“At this point, I would recommend against anyone buying a piece of hardware from the Pegasos people because their firmware is SO BUSTED that it makes Apple roms look like hot sh**”.” These are the words of the infamous Theo de Raadt, the OpenBSD founder. Theo cited problems with the BIOS of the Pegasos and other difficulties during the development of the OpenBSD port to the Pegasos platform.Theo’s two posts are here and here, Mitch B. Parker’s explanation of the overall events and the… sabotage attempts is here and Dale Rahn’s incredible story of his (unpaid) porting effort is here (Dale seems to be a good and responsible system software engineer, but out of a job because of the incidents described in his post, so if any OS/embedded/system-software companies need his services please contact him, resume here).
Another OS developer –who shall remain anonymous– had major trouble booting his OS using network, serial or floppy during the porting process. The only booting method that worked was to write the file out to the hard drive, reboot, boot from that, repeat. That was very time consuming and not a flexible/productive way to port an OS to a new platform, he told us.
“If $10000 is all that he’s wasted on court costs, that begs the question how on earth he expected to pay his consultants the amounts that he promised them.”
Could you please explain your logic here? Even though the joke on this side of the pond is that when you start a business in US the third employee HAS to be a lawyer I would still think that expecting to be more able to pay the developers the more you spend in legal bills just makes no sense. Unless you’re SCO. And even then it is a very bad business plan as we shall see.
As to your comments about Amiga and Apple, they, unlike Genesi, have developed platforms in the past, they have experience. If I have understood correctly Genesi started from scratch with no prior experience.
(I had to see why I got hits referred from OSNews…)
Your idiotic jpg may be funny when preaching to the choir, but I find it unconvincing.
It’s meant to be funny (in a tragicomical sort of way), but it’s entirely accurate. It’s not an opinion of any choir: The Amiga is dead and AmigaOS will finally be made for third party hardware, but AmigaOS is still screwed by the invention of a separated and restricted “Amiga hardware market” for such third party hardware.
Only the “screwed” bit above is opinion, but I don’t think it’s far fetched to believe that it’s idiotic to make the whole point of running on 3rd party hardware moot and to deliberately construct a situation that even possibly could reduce any chances that a reborn AmigaOS might have.
Some people seem to wish that the Terons sold as “AmigaOnes” were “special” and somehow different from other Terons, and refuse to accept reality. I don’t understand the reasoning behind that wish. Do these fanatics actually want the even lower volumes, the even higher prices, the even slower development and so on that this would mean, just to be “special” in an entirely meaningless way?
Luckily, things aren’t THAT bad. The Terons that Eyetech buy are exactly the same as any other Teron. The design that Eyetech license is not exclusive to Eyetech, any changes done to the Teron design are implemented in all boards regardless of distributor.
That quote you posted, Jack, is from the Eyetech(!) CEO, and what he says there is, as can be expected, simply not true. BTW, it’s an old quote and I think he’s stopped peddling those fairy tales quite a while ago, but I’ll debunk them again for the newcomers.
MAI logic are a chipset manufacturer, not a PPC motherboard manufacturer, but they had commissioned a low volume, high cost evaluation board, the Teron Cx, to help sell their chipsets.
Where the physical boards are fabbed is of course irrelevant. Only Mai Logic design Teron boards (a.k.a. “AmigaOne”, “Boxer”, “Dragon”). Eyetech sold the Teron CX as “AmigaOne SE”, and yes, of course it was a low volume and high cost evaluation board (though that didn’t stop Eyetech from adding a further $300 to the pricetag). Now they sell the Teron PX (“AmigaOne XE”), and soon they’ll sell the Teron Mini (“Micro AmigaOne”). Of course, Eyetech aren’t manufacturers either, and they most certainly aren’t designing any motherboards, so I wonder if there was a point with that statement of his.
We therefore asked them if they could recommend a design company who was familiar with using the Articia S in PPC motherboard design. They recommended the same (Far Eastern) company that designed their Teron Cx evaluation board.
That was a blatant lie. All Teron (and thus “AmigaOne”, et c.) boards are designed in house by Mai themselves. Mainly by Bill Mueller at Mai, to be precise. Eyetech is a computer retailer and IIRC a former printing company with frequently displayed ignorance on rather basic contemporary technical matters (they do seem to know their Amigas – the “classics” – inside out though). Bill Mueller is a hardware engineer and the one who designed the hardware we’re talking about. It’s easy to see who’s right. Furthermore I doubt there are any companies that are “familiar with using the Articia S in PPC motherboard design” other than Mai themselves, Tratech (“Barbie”) and bPlan (“Pegasos 1”). The two latter companies have now dropped the ArticiaS, and they have never designed anything for Eyetech.
… the specifications (ATA speed, integrated ethernet, custom firmware, number of active PCI/AGP slots etc)…
Which are exactly the same on all respective Teron models regardless who distributes them and what trademarks they use, including Eyetech and the “AmigaOnes”.
The only thing “custom” about the firmware in Terons sold by Eyetech is (or will be – I don’t think any boards have yet been sold with this included) their “Amiga hardware market” monopoly protection code that’s added. This has no technical function, and of course it doesn’t have anything to do with the board design. It’s an added alphanumerical sequence to a software file that happens to be flashed on a chip instead of e.g. saved on a disk for crying out loud!
… and the price …
Yes.
Teron PX RRP: $500
Teron PX sold as Terrasoft “Boxer”: $500
Teron PX sold as Eyetech “AmigaOne XE” RRP: $800
Mai’s 4 figure price is for a developer’s kit, if anyone here is planning to design hardware using the Articia S. It became popular to quote this in Eyetech mythology, but I haven’t seen it used for a while, so it was funny to read this old quote.
[Terons not sold by Eyetech] won’t run OS4.
Not due to any imagined incompatibility or differing designs, but due to artificially created market separation by means of that “dongle” code, which is supposed to be installed on any hardware that AmigaOS would ever be made to run on. Of course this will be cracked in a coffee break, and then only pirates will get the benefit that paying customers won’t get: an open hardware market.
Mr Jack Perry,
the website you referenced to says the excerpt was taken from the Eyetech site.
I cannot find it there so we do not know if it is right after all.
If you look at http://www.mai.com/news&events/PressRelease090302.html you can see
MAI Logic wanted to make the boards available to Linux users and developers at $500 price tag.
The $3900 is figure is for a complete Articia S development environment and makes a comparison
completely irrelevant.
Can you explain the astonishing parallels of Teron PX which got 100MBit Ethernet, AC97 sound,
ATA100 and the removal of the ACR? By your logic the Teron PX wouldn’t have changed at all
when AmigaOne got the “advanced” features…
Perhaps Amiga related needs have affected Teron development, but anyway, no matter what, A1 HW improvements / changes have found theri way also to Teron boards ((or vice versa)).
Anyway. This is WAY offtopic.
Genesi mismanaged yet another relationship. When will they stop (doing THAT)…