@Leo

Quote:

And it seems histroy repeats itself: OS 4.2 seems to take more time than expected too...

probably it will take the eternity this time.

Quote:

If only the right people took the right decisions...

the explanation might be, its the same wrong people taking wrong decisions, and so on..

@umisef

the time is over... NG should have been something modernized and not just reimplementation

...

Last edited by wawa on 22-Aug-2015 at 11:27 AM.

@itix

Quote:

itix wrote: @cdimauro Kickstart 2.0 was also a step to wrong direction when it added many callback hooks where application code was called from the OS context.

I've totally forgot it. Thanks.

@Turrican3

Quote:

Turrican3 wrote: @cdimauro Thanks for the extremely detailed reply.

You're welcome. And I like to talk of such arguments.
Quote:

As an end user I *really* loved AmigaOS and its neat, clear (well, at least on the surface) structure... but at that time I knew nothing about C so I never really dug into programming. Not at that relatively low level anyway. It's always been very fascinating to me though, and even if its time has looong passed, now that I'm slightly more proficient in C I wouldn't mind messing around a bit, somehow someday...

I had a similar experience. I was a more than happy user & developer. And also an Amiga fanatic.

But I was young, and hadn't much experience with other o.ses. I also primarily lacked knowledge in the field of o.ses, which I then acquired at the university. Increasing knowledge and experience let me had a much better, unbiased, opinion about such arguments, which I then shared.

@KimmoK

Quote:

KimmoK wrote: @cdimauro >Amiga o.s. was good by design You must compare to other offerings of the time (1985), especially against the mainstream, (that was MS-DOS untill 1992..1998)?

Some other people already reported something, but I only add the infamous Window, because it provided a proper abstraction and did NOT exposed its internal structures. I already reported a lot of information about it some time ago, in a similar thread; maybe you didn't read it too.

BTW, Windows 1.0 requirements were also very low.

@OlafS25

Quote:

OlafS25 wrote: @cdimauro Yes but even if I bore you A OS is not a design studie or proof of concept but a base for software. What if software is not adapted to it or adaption is not possible because devs left and sources not available? You will have a nice clean modern but otherwise useless OS because of no 3rd party support. Do not forget that it is a hobby market, the few devs left do it for fun in spare time. So when you want to really make a modern OS including memory protection you must make heavy changes in the structure, the result will be "amiga-like" but other than that very different. As geit wrote all 3rd party except what the OS devs offer will stop running, in case of MorphOS there will be OWB at least, in case of AmigaOS not even that.

Olaf, I know very well what do you think about it, and that's why you're always pushing on the legacy (68K, in particular) software side when we (in general; not only with me) discuss about the same theme.

But that's a different argument.

@Massi

Quote:

Massi wrote: @cdimauro AmigaOS design was very good for its time, there are of course good and bad things for all operating systems, it is too easy to judge with today eyes. Given the hardware constraints, the designers did an excellent work, resulting in several forced choices and compromises just for one thing: speed. AOS is designed to be speedy on limited hardware and resources.

Some other people already gave clear and technical answers about that, so I have nothing do add here, except to remark that a fast o.s. doesn't mean that it had a good design.

In fact, the "wall of text" which I previously provided still applies in all its parts.

@KimmoK

Quote:

KimmoK wrote: @cdimauro >>Custom x86 face same realities as custom PPC + more compettion perhaps. >Competition? With Intel which as 90% of the x86 market? Yes. Custom PPC motherboard does not have competition in PPC space.

If you have ONE motherboard... yes.
Quote:

Custom x86 borad compete with other x86 boards. (perhaps)

That's absolutely normal, because there are several vendors.
Quote:

>What kind of custom stuff do you talk about? Motherboard with selected componets, produced when needed, as long as needed.

That has nothing of "custom": it's the normal thing.
Quote:

>Sure, but actually if I buy an x86 CPU I have everything which I need, included a GPU (even good one with the high-end models). In fact, my PC case is empty, except for the memory and SATA which I've attached. I find windows disgusting. That's why I've used Linux on my x86 at home.

De gustibus...
Quote:

My motherboard had built in RadeonHD3000, it did not work properly with linux, no way to avoid mouse stuttering, had to buy NVidia card.

And you don't find it disgusting, I suppose...
Quote:

+Desktop 3D games require more than embedded GPUs of x86.

Please, take a look a the latest processors.
Quote:

>>>And draw less power. >>NOT TRUE. >Never eared of BayTrail, Core-M? Not counting the latest low-power Xeons. They are in same ballpark with PPC.

I already reported some data / examples in another thread, with Avoton and the latest low-power Xeon, which clearly show the contrary. And you didn't replied...
Quote:

>>>And have way better support... >>NOT TRUE. >Are you kidding? Even if you need to work on PowerPCs, usually SDKs are based on PC (using Windows or Linux). You are mixing up things. Sure, Amigas have always been designed mainly on other computers. Not related to the matter/topic in any way.

It is, since you're not even a "self-contained" environment for your custom boards, and you need a PC.
Quote:

>And, of course, there are ZILLIONS of software for the PC. And they suddenly run in AmigaOS if Amiga HW has x86 CPU?

Can be, with something like WINE.

But the talk was in general: about available software.
Quote:

>>>Take a complex web page, like Facebook, GMail, etc., and take a look at how your system performs. >>I need the SW first. (+ JIT for JAVA) >>Currently 667Mhz (PPC440) seems to do most of the web usage. >>600Mhz + JIT (ARM) does it even better. >Try Facebook and GMail, please. Then we can talk again... Use them daily (not on Amiga) To my understanding, both take advantage of JIT on x86/ARM, unavailable SW on AOS. My point was. Most of the web browsing works on 600Mhz, especially with Android (JAVA JIT etc), but not all. (At the same time some web pages are not fast even on quad core 4Ghz.)

So, it clearly shows that you need a lot of power nowadays, even for just serving.
Quote:

>>For example in EUR200 motherboard+CPU BOM, PPC CPU is around 30%. >What kind of PowerPC CPU? For example Freescale T10xx. [UPDATE] There exist cheaper PPCs (from EUR20 or so), but this T10xx has good enough performance & feature set. [/UPDATE] >Can you report a complete BOM for your PowerPC solution? Nope. Take any motherboard BOM and slap in the SoC (+-GPU). From what I have seen, price is not the advantage of x86 vs PPC when building a SBC or motherboard with a CPU. RAW performance is.

OK, not you talked about some PPC system, and but there's no way to make a comparison.
Quote:

IMO: -we need 4000...6000MIPS per core for LOW END to be useable in generic computing needs

Forget it: the latest PowerPCs have only TWO pipelines, which multiplied by the clock frequency gives you a THEORETICAL measure of the MIPS.
Quote:

-multicore is mandatory above LOW END (but we do not have AmigalikeOS + SW for that yet)

No usage yet...
Quote:

I've read/learned it's far simpler to build a computer motherboard around PPC(or ARM) than around x86/x64. (documentation and SoC component availablity has been better, etc, but my surroundings have been mainly designing products around PPC and MIPS, only recently around x64)

I've a very different experience. And I think I'm not alone...

@KimmoK

Quote:

KimmoK wrote: @cdimauro I made summary of your post (#45): Mainstream 1985 -no multitasking AmigaOS 1985 -apps can disable the multitasking So, the Amiga OS is bad by design.

You completely misunderstood it. Please, read again, CAREFULLY, my previous comment.
Quote:

I disagree. I say Amiga OS design was superior.

AmigaOS DESIGN was more than 10 years ahead of mainstream, enabling a lot of new things vs the mainstream competition.

AmigaOS design just was not perfect.

Later other people invented OS designs that are many ways better than AmigaOS design from 1985.
(none being perfect and some poorly implemented, but anyway)[/quote]
You can say whatever you want: it's completely useless if you don't report TECHNICAL FACTS.

I've reported some. And I've found no one which attacked even a single one. So, it speaks a lot.

Talk is cheap, KimmoK...

@Leo

Quote:

Leo wrote: Amiga was good by 1985's standards, yes. But it had a major flaw most consumer OS (Mac & DOS/Windows) had back then too. It was tied to a specific hardware and wasn't protected (memory protection, exposed structures, exposed functionnality like forbid(), etc...) . The same went for MacOS & DOS. The thing is, MacOS fixed this by using Darwin kernel and developing new APIs with MacOSX. Microsoft solved it by developing the new NT kernel with WinNT/XP. Amiga didn't fix anything. So, as good as it was in 1985, it's outdated today, way outdated. Amiga had a chance to fix it: going PPC was the time when things should have been properly fixed. AmigaOS 4 didn't fix it: they rewrote a kernel that had the same limitations. AROS went x86 but again, simply reimplemented the kernel with the same flaws. MorphOS chose a more clever way, by designing a new modern kernel but alas never properly made use of it. Amiga could be extended and patched easily since to its modular libs and setPatch stuff. This made possible the PowerUp systems to work with the old OS. That's great, for the short term. The thing is: this was supposed to be temporary. Of course, implementing a new API takes time, writing new apps, two. But at least that's a goal, with some nice perspectives. What are the perspectives of current API ?

Only one thing: Windows, since 1.0, hadn't the same issues of the Amiga o.s..

@umisef
Quote:

They could, and to some degree at least they even did. But they didn't follow through on the threat of "bad things will happen in the future if you don't".

Weren't they going to finally do achieve that goal (?) with AAA?
If I got it correctly, technical papers by Dave Haynie state, for example, that there was no AGA compatibility unless you went through 3.0 OS calls.

@itix
Quote:

I dont think there ever was serious funging... Commodore had only 3-5 people working there.

Can't tell if that's sarcasm or not... :-\

@wawa
Quote:

have you skipped on trevors involvement, or do you simply doubt sensitivity of his goals?

Nope, I honestly didn't know about that figures: I've been a lurker for ages, even though I visit AW.net on a (mostly) daily basis I've basically lost most of the interest in the platform due to both rising disillusionment and other issues like lack of free time. :-\

If the numbers you talk about are real they are definitely interesting for a basically dead platform like the Amiga, problem IMHO is (and has been for ages) that the basic strategy of investing in the mid-to-high end market is not going to build a significant userbase. From there obviously you got into a vicious circle, because a tiny userbase won' attract further developers/users so, in the end, the market will stagnate: an unhealthy scenario, business-wise.

Conversely, I've always thought (I'm sure there are many posts dating years back where I stated this same, firm belief) that history unequivocally taught us the Amiga succeeded mostly thanks to the low-end. I understand nowadays there's little room in that market as well due to the huge popularity of game consoles, the resurgence of the PC as a gaming platform and, last but definitely not least, the rise of mobile.

But still, if there was a chance to somehow relive the Amiga, I'm 99.9% confident it would be (it should have been?) with a cheap box, definitely not with an extremely expensive, exotic motherboard.

Last edited by Turrican3 on 23-Aug-2015 at 09:41 PM.

@Turrican3

Quote:

If the numbers you talk about are real they are definitely interesting for a basically dead platform like the Amiga, problem IMHO is (and has been for ages) that the basic strategy of investing in the mid-to-high end market is not going to build a significant userbase. From there obviously you got into a vicious circle, because a tiny userbase won' attract further developers/users so, in the end, the market will stagnate: an unhealthy scenario, business-wise. Conversely, I've always thought (I'm sure there are many posts dating years back where I stated this same, firm belief) that history unequivocally taught us the Amiga succeeded mostly thanks to the low-end. I understand nowadays there's little room in that market as well due to the huge popularity of game consoles, the resurgence of the PC as a gaming platform and, last but definitely not least, the rise of mobile. But still, if there was a chance to somehow relive the Amiga, I'm 99.9% confident it would be (it should have been?) with a cheap box, definitely not with an extremely expensive, exotic motherboard

i think there are many who share your point of view, as it is pretty obvious. stíll, the question is what does it mean "cheap" in relation to what features need to be offered. appsrently there is no good answer to that, bcause if there was, either one of the ng alternatives would have taken off already, or the genuine amiga would be better supported and sustained.

whatever the case, we, simple members of the forums can not do anything significant about it.

@wawa
Quote:

the question is what does it mean "cheap" in relation to what features need to be offered

So true, unfortunately. :-\

I believe this has been discussed to death so I'll simply (re)state that, in my opinion, given the current state of the affairs it would be far, far better to start rebuilding the Amiga from the very low-end: a sub-99 $/€ target (*) would be ideal because it should be an almost impulse-buy territory.

(this comes from the basic assumption that AmigaOS should have reached a fair level of HW abstraction, allowing for relatively easy porting to basically everything)


(*) that should give you a small box with standard connectors for mouse, keyboard, monitor and external storage (like an USB HD), so you'd just need extremely basic IT knowledge to have a running unit in less than a hour

@Turrican3

Quote:

very low-end: a sub-99 $/€ target

we actually have it all covered:

- efika and second hand mac ppc hardware for morphos should about to fit within this cathegory.

- a choice of low end off shelf arm/x86 hardware works with aros.

- low cost fpga accelerators for existing amiga hardware may not exactly compare in performance to x86, srm or ppc, still present obviously a gain in comparison to what was available till now.

edit: but im apparently not fully comprehending your postulates. saying "amigaos" you obviously mean "os4"? so, first of all it isnt clear how far it involves hardware abstraction layer. and secondly the policy here is definitely against low cost hardware, so no chance.

Last edited by wawa on 23-Aug-2015 at 11:05 PM.
Last edited by wawa on 23-Aug-2015 at 11:05 PM.

@cdimauro

>Forget it: the latest PowerPCs have only TWO pipelines, which multiplied by the clock frequency gives you a THEORETICAL measure of the MIPS.

Where did you get that idea?

Currently two threads per core (as in the e6500 cored cpus), yes.
So, at its highest end, we have the T4240.
That has twelve cores, can handle two threads per core, for a total of twenty four threads.

Care to point out an X64 processor that can support 24 threads?

Last edited by iggy on 24-Aug-2015 at 12:26 AM.

@wawa
Quote:

saying "amigaos" you obviously mean "os4"?

Sorry about that: a mix of not being a native english speaker and the somehow brain-crippling nature of writing when you're half asleep made my post a bit obscure. A bit too much I guess...

But yeah, I'm mostly talking about AmigaOS4: not because I dislike MorphOS (I don't!) nor I care about the almost religious wars between the camps (I couldn't care less) but simply because I'm afraid it has even less chances to succeed due to the name/brand awareness, or lack thereof I should say.

So the idea was about a cheap "AmigaOS4 box". I hope I cleared it up.

@Turrican3

Quote:

Turrican3 wrote: @umisef Quote: They could, and to some degree at least they even did. But they didn't follow through on the threat of "bad things will happen in the future if you don't". Weren't they going to finally do achieve that goal (?) with AAA? If I got it correctly, technical papers by Dave Haynie state, for example, that there was no AGA compatibility unless you went through 3.0 OS calls. @itix Quote: I dont think there ever was serious funging... Commodore had only 3-5 people working there. Can't tell if that's sarcasm or not... :-\ @wawa Quote: have you skipped on trevors involvement, or do you simply doubt sensitivity of his goals? Nope, I honestly didn't know about that figures: I've been a lurker for ages, even though I visit AW.net on a (mostly) daily basis I've basically lost most of the interest in the platform due to both rising disillusionment and other issues like lack of free time. :-\ If the numbers you talk about are real they are definitely interesting for a basically dead platform like the Amiga, problem IMHO is (and has been for ages) that the basic strategy of investing in the mid-to-high end market is not going to build a significant userbase. From there obviously you got into a vicious circle, because a tiny userbase won' attract further developers/users so, in the end, the market will stagnate: an unhealthy scenario, business-wise. Conversely, I've always thought (I'm sure there are many posts dating years back where I stated this same, firm belief) that history unequivocally taught us the Amiga succeeded mostly thanks to the low-end. I understand nowadays there's little room in that market as well due to the huge popularity of game consoles, the resurgence of the PC as a gaming platform and, last but definitely not least, the rise of mobile. But still, if there was a chance to somehow relive the Amiga, I'm 99.9% confident it would be (it should have been?) with a cheap box, definitely not with an extremely expensive, exotic motherboard.

What do mean with "Amiga"?

@iggy

Quote:

iggy wrote: @cdimauro >Forget it: the latest PowerPCs have only TWO pipelines, which multiplied by the clock frequency gives you a THEORETICAL measure of the MIPS. Where did you get that idea? Currently two threads per core (as in the e6500 cored cpus), yes.

In that part of my reply to KimmoK I think that he was talking about a single core/thread scenario (in fact, after that he reported another one: multicore).

In that case, there's only core, and also one thread if a processor have more threads per core, and what I've reported is the maximum number of instructions that can be executed.
Quote:

So, at its highest end, we have the T4240. That has twelve cores, can handle two threads per core, for a total of twenty four threads. Care to point out an X64 processor that can support 24 threads?

We have:
- Xeons up to 18 cores and 36 hardware threads;
- Xeon Phi (on PCI-Express cards) with up to 61 cores and 244 hardware threads (4 hardware threads).
Very soon a new Xeon Phi will be presented, which can also work as a standalone chip, and can have up to 72 cores and 288 hardware threads.

@Turrican3

Quote:

Turrican3 wrote: @wawa Quote: saying "amigaos" you obviously mean "os4"? yeah, I'm mostly talking about AmigaOS4

Well, there is only one product on the market bearing the name "AmigaOS", and this is OS4.

AmigaOS is OS4 and nothing else. Hyperion has an exclusive name license for this. Nothing else can be called AmigaOS, only their OS4.

The original 68k OS for Amiga computer is marketed under the name "Workbench" these days. Then there is MorphOS and AROS of course.

But AmigaOS = OS4, nothing else.