Amiga Plus 2004 #2

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Wrap

Text File | 2004-01-31 | 10.0 KB | 290 lines

»PIC:barclip2.ilbm» »CL9: HALF OF THE NEW AMIGA SCENE? »PIC:barclip2.ilbm» »CL4: By Darkhawk/IRIS »CL0:If you haven't already, I would kindly ask you to read my article entitled 'Hired Demoscening', before you read this one. In here, I will try to look at the Pegasos2 and MorphOS in terms of its demoscene viability. If we are to survive as a scene, we must upgrade our Amigas to either the Pegasos or the AmigaOne, computers that are very related to eachother and the older Amigas, computers that can both run all the old Amiga software, and that will also be able to run each others programs somewhat easily with some recompilation. »CL1:So, I got myself a Pegasos2 shipped via mail the last days of 2003. While this was a pleasant surprise, it wasn't as easy as that. »CL0:Before I go into more detail, you should know that the Pegasos2 is a motherboard, designed to fit into a microATX cabinet, sporting some special North and Southbridge, aswell as a slot for a PPC processorcard (much like the A4000 for instance, so that future expansions are rather easy). Apart from what I mentioned, the board is fairly standard and in places below standard. Thus, there is an AGP slot, but only at 1x. There are 3 PCI slots, one with RISE compability (some thingie..), 2 slots for RAM, 2 ULTRA DMA (I think) IDE slots (meaning you can connect up to 4 IDE devices), there is USB (only 1.x I think), PS2 mouse/keyboard, AC97 audio, Firewire, 100mbit aswell as 1gb ethernet. Especially the last is nice, and about the only thing that makes the board better than a medium-priced PC HW featurewise. The RAM slots are annoying though, as they only accept DDR 200 or 333 modules in 128, 256 and 512mb formats. Still, if you bought such a board, I guess you make sure to get the right HW for it. »CL1:The issue of what gfxcard to use is the most annoying thing here though, especially for demosceners who want to do hardwareaccelerated 3D (and who doesn't? It would be a huge disadvantage not to have your 3D effects run hardwareaccelerated, if other demos did). This is partly the reason why we haven't gotten the beast up and running yet. First off, the Pegasos2 does not accept just any gfxcard, just like it doesn't accept just any RAM module. Gfxcards that work with Pegasos2 are the ATI Radeon line of cards, aswell as Voodoo and SiS cards. Fine, you can get a cheap and fast (especially compared with Amiga Permedia based gfxcards, heh) ATI Radeon. But no, for demosceners it HAS to be either a Voodoo 2, 3 or 4. How come? Because the 3D developers of MorphOS, the OS for Pegasos (it can also run Linux, naturally) have only worked on 3D API's for those cards so far. The team is working on writing the code neccessary for ATI's cards, but they have been doing that for over a year now. Thus, if you want to do demos on your Pegasos2 system right away, you need one of these cards. Sadly for us, we seem pathetically unable to find even one person in Denmark who still has one of those cards. Yes well, I still believe it is possible, naturally, especially from other Amiga users, who might have gotten a Voodoo themselves once upon a time for their classic Amiga extensions. Still, to date we have not procurred such a card, and if you have one, we're very interested in buying it indeed, so that we can finally get started on the demo. Find my address in the editorial section of the mag. »CL0:So, my first tries in getting the bugger up and running failed somewhat, because of me missing one of the compatible gfxcards. Therefore, I only got to see a frozen screen telling me the name of the gfxcard I had put in, and did not get the opportunity to actually install and test MorpOS 1.4. »CL1:MorphOS is the OS that is developed specifically for the Pegasos computer, and both the Pegasos and MorphOS can be seen as the adversary of the AmigaOne and AmigaOS 4.0, as both solutions basically target the same audience. Thus, there has already been heavy wars between loyalists from either camp, with the obligatory lies, accusations and attacks from both sides, as will always happen when two conflicting interests clash because »PIC:budgie» they share the same space. People buying the Pegasos computer are seens as traitors to the 'true' Amiga succession with the AmigaOne, and people touting the AmigaOne are seen as hopeless fossils backing amateurs who haven't even produced an OS after all these years yet. I certainly don't want to get involved in that 'discussion' myself, both computers and OS'es (when OS4 finally gets out) have their strengths and weaknesses. For me it is of much bigger importance that the Amiga scene does not fall into this trap of supporting one or the other platform. We're too small for this, and if we want to be consistent, whole and as big as we can get, we would be wise to produce our demos for both computers, aswell as for PPC equipped classic Amigas. Everything else would really be a big folly, as I see it. Let the fanatic (and desperate, understandably) users bicker about what is best and who lied to whom, while we establish the Amiga scene on both Amiga successor computers. It is quite easy, as it will 'only' take a recompiling of the C-source of the demo for each OS, aswell as adjustments according to their respective 3D API's. The benefits should clearly outweigh the added trouble of recompiling the demos for each OS. »CL0:So, no matter which computer you get, you should keep in mind that you and your group MUST work to tie the systems together by releasing for both and making sure that people see you treat both systems as one scene. This is very important, and it will be something I will do what I can to promote. We need no small and pathetically irrelevant borderwars at this point, we must be a scene for all Amigas, 68k and PPC. With that said, the decision about which computer to get is still left unanswered. »CL1:As a democomputer, I guess the Pegasos2 is as good as the AmigaOne. The Pegasos2 HW is smaller, faster, cheaper and richer in features than the AmigaOne HW. This is not that surprising, as the Pegasos2 was designed later than the AmigaOne was. However, that isn't as important as the OS, since the HW differences do not mean too much. In that regard, I can't say anything, as the one OS is not out yet and I haven't been able to test the other. Demoscene wise, both computers and OS's should be fine though, the most important in this regard is the software available, aswell as the drivers available for the needed HW. In the first case both OS's have backwardscompatibility with classic AOS, and so sceners will have access to a broad range of tools from the outset. Naturally, most Amiga sceners work on their PC's anyway, and then convert the work to the Amiga, so I guess this is also irrelevant, hrmm. I do not know what C-compilers are available, which might be the most relevant program to use on the Pegasos/AmigaOne, but it seems like MorphOS has a growing community of softwaredevelopers working with porting many Open Source things, and I guess the same will be true with the AOS 4.0 when that time comes. What is more important is the inclusion of 3D API's, and here we have already seen that MorphOS has not come very far. This is likely the most irritating point for sceners, but as stated, people are working on this. I have no idea what 3D API's AOS 4.0 will support, but I would be very disappointed in the OS if they didn't support more than MorphOS do right now. »CL0:Thus, it really does not matter, demoscenewise, what you choose, unless some catastrophe hits one of the firms behind the HW and OS's, or unless one of the computers manages to outdistance the other in sales and popularity to such a degree that programs are not made available on both. There is no saying what is a 'safer' bet in this situation I think. It is likely that Amiga Inc. is in litigation now, and close to bankruptcy (substantiated rumours it seems), but the clever thing this time is that they are not producing neither the AmigaOne nor the AOS 4.0 themselves, and thus, even if they went under, the AmigaOne and the new OS might still run, although it would probably never get very big saleswise. Genesi on the other hand, will likely never ever get big in any case, it being a very small niche computer (motherboard rather), but on the positive side, it looks to be way more stable than its opposition. It has a supported OS, and it manages to both produce and sell ok niche quantities of motherboards. It would be best, perhaps vitally important, for the Amiga scene if both systems flourished and gathered users to them. The scene could then be a bridge between the systems, where users of both computers could meet. More than that, the scene could then be twice as big and this will probably be needed in any case. »PIC:df1» »CL1:So, buy what you want, I can't really tell, since I haven't seen either OS. Speaking from my limited viewpoint right now, I'd say that HW and support wise, the Pegasos2 system is the best buy these days, but that might change quickly, and the most important thing is a comparison of the two OS's. In any case you might also wait and see what will happen, I can't hold that against you, since Amiga history proves that things seldom go as people hope. When you see that there is a hope for a new scene and one or two new Amiga inspired systems however, you should stand up and do your part, if you want to keep our scenish community alive.