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I took the liberty of adding bold styling to a portion of Mark's post. Hopefully, this will make it clearer that this is about far more than the mere ability to somehow boot into the MorphOS desktop environment.

None of the answers seen (here or otherwise) actually address the concerns raised.

As such the original statement stands: Do no upgrade the firmware to versions other than ones approved by bigfoot if you wish to be certain that MorphOS continues to work.

A-EON Technology is not affiliated to the "ExecSG" team as Trevor has pointed out.

The private branch of the firmware is used for testing and developing the ExecSG projects and has nothing to do with the consumer release of the firmware.

The official X5000 firmware that is distributed on X5000 systems and board is the version that BigFoot has worked on for A-EON over some years.

He is the official maintainer of the firmware for A-EON. A-EON is happy for this relationship to continue going forward and presumably BigFoot is too (his schedule permitting).

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I'm even more confused now. Does this mean that the firmware is only needed for development purposes and no new firmware update will be needed for end users?

Even more confusingly the ExecSG presentation slides say:

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Some clarification is in order I think.

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A-EON only distributes and releases official firmware which BigFoot is the maintainer. He took over from Varisys' contractor for A-EON quite some time ago. We were very happy that he could maintain the firmware and get the project back on track.

I have no idea what happens in the ExecSG Team internally. Third party branches are not official updates and therefore are not distributed by A-EON or installed on A-EON consumer product when they go out of the door.

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Okay sounds good, except that it doesn't answer my question definitely. "Yes" or "no" would suffice.

Also there is this statement from Steven Solie:
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So there is something being beta tested that is supposed to be released. How come bigfoot is totally unaware what this new firmware does?

My confusion remains.

Free hint: You guys (Trevor, Matthew & Steven, plus whoever else might be involved) should talk to each other first and agree on what you're actually doing and how, and how it will be communicated and by whom.

Also: If you intend Bigfoot to be the gatekeeper of the firmware, then please please involve him in the process properly. He has been extremely patient (more than I would have ever been in the same position) in trying to offer his help in ensuring things don't get fucked up. He has been completely ignored. Hence us being in this situation.

>> U-Boot molsen-2018-10-05 (Oct 05 2018 - 17:02:05)

> "The only U-Boot firmware you need [...] includes "aeon" in the version string."
> [...] My confusion remains.

Same here :-)

@Piru

There are two distinct entities here:

* ExecSG Team with a private branch of the source code

* A-EON Technology Ltd with official source maintained by BigFoot

I am not involved, or have been asked to be involved with ExecSG Team and therefore do not speak for them. I also do not know what they are working on except for news snippets of information that come my way from time to time.

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Bundling us together is maybe why you and others are confused and asking for clarification.

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I have not been give access or ever used this new third-party firmware so I am unaware also. I presume that SSolie will distribute it to their group of beta testers. I am seeking clarification now. As I mentioned before, official A-EON X5000 firmware is maintained by BigFoot unless he chooses otherwise.

> Bundling us together is maybe why you and others are confused
> and asking for clarification. [...] I am seeking clarification now.

;-)

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Ok, fine. Considering that the communication coming from other parties involves X5000, it is quite possible to assume that you should be at least somehow working together on this. As it is now (from outsider's point of view) it sure looks like some important internal communication is missing, and thus has resulted in:

1. Bigfoot being withheld important information and his offer to help being ignored, resulting in well founded fears of some disastrous changes being done to the firmware that may result in future problems
2. Mixed public signals from number of parties (more or less) involved.

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Thanks, clarity would be great in this matter, indeed.

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Sure, I can see how it could be assumed the case, but it is not.

I have suggested to the ExecSG team that they send their update information and other relevant files to BigFoot for review. We do not want it having any unintended adverse effects on the MorphOS Kernel if any of the changes are eventually put into the official firmware.

Im totally lost in this mess.
ExecNG, that is a vital part of AOS4 is done from people that seems dont know much about the company doing the OS, with people making firmwares that nobody needs...
A lot of people, companies and work but with no communication.

Sorry but all this is so weird from an outside view that yes...Im lost.

We're hitting confusion levels that shouldn't even be possible.

I prefer this kind of communication to no communication.
In the end it's all quite clear, and what emerge is once again a blackout in communication among parts, or better, no communication.

Anyway if there'll ever be a next time where Mark will offer himself to build a new version of x5k firmware, obviously explaining he about what would be addressed, IMHO could be better accept his help and work as a team, at least on this goal

Things seems going on on both AOS4 nd MOS sides, and this is another good reason to think positive for all amiga users.

[ Edited by Flash 29.10.2020 - 21:13 ]

These kind of problems makes mistrust in OS4 team even more, meanwhile MorphOS team works in silent without any kind of "awesome feature announces" that never arrive.

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To be fair, I don't think there is an OS4 team any more, just a bunch of volunteers completely unfamiliar with low level coding landed with a chunk of code that's probably not written to a standard where it can be easily maintained by anyone but its original coders.

I read this thread with my jaw open while shaking my head in disbelief. Wow.


Wow.

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It's not really my place to step into the middle of this, but I just want to address this one question of Trevor's, with the most likely answer, that everyone has read in Mark's initial post to this thread. Mark/Bigfoot posted this here because Solie and to an extent Trevor himself kept refusing to give Mark the answers to his questions in those emails. I think if it had been me, I probably would have resisted helping the ExecSG team even more than Mark did, and I would not have given them the source code, until they DID answer my questions fully. But that is just my opinion on how I would have reacted, and Mark is a much more helpful and "Nice Guy".

It seems completely reasonable to me for Mark to post this warning publicly, when he was kept "out of the loop" by Trevor and the ExecSG team, but learned what was going on and put the pieces together that seem to confirm his fears. I don't know if Mark made one last attempt to get the answers directly from Trevor or the ExecSG team, which I would have done before posting here, but it is done now, so why doesn't the ExecSG team and owner come out with an official statement to clear things up and ease the minds of the users. All of this "cloak and dagger" secrecy in our tiny community is silly. We are too small and way too far behind all other platforms to worry that anyone is going to steal the ideas of our development teams, and I can't see any benefit in keeping the users in the dark about what is going on. In fact, I think it hurts our community.

After all the help that Mark has provided to get MorphOS working on the X5000, I hope that it won't all be in vain because A-Eon decides to drop support for MorphOS, due to the current graphics card problem between the two OSes, and the apparent low number of users running MorphOS on an X5000.

The moment you realize that running abandoned HW with no chance of any firmware updates is a blessing.....

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:D

Regarding this "don't upgrade", is there something that prevents users from downgrading to previous version, if there are problems? (like firmware upgrades are done on modern games consoles, for example)

Also, an average user will probably think it's better to add as much features as possible to the firmware. But is there actually any benefit in doing that, instead of "doing as little as possible", and handing the control to the OS as soon as possible? (I assume the answer is "absolutely none") - would the OS actually run exactly the same, if firmware was completely erased once the system was booted up?

I think it's also good to point out that this firmware rom is mostly different from Amiga Kickstart ROMs. Both definitely do some initializations, but classic Amiga ROM (or ROM image in RAM) continues to play a significant role once the OS is up and running.

@Jupp3

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The issue at hand is that the possibility of downgrading your firmware version does not undo severe data loss that was caused by a prior upgrade, hence the need for a public warning before MorphOS users might be the victim of potentially irreversible damage.