@redrumla

Trevor is rich and somewhat eccentric. I think he can keep his company floating until he can release the X5000. Heck, it's even possible that he will release it anyway with only MorphOS on it if the AOS 4 port takes too long. With a promise of an upcoming 4.1 I bet a lot of fanboys are going to buy the board anyway, even if they are just gonna look at it or run PPC Ubuntu on it (I doubt many of them will even touch MorphOS). Don't forget that the boards are already made. I seriously doubt Trevor would prefer throwing those away than letting them be runned on a non AOS 4 system.

MorphOS Team is not just working on the X5000 port, but also on drivers for Radeon HD cards which will also benefit SAM 460 users and a possible G5 PCI-x port. And then we have all the internals that is being worked on too. The Team isn't focusing on the X5000 alone.

>>>>> I hope this boat anchor isn't holding back further proper MorphOS development.

>>>> At least the delay of the X5000 won't hold back MorphOS development ;-)

>>> Maybe not if the machine actually gets released to end users. If A-Eonkit goes
>>> belly up and the X5000 never gets released, then it seems to me an awful lot of
>>> development time has been wasted that could have gone into the ISA switch.

>> From the point of view of someone who calls the X5000 a 'boat anchor', imminent
>> release, further delay or even entire cancellation won't make a difference as
>> development time will have been wasted for porting either way.

> If the X5000 ends up being canceled, the work put into it sure has acted like a
> boat anchor IMO.

And if it will get released, porting MorphOS to it won't have held back "further proper MorphOS development", acting like a 'boat anchor'?

> a possible G5 PCI-x port

PCIe or PCI-E :-)

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I think this is a myth, carefully cultivated for some reason, probably to raise goodwill or some kind of saint status around the AeonKit business sphere. A marketing twist. Like they "saved" those community forums they bought, like they "saved" those old pieces of SW they bought, like they "saved" the developers by funneling them through their "app store". You don't sell €3,000 machines as "charity" or to lose money on purpose. That's my firm opinion.

They have a huge gamble in the X5000, it's long overdue, and it has turned out that it won't be offering any significant performance gain over current PPC machines (a platform that is hopelessly behind anyway). And if the rumors about a thosand Tabor motherboards (with that uncompatible FPU) already built and paid for is true, then a huge loss is a fact. A lot of money. A lot. For nothing. Excentric or not, nobody likes flushing huge amounts of money down the toilet. That wouldn't be excentric, that would be insane.

If the X5000 fails, and if the Tabor fails, don't expect him to keep pumping in huge amounts of money in sequel gambles. Especially not given the obvious hopeless OS4 situation, that must be really frustrating for them.

"AeonKit aren't doing it for the money" - Well, I call that bluff...

well, at least morphos 3.10 release is not depended on X5000 release.

no. it's just postponed because of this (because of OS4 is not ready yet).

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I don't see any reason the X5000 would fail.
Tabor, while not a good solution, is still likely to be purchased by the OS4 fanboys that want a low cost system.

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The 2.5 year lead time is a failure in itself (clock is still ticking), as is having a batch of produced boards sitting on a shelf collecting dust and getting old fashioned by the day. A huge amount of money is tied up in this, and the gamble is enormous since it doesn't offer that much beyond the X1000 spec wise and performance wise, especially not relative current standards. It's more of a sideways move than a leap forward, and this compared to an X1000, which was in 2005 level performance territory to begin with. And it's still a grotesquely overpriced piece of HW, only marginally cheaper than the X1000. The market for X1000 priced OS4 machines was very narrow to begin with, even half a decade ago when some people still were interested in that kind of stuff, no matter the cost. And how many of those people already bought an X1000 will actually coin up almost a similar insane price a second time only to get about what they already have? My guess is, not very many. Especially not considering the questional state of OS4 and its future. Is there a heartbeat there still? Are there any developers? Seems low-level coders disappeared years ago. File system development abandoned, gfx drivers abandoned, etc. Is there any competence left capable of building support for new machines? No updates whatsoever for a very long time. And what "OS4 fanboys" for that matter? Even the just-want-to-talk-and-dream-about-it crowd seems to have moved on, judging by forum activity. These days it's the same 10-15 guys talking in circles. I suppose reality has started to shine through. Ben Hermans is currently milking the last few possible sales out of OS4 Final(!) through the €30 digital download edition for emulators running on X86. Who will want a ridiculously underpowered PPC machine like the Tabor? In 2018? By then there will be nobody left.

And you don't see how it could fail?

> Seems low-level coders disappeared years ago.

The Frieden brothers were present at the Amiga 30 years celebrations in Neuss 5 months ago where they told they were currently working on OS4 a couple of hours per week.

> OS4 Final(!)

OS4.1(!) Final Edition.

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no, MorphOS Team told me that X5000 release has nothing to do with MorphOS release date. MorphOS will be released as soon as it is ready, no matter if X5000 is available or not.

The release of MorphOS 3.10 is not dependent on anything to do with X5000 availability.

@TMHG

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I think he is smart enough to realize that the best way to make money is to stay as far away from the NG scene as possible. Especially after saying that he lost a lot of money with the X1000. Yet he stays and invest a lot of more money on equally unsellable hardware. This should suggest he is a geek at heart, not a venture capitalist.

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why does it matter what trevor's motives are? i'm thrilled he's doing this against tremendous odds, and i appreciate his passion. whether it's for profit or personal reasons or both, we're just customers. why does it matter so much?

-- eliyahu

@eliyahu

Trevor doesn't give you a reason to believe he is isn't doing this out of love so I feel I have to defend him when someone suggest otherwise, that's all.

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Oh, I think it's obvious that he's passionate about his Amigaone endeavor. But you said you doubted the endeavor could go bankrupt, and you said that he won't mind loosing the money spent, and Jim can't see a reason to why the X5000 and Tabor could fail. I'm not particularly convinced any of you are right about what you say.

There has been a long delay between decisions and released OS4 supported products. The X1000 was an example of that. The X5000 project has had at least a 2.5 year lead time, but I believe the ideas about it could have spawned further back when the X1000 entered the market already, and the Tabor as well. Back when it was clear the PA6T based machines was a dead end, but they could sell enough of them to make money. One "big box" and one cheaper entry model.

But years has passed. And as I said above, I think it's very possible that any assumptions about potential sales of new machines made back then based on X1000 sales could be completely erroneous today. Much has happened (or when it comes to OS4 - nothing at all). It could be that the market for mediocre, extremely expensive PPC HW for OS4 could be both saturated and vaporized today. I think this is kind of plausible actually.

AeonKit is obviuosly sitting on a big pile of pre-paid, produced motherboards. The X5000 is like the X1000 all over again, no significant improvements, the same 2005 level HW just slightly less insanely priced, and the Tabor has a severe design screw-up that definitely will impact both its performance and its marketability. If big piles of these motherboards remains unsold, or sold at a significant loss just to realize some of the money invested in it, then I think AeonKit would have to be *very* passionate about their "hobby" to start all over again and design yet another set of PPC motherboards. If not, it means the end of line for OS4 HW.

But to me it looks pretty much like OS4 has reached its own end of line on its own already. When Ben Hermans peddling of €30 digital download copies for Emulators dries up, then what? Well, I guess we'll have the answers to all these questions in just a year or two...

@TMHG

Trevors seems to make enough not to have to worry about A-Eon. But sure, his interest lies in that the AOS 4 port being finished. If not I bet he would be really pissed off

@Yasu

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he won't be the only one.

-- eliyahu

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A couple of hours a week?
That explains a lot.

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The problem with your scenario is that this is not a personal hobby under his own name, it is a registered "Limited" company. While we don't know what the private share structure, there will still be laws to govern how they operate. In the US LLC's (Limited Liability Company) still have basic reporting and corporate governance requirements. I'm sure the 'Limited' Companies are similar. You can't create a company and then just have it's cash balance be a slush fund from your own wallet. At some point the company has to be able to be able to stand on it's own. Generally speaking, when the company is founded one of the principal officer can fund it in exchange for stock, but constantly throwing money at it after that starts off as frowned upon and eventually becomes illegal.

That's simplifying things, but the general gist.

[ Edited by redrumloa 09.03.2016 - 14:17 ]

> The X5000 is like the X1000 [...] the same 2005 level HW

DDR3 and PCIe v2 are from 2007 :-)

> we don't know what the private share structure

http://morph.zone/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?forum=3&topic_id=7183&start=932

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Ahh, what do you know. 100% of the shares are distributed, none left in the treasury. Matt Leaman is half owner too. It is even less likely that A-Eon's cash balance is fungible with Trevor's wallet.

@redrumla

I don't think there is a law against being not profitable. If it is a share holding company all the company need to do when it's out of cash is to ask it's share holders for more. Because then the company is only accountable to it's shareholders and if they think it's a good idea to invest more money it's perfectly legal. Which is what I think the presumably main shareholder Trevor does.

Remember the IT bubble? The share holders kept pouring in money into hugely unprofitable companies because they thought one day in the not too far future it would pay off. And most of the companies went belly up once the share holders realised that their "multi billion dollar companies" was worth about as much as a hot dog stand. The share holders had to take the knock-back because it was up to them to decide whether to invest more and more money into it or not. The only thing the companies had to do was not to lie about its revenue.

Perfectly legal.

> the presumably main shareholder Trevor

As indirectly linked to above, main shareholder of A-Eon Technology Ltd. is Matthew Leaman (50%). Trevor and his wife each hold 25% of shares.

Addendum:

>> Seems low-level coders disappeared years ago.

> The Frieden brothers were present at the Amiga 30 years celebrations in Neuss 5 months
> ago where they told they were currently working on OS4 a couple of hours per week.

"I received a pleasant surprise in my email inbox this morning from AmigaOS Kernel developer Thomas Frieden. [...] Attached to the email was a photo of a vaguely familiar image of a Boing Ball, Hyperion copyright notice and an "insert floppy disk" graphic. [...] I think it means my Tabor board will be mighty pleased"
http://blog.a-eon.biz/blog/?p=8740