Addendum:

> the southbridge, which is rumoured to be the AMD SB600.

Seems the rumour was spot on. Compare:

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=31514&forum=33&start=80#557201 (1st link therein)

vs.

http://img.tomshardware.com/us/2008/03/04/amd_780g_chipset/amd_780g___sb600.jpg

Think about it, BeOS was on PPC, was doing great, but it decided to try X86. It perished woefully against a company like MS. Don't think for a second we aren't any different:

Small user base to start with
Lack of all modern features
Very expensive OS
A small group of developers with extremely limited resources, fixes specific to OS cannot be currently "Hotfixed".

And, it would make us fall into the other minority OSes, and against them we don't stand a chance.

Reality-check:

BeOS did not great when they had their own HW, sure the BeBox was cool but also far to expensive and therefore sold badly.

Afterwards BeOS failed again on PPC when the were trying to backstap Apple, as a result Apple closed their HW and Be ran out of (PPC) options.

Then they went x86, where they sold reasonable numbers, but again decided to go head-on this time against MS. What a suprise when MS fought back and forced HW dealers to stop bundling BeOS if they wanted to continue to get OEM versions of MS-SW.

So yes BeOS did fail on x86, but the reason wasn't x86 it was Be themselves.

As I recall it, Be Inc did some really bad bets in the dot-com bubble, and that more than anything else killed the company.

A commercial desktop OS will always compete with and be compared to other desktop OS's, especially if they have the same ambitions. Instruction sets of the CPU doesn't have anything to do with that.

It could help though, if you at least have your OS on HW of the same price and performance. Having your OS locked to HW that is *more obscure* and *less performing* can't be considered a good competitive strategy IMHO, and even less so if it's extremely expensive. The Sam and "X1000" hardware can in no way be considered a strength or opportunity for OS4, but only a *burden*; it's like a big block of concrete chained to its feet, that will ensure for certain that it won't go anywhere.

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[ Edited by Velcro_SP 20.04.2011 - 07:14 ]

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Yes, and?

> Yes, and?

Nothing "and". The assumption I mentioned before turned out to be true. That's all I wanted to tell.
Btw, there've been doubts by some that the SB600 can be properly used together with non-AMD northbridges. Refer to:

http://www.powerdeveloper.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=11961#11961

Bottom line: If MOS becomes x86, I'm leaving because it would become, overtime, just another OS, with nothing special to it any longer, for x86, Linux and UNIX win hands down. I'm buying an x1000 within a year of its release, and for me, my current PPC line has been my greatest investment, all of my x86 boxes were crap and most were brand new, and are now probably in pieces on I-95, if the fragments havent already caused an accident. My macs are at least twice as fast as they were, and most have half the power. PowerPC isn't dead until the last G5 PMac dies my friend, or the last X1000. Go tell to the MOS devs about making a switch, I have neither the willingness nor the power to assist you, or go make a blog and post there, I'm tired of this x86 switch spam

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So if MorphOS 3.0 would introduce x86 support (or ARM support, which is also an option), you would quit using the PPC version of it?

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...which isn't any dfferent from PPC, if it is the merits of *nix that you want and need and *not* those of MorphOS. But the same PPC limitations then applies - PPC hardware (like Pegasos, PPC Mac's, and even more so the Sam and X1000) has a lousy bang for the buck ratio compared to x86, they are more obscure and difficult to get a hold of, etc.

I could have bought your Point of View had you been a low level SW developer specialized on writing ASM in PPC, or HW developer or such. But if you like most (all?) of us here is mainly interested in *the merits of MorphOS*, i.e. it's features, performance, price for a system etc, then your POV doesn't compute. The merits of MorphOS *does not change* with the underlying ISA. The OS is all the same! But with better cost for a system, much better performance (performance that could also allow new features and applications), and a safer future.

It's not the ISA of the CPU that makes *an OS* special, it's the specs and merits of the OS itself! No regular user cares about CPU's and ISA's anyway, you don't look at the CPU, you don't think of it, you don't notice it (except when you gets annoyed and curse it because you can't play those 1080p x264 streams). it's the merits of the OS that is important. Those merits would still be there, but with a far better bang for the buck ratio, and it would make the OS accessible for the broad general public out there.

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Good for you then.

IMHO this would be a prime example though, that you are *NOT* interested in the merits of the OS (like the best possible Amiga NG experience, with best specs, features, Amiga compatibility, and bang for the buck), but only *instruction sets of CPU's* (!!!). Well that, and that you despise money...

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I don't regret buying my Pegasos computers either. And I recently bought a Mac Mini G4. I have had a great time with MorphOS.

But I didn't buy them because they were PPC. I bought them because that was the best and only option to run MorphOS. Could I run MorphOS on better and more powerful and competent HW that's also cheap and easily available, then I would go for the better option. Sorry, but PPC lose there...

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Then don't buy crap HW, it's as simple as that! Read some tests, go for premium brands and tried solutions.

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I don't think anyone has to tell them anything, I think they are perfectly aware of the HW situation and the pros/cons with PPC vs. x86.

Here are some scattered MorphOS Team comments on the subject (some of them from this very thread):

About choosing PPC as target architecture in the first place: "if we would have known back then what we know today, we would have chosen differently"

In a response to the comment "I only regret that again we have an annoucement about old hardware", a developer said: "Fair enough, but don't whine if it ain't a PowerPC based box ;)"

In a response to the comment "Due to lack of another new PPC-based hardware, I can make the only conclusion: this is the end of MorphOS :(", a developer said: "IMHO Apple hardware is the only target that makes sense for PowerPC MorphOS at the moment." (and no, the emphasis was not put there by me, but by the dev)

In a response to the comment "Were MorphOS to be rewritten in X86 machine code, program code compiled for MorphOS would have to be specific to MorphOS", a developer said: "First, assembler code is rarely used for the PowerPC-compatible versions of MorphOS." (Note: insinuating that PPC versions isn't the only ones)

All this is highly speculative from my side of course. But for all we know, someone could very well have been working on a non-PPC version of MorphOS for a long time already...

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The quoted sentence is to be taken literally. The PPC qualifier may seem redundant in a short quotation but it makes sense in the context of the original discussion. There is not supposed to be any hidden meaning.

> Go tell to the MOS devs about making a switch, I have neither the
> willingness nor the power to assist you, or go make a blog and post
> there, I'm tired of this x86 switch spam

According to threaded view you directed this at me. Why?

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[ Edited by Velcro_SP 20.04.2011 - 07:20 ]

no, just replying to TMHG's post

> no, just replying to TMHG's post

Okay, then please try to take more care when replying. As it stands now, your post looks like an answer to me because it's not explicitly directed at someone and more so because in threaded view it actually *is* an answer to me.

Dreamcast, how old are you? Did you "enjoy" the glory Amiga days (well, the company actually, had closed doors) in the nineties, when we stubbornly praised our Motorola 68k CPUs against Intel's Pentiums?

Does that make any sense now?

History is useful at least for one thing: To be conscious of past mistakes, not to repest them. Even if they looked like "the right thing" in the past, time makes you learn invaluable things, not to be overlooked.

No I did not, I was too young to remember the closing of C=, but I learned back in '05 about PowerPC, Amigas and such, and just last year I got my PowerPC macs and i have decided not to buy x86 any more because PowerPC has given me what I want. I no longer want to be in the rat race of "my PC can kick urs" type stuff, I have game systems for that. I'm willing to pay a premium for PPC because it is better quality and because it isn't a monopoly which has inferior products. The 867Mhz G4 could beat the fastest P4 at 1.7Ghz at its release, the 1.5Ghz trumps the 3gHz P4. And before long, another design will be developed, maybe in the server market, which can defeat the Xeon and i7. The 970MP alone can beat a core 2 duo at the 1.5 times the clock. The 060 is better than teh Pentium, I have done benchmarks in the past with my uncle, who is a web designer and is friends with some of the best US embedded engineers.

[ Edited by Dreamcast270mhz on 2010/5/10 10:38 ]

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Any actual proof on this?


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Yes, and as we all know web designers are experts when it comes to CPU's ;) What kind of benchmarks did you guys do, and on what platforms?

You can craft a benchmark to make your product to shine over another. But forget about it, the advantage x86 has is not technical, but a much more important one. And event technically speaking, these hugely evolutioned CPUs are far from being dumb.

...and then, it's all about how you use them.

i've been using for a few months a 2,5ghz Corei7 cpu that i overclocked at 3,8ghz, running perfectly stable and blazzing fast, and who does need more than air cooling and keeps at decent temperatures. I don't remember any PowerPC processor able of doing that without being water cooled.
Not to start a debate, but it is quite obvious that X86 is finally going to an interesting direction and PowerPC is agonising, trapped in its limits. And no one cares to work on making it evolve or progress.
The Amiga spirit was driven with innovation, pushing the limits, at least on the glory days. Now the Amiga spirit looks like something that doesn't dare. Stuck on old technologies, stuck on old hardware, stuck on its holy compability (the most efficient blocker), etc.

I would never blame someone that loves tu use vintage cars, as long as he loves driving them, but isn't computing in general about progress ?

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[ Edited by Velcro_SP 20.04.2011 - 07:26 ]

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Agreed 100%. The "problem" is that the industry (thus not us) is already doing so!

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Od course. But you'll have a hard time finding a regular computer thas has so little power. Imagine telling your boss that you have to spend very expensive human resources into optimizing for an scenario that either doesn't exist, or is easily avoided.

Of course, I agree that MorphOS is more clever than other operating systems. But it also does less things. And it has to, in order to kkep its philosopy.

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Very valid option. Just because it's a very obvious option! Pity that, again, the industry is already doing so: If you specifically suggest "custom chips", by the time you have them working properly (after a huuuuuge and bloody expensive development cycle) you already have in the market very clever chips that already do that, and more. Would you compete with ATi or nVidia in the GPU space? Perhaps you just want a subset of the functions their chips already provide... But hey, go boy the full package! It's going to be proven, cheaper technology.

It's a shame, but the scenario in which the Amiga 1000 emerged no longer exists, when you could outshine others doing all the components by yourself, becuase noone else had those components. There were much more opportunities for innovation.

There are lots of extremely clever engineering teams designing pretty much anything you could ever think about. Both in processor and coprocessor areas.

So, in all, the "problem" is that computer industry has become boring. Innovation is only possible in the software area: Putting those clever chips to work like they should!

Now I've realized I've just said things you already knew. Sorry for wasting your time guys!

> the SoC concept: processor bundled with and cooperating with special chips on
> a board. Like a chip for 3D environments and one for Theora video at hi-def.

A SoC is one single chip with various functional units for different purposes, not various chips on a single board. Your old habit of confusing chips and boards once again... Kind of running gag?

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[ Edited by Velcro_SP 20.04.2011 - 07:23 ]

> you only make yourself look bad and childish with your rudeness needling.

While I respect your opinion I think that you make yourself look stubborn with your... well ...stubbornness. Or why else do you keep on confusing things you've been corrected about numerous times? Is that some kind of ludicrous humour?

Velcro was slightly wrong, and Andreas very rude. Don't like.