AmigaOS4 for Classic - 30th November

[Harrison]

That is a good point! I hadn't thought about that but you are right, if OS4 is released for classic Amigas it will surely put a huge demand on the rare PPC accelerators and the price will shoot up. Now would be the perfect time for a manufacturer to have a new PPC card paused for manufacter ready for the OS4 launch.

[Puni/Void]

I agree with you about that. Maybe Elbox will release something? They have quite a few products in the pipeline, according to their homepage. Will be interesting to see if something hits the shops soon.

Anyway, I'm a bit afraid of the escalating prices, as I don't have a big fat wallet full of cash to spend on Amiga gear. If the prices on PPC stuff rises, I don't think I'll be able to buy it any time soon. Will have to save up for that! If they remain stagnant, things will be a bit different.

Just wish they could release Amiga OS 4 for new-school hardwares, so that it could be used with the new SAM board. That would have been great to see.

[Harrison]

The best plan would be to make OS4 compatible with all PPC based machines. Then we could buy a cheap Mac Mini (£200 new now!) and run OS4 on that. It would be small and look nice, and would be a great solution.

I think the biggest problem for the Amiga One and all other recent PPC based systems developed is that they are all proprietary designs needing a lot of time and money spent on them to develop, test and produce. This has been the big problem as the companies doing this are always small and can't eventually cope with the manufacturing cost or demands required. Plus the limited manufacturing costs have increase the hardware prices for the customers.

If we could get OS4 for any PPC system imagine all those older PPC powered Macs out there that users are ditching to move to Intel Macs at the moment!

[Stephen Coates]

OS4 already does run on Mac Minis with Moana. It would just be nice if ACube would release the programme, but I expect that they can't for legal reasons. Or they just want to ensure that people buy their products if OS4 is made avaliable for it, rather than everyone buying old Macs.

I am bidding on a PPC card on ebay at the moment. I should be able to afford one if I sell my 1230.

Hopefully, we might see some Sharks soon as well.

[Buleste]

After visiting the hyperion page and then A-cube it looks like OS4 classic will be a bit longer. At the moment it only runs on A3000(t) and A4000(T) with PPC boards they've yet to announce a version for the A1200 and Blizzard PPC and then they're not even sure what hardware is compatable. Sounds like Hyperion are just making Big announcements without being able to back them up. I'd love to have a PPC OS running on my 200mhz 603e but as MorphOS is tempremental and you need an internet capable Amiga to run it longer than 2hrs and OS4 for the 1200 may never come out. Then we go onto what graphics cards will be needed so it's going to be even more expense. I think this may be another Shark PPC, sounds great but if it ever materializes it will be too expensive to bother with.

[Harrison]

Hi Blueste and welcome to the forum

That is bad news if there isn't actually any firm confirmation of the compatibility of OS4 classic.

Is this because each PPC accelerator is created in a completely different way, because there was never an actual reference standard, that they just can't create OS code that will run on any PPC processor regardless of the manufacturer?

Seems a mad situation to be in, to have PPC equipped Amiga's out there and not to code the first PPC Amiga OS to directly support them all. There are not actually that many variations and different PPC accelerators after all.

[Buleste]

I think it's possibly due to the various PPC kernals and what seems to have been a bit of a botch job by Phase5 when they first made the boards. Then on top of that there is the IDE problems with the 1200 as it looks as though all the IDE interfaces use differing methods to work and with no direction given to third party hardware developers by Amiga Inc everything is just patches and hacks with no standard. The other thing is Hyperion will not have every bit of hardware to test everything on so there's no guarantees that different combinations of hardware will be compatable. Maybe i'm just a bit pessimistic after all these years of broken promises but i do want my beloved Amiga to get into the 21st century or at least late 1990's with a fast, powerfull OS and OS4 could be it if it ever comes out.

For more information on the compatability of OS4 classic goto http://www.acube-systems.com/compatibility/

[Harrison]

I think the only solution because of this is for the developers of OS4 classic to work with a hardware manufacturer and create a PPC accelerator bundle for A1200 owners. I know that many still don't yet have a PPC for their systems so being able to buy a compatible one with OS4 bundled together would be a solution many would be willing to buy.

Also as we have all been waiting for so long already, even many with an existing PPC board would probably buy into that too just so they finally have a directly supported hardware solution.

I've always thought that will all the third party companies producing hardware for the A1200 to expand it beyond it's original design is great, why they never got together and actually developed a reference design for them all to work from was madness. It would have reduced manufacturing costs too.

[Buleste]

Let's face it cooperation between companies has never been the Amiga way. I think if Hyperion had worked with Elbox then there could have been a joint Shark PPC and OS4 Classic launch but even then you would have to buy a mediator PCI board so for the price of a super fast PC with all the bells and whistles you can have an Amiga running the OS we should have had 5 years ago with very little in the way of New software.
Another worrying thing about the Acube site was that the screen shots were from a A4000 running OS4 but also an AmigaOne. Could they not get the 4000 to ren everything???

[Harrison]

but even then you would have to buy a mediator PCI board so for the price of a super fast PC with all the bells and whistles you can have an Amiga running the OS we should have had 5 years ago with very little in the way of New software.

While this is very true, we do have to admit that the Amiga is no longer a mainstream well supported platform and is instead a platform for Amiga enthusiasts. This will always cost more than any mainstream platform due to the proprietary hardware. If we want to enjoy the Amiga then we have to pay the premium.

I'm currently still quite sceptical over OS4 actually every launching as a finished product. How long as it now been in development?

Ever since Commodore went out of business we have seen a lot of companies promising the Amiga community new hardware or software and the companies with the biggest claimed have never delivered and instead just faded away without any follow up announcements.

Look at the Dragon Coldfire for example. How long ago was that meant to be ready? It was first announced in 2004, and they showed the preview of it over a year ago and still nothing. Elbox's last update about it is even dated November 2006! And this is a product I have been wanting to buy since it was announced as I'm more interested in running 68K Amiga code than PPC and this would have been perfect.