Opinion: PPC, 68080 and other

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by NorthWay

There is still Mill who are betting their boat against the commonly accepted truth of that. I'm a bit worried about the silence from that direction, because I like a _lot_ of their ideas. (If I was to do a 64bit Amiga-like (SAS)OS I'd hope they would deliver so it could be my target.)

Yes I followed that project and watched most of the scholar videos, they released. (witch are really interesting, independent of the project itself)

I really hoped they could manage to produce something ... but sadly there is nothing. AFAIK not even the FPGA implementation is open to the public and there is no usable simulator ...

"It's dead, Jim"

[LazarX]

Originally Posted by pix

Pimiga is a great combo of emulator and hardware and on a Pi400 it almost captures the feel of having an Amiga very well, so I'm happy with that end of things.

If I was going to opt to use an OS on off the shelf hardware, while I liked the look of MorphOS and tried it on an iBook the idea of owning Apple hardware to run Amiga makes me feel a bit.... dirty.

Why should it? Apple made some very nice hardware during it's 68k and PPC period. The original cheese grater G5s were a joy to tinker with and were the most accessible machines ever made. It's later OS is a direct descedant of UNIX itself. There are a lot of legitimate reasons to dump on Apple. But they truly put out a UNIX you can give to Grandma. AndI still have fond memories of our Mac IIci.

Would really hope the Amiga will one day get standardized on OS 4 with either Moto or PPC redesigns at higher power and its own chipsets to really offer Amiga developers a way to flex the differences of an Amiga against anything else.

In a world where we have to choose between boring ol x86 and an endless stream of ARM, we need that!

At this point, 3.2 and MorphOS are the only items that look like they have active development.

[pix]

Originally Posted by LazarX

Why should it? Apple made some very nice hardware during it's 68k and PPC period. The original cheese grater G5s were a joy to tinker with and were the most accessible machines ever made. It's later OS is a direct descedant of UNIX itself. There are a lot of legitimate reasons to dump on Apple. But they truly put out a UNIX you can give to Grandma. AndI still have fond memories of our Mac IIci.

I'm sorry, I understand you have fond memories of your experience with Apple computers, but I don't share them and I am rabidly anti-Apple, so I mean no offense when I vent. They have made "some" interesting looking hardware over the years I suppose? See their OS releases as rather pointless though if I'm being honest.

If it makes a difference, I think I more or less feel the same way about running an Amiga on Apple badged hardware, as I would on Google badged, or Microsoft badged hardware. At least with a PC I can make it look however I want it to look and install whatever I want to install.

I'm afraid to that Apple and that logo to me = hype an conceit. The company should have died out in the 90's and been left dead and buried, but the cabal had to bail out their silicon valley buds and continue to gift us with those few people in marketing, graphic design, or execs who would find any excuse to spend triple the amount required on a computer that has only one mouse button, simply because they were apparently so enthralled by the idea of that minimalist schtick.

MacOS may have hid its BSD underbelly well, but I'm not sure why Granny needs to use that? And I am not at all thankful for the iPhone and iPad - which are still lapped up model after turd model by Apple grazers who, as a group, have literally destroyed device diversity, competition and realistic pricing in the way Apple does best. Now people pay $1500+ for a new phone release and they are "oh so grateful" to be locked into 3 year cell contracts and force me to support that turd of a mobile OS simply because the Youtube adverts showed them a new shiny. I can't believe we lost Windows Mobile or even Windows Phone, Blackberry and Nokia Symbian plus countless other far more interesting OS and devices to that stain called an iPhone - and replaced them with an endless stream of clones which look identical apart from where a notch appears, or how bulky the camera lenses are. Yeah - I am not the least bit thankful to Apple computers, phones or users personally

Yes, I really do hate Apple as a company and my experience with its userbase has not been a good one

You might just find me agreeing on the G4/G5 desktops however - they were really nice pieces of equipment and some of the Mac Pro all-in-one's are also very nice and I do own one of those that I repaired and keep around for display.

At this point, 3.2 and MorphOS are the only items that look like they have active development.

I think you are right - however, without new PPC equipment MorphOS is running out of road. Of the Mac hardware it supports, some of it is quite terrible. And yes, to reiterate - it makes me feel a bit grubby having my Boing ball hosted inside a machine with an Apple badge. I hope you can understand

Its a pity that AROS can't get as far as MorphOS has. Looks like it is going to be Amiga OS3.2 after all?

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Gorf

But the slots where not equal:
2 for integer operations and two for floating point.
And only one integer-slot is connected to the barrel-shifter, so only that slot can do multiplications and shifts, while only the other integer-slot can do branching.

So if you need a lot of integer multiplications in a row (like early 3D shooters) you are essentially down to a single issue CPU again.

Alpha 21264 (1998) could to out-of-order execution, but this is still very limited compared to todays CPUs. Well but so could Pentium Pro since 1995.

In terms of OOO there is no distinct RISC advantage - all architectures need to throw a lot of silicone on to it, to make it happen.

To avoid this Intel had the glorious idea to let the compiler do the re-ordering and give the CPU a very long instruction word instead: EPIC
And everyone thought: "This is the way!"
Well ... not so much.
Turns out there is not that much parallelism in the instruction flow of a single thread in real world applications.

Modern CPUs may not equal pipelines.

[klx300r]

Originally Posted by LazarX

..,At this point, 3.2 and MorphOS are the only items that look like they have active development.

the Cloanto/Hyperion lawsuit has definitely slowed down OS4 development but there's quit alot still going on with OS4 over at amigans.net and A-Eon/Amigakit are still producing new OS4 hardware with the X5000 and recently released A1220 and also ACube with their Sam460 line,

[Minuous]

Originally Posted by pix

I'm afraid to that Apple and that logo to me = hype an conceit. The company should have died out in the 90's

Or better yet, the '70s :-D

[pix]

Originally Posted by Minuous

Or better yet, the '70s :-D

Haha ... that's a bit mean. It would definitely have saved me a lot of tech related angst over the years, but robbed others of the joy Apple computers brought them back in the day - which I do understand of course.

I mean I also experience ambivalence myself because I know that Apple have been a catalyst for some positive developments. For example, I have a picture of the original colourful iMac CRT all-in-one on my wall. They didn't event the all-in-one but they made it a desirable object. Likewise they didn't invent the tablet, but they refined the form factor and made it palatable so that normies finally were able to see what techie people had seen a decade earlier.

However, they are otherwise basically the tech equivalent of the Necromongers in Riddick

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by pix

MacOS may have hid its BSD underbelly well, but I'm not sure why Granny needs to use that?

Maybe not your Granny, but me

Despite all the hate and justified complaints of what Apple is sometimes doing:
They managed to deliver a system that fulfills many things the Amiga(OS) was aiming for. The combination of an easy to use and intuitive user interface, while still providing good access to its "underbelly" via a CLI: in this case a full blown unix shell.

MacOS has now also a very nice implementation of the "screens" concept. Programs can run on their own screen and this screen can be "dragged" (left to right and not up and down, but who cares). You can also split the view on your monitor and have two screens next to each other at the same time.
Taking it a step further than AmigaOS almost every window can be turned into a full screen view and the app can adjust its GUI to accommodate for that.

And these screens are of course no longer bound to just live on one monitor, but can be dragged to a second or third monitor, if you have those connected.
And any window can be moved to any public screen as well.

"Stage Manager" is a feature that I just turned on recently ... after thinking I would certainly not need/want that for a long time. Turned out I was wrong, because it is actually very useful.
You can group windows together and switch between those groups in a nice way - windows of the group you are using are shown on the screen, while other groups are minified to a spezial area on the left side of the screen, that slides in and out (different from the dock, that is organized per app/program and not per window/group)

All in all MacOS right now still provides the best user experience for power users, that prefer a streamlined intuitive user interface, while granting you all the things unix or linux would on the command line.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by klx300r

the Cloanto/Hyperion lawsuit has definitely slowed down OS4 development but there's quit alot still going on with OS4 over at amigans.net and A-Eon/Amigakit are still producing new OS4 hardware with the X5000 and recently released A1220 and also ACube with their Sam460 line,

Litigation lawyer Ben Herman's lawsuit against Cloanto is bankrolled by A-EON's Trevor Dickinson. https://sites.google.com/site/amigad...-gray-eminence


From https://sites.google.com/site/amigad...ent-vs-amiga-2

Current Status
In April 2023, falsely claiming "complete success" in the legal case, and eager to quickly secure a ruling granting it attorney's fees, Hyperion Entertainment agreed with Cloanto and the Amiga Parties to give up - with prejudice - all of its counterclaims [378] in return for a faster decision.

In the misplaced certainty that it would win, Hyperion Entertainment, led by "Intellectual Property litigator with over 20 years of relevant experience" Mr. Ben Hermans [303] and relentlessly backed by its millionaire shareholder, money lender, customer, secret "free everything beneficiary" [268][377] and secret co-owner of assets Mr. Robert Trevor Dickinson, also personally charged Mr. Mike Battilana and Mr. Gordon Troy with claims worth up to half a million dollars (considering $356,629.00 in fees and the potential for damages and sanctions), if not more.

The court satisfied [379] Hyperion Entertainment's wish to give up its counterclaims, but denied [381] its request for attorney's fees and to hold Mr. Mike Battilana and attorney Mr. Gordon Troy personally liable and sanctionable. Disagreeing with Hyperion Entertainment, the judge concluded that Cloanto and Amiga brought the action in good faith, and that their position was not unreasonable.

Hyperion Entertainment's aggressive gamble also cost it claims that included perceived mishandlings of Amiga trademarks by the Amiga Parties, as well as interference with the 2009 Settlement Agreement. These claims, which were pillars of Hyperion Entertainment's expensive legal case against Cloanto and the Amiga Parties, were dismissed with prejudice, meaning that Hyperion Entertainment may never bring them up again.

As of May 2023, a "Mediation Questionnaire" [380] submitted by Cloanto and the Amiga Parties provides a good recap of the current status. https://docs.google.com/file/d/1XkeT...i1O8BkGxI/edit

[klx300r]

@ hammer

Hopefully that legal mumbo jumbo means that the law suits are finally finished and done with

[TCD]

Originally Posted by klx300r

@ hammer

Hopefully that legal mumbo jumbo means that the law suits are finally finished and done with

Just the counterclaims. AFAIK the 'main' claims are still not settled.