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[downix]

cicero790 wrote:
downix you said:The Amiga was about being the next big thing. Frankly, there is no NBT in desktops. There is, however, in smaller, lightweight products. And the Amiga, and MorphOS, are uniquely situated to such markets. Instant-on, multitasking, and scalable. And the weakness of the design, not so relevent anymore once you get to that scale.

I say: I can see your point. And agree. But I have a different view about Amiga's possibility to snatch back market shares and finding its place next to PC and MAC. And why? because being in the Amiga OS is an experience, that is special.

And out of date. 10 years ago, you could make the claim still for it's features. Now, it's a quaint novelty system for a desktop. The last big chance was in the early parts of this decade, but that ship has sailed.

Yes, a case can be made, and I've made it in other threads, but we have to be realistic here. None of us have the cash to do what needs to be done. We can do this for fun, and if we stick to it being fun, we will never die.

If someone came to me tomorrow saying "I've bought out Hyperion and AmigaInc, and hired the MorphOS guys, I have $12 million in the bank, and I need the best team to develop a machine" then yes, I'd be all over that. I don't see that happening, but stranger things have happened.

[Hammer]

downix wrote:

Not that much different, save MIPS now has a Chinese firm pushing it hard in that rapidly growing economy. PPC has also grown.

x86 does scale, but not as completely as other options for a reasonable price. New MIPS netbook announced last week, $100. New x86 netbook announced last week, same features, $350.
.

They don't have the same features. Have you factored in the GPU?

According to http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10038054-1.html
This $100 MIPS based netbook comes with 400Mhz CPU, 64MB RAM, Wi-Fi, Ethernet, three USB ports, 1GB flash storage and an SDHC card slot.

This is matched by AMD Geode based OLPC.

http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/laptop-inspiron-9
Dell's Inspiron Mini 9 comes with Intel Atom CPU(1.6GHz, 512KB L2 Cache, 533MHz FSB with HT), Intel Integrated Graphics Media Accelerator 950, 512MB RAM and a 4GB solid state drive. Starting from $350 USD.

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4526797348.html
(MIPS based )Loongson 2F 900Mhz manufactured by STMicroelectronics
Memory -- 512MB DDR2
Flash storage -- 8GB or 16GB flash G-Key
USB -- 3 x ports (one used for G-Key). No USB 2.0 support is claimed, although the 2F in theory supports it
SD -- 1 x SD HC port
Display -- 10-inch, 1024 x 600 LCD powered by Silicon Motion SM502 (16MB RAM)
Networking -- 10/100Mbps Ethernet (RJ45)
WiFi -- 802.11 b/g
Starting from $450 USD.

So, which one can play Quake 3 OpenGL?

[warpdesign]

Obviously you're entitled to have your opinion, but I don't agree with it. If you feel I'm wrong, you can always prove me wrong by starting your own x86 OS and making it successful. Good luck.

What's the definition of "successfull" in that context ?
Do you consider MorphOS currently successfull ? Why (not) ?

[thecount22]

I think this is one of only valid technical comments in this discussion so I will try to respond to it.

Originally Posted by mschulz

It's not. The community would expect that you are able to run all your existing m68k and ppc software on such x86 MOS. With MOS (and AmigaOS in general) design it is not feasible. Don't use Rosetta of OSX as an example because it's wrong one. Small example: on OSX a process has a PID assigned - unique identifier. If you will call FindTask(NULL) MOS and/or AmigaOS, you will receive a pointer to the struct Task, the very same structure MOS is using internally. Try to deal with it and find a sane solution for Little-endian system (with little-endian layout of all system structures) and big-endian software running on emulated PPC and using the very same little-endian layouted system structures (the software would expect them to be big endian though).

There is a very obvious solution to this problem. You can simply store the structures in big-endian format even on x86. This on it's own would turn into a programming nightmare however for writing new applications you would use functions like htons, ntohs, ntohl and htonl even on 68k and/or PPC to make sure the code is portable between big-endian and little-endian systems. As a result x86 would be making many more conversions than 68k and/or PPC software but it would greatly simplify the compatibility between the two. Secondly I would argue that most amiga software today is either 68k or PPC and the very small penalty that you get from doing conversions when using x86 code would not really be a problem. After all TCP/IP is big-endian but that hasn't stopped us from using it on little-endian machines.

Originally Posted by mschulz

OSX is an example of an operating system which separates userland from kernel space. On MOS they are basically the same.



I'm sorry to disappoint you, but PPC NT was running PowerPC cpu in little endian mode.


and from another message:



Prove they are wrong then. No, giving an example is not enough. Prove them, that you may do such transition with Amiga-like operating system.



Simply. We didn't cared about the binary compatibility. Therefore, you are not able to run x86 AROS software on PPC AROS and vice versa. Keep in mind however, that if the amiga community wants MOS or OS4 on x86, they will demand to be able to run m68k and/or PPC software through a built-in transpared emulator integrated tightly into the system. That's the point. I, an AROS developer, don't care about it actually, but most people here do care.



You seem to be new here ). Most people in Amiga community want it. The people here don't care x86 unless you would be able to run original m68k and ppc software on x86 without recompilation. Not to mention they will be very unhappy if you would suggest running such old m68k software on x86 MOS through UAE. They would likely hate you for having such crazy idea

If they would never mind it, they would support projects like AROS with pleasure. But no, most people expect AROS developers to make the integrated m68k emu for AROS.

[runequester]

4 years later we finally got closure

[Digiman]

Never have closure now with such a fractured group enjoying the 'Amiga' hmmmm

As for x86 MorphOS, it's not financially viable for them. They need to make money on their projects otherwise no more MorphOS team doing anything for any CPU.

[Akiko]

According to takemehomegrandma , MorphOS is moving to Arm.

[psxphill]

Originally Posted by thecount22

There is a very obvious solution to this problem. You can simply store the structures in big-endian format even on x86. This on it's own would turn into a programming nightmare however for writing new applications you would use functions like htons, ntohs, ntohl and htonl even on 68k and/or PPC to make sure the code is portable between big-endian and little-endian systems.

You're better off with AROS running in little endian on x86 with an emulator running AROS on 68k that transparently links the two environments.

You'll never achieve an x86 kernel that can run x86 or 68k software that automatically can link to either a 68k or x86 library. We don't even have a version of UAE that can run PPC software.

[runequester]

Originally Posted by Akiko

According to takemehomegrandma , MorphOS is moving to Arm.

ARM is the new holy grail I guess.

As an aside, on a technical level, how does Mac OS does it with universal binaries that run on both X86 and powerPC ?

[commodorejohn]

OSX universal binaries just have both x86 and PPC binaries packed into one file, that's all. (You can actually get tools to strip out whichever one you don't need to save space.) Intel OSX did have a dynamically-recompiling emulator called Rosetta for running non-universal PPC software, but quit providing it by default in 10.6 and cut support altogether in 10.7 onwards.

[haywirepc]

I never tried intel osx and rosetta, how well did it run powerpc osx apps?

[itix]

Originally Posted by psxphill

You're better off with AROS running in little endian on x86 with an emulator running AROS on 68k that transparently links the two environments.

You'll never achieve an x86 kernel that can run x86 or 68k software that automatically can link to either a 68k or x86 library.

Amithlon can execute 68k and x86 code and binaries can link to each other.

http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/emulators/amithlon.html
http://aminet.net/search?arch[]=i386-amithlon

But here x86 binaries are using modified compiler where endianess is swapped automatically (IIRC?).

[commodorejohn]

Originally Posted by haywirepc

I never tried intel osx and rosetta, how well did it run powerpc osx apps?

Dunno, I've never owned an Intel Mac. (Might as well just get a PC, as far as I'm concerned.)

[bloodline]

Originally Posted by haywirepc

I never tried intel osx and rosetta, how well did it run powerpc osx apps?

Better in many cases than the native PPC due to the much more powerful intel chip

-edit- I should add that my last PPC was a 1.5Ghz G4, and the intel Mac was a 2Ghz CoreDuo... So it was able to emulate the PPC very well!

[thecount22]

Originally Posted by psxphill

You're better off with AROS running in little endian on x86 with an emulator running AROS on 68k that transparently links the two environments.

You'll never achieve an x86 kernel that can run x86 or 68k software that automatically can link to either a 68k or x86 library. We don't even have a version of UAE that can run PPC software.

And this assumption is based on what facts exactly?