have a monopoly share (somewhere greater than 80%) and a grip on the market they begin to raise the price dramatically often as far as several hundred percent value added. But this is not directly relevant to the above discussion.
Both on their own are devastating to the overall efficiency of the economy as a whole, not mentioning destruction of competition and innovation etc. When combined MS have used them to crush all others and now they are expanding into other areas… devices, home entertainment, video streaming (codecs) – first step to broadcasting it view of the world?
BTW. I think OS4 on PPC is a good choice. OK, the arguments for putting on x86-64 are very valid – yup, a cheaper system – at least at the moment due to its great availability. However, don’t underestimate the powers ‘Vertical Integration’, this can by a mighty force if done correctly (and a horrific failure if done badly). The Japanese I note from observation have tended to be excellent at Vertical Integration which means everything that makes your product to be brought together closely for planning and to share responsibility at all levels. This means don’t choose the layers above and below you competitively but work closely with them to design exactly what is required. With trust (more than good contracts) the whole can be stronger than the parts. the pain and the pleasures are shared (somehow) across the whole. A cooperative Vertical Integrated structure (example here could be PPC hardware – PPC board designers – Amiga OS4 – distrib & retailers) have been seen to exceed structures where competition exists at all levels.
All interesting points. I think PPC is right for amiga for the coming years to mature. After maturing look at what is hot at the time. Maybe Cell processors, maybe x86-64, maybe PPC-64, maybe something new.
@EyeAm
Are you Tim Rue? You’re starting to sound a lot like him.
“Amiga OS cannot compete with Windows, because those making Amiga OS don’t know how to. (I know how to, however)” — EyeAm
“Is the JIT Amiga emulatio being talked about in Amiga OS 4 from the E-UAE project? ”
The UAE JIT emulator converts 68k code to x86 code.
The Petunia JIT emulator for AmigaOS 4 converts 68k code to PPC code.
I agree with EyeAm it’s really stupid in my mind not to port to the X86 platform,right now I can pick up an old box like this twin 466 celeron server for less than 100 bucks on ebay and throw a copy of BeOS on it and have a screaming machine,now what i see you are talking 700$ plus for just the OS and a board we havent even put a cd rom drive or any thing in it yet,by the time it’s built there will be over a grand spent. that seems pretty expensive just to try out an alternative OS.it’s like re-inventing the apple,which is the only way I can see this scheme even remotely working would be to offer a complete computer with the style factor of an apple,other than that i see no-one buying it with the exception of a few wealthy geeks.on the other hand if it truly were ‘all that’I would pay a comparable price to a BeOS or Linux boxed set $50-100,or the XP home edition.Personally I think it’s better to seææ a million copies for 50 dollars than a hundred for 700
Those screenshot movies are pretty damn impressive looking ,looks like BeOS has some serious competition,sorry to say I missed out on the original commodore amiga craze so this is all fairly new to me,I just wish it would run on standard X86 hardware
Isn’t Amiga’s goal to sell as many boxes of the OS as possible? Shouldn’t their focus be on maximizing the amount of OS boxes sold?
As sasquatch666 keyed in on, they would have sold many more boxes of the OS if they had gone to x86.
Just in general round figures…
$700,000 for selling 1000 AmigaOnes w/OS (if they’re lucky)
Of that, Amiga gets about $150,000.
whereas on x86-64, the sheer number of motherboards that the Amiga OS could run on, coupled with the amount of money sales would generate, far outweighs the concerns with bugs or compatability problems which have been bandied about.
Now, I see the point about compatability problems–but it makes sense that it is perfectly legal to put on the OS package that the OS is recommended for certain chipsets, etc. Minimum Requirements, Recommended Hardware…we’ve all seen these things on Windows and other programs. And they get along just fine. Again, Amiga is not addressing “every single motherboard out there”, but the reality is more like “a finite number of chipsets”, which cover every single motherboard out there.
Another thought about the compatability issue: When people think of the x86 architecture, or the “PC” (which stood of Personal Computer once upon a time and even applied once to the Amiga Personal Computer, before it got associated with IBM/PC), they think Windows. It’s a given, Windows is associated with the architecture, because it is dominated it for so long. Second to that, people think Linux, because it now dominates (where Windows doesn’t, and where Windows does). But, comparing Windows to Amiga, the associated headaches would be fewer with Amiga, because the Amiga OS is apparently about 60MB, compared to Windows being anywhere from 600MB to 800MB (I’ve heard various figures, so don’t know exactly). Windows dwarfs Amiga OS in size, at any rate. There is more one must work with on Windows than Amiga.
I own an Amiga 1200; and it boots in less than 13 seconds. I believe it has a 68020 chip in it.
Bernie Meyer’s Amithlon, which emulates the classic Amiga chipset, carries with it the tested benchmark of “ten times faster than the fastest Amiga” (the fastest being the Amiga 4000, I assume, maxed out with an ‘060 CPU; certainly far beyond the Amiga I have), and does so on PC hardware. Emulated!
Now that should tell you something.
Imagine Amiga OS on the Abit AV8 (some something comparable–and that board is last year), running on an AMD Athlon64, 2.2Ghz, way more than enough RAM…
–EyeAm
The standard A1200 has a Motorola MC68EC020 at 14 MHz. (68020 is the full version)
Amiga 1200 is a great computer.
The A1200 Hollywood Bundle from 1993 was a great deal for presentations, video editing, general office work and almost anything else you could do with a computer at the time.
The bundle came with a SVHS Neptune video genlock and great software like SCALA MM300, Adorage, Organiser V1.1, Monument Titler, Photogenics 1.2, PPaint 6.4, TurboCalc 3.5 and WordWorth 4SE !
What would be interesting would be a *neutral* comparision of all available Amiga style OSes around.
MorphOS and AmigaOS4 for PPC and AROS for x86. They are all very close together.
Short summary of advantges and disadvanteges in *my* POV:
AOS4:
pro: fast, nice, name tag
cons: expensive hardware, no JIT (yet), only few native applications.
MOS:
pro: extreme fast, nice, MUI, box system, good hardware (PegasosII), very compatible (68k, WarpOS and PowerUP)
cons: no own tcp/IP (yet), Desktop file manager not too matured
AROS:
pro: cheap x86 hardware, free of cost
cons: not too clean implemented, no 68k emulation included, not very good supported, slow development progress.
All three lack a memory protection, AOS tries to implement a hardly limited one to keep teh compatibility, MOS has the future option for the advanced box (well, even this is really, really future..), AROS has no intension for that.
Biggest drawback for all three brothers is the lack of a state of the art browser. Office became better with the advent of papyrus office (MOS and 68k version available).
It would be interesting but would it make you happy? I don’t think so.
And the future of MorphOS is already in doubt and hasn’t seen official updates for more than a year. Even the founder thinks MorphOS is dead for the desktop. Maybe Genesi should have included the price of paying their developers into the Pegasos price:
http://morphos.net/
MorphOS is now a nice clone of a great classic OS running on more modern hardware. But what makes you think a MorphOS box would be so special in the future? AROS runs hosted in a box on Linux and Windows too. I think that gradually improving the OS like is better.
Well, MOS is not as dead as some might think. The “famous” chat log is not latest news anymore, same goes for the often referred web site http://www.morphos.net. Been there, read that – but that is only part of the picture.
Still there are issues, not small ones but serious ones, but there is also the will to continue MOS. Many things changed since that chat log.
IMO MOS is still the most advanced amigaish OS.
But the overall message is that all those three amigaish OSes are brothers and resources should be focused to close the common well known gaps (most important: good browser).
Which is better Amiga OS3.9 or MOS?
Amiga OS3.9: http://www1.freeweb.hu/amigasys/0055.jpg
Some say they like OS3.9 better. If thats true MOS is far behind Amiga OS4 or not?
I thought MorphOS emulated AmigaOS 3 and AmigaOS 4 API?
MorphOS only includes OS3.x API emulation but by far does not include all OS3.x functionality.
And like there is the Windows API emu (WINE) available for Linux there’s a 3rd party OS4 API emu available for MOS and there’s a MOS API emu in beta for AmigaOS4:
http://s.guillard.free.fr/OS4/mosemu2.jpg