An Open Letter to Dave Haynie
  • Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Velcro_SP
    Posts: 929 from 2003/7/13
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    [ Edited by Velcro_SP 06.09.2011 - 07:34 ]
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  • »29.04.11 - 11:20
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    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12058 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    > You're saying Hembach was 1) the bankruptcy trustee for Commodore-Amiga,
    > and 2) subsequently the bankruptcy trustee for Escom

    Yes, exactly.

    > and 3) at the time of the three $1 transactions from Commodore-Amiga to
    > Escom he was *concurrently* the trustee for *both* bankrupt companies?

    While he *acted* as the trustee for both companies in 1998, I'm not sure if he did legitimately so considering that Commodore-Amiga (and probably Escom as well) had already been liquidated (and thus ceased to exist) before. So the questions to be asked are: 1. Can someone act on behalf of a non-existing company which he had been the trustee of back when it still existed? 2. Can a non-existing company transfer assets to another (existing or non-existing) company?
    The notary public in 1998 acknowledged Hembach as attorney for both CBM and Commodore-Amiga, based on their May 1995 contract with Escom, and as attorney for Escom, based on Hembach's July 1996 constitution as Escom's trustee.

    > I looked at the three $1 transactions and I didn't see it there either
    > (however I may have overlooked it!). Did you see it in there?

    Quite to my surprise I don't. They mention "Amiga Kickstart ROM version 1.3" and "Amiga Kickstart ROM version 2.04" but quite shockingly nothing about "3.0" or "3.1". I really don't know what to make of this. Nicely spotted. Now what are the implications?

    > one reason that Commodore-Amiga might not have transferred the 3.1
    > and prior Amiga OSs to Escom is because the rights to those may possibly
    > have been partially encumbered to third parties, say through licensing or
    > IP claims by contributors. Candidly, I don't know though exactly who such
    > parties might be. Villagetronic? The narrator.device people?

    Interesting thought.

    "Commodore discontinued licensing the Amiga's speech software from SoftVoice, Inc., so (officially) beginning with this release, the "Say" program, DEVS:narrator.device, and LIBS:translator.library were no longer included on the Workbench disks. According to Matt Sealey, the guys who designed translator and narrator had a spat with Commodore, much like William Hawes did (ARexx), so Commodore had to withdraw it from the OS distribution."
    http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/wb_21.html

    "Michael C. Battilana of Cloanto notes that: '[...] In the early 1990s we had also done some operating system improvements, e.g. to printer drivers and DataTypes, among others. This resulted in our code being included in the 3.1 release. So, technically (and legally), we are co-authors of 3.1.'"
    http://www.gregdonner.org/workbench/wb_amigaforever.html

    "Cloanto Italia srl, being [...] a co-author of the operating system, obtained multiple licenses over different versions and components of these original ROM and operating system files [...]. This licensing process began before the initial publication of Amiga Forever in 1997 (the first operating system distribution licenses date back to before the 1994 Commodore liquidation, by which time Cloanto already was both a co-author and a license holder)"
    http://www.amigaforever.com/kb/13-122

    "William Hawes is no longer involved in development of Amiga programs because of quarrels in the past with Commodore about the licensing of ARexx"
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARexx#History

    IIRC Commodore included ARexx in AmigaOS 3 without Hawes' permission. That might indeed have been an issue for the sale of the rights to software containing this component.
  • »29.04.11 - 15:05
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  • Jim
  • Yokemate of Keyboards
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    Jim
    Posts: 4977 from 2009/1/28
    From: Delaware, USA
    >> Dave's still spouting this crap over ten years later.

    >November 2001 was less than ten years ago. At least I'm not aware that Haynie uttered those accusations prior to this.
    '
    OK, changed 'over' to 'almost'.

    Also, i still regret bringing IP issues into this.
    No recent negative comments have been issued by Hyperion or Amiga Inc. executives.
    As there is no valid party left to challenge their rights, its a subject I should have left alone.
    "Never attribute to malice what can more readily explained by incompetence"
  • »29.04.11 - 15:05
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  • Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Velcro_SP
    Posts: 929 from 2003/7/13
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    [ Edited by Velcro_SP 31.08.2011 - 08:51 ]
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  • »30.04.11 - 00:09
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  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    minator
    Posts: 365 from 2003/3/28
    Quote:

    Here is an update from Dave...


    His following post is more important, this is what he's really talking about:

    HazyDave:
    Quote:

    They still don't understand clean room development. If you have seen the Amiga source code, you cannot produce a legally separate work-alike. So any copied comments are absolute proof that the code is dirty. And they're not rejecting my claim, if you go back into those linked documents, that the comments were copied.

    If the MorphOS people would like to swear in public that not a line of code or comment is copied from the AmigaOS sources or derived from the Phase 5 code (fruits of a poisonous tree, in legal terms), I will not mention MorphOS again.


    I replied with the following where I've tried to give my interpretation of the situation.

    Minator:
    Quote:

    At the time Amiga technologies were seemingly sending their code to all and sundry. I've never heard any talk of NDAs so I'll assume there wasn't one involved.
    If this was copied, could it have been done with AT's knowledge or permission?
    i.e. Did AT give and Amiga sources to Phase5?

    The question then is how does this relate to MorphOS.
    Did that code get into MorphOS?

    If yes, then the MorphOS team might have IP contamination issues. However, I doubt it because this would have been very old code by the time MorphOS was even started and MorphOS uses a different kernel anyway (MorphOS was always intended to add things like SMP and full memory protection at some point so the low level architecture is quite different).

    The other question is, did anyone who has seen AmigaOS source work on MorphOS.
    The answer to this is more complex, because it depends on the time elapsed between seeing the AmigaOS code and then working on MorphOS. As I understand it there shouldn't be any IP issues because MorphOS wasn't started until years later.

    I'm no expert on this but I do know people (in a completely different context) who have been "IP contaminated" and had to go and work on something else for a period of months before they could come back to work on something related.

    It should be pointed out however that MorphOS was never created as an alternative or to compete with AmigaOS. When MorphOS was started AmigaOS had been cancelled and declared dead.


    I once asked did they use any AmigaOS code and was given a clear no. I've no reason to doubt this.

    The point he's making is about "IP pollution". Has anyone working on MorphOS seen the AmigaOS source? If so, then there is a potential problem.
    It's not about if someone has copy-pasted code. It's if they've ever even seen the AmigaOS code. If so, under what conditions was it seen? Was any code produced referencing it and did any of this make it into MorphOS?

    It's much more complex than it first appears and it's certainly a valid question.

    While some people are writing off Dave as some old dude, it's clear to me he's one of the smartest people who ever worked on the Amiga and given the clarity of the comments he makes, still is. Quite why he is so negative towards MorphOS I don't know, but I suspect it's all a misunderstanding, a very old misunderstanding.

    However, I think this can be finally cleared up by answering the questions he posed:
    I believe the first part has been answered. What about the second?

    Quote:


    If the MorphOS people would like to swear in public that
    not a line of code or comment is copied from the AmigaOS sources
    or
    derived from the Phase 5 code

  • »30.04.11 - 23:40
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Andreas_Wolf
    Posts: 12058 from 2003/5/22
    From: Germany
    > His following post is more important

    Yes, that's why CISC referred to it in comment #14 and I linked to it in comment #33.

    > I believe the first part has been answered. What about the second?

    CISC in comment #14 says he thinks that those questions are addressed on the web page cheesegrate linked to in comment #3.
  • »01.05.11 - 12:06
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    Fats
    Posts: 19 from 2011/2/3
    minator,
    Quote:

    While some people are writing off Dave as some old dude,


    That was not what I was saying. What I was saying is that Dave is irrelevant to the current Amiga community, he is not a stakeholder anymore in it. As a consequence, his stance should not allow to tear open some old wounds.

    greets,
    Staf.
    Trust me ...
    I know what I am doing
  • »02.05.11 - 17:47
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  • Jim
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    Jim
    Posts: 4977 from 2009/1/28
    From: Delaware, USA
    Fats,


    Yes, dismissing Dave would not be what Staf intended at all (that would be more like something I would suggest). More to the point, I think what he's stated is rather important. Dave's no longer a player in our communities. So his comments, valid or invalid, are no reason to bring up another old controversy. It only serves to further the distance between us and other Amiga stakeholders.
    "Never attribute to malice what can more readily explained by incompetence"
  • »03.05.11 - 02:59
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  • Order of the Butterfly
    Order of the Butterfly
    DiskDoctor
    Posts: 306 from 2009/4/17
    From: Rzeszow, place...
    @ASiegel

    You are mostly right frankly. If OS programs we're talking, the form does not matter. Hell, what's the bloody form of Ubuntu?? Is it KDE or GNOME? On just NONE?

    The funny thing is (and I thank you for that notion), that OSes have no particular form, UI managers can be substituted easily, even in the Windows case, to some extent. So the form in question is something pretty much void. Hence it is nearly impossible in the quoted EU-IP Directive definition sense, to dirty-wise rev-enginer an OS :-)

    But that's only because regular computer programs were kept in mind while writing this Directive. Thus the directive became ultimately OS-agnostic.

    Which on the other hand makes me even a bigger fan of US patent-based regulations. ANd when you say many (most I suppose) programmers prefer not to patent stuff... You know MOST Pharma also does not like that lengthy patents for drugs. Why? Because they're generic pharma, they produce only drugs which are not protected. They invent nothing, only manufacture 100-th breed of aspirin and spend 90% of the budget on marketing. So they're not the least close to what is called INNOVATION.

    Same goes to programmers. Most programmers worldwide which are simply just too stupid to come up with something original. This is why they want to be capable of basing their work on someone else's work. But if you have a new business venture, that is, start-up, your thinking optics changes. You want no large software company to just rip off your portal, app or other software stuff, because the innovation is your highest and ONLY value, not the sales force thugs or millions for marketing.

    So summarizing this, in every business there are always two options, majority is against the protection, because what they do is slave-immitation of innovative competition so that it can be sold for lower margins (see all those crappy retard iPhone closes for these years). And the minority wants to protect their invention, in order to push this all shit forward anyhow.

    So made up yourself which crowd you feel is yours.

    DD
    Was: Mac Mini PPC running MorphOS 2.4
    Now: Amiga Forever 2010 with AmiKit and AmigaSYS
    Not used: Icaros Desktop 1.2 (reason: no wifi)
    Planned soon: an OS4 system
    Shortly then: a MOS notebook (wifi is a must-have)
  • »03.05.11 - 11:09
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  • Paladin of the Pegasos
    Paladin of the Pegasos
    koszer
    Posts: 1246 from 2004/2/8
    From: Poland
    As for your statements concerning pharmaceutical market - the truth is more complicated. How would you call a company that's patenting a new, innovative drug that's practically the same as the product of competitors, but has a (minimally) altered particle? No problems to patent it for a long time (except you need an awfull lot of money for clinical trials, but the risk that your congener fails there is somewhat lower than in the case of its precursor). And the sums we're talking about here are so huge that small, innovative company (or some university) that may sometime discover a fantastic drug (yes, that happens) can only wait and beg "the big ones" to invest their money and sponsor the further trials/production. Unfortunately, if they consider that your "new, fantastic drug" has no mareting potential, you can stick it deep in your... drawer. OK, you might have some luck if you develop an "orphan drug", but in other case... :(. IT is completely different in this matter, here even a microscopic company with a good idea may become a giant in no time (and I believe I don't have to post some good examples here).

    Also don't underestimate the role of generic companies. If it wasn't for them the innovative ones would sell their innovative (or not-so-innovative-but-nevertheless-patented) drugs for ages without need to develop new ones.

    Anyway, where were we? Ahh, Dave Haynie, yes. :-P
  • »03.05.11 - 13:46
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  • Moderator
    Kronos
    Posts: 2231 from 2003/2/24
    DiskDoctor,
    Quote:


    Same goes to programmers. Most programmers worldwide which are simply just too stupid to come up with something original. This is why they want to be capable of basing their work on someone else's work. But if you have a new business venture, that is, start-up, your thinking optics changes




    Just take a look at the patents M$, Apple,Nokia etc etc are sueing eachother for. How many are really an invetion ? Or atleast somewhat orginal ?

    By the standards of the US-patent-office I could could apply for "scratch balls with left hand gesture" and given a good lawyer I would get away with it.....
  • »03.05.11 - 17:21
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    humantarget
    Posts: 10 from 2011/6/2
    Andreas_Wolf,
    Quote:

    http://moobunny.dreamhosters.com/cgi/mbthread.pl/amiga/expand/89963


    This is a pretty accurate description of the history of this whole thing, at least as far as I know it. Andy and I were consulting on software and hardware development, respectively, at Amiga Technologies at the time. Phase V was trying really hard to get involved with AT, including offering to license a C Exec, and perhaps other pieces, of the AmigaOS. Andy did a code review, and what came out of that was largely the reason AT did not enter into any agreements with Phase V.

    And do keep in mind, the AmigaOS was a bit of a mess at the time. Some modules could only be built in Greenhills C on a Sun workstation. The first major software project done at AT was to get everything to build correctly under Lattice on an Amiga. And there were definite plans to build a HAL (done right, this not only eliminates system difference issues in the OS, but endian concerns as well) and a PowerPC port.

    I have no first-hand knowledge of ANY of the Phase V code going into MorphOS. The copyright issues certainly still apply -- if anyone studied, say, the Amiga Exec source code, then went and built their own clone, that would still violate copyrights. But I don't know that to be true either, and Ralph says it's not, so I'm more than happy to take him at his word.

    I'm not sure what information Gary Peake was privvy to while at Amiga, Inc. He was about the only guy there I'd trust anyway. But he might simply have been repeating stuff that Bill McEwan or fleecy moss said.

    Honestly, I was frustrated with nearly every "Amiga" effort after Amiga Technologies/ESCOM bit the dust. PIOS/Metabox tried and failed to get the rights to use AmigaOS, and as a result, got in bed with Apple, and that ulitmately killed the PIOS One project. Gateway wanted to basically toss AmigaOS out and replace it with Linux; Amiga, Inc. wanted to toss AmigaOS out and replace it with Tao-OS. And MorphOS was fragmenting an already weak community by offering an Amiga clone. But hey, anything you can cling to I guess -- the AmigaOS and all spinoffs have been largely irrelevant for a good decade now, at least on the scale of computer industry things.
  • »02.06.11 - 07:05
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    humantarget
    Posts: 10 from 2011/6/2
    JJ,
    Quote:

    Just quikly read them. Really Linux is running on more computers than Windows. That smells like bollocks to me or has Windows market share really decreased that much.


    Windows is fine on the desktop, though yeah, it's lost a little ground.. something like 90% of the desktop these days. Linux powers lots of embedded systems: TiVos and other set top boxes, GPS systems, Android and WebOS smartphones and tablets (and soon, every HP PC as well, as an option), Google's forthcoming ChromeOS, most routers and internet switches, etc. And servers -- much of the web. And "big iron"... custom highly parallel database engines, most supercomputers, etc. It's even common to see uCLinux on things as small as an ARM7 or Cortex A3.

    Change "Linux" to "some kind of UNIX" and you get to add in everything Apple does, as well. That's 5% of the desktop and another 16% of smartphones, as well as tablets and iPods.

    Of course, you could counter with "some kind of Windows" and include XBox, a smaller number of smartphones, embedded systems like GPS as well, some ATMs, and most HD-DVD players (such as they are). Windows is certainly popular on smaller servers, too.

    My point was that Linux is very, very big... even if it's not "in yer face" the way Windows is.
  • »02.06.11 - 07:19
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    humantarget
    Posts: 10 from 2011/6/2
    ASiegel,
    Quote:

    Of course, his statement makes about as much sense as saying that Mr. Haynie should in no way be trusted because he used to work for the infamous company Merlancia Industries... and the equally infamous Metabox.


    Oh, snap!

    Yeah, I was foolish enough to do some work for Merlancia for a short time -- yet another foolish attempt to re-launch some kind of Amiga system (Merlancia did actually make a cash deal with Amiga, Inc., and did start development of a lower cost PPC system). If you payed close attention, you'll also recall that I was the one who actually outed Merlancia as a complete fraud, once I started.

    As for PIOS/Metabox, not sure what you're after there. We wanted AmigaOS, but had no legal way to deliver it, so we didn't deliver it. We became the German distributer for the BeBox, launched a line of MacOS compatibles, worked toward delivering a CHRP system, rather than a plain old Mac Clone (well, we developed the CPU cards, the motherboards and MacOS license came from UMAX). When Apple stopped the MacOS licensing, that ended the CHRP project (PIOS One).

    No, that wasn't terribly useful to Amiga fans. But at the time, at least it was real. Tell me, what has been all that useful to Amiga fans? 17 years of false promises? Old-fashioned OSs that only run on a dead CPU architecture... on SOCs made for routers or old abandoned Macs? I mean, ok, MorphOS moved a bit faster, but Amiga, Inc. and Hyperion took longer to deliver AmigaOS 4.x than it took to write AmigaOS from scratch, plus 1.2 and at least 1.3. And for what... to run on a computer system that really doesn't exist, and wouldn't grow the community if it even did?

    If you're wondering why I stopped trying to re-create the Amiga and just went on to other projects, that's pretty much it. I did not see any point in another false promise to the Amiga community.
  • »02.06.11 - 07:48
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    humantarget
    Posts: 10 from 2011/6/2
    ausPPC,
    Quote:

    I don't get it Dave - Is MorphOS as alien to the classic Amiga as Windows or is it, albeit partially, a direct copy of the original? I don't get how anyone can think it is both of those things.


    I don't know much about MorphOS, honestly. I know it was sold as a replacement for AmigaOS. I'm convinced it's not, but not in a good way. Can anyone explain this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvmWIqqRR-g

    I mean, what happened to Intuition, or whatever the equivalent in MorphOS ought to be? AmigaOS fundamentally doesn't lock up when overloaded, doesn't stutter in audio even when overloaded, doesn't get a jittery mouse, etc. I might expect those web browser windows to redraw slowly if the system were overloaded in CPU, but Intuition should always run at a higher priority, along with the whole UI event chain.

    Even on Amiga-like OSs. Metabox's CaOS wasn't an AmigaOS clone... it wasn't API compatible or anything. It was similar enough to port over AmigaOS code without too much work (we hired a number of Amiga developers to do just that in the late 90s, which helped keep things like Voyager alive just a little longer). In those days, it took about 90% of a 90MHz Phoenix (Metabox 1000) to play an MP3... no FPU in that sucker. And still, I could move Windows around, browse the web, etc. without glitching audio even slightly... sure, the non-realtime stuff like the web display would be crazy slow.

    Anyway, I'm not absolutely convinced that MorphOS has nothing to do with AmigaOS. There is no possible good answer for why it's so slow, compared to something like MacOS. In fact, I would have loved to see the same demo, on the Mac under MacOS running UAE. Betcha it also embarrasses MorphOS.

    I used to have a Mac in my lab, back in the late 80s and early 90s. It was basically just a display device for a $50,000 logic analyzer... the Mac communicated through SCSI to the analyzer, drew pretty pictures, etc. One day I was working on the Mac/analyzer, when I noticed Chris Green, our graphics wizard (these days working at Valve Software, game credits here: http://www.giantbomb.com/chris-green/72-5032/), looking over my shoulder. He said "I'm trying to figure out why it's so slow", referring to the Mac's graphics display.

    And that was old MacOS, before Quartz (which uses a PDF-derived rendering model). But also at 25MHz... run this at 1.5GHz, maybe even use a GPU (though MacOS has been pretty bad at that), and yeah, it'll go faster. So what's the deal with MorphOS?
  • »02.06.11 - 08:09
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  • Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    boot_wb
    Posts: 874 from 2007/4/9
    From: Kingston upon ...
    Thanks Dave,

    A sane voice amongst the screaming banshees of Moobunny.

    Happy 50th btw.
    www.hullchimneyservices.co.uk

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  • »02.06.11 - 08:27
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    humantarget
    Posts: 10 from 2011/6/2
    Andreas_Wolf,
    Quote:

    Commodore -> Escom (1995):
    dubious


    Don't think so. Yeah, some of the stuff Hembach did was dubious... but keep in mind, he was only Trustee of Commodore GmbH. He initially sold the Commodore trademark to ESCOM, even though he didn't have the authority:
    http://articles.philly.com/1995-03-09/business/25700886_1_commodore-s-amiga-commodore-international-sale

    The final sale was for all of Commodore's intellectual properties, and certain inventories. Hembach had nothing to do with it.
    http://articles.philly.com/1995-04-22/business/25686725_1_amiga-commodore-products-commodore-international

    In retrospect, it's a shame Dell didn't win... at least they didn't kill themselves the way ESCOM did. Maybe something Amiga would have survived, maybe not.
  • »02.06.11 - 08:28
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    jacadcaps
    Posts: 2968 from 2003/3/5
    From: Canada
    Quote:

    I mean, what happened to Intuition, or whatever the equivalent in MorphOS ought to be?


    It works pretty much the same as original.

    Quote:

    AmigaOS fundamentally doesn't lock up when overloaded, doesn't stutter in audio even when overloaded, doesn't get a jittery mouse, etc.


    Can't agree with you on that. If a graphics operation takes a long time under a layers lock and is being performed on the input.device's context, this is what you'll get as well. Imagine doing a large, complex cpu draw leading to loads of accesses to chip ram - ouch.

    Quote:

    I might expect those web browser windows to redraw slowly if the system were overloaded in CPU, but Intuition should always run at a higher priority, along with the whole UI event chain.


    This is totally unrelated to intuition, but simply a limitation of our current graphics subsystem (CGX/Layers/Radeon driver). What you're seeing is the effect of CPU swapping bitmaps from system memory to graphics memory and back to system memory on each draw, because the system is running at a high-res screen on a machine with mere 32MB of graphics memory. Surely something we do need to address in future releases, but not in the area of intuition like you imagined.
  • »02.06.11 - 08:32
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  • Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    boot_wb
    Posts: 874 from 2007/4/9
    From: Kingston upon ...
    Quote:

    There is no possible good answer for why it's so slow, compared to something like MacOS.


    Erm, mac-mini here running MacOS and MorphOS dual-boot. MorphOS kicks MacOS arse on every single task as far as I can see - asynchronicity, redrawing, video rendering... not sure on audio, but I betcha reggae wins. Lower ram usage... video graphics usage not sure about, but hey - triple buffering and multiple screens takes its toll.

    There are some glitches - target windows frozen when drag/drop copying between directories (which can be changed in ambient config files), screen-blanker/dpms activation causes momentary stuttering on MPlayer, hardware limitations of the mac-mini ATA bus (cd drive locks up ata hdd) - but far less irritating without that damn MacOS colour wheel...

    When was the last time you played around with/demoed MorphOS?
    www.hullchimneyservices.co.uk

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  • »02.06.11 - 08:36
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  • MorphOS Developer
    Piru
    Posts: 575 from 2003/2/24
    From: finland, the l...
    humantarget,
    Quote:

    Can anyone explain this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvmWIqqRR-g

    IIRC this particular slowness was due to running out of VRAM and the resulting swapping. Think of a windows system running out of physical memory and you get the idea (except that in this case the VRAM is being swapped to system memory. It isn't as slow as HDD but still slow). OS X does have better VRAM management. Obviously this is one area we're attempting to improve. This can be worked around somewhat by reducing the eye candy and in extreme cases (16 or 32MB VRAM) reducing the resolution and or screen depth.

    Assuming you don't run into this situation MorphOS quite easily runs circles around OS X in most areas. I am fairly certain there are numerous users who can back this up.
  • »02.06.11 - 08:38
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    humantarget
    Posts: 10 from 2011/6/2
    itix,
    Quote:

    Dave Haynie being PCB layout guy at some ex-toy company doesnt make him any special.


    PCB layout guy? Get your facts straight, Sherlock. I did do PC layout on the Nomadio Sensor and React. And everything other hardware task as well, and some software just for fun. And yeah, they were toys to you, I guess... much as the Amiga was a toy in its day to those who didn't know what they were talking about.

    Just to set the record straight, the Sensor was the first all digital R/C controller. It offered bidirectional communications, first of its kind for R/C racing. Four of the top five professional R/C racers used our radio. Yeah, I didn't know there were professionals either... but if you can drive an R/C car well enough, you can make well in excess of $100,000 a year doing that thing.

    The main reason was low latency.. a trained musician can detect about a 1ms difference in tempo... that's the goal that MIDI set out to meet, way back when. A typical R/C controller for serious hobby vehicles (eg, you'll be spending several hundred dollars US on the car, more for servos, etc) usually had a latency of about 20ms. We did it in about 5ms, typical. When you're racing a 1:10 scale car at an actual 60-70mph, this apparently makes a difference (I was no RCer).

    A version of this same technology was commissioned though a US government funded project to deliver a super low cost robot for bomb hunting and destruction. We put about 3,000 of these systems into Iraq, a few hundred more went to Special Forces... no idea what they did with them. This was a $5,000 robot system that could carry up to 10lbs of C4 explosive, with a camera system to let a soldier drive up to about 2,000 feet away. It was mainly used to identify and blow up IEDs along the roadside in Iraq. Without this, they would have sent some private... some of whom would have been killed. Not a thing that's touching a few million lives like the Amiga, but then again, the people who didn't get killed because they had a robot to send instead are presumably pretty happy they had this "toy" available.

    There are certainly other robots... our current radio, developed with funding from Homeland Security, is being used on the PackBot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PackBot) and other larger robots. A PackBot costs about $250,000 or so. In typical government behavior, the cheap robots were pretty successful, so they're not making any more. There's more being done with these expensive robots now, but only so much, because they're too expensive to just put in the back of every HumVee... they're for EOD squads only. And their default radio isn't good enough.. thus the testing with our new one. And yeah, I designed the custom hardware parts of that (does modified 802.11n, MIMO, on 5MHz and 10MHz channels, at any frequency between 400MHz and 2000MHz, with a secondary radio at 2200-2600MHz or 4500-5800MHz). It runs a proprietary mesh network... each radio is an end-point and a router. I had to teach myself hardcore RF design to build this... nothing I needed before Nomadio. I did the architecture, design, software, FPGA, and yeah, the PCB.
  • »02.06.11 - 08:49
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  • Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    Priest of the Order of the Butterfly
    boot_wb
    Posts: 874 from 2007/4/9
    From: Kingston upon ...
    Quote:

    What you're seeing is the effect of CPU swapping bitmaps from system memory to graphics memory and back to system memory on each draw, because the system is running at a high-res screen on a machine with mere 32MB of graphics memory.


    64MB Vram according to the video.

    Surprised they managed to run out of display memory so quickly, even at 1920x1200 res 32-bit triple buffered. I have never run into anything like that using multiple 32-bit triple-buffered screens at 1366x720.
    www.hullchimneyservices.co.uk

    UI: Powerbook 5,6 (1.67GHz, 128MB VRam): OS3.1, OSX 10.5.8
    HTPC: Mac Mini G4 (1,5GHz, 64MB VRam): OS3.1 (ZVNC)
    Audiophile: Efika 5200b (SB Audigy): OS3.1 (VNC + Virtual Monitor)

    Windows free since 2011!
  • »02.06.11 - 08:54
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  • Just looking around
    humantarget
    Posts: 10 from 2011/6/2
    jacadcaps,
    Quote:

    Can't agree with you on that. If a graphics operation takes a long time under a layers lock and is being performed on the input.device's context, this is what you'll get as well. Imagine doing a large, complex cpu draw leading to loads of accesses to chip ram - ouch.


    The problem is certainly that it's being done on the input device's context, rather than in the application proper. That at least explains why the UI is bogged down... input devices would be running at the same priority as Intuition... which is why you'd never want to do something that expensive this way.

    Doesn't explain the audio glitching... that should be at a higher priority. Audio needs to be realtime, web browser overhead, not so much. I guess you have to know the code... maybe there's a good reason. It's just fairly shocking to see a MacOS display outperform... well... much of anything.
  • »02.06.11 - 08:58
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  • Yokemate of Keyboards
    Yokemate of Keyboards
    Zylesea
    Posts: 2053 from 2003/6/4
    humantarget,
    Quote:

    I don't know much about MorphOS, honestly. I know it was sold as a replacement for AmigaOS. I'm convinced it's not, but not in a good way.


    Hi Dave and welcome to the Morphzone. Tone may be a bit rough here sometimes, but usually nobody gets really biten. One suggestion though: If you don't know much about MorphOS then try it out yourself! Grab a compatible computer (Efika, Pegasos 1/2, Mac mini G4, emac G4 1.25/1.42 GHz or any Powermac G4 || complete list at http://www.morphos.de/hardware.html) go to www.morphos.de, download the free iso of MorphOS 2.7, burn that to cd and boot the computer off with that cd and make your own picture. It is really easy.
    For a starter - how MorphOS looks from the Amiga user POV - you may read this very brief introduction: http://via.i-networx.de/wim.htm
    --
    http://via.bckrs.de

    Whenever you're sad just remember the world is 4.543 billion years old and you somehow managed to exist at the same time as David Bowie.
    ...and Matthias , my friend - RIP
  • »02.06.11 - 09:04
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  • MorphOS Developer
    jacadcaps
    Posts: 2968 from 2003/3/5
    From: Canada
    Quote:

    It's just fairly shocking to see a MacOS display outperform... well... much of anything.


    Well, the youtube video shows the currently worst possible scenario. Normally the whole thing works a lot faster than on OSX. For instance, you actually can play h264 720p on a Mac Mini 1.5GHz on MorphOS while it's too slow on OSX on the same machine.

    [ Edited by jacadcaps 02.06.2011 - 11:06 ]
  • »02.06.11 - 09:06
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