Coldfire Dragon

[Buleste]

Now that OS4 is being released for Classic Amigas, has anyone heard if Elbox's Dragon expansion has been cancelled or going ahead. It just seems that a coldfire chip may now be meaningless unless you're rich and once you buy a Dragon then buy a SharkPPC when they come out and plug that in but you would be talking about £1,000 if they are both ever released.

[Harrison]

I've not heard anything about the Coldfire Dragon since they held their preview event last year to show it working.

It is hard to know how well such an expansion would now sell due to OS4. The Shark PPC is definitely bound to attract more interest thanks to the PPC aspect of it. I myself am also unsure which I would buy now. Before I was sure I would buy the Coldfire Dragon, but now if the SharkPPC did get released I think I would pick that instead so I could run OS4.

[Buleste]

The main problem with the Shark is that it's PCI only so as an upgrade if you don't have a mediator card then you ned to get one whish id another £120+ on top of the Shark so neither way is going to be cheap. I think more than anything this is why we need something definate about new Amigas.

[Harrison]

I agree. The big problem at the moment is the lack of any new definite hardware. We need a proper PPC platform on which to run OS4.

If they made OS4 run natively on Power Macs that would be good (I did hear it is possible but not directly supported). I know it is a Mac and goes against all Amiga users philosophies but I've been seeing Mac Mini's selling for under £200 and one of those would be perfect for OS4.

[Zetr0]

I never understood the crazy route of PPC chips to be honnest...

there woefully slow compared to x86s of the same price!..... i think its beyond the time now, AOS should of implemented a dedicated x86 OS years ago. why build for old (near enough abandoned) technology.

every man and his dog have an x86 PC, there's nothing wrong with the hardware, there only let down by crappy OS's and poor BIOS's.... all would need is some enterpising company to realize this, buy a cheap but functional OS and start shifting boxes



Amiga OS for x86!!!!

[Harrison]

Exactly what I've been saying for years! They could just go the way of Linux and develop it to run on any PC box. The community would quickly adopt it and driver development would snowball. There is definitely still enough interest in the Amiga to warrant such development. Imagine Amiga OS running on a quad 2.6GHz PC.

Sadly I don't think we will see this unless something major suddenly changed.

As for PPC chips. It is puzzling why they never developed them quite in the same way as x86 compatible chip development.

The only reason I can think is that most PPC development branched off years ago and went into using PPC chips to control industrial machinery, as well as household white goods. Something they are very well suited too due to low power consumption and minimal heat output. Well, that is as long as you don't include the G5, which was developed purely because Apple pushed them enough to develop it. The G5 could heat a whole house given half a chance. And actually the lack of interest in developing PPC for computers was the real reason Apple jumped ship and started x86 exclusive development.

[Zetr0]

Apple = style over substance
M$ = no substance or style

Workbench...... still years ahead in all that counts