@COBRA Quote:
I think that you accidentally make the point that Amiga hardware developments are always going to be FAR behind the x86 world, so that people complaining about "lack" of GHz (compared to x86) are always going to be disappointed:

It is quite arguable that 1.33 GHz is "underpowered" for a modern system in a year or two (if not now already). How are we going to decode Blueray in real time? (Never mind whether this is a sensible thing to be want to do on an Amiga.) How are we going to do play Doom 3, after the source code is released? (Never mind our lack of a modern & efficient OpenGL implementation.) How are we going to do all the latest whizz bang things from the Windows world? (Never mind that those wanting that are always going to be disappointed, because we will always be playing catch-up.)

IMHO we should be enjoying the strengths of the AmigaOS & Amiga hardware, rather than trying to compete with x86 (which we can never do).

@COBRA Quote:
Of course you can, you simply make the x86 act like a big-endian CPU, by modifying GCC to generate extra byte-swapping instructions on memory accesses.

And this has already been done for Amithlon years ago, proving it works. The overhead is also apparently quite small, especially when you consider x86 runs 3GHz compared to 0.5 to 1.0 GHz of our PPC machines.


Sadly there are valid reasons why OS4 won't go x86, but this isn't one of them.

@cygnusEd Quote:
Great to hear that.

Rigo wrote:Quote:
It's worth pointing out that Rigo was talking about system-friendly applications (which you run from Workbench), rather than old games.

The old games (which usually booted from floppy disk) need an Amiga emulator to run, since they expect the Amiga's old chipset (which is not present in modern Amigas). We have E-UAE to run such stuff on AmigaOS 4.

There are also some ports of non-Amiga games (such as Quake 2 & 3), although it seems there are a few bugs that need fixing for them to work well on the Sam440 & OS4.1.

@cygnusEd
Regarding AmiCygnix performance on Sam440, the main speed problem seems to be scrolling - you can see the CPU redrawing the bitmap at the new position. Same goes dragging windows in AmiCygnix.

If AmiCygnix could somehow use blitter-like operations (i.e let the gfx card do the work rather than the CPU), then I think AmiCygnix would be really FAAAAAST.


A secondary, more minor problem is that you can see large parts of GUI (in AbiWord) refreshing when you do something like type text. Ideally it would avoid refreshing stuff it doesn't need to, but I guess this is a problem with the design of AbiWord, and not easily solved.

@LyleHaze
ah ha, I can see how you could misinterpret that strange (English?) phrase. By "to boot" I meant "also".

@Slayer Quote:
Yes & no: The AmigaOne had it's CPU put on a separate plug-in card, because people were demanding upgradability, BUT this vastly increased the complexity & cost of AmigaOnes. And such motherboards are still limited to whatever max speed they was designed to handle.

Are you prepared for the motherboard to take several times as long to develop, and cost twice as much? It'll also take up much more space, and be less reliable to boot.


I'm afraid that as far as expandability goes, PCI (and now PCI-Express) is as good as it gets.

@swoodall Quote:
We discovered at North Amiga Thames that my Sam440 does not like an old Hub we have (no network connectivity at all, not ping or anything), yet the same Hub works fine with other Amigas (inc OS4.1 on A1).

Switching to a different Hub solved the problem.

Conclusion was that this old Hub probably used 10Mbit only or maybe half-duplex or something like that, and the Sam ethernet driver was not able to handle that.

@TSK
CxInstall sounds like a good idea! People are lazy, so anything that makes it easy to try-out stuff is good (I'd use it!). But some suggestions:

1. Please COPY the commodity to WbStartup, not move. (a) This is much less likely to go wrong or get confused, and (b) uninstall is always delete.

2. Group commodities in some fashion. One mega list can be very off-putting.

@tommo1975
My thinking was that you want as much space for your Data as possible, although that of course depends on exactly what you plan to do with it.

I would also suggest another 1GB partition for a backup *copy* of OS4/Workbench. That way you can easily boot into it if you manage to screw-up your primary boot partition, rather than having to fiddle with the BIOS to boot the OS4 CD. There are programs you can use to occasionally update the backup partition (the fact that it is an OS partition makes no difference).

P.S. I always refer to my boot partition as "Workbench", even though the Workbench is technically just the GUI part of AmigaOS, because historically that was what Commodore called the AmigaOS for users in days gone by.

@tommo1975
While I said "medium to large size" for the Programs partition, I would also say that 40GB is going to be *humongous* for Amiga programs & games:

All the Amiga programs I've accumulated over the years (including a large email folder stored in SimpleMail's program directory) comes to 1.1GB. Similarly, all the Amiga games I've accumulated over 15+ years (inc. Doom & Quake 1 stuff) comes to 2GB.

So IMHO 10GB is probably sufficient for all your needs, although maybe 20GB if you really want to future-proof yourself against ports of huge Windows programs & games.

@Mikey_C
If the snow doesn't stop me :)

@tommo1975
1. Amiga will treat it as a blank HD, because Amiga uses RDB (Rigid Disk Block) for organising HDs, while Windows uses MBR (Master Boot Record). edit: You can mount Windows partitions with some effort, but you cannot mix Windows & Amiga partitions.

2. JXF is the new filing system, while SFS is a newer (than FFS) third-party filingsystem. SFS/00 (32-bit) can be used for the boot partition, while SFS/02 (64-bit) cannot. I personally recommend SFS over JXF.


BTW, 20GB is ridiculous for a boot partition - AmigaOS is not Windows, you do not put all your programs & data on the "C" partition. I personally have an 800MB partition, although 1-2GB would also be reasonable.

For AmigaOS you have two common partition arrangements beyond the small OS/Workbench partition:
1. A large "Work" partition, where you put all your programs, games & data.
2. A medium to large "Programs" partition, where you put all your programs (and games), and a large "Data" partition, where you put all your data files.

You may of course have additional partitions beyond these. I use arrangement 2, but have a separate "Games" partition, and a 1GB-ish "Temp" partition (for big temporary files like ISO images, etc).

@Troika Quote:
1. Plan goes wrong once - that's bad luck.
2. Plan goes wrong twice - that's incompetence.

So, exactly what happened to both your (1) Amy'05 board, and (2) your Panda board? We are NOT looking for excuses, we are looking for explanations that would allow us to take you seriously again.

Quote:
After all your failed promises & misleading posts, calling anyone (and everyone) who doesn't believe your every word a troll is ridiculous & frankly insulting the intelligence of everyone here.

Please start answering your critics - or else be quiet until you can demo OS4.1 on a prototype of your motherboard (and not a reference motherboard).


P.S. For more information at what I hinted at, please read my AmigaWorld posts here and here.

P.P.S. If your THIRD plan (Athena) goes wrong, then that is probably malice (or else unbelievably extreme incompetence).

@ghack22
Yeah, remember that AHI has 5 units, all of which need be unmuted (how stupid is that for the default? No other OS does that.)

@tommo1975
The printed manual that comes with OS4.1 has a pretty good guide to installing it on the Sam440 . However there were a couple of small omissions, so someone not knowlegable about AmigaOS might have problems.

Someone kindly created their own guide, which may be worth trying:
http://rapidshare.com/files/188761017 ... _4.1_Sam440EP_English.pdf

edit: The latest version can be downloaded from here:
http://faranheit.dyndns.org:8080/Inst ... _4.1_Sam440EP_English.pdf

@brotsalami
Not sure where I got the impression that it accepts Flex-ATX, but this seems to confirm it:
"The case is set up to accept either mini-ITX form factor or Flex-ATX form factor"
(it is also a very nice review, which I do remember looking at before purchasing it)

edit: That review is for the Morex 668, but the 669 seems almost identical (the front facia is different).

Has anyone spoken to FryingPan's author about it's (apparently) slow speed on the Sam440?

@Mikey_C
Sadly it is only being written by Doug Naylor, and not Rob Grant (the other half of "Grant Naylor"), who was responsible for the (IMHO) less-than-spectacular 7th & 8th series (the ones with wizzy modern 3D graphics rather than models on strings).

Not to say that 7th & 8th series were BAD, just not up to the consistent awesomeness of the previous series IMHO.

Beware that a 256MB gfx-card is currently not supported, apparently 128MB is the maximum currently supported. I hope 256MB is supported in the future, since I already bought one (untested in my Sam)...

I think Flex is slightly better option, but it entirely depends on your needs.

Here is the case I use for my Sam, which I *believe* should also house the Flex version:
http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=10542
(Get them while they are still in stock! LinItx seems like a good company.)