> He has in-depth knowledge on pretty much every PowerPC cpu out there

"The G4 is a group of chips which range from single core with 400MHz to Dual Core with 1.8 GHz."
http://www.natami.net/knowledge.php?note=13228&x=5

Dual core G4/e600 at 1.8 GHz? Where?

I'm a little confused by the references to OpenGL.
The drivers that utilize hardware rendering functions rest below that level don't they?
If a MorphOS user uses a non-accelerated card, doesn't the driver substitute software rendering functions for the non-existent functions?

And I'm not buying into anyone's propaganda. I loved working with the 68K microprocessor in the 80's and 90's, but given a choice I'd rather use a PPC processor. Unlike the CISC X86 family, the PPC family looks elegant and far easier to use and its definitely an advance over the 68K.

That's why the comparision bothered me. I used the term "biased" in posting here and on the Natami's forums and I've gotten a lot of flack for it, but even Gunnar has used the term "unfair" to describe the same tests.

No one here needs to worry as to which system I think is best. What was here first? What still outperforms the competition? What wasn't available until recently (and still under performs)? And what isn't available yet?
A)MorphOS
B)MorphOS
C)AmigaOS4
D)The Natami

[ Edited by Jim on 2010/5/21 1:58 ]

> What wasn't available until recently (and still under performs)?
> [...]
> C)AmigaOS4

OS4 was (pre-)released as recently as 6 years ago ;-)

Not according to Hyperion. That release wasn't was the official release of the product (even though everyone knows its been around that long).

Hyperion didn't claim that OS4 had finally been released until after they and Amiga Inc. had finally mutually concluded that the only way to resolve their conflict was through litigation.

Andreas, you love the fine points. Does it even matter that Hyperion has been developing the "official" latest version of Amiga OS (for a REALLY long time) when Amiga Inc. may not even have had the right grant that license?

Perhaps if Genesi, and bplan had been treated better/fairer then MorphOs would be the current AmigaOS.

It hardly matter now, post Commodore development of AmigaOS went to third party companies. With all revisions after 3.1 (including the PPC WarpOS components) ownership is fairly questionable (but it was definitely not owned by Amiga Inc). And Amiga Inc.'s claim to ownership of 3.1 is pretty threadbare. At best, the original entity was a licensee.

So, AmigaOS 4.0 has been around six years? Legally no, in reality yes and does it really matter? MorphOS still outperforms it and appears to have been created primarily because the developers of the Pegasos got a raw deal.

Long live AmigaOS dead, alive, or superceded bvy products developed by a market tired of being jerked around!

> Not according to Hyperion. That release wasn't was the official release of the product

That's why I wrote "(pre-)released". A public pre-release does meet your term "available" in my book. So it seems Hyperion is quite with me saying that OS4 has been available for 6 years.

> Hyperion didn't claim that OS4 had finally been released until after they and
> Amiga Inc. had finally mutually concluded that the only way to resolve their
> conflict was through litigation.

I'm not so sure of the chronology you present. After all, the trial started months after the release of Hyperion's "Final Update" of OS4.

> Does it even matter that Hyperion has been developing the "official"
> latest version of Amiga OS (for a REALLY long time)

I'm not talking about the duration of development of OS4 but about the time that has passed since OS4 started being publically available.

> when Amiga Inc. may not even have had the right grant that license?

The answer to that question wouldn't change anything that happened in the past. OS4 has been publically available for 6 years, whether Amiga Inc. had the right to grant a licence to Hyperion or not.

> Perhaps if Genesi, and bplan had been treated better/fairer then MorphOs
> would be the current AmigaOS.

The failed talks between Amiga Inc. and the MorphOS rights holder(s) to make MorphOS the official OS4 took place until August 2001 (before Hyperion started on OS4 end of that year) when there was no Genesi existing at all and until then even no Thendic France involved in anything MorphOS.
Thendic France coming into the picture was a result of the failed talks. Interestingly, in June 2001 Bill Buck had visited Benelux Amiga Show in Rotterdam (an AmigaOne and OS4 (as in Amiga Inc's own OS4 project, prior to Hyperion's) centric show), and prior to that in late 2000 just after the WOA 2000 show in Cologne he contacted bplan, which may mark the beginning of Buck's interest in Pegasos/MorphOS, presumably. In mid November 2001, two weeks after Hyperion took over the OS4 project, Buck visited the AMIGA 2001 show in Cologne where bplan were publically showing their post-prototype (i.e. microATX) Pegasos board for the first time (and running MorphOS).

> It hardly matter now

It's just that I find it strange calling an incident from 6 years ago to have happened just "recently". After all, we're talking about IT, not about evolution of mankind ;-)

> Amiga Inc.'s claim to ownership of 3.1 is pretty threadbare. At best, the original
> entity was a licensee.

Amino (Amiga Inc. (WA)) an AmigaOS 3.1 licensee? From whom?

> AmigaOS 4.0 has been around six years? Legally no

Then how do you call the public availability of OS4 starting 6 years ago legally?

> in reality yes

That's what I'm referring to, this obscure thing called "reality" :-)

> does it really matter?

See answer to "It hardly matter now" :-)

> MorphOS [...] appears to have been created primarily because
> the developers of the Pegasos got a raw deal.

According to laire, MorphOS development started in 1998 (and first public (beta) release was in August 2000 for CSPPC/BPPC). The Pegasos was announced by bplan not before December 2000.

I truly love the way you word things Andreas, in particular the reference to reality.
You're better with English than I am myself (a credit to you as is that vast Encyclopedia between your ears).
And since I still look at the development of CD-i as recent (yep, I'm definitely getting old), six years isn't that long ago.
In fact, if you think about it, Microsoft is still polishing a kernel it started working on at about the same time you mention MorphOS being developed (over ten years ago).
Thanks for the additional information about the history of MorphOS, it can be difficult to find a clear chronology of post Commodore events.
As to the "final" release of AOS4.0, I just remember it was announced at about the same time that Bill McEwen decided that Hyperion was no longer entitled to develop it.
You know, I don't think there was an Amiga curse, just a lot of scrambling to control a dwindling market.

BTW - How come no one has answered my question about hardware rendering? I'm pretty sure that's a function of the video card drivers, not OpenGL. Doesn't OpenGL reside on top of that as a standard interface between the OS and differing video hardware?

[ Edited by Jim on 2010/5/21 5:38 ]

@Jim

TinyGL is indeed one of the interfaces to 3D functionalities of the hardware. As for 2D operations, MorphOS tries to accelerate as much as possible of the legacy graphics.library API and also sports several new functions like accelerated alpha blending or accelerated gradient drawing functions - these always have a CPU based fallback in case a given card cannot do this in hardware

[noone replied earlier because all developers are in europe and we do need some sleep you know;]


"I'm a little confused by the references to OpenGL.
The drivers that utilize hardware rendering functions rest below that level don't they?
If a MorphOS user uses a non-accelerated card, doesn't the driver substitute software rendering functions for the non-existent functions?"

when it comes to opengl implementation on MorphOS then there is no software rendering involved. either the card/function is supported or not. so if you start using opengl you need supported gfx card (all supported radeons except 9700, plus some voodoo/sis) and all implemented functions will be hardware accelerated. to be honest i even think that simple old voodoo could push enough pixels on screen for that game when used properly.

PS. and yes, even lowly radeon 9200 can push enough pixels in the resolution used in that game.

[ Edited by kiero on 2010/5/21 8:15 ]

Quote:

I'm not an expert on Coldfires, but on Freescale's site I see v4 Coldfire cpus ranging up to 220Mhz, which means that they might actually have a chance to operate faster than their 680x0 cousins. I understand they're not 100% compatible, but perhaps any translation overhead might be negligible.