>> So if this is true and Ben Hermans' involvement in A-Eon ceased
>> somewhen between October 1st and October 12th last year

> Nice to have confirmation of that.

Err, you just misquoted me. I wrote that as the premise of a conditional sentence. I'm certainly not in the position to confirm (or deny) any such information. And so far I haven't come across any official/public confirmation by A-Eon or any of its official representatives.

Jim,
Quote:
Before I'd buy a very pricey EOL chip based system as the X1000 is, I'd rather put my money on a dev system of an active chip by freescale. The prices differ only little (P5020 dev system with 2x e5500 2GHz is $4000). The e6500 dev systems are not available yet.

> The prices differ only little (P5020 dev system with 2x e5500 2GHz is $4000).

...which is as little as 1000 USD more than the X1000 for what is essentially just a board.

@Andreas_Wolf

Trevor's reply in the Amigaworld thread is as close to an answer as you can get atm:

does not seem to answer to the specific question of Ben's involvement, but maybe that's just my take on it.

#6

Andreas_Wolf,
Quote:

See post #57 in this thread.

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?mode=viewtopic&topic_id=35093&forum=32&start=40&viewmode=flat&order=0

Take his and my comments any way you want to.

I won't be commenting on it any further, out of respect for Trevor.

Edit: I see that Number6 beat me to linking to that thread already.

[ Edited by amigadave 10.03.2012 - 15:16 ]

> Trevor's reply in the Amigaworld thread is as close to an answer as you can get atm

More like a non-answer I'd say.

> does not seem to answer to the specific question of Ben's involvement

Exactly. Hence my statement regarding the lack of official confirmation (or denial).

>> And so far I haven't come across any official/public confirmation by A-Eon or any
>> of its official representatives.

> See post #57 in this thread.
> http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?mode=viewtopic&topic_id=35093&forum=32&start=40&viewmode=flat&order=0

Nothing to see there regarding the question at hand. Or have I missed anything?

> I see that Number6 beat me to linking to that thread already.

Actually, I linked to that thread already 5 postings before number6's ;-)

Did you read all of my posts in the same thread that Trevor is coming to my defense for making?

>> Nothing to see there regarding the question at hand. Or have I missed anything?

> Did you read all of my posts in the same thread that Trevor is coming to my
> defense for making?

I think so. Still, nothing you write can ever be classified by me as an official A-Eon statement, unless you've become part of A-Eon by now.

I never claimed to be an official spokesman, but Trevor certainly is.

It is up to you to decide which statements he is coming to my defense for, but I think it is pretty clear.

That is all I am going to say on this topic.

Zylesea,
Quote:

Andreas made one point that makes sense, the P5020 is only a board (not a whole system). And the X1000 already has an OS.
Besides, I'd rather have T50XX processor as they support AltiVec.

And from the threads quoted, I'd guess its fair to say that Ben Herman's status at Aeon is unknown

If a switch to the x86 in the future years is about to come (imho a wise decision), why not help AROS project by integrating most of Morphos in it and creating a new distro? Some features already exist like Poseidon, Zune is about to receive a major overhaul to meet MUI 4.0 as much it can get without sources/inside help from Morphos dev. Also, the graphics subsystem on AROS is a very good one. In this way, we will gain time and the work will be less (I think).

> the P5020 is only a board (not a whole system).

Actually, the P5020 is only a chip. The board is called P5020DS ;-)

> the X1000 already has an OS.

So has the P5020DS:

"The P5020DS is pre-loaded with an Embedded Linux Essentials for QorIQ Processors with Data Path Acceleration development kit. This kit includes a 2.6.x.x SMP Linux kernel, hugetlbfs for applications with a large memory footprint, user space DPAA for high-performance packet handling, u-boot, the GCC tool chain and Mentor System Builder, among many other features."
http://www.freescale.com/files/32bit/doc/fact_sheet/P5020DSFS.pdf

MEL-E web resource:
http://www.mentor.com/embedded-software/linux/mel-essentials-freescale/

> from the threads quoted, I'd guess its fair to say that Ben Herman's status at
> Aeon is unknown

Thanks. For one moment I was afraid I had unlearned how to read properly ;-) That said, from Trevor Dickinson's reaction to amigadave's posting on amigaworld.net, I also *assume* that Ben Hermans really left A-Eon, but that's just my assumption, not an official confirmation by A-Eon.

> I never claimed to be an official spokesman, but Trevor certainly is. It is up to you to
> decide which statements he is coming to my defense for, but I think it is pretty clear.

Trevor coming to your defense when you were "coming under some stick" (his words) could as well mean that he takes the blame for your misunderstanding that Ben Hermans left A-Eon because he thinks he may have fueled this interpretation by not being clear enough when he spoke (to you or in public) about A-Eon's reinforced partnership with AmigaKit.
Either way, it's obvious that he failed to confirm or deny your statement on that matter. And nothing you wrote could change that fact.

@number6

An interesting post, that answers the question many have had about "what's the deal with the 'First Contact' name".

It seems like:

1. Matthew Leaman cashed up from his own (Amigakit) pocket to finance the production of a batch of X1000 motherboards, purchase the necessary network cards, sound cards, etc (whatever peripheral cards needed for OS4 to function in a useful way), purchase the cases and case-fronts, etc.

2. Without this little "external project", there would probably *still* not be any X1000 released. It was Amigakit, not Aeon, that made the "First Contact" release happen.

3. This gives a much clearer picture of Aeon's financial muscles and ability. (The production (and probably also some R&D) of the "beta systems" was covered by a pre-payment scheme)

As you know I don't normally comment on internal buisness matters but to correct some "misunderstandings".....

I personally funded the "First Contact" build. I also funded the A1-X1000 development and most of the betatest program.

However, the assistance of AmigaKit's technical, distribution and support network was vital to the successful launch of AmigaONE X1000 "First Contact" system. This is not new information. Please refer to the news releases form AmiWest last year.

BTW, I am continuing to personally fund new development.

TrevorD

@tmhgm,

You enjoy making stupid statements about things that you know nothing about?

Wow, harsh statements from some corners and a clarication (of one point anyway) from Trevor.

And yes Andreas, I know the development systewm has Linux support. But, obviously, no NG OS.

@ Trevor, I love the design you and Varisys came up with. Wish it supported the OS I'm using, but then its about the only thing that would make me consider OS4.

To all those pushing for an ISA move, staying with PPC would be the easiest route to follow.

Pity we don't have a patron like Trevor to help develop a new system for us. I, for one, would be willing to buy a new PPC system (even at a price premium).

Jim,
Quote:
From the software POV it indeed is. But looking to the whole package you will also agree that there is a "little" (cough!) shortage in easily availalble new, powerful and sanely priced end user Power based hardware. And what's software good for if there is virtually no hardware to run on? Don't get me wrong, I am still a fan of the Power architecture and don't think the least word about it is spoken already, but fact is that currently the end user hardware situation in Power land isn't really a good one. One must evaluate what eventually yields the bigger benefit. Not an easy evaluation, really not. Both approaches have their appeal and their downsides.

Quote:

Perhaps you misunderstood me. If you need x86 right now, the solution is AROS, we'll have to wait many years for a x86/ARM port. I guess that since both you and Soundsquare no longer use MorphOS (read: are no longer MorphOS users) you "constructively" prefer to leave real users without hardware no matter how much time it is.

Quote: I prefer waiting 12 years using 64bit 2.7Ghz G5 instead of a 1.5Ghz G4. Power consumption control APIs introduced for powerbook will also be neccessary for x86 and gfx/audio drivers would also have to be written for x86 (and can be ported from PPC version)

Quote: Newer qbox versions with new features like SMP/64bit could be more easily implemented on already supported hardware. There's no reason newer qbox versions with new features couldn't run on G5 (and you could take more advantage of the "boxes" approach having a more or less isolated A-Box and another one with latest goodies).

Thank you Crumb.
We seem to be seperated into two groups.
Those that would like a move to another ISA immediately and those that would prefer to make that switch after more PPC support is introduced.

We know Pega-1's position. I'd like to hear from other developers (and I wouldn't mind a statement from Andreas Wolf as to his preference).

[ Edited by Jim 12.03.2012 - 01:19 ]

@TrevorDick

OK, thanks for the clarifications. The pre-payments a long time ahead brought a slightly different impression.

So when is the "second contact" coming? Will we have to wait until summer?

Quote:

Also the (two finger) mouse pad driver, and WiFi, WPA/WPA2.

:-)

Quote:
AmigaKit will control the timing of the actual release but the boards themselves are already in the works.

TrevorD

Jim,
Quote:

There have been considerations to produce new desktop Power Architecture hardware but it still does not make any economic sense given the price to performance ratio offered by used or unused / "new" PowerPC Macs.

You appear to have some insight into hardware development so I trust that you can gauge what level of financial investment would be required to successfully complete even a smaller project such as a new EfikaPPC. Now imagine how much could be accomplished by taking the same amount of money and using it to advance MorphOS itself, which is the primary and in many cases only reason why people are on this website.

One of the nice side-effects of supporting low-cost devices such as the EfikaPPC and, of course, Apple hardware is that a much larger percentage of the available resources in this community are spent to improve what actually counts, namely software. Before MorphOS 2.0 appeared, by far most of the money users paid to use MorphOS essentially covered expenses that had nothing to do with the on-going development of MorphOS. This has been drastically changed - for the better.

If there was any patron offering to lose money to support MorphOS, the best thing this patron could do would be to invest into the development team for improving the software (which could mean porting it to a different processor architecture if hardware support was a serious concern) rather than pay unrelated component suppliers in Asia, hardware engineers, etc. who have no real stake or interest in the project that brought all of us here together.