Amigaone X1000 - 3 years in.

@mechanic

I too can get it to work under linux when it is initialised correctly, at power on under CFE. Its when it fails to initialise correctly after a reset or powercycle and all the Port LED's remain ON that it doesn't work under linux either. <here>

@jurassicc

Don't seem to have that problem here. (???)

@Jurassicc

Take a picture and post it.

@mechanic

Quote:

Yes, but it's slow.

It used to work flawelssly with Update 6 and the adapter. I think there is something wrong with the new DMA implementation and my specific configuration.

@mechanic

The pci slot is 33mhz, The pci->pcie adapter gives 66mhz speed.

Quote:

It has been a year for me. I was so excited to start using this machine and continue to be till this day. It is extremely out of the ordinary that we have such a machine about 20 years after most of us left. I can still remember those days because I was so sad to leave. Even then I didn't leave because of what a lot of people on other sites are referring to as "better". It was a matter of choice or rather lack of one, the same one which appeared once again at a time I really wanted something like this. After 20 years on other platforms you really appreciate what we have here.

The thing about the X1000 and my expectations is never about something that is not good, simply because if you judge other platforms by Amiga and Amigans standards then most of them are pretty crap so I guess if you compare the other way around you can let the X1000 pass for some of its shortcomings.

There are 2 major important things I would love to have on the X1000:

A. In the old Amiga days there were plenty of bugs. At that time I couldn't care one bit because it was magic. Now, people always seem to look backwards on the originality of the Amiga and always demanding the same which is good just not so adequate to what was actually at that time and what can be had today. The Amiga model once run its course was very hard to keep up to date especially on the software side and what were becoming world necessities. So the original model also had issues with was not foreseen engineering-wise but with entire imaginable developments of the computer and social world. So I think the focus should be on the ongoing cleverness and right to the point software and hardware and not searching for things that aren't there. What I personally mean by that is that said features of the X1000 not working don't bother me. Sure, I would love to have the S/pdif working just like on the Linux side, it is just that I would rather have a special sound card designed by people while having the Amiga warm synthesizer in mind and the special things it could do. I would rather have a video card which has some qualities of the better rendering of a decade or so (Matrox). I would rather like to be excited with upcoming indy releases that the Amiga people got in contact with to produce a version for my machine than a new bland Modern Warfare. Last but not least I would like that my machine would still be hot and the people that made still be excited about it even if a new shiny one is around the corner. I guess the SAM people felt the same about the X1000 and that should happen here. I guess that's the difference between us users and those on other platforms - it's a heart thing.

B. All this argument about power (no pun intended) is so pointless, especially when I look at my nephews playing games on their smartphones, tablets and handhelds, or Lego Star Wars on an old computer. They have also the newest hardware yet they can't care. They load up their consoles, phones and gadgets because they are most comfortable with them. I would love to invite them and present them something that would be just as compelling and easy. You know what? sometimes I wish I could load up the X1000 directly to the emulator just like old times.

@mechanic
Quote:
If that's the case, why include hardware on the motherboard that can never be used but just increases the cost of the computer? I get especially irritated when I find out new hardware is being worked on when the current hardware isn't yet completely functional.

Internal gigabit networking - not functional.
Xena - unused unless you like watching LEDs flash.
Second CPU core - not functional.
Extra 2GB of memory I was dumb enough to add to X1000 purchase - unused.
Internal audio - Only working because Lyle donated his time to get it working.

I like my X1000 and use it every day. I just want everything I paid for to work.

@eliyahu
Quote:
I can't speak for anyone else, but hauling my gigantic X1000 across the entire country just to ask ssolie a few questions at devcon doesn't sound very appealing

@xenic

Come on - at least you're on the same continent . And voltage, BTW.

P.S. So, Steven, when are you going to come over here and run a European incarnation of the DevCon? It's sorely missed.

Best regards,

Niels

@xenic

I was compensated for my work on the X1000 audio. It was also during a time that I was unemployed, and I must say the income was quite dear to me. I used it for "fancy things" like medicine and car tires. I was also the third or fourth programmer to work on it, so technically I didn't write the driver, I just tore it apart and beat it with a baseball bat until it made noise. Our S/PDIF output works, but we do not support proprietary codecs, probably because of the costs involved in licensing them.


But maybe a different perspective: If someone decided they wanted to build a new, high end Amiga system, let's consider some of the choices to make:

a: Let's build it using ONLY parts and chips that we already have drivers for, and we will get a machine that is literally made of lots of stuff we already had..

b: Let's build it for the future, and add stuff that goes beyond what we already had. HDAudio, dual cores, enough slots to support more/modern memory.

Which one is leading us into the future?

I'm just saying, designing a new board is a big challenge. Then getting drivers written for every little difference is another challenge entirely.

I suppose there's room on both sides of the argument. Those who still use "classic" Amigas know exactly what they have and what they can do with it, and that's wonderful. I have a huge respect for the classic Amiga, both hardware and OS. It began the revolution.

But it's hard to build a future there unless we find someone to start reproducing Agnus, Denise, and the other custom chips. And I suspect 68k series chips may be getting hard to find too.

So if we are to have a future, we will need to change, we will need to grow. With such a small community and limited cash resources, growth will happen slower than we want. And because we are made up mostly of people who are very passionate about "what is an Amiga?", there will be different ideas, different opinions, and different paths into the future.

One example of that is the variety of operating systems that have been designed to resemble the classic Amiga.. Either PPC, x86, 68k, emulated, or even run on an ARM core. For such a small group, we are quite diverse in our opinions.

So I'll be grateful for progress, at whatever rate it proceeds. And I'll contribute if I can, when I can, and be content that I helped to keep my favorite OS moving towards tomorrow.

Peace Friend.

@LyleHaze

+1 and well said Lyle

Ok, I just got a old PC with a Radeon 2400 Pro installed (R610LE).

After having bought the Radeon HD Driver 2.7, I installed it in my X1000 to replace the Radeon 9250 and its adapter. I must admit that I have no more troubles even if it's an old card.

I must also say that Hans has really done a very good job on the Radeon HD driver ! Worth the money.

My only suggestion : do not use any old Radeon 9xxx in your X1000.

Too bad : I tried to use my netwok card with the adapter but the X1000 refuses to boot. I wanted to take advantage of the PCI-E slot and stop using the slower PCI slot.

@K-L

I don't have a PCIe to PCI adapter, but I did try the Radeon 9250 directly in the PCI slot and it works fine.

Someone suggested that you try turning off DMA for graphics library, but I don't know how to accomplish that.

I'm glad you obtained a Radeon HD card, and I agree, Hans did a great job with it.

@Srtest

My arguments for more power is to be able to play HD videos. The X1000 currently cannot play normal HD videos with the normal HD codec, h264. Also, any web browsing that includes more than a little javascript is very slow.

Of course there two problems could be solved by HW video decoding by the gfx-card and javascript-JIT. But will we ever get any of those things?

We need more power

@Deniil

We need to harness the hardware power that we have under AmigaOS 4.x .
Gallium and Multicore being the start.
Run Linux to see the power of your hardware that is currently not used by AmigaOS 4.1 .

@Deniil

Composited accelerated video was introduced some time ago for the AmigaOne X1000 when the RadeonHD v2 driver was comissioned and released by A-EON Technology.

@all

A-EON was also pleased to release the Warp3D Southern Islands 3D driver earlier this year and is continuing to invest in 3D software technology.

@Amigakit

Thanks for the press release... (I couldn't help, sorry)

@amigakit

Quote:

I know! These are great steps forward!

I enjoy the composited display acceleration at least weekly. But the raw power of the (single-core) CPU is simply not enough to decode 720p h264, as encoded by my phone or my action camera. I have to (spend hours) re-encoding to mpeg2 to watch the videos, but thanks to compositing I can keep the HD resolution.

Don't use 3D very much though, and I have the wrong card apparently, a RadeonHD 6xxx. Southern Island is 7xxx, isn't it?

@Deniil

Quote:
H.264 has a lot of different profiles and settings with varying degrees of computational power required. Your phone & camera must be have the settings cranked up to the max if your 720p videos don't play fluidly.

Hans

@Deniil

I don't know what you are using to play videos. On both Lubuntu and AOS Mplayer makes a big difference and even then it depends on the movie being played. For example, I have this file which demonstrates a 1080P version of "Where Wild Things Are" and for some reason it doesn't flow on Lubuntu. When I play the benchmark of "Big Buck Bunny" at 1080P it depends on a lot of factors like the distro being used and the Kernel, While the exact same bench just gets better on the AOS side and even more so with the recent Mplayer. If it was just a matter of ability to use power and such then It should be no comparison because of the added core. It seems as though the technology still can't use more cores in a casual and streamlined way and its a matter of having those contingents of developers specially dedicated to those issues. I mean, look at the state of the AMD driver, they always try to get you another FPS as though they are using a Matrox Millennium card from more than a decade ago and try to push it like a last resort when in fact they suppose to have a "new generation" hardware which should drive itself... After 20 years on other platforms I can honestly say I don't understand why someone who is supposed to know anything about the technology buys anything that comes in a range of 5 years after buying the initial hardware because there is simply no advancement. What is power? the power of the pc and consoles worlds is the power of the market. That is the only thing they have. Intel's crown jewel, the technology that have given them the absolute edge over AMD is nothing ground breaking or new just an optimization that was developed in my country. Even if you compare on the X1000 the Linux and AOS sides it depends on your perspective cause on Lubuntu stuff really isn't "clickable" like they are on AOS and don't even get me started on the state of Firefox which bring the os session to a halt, while Netsurf on a lot of sites is blazing fast and Odyssey does the job it supposed to do. You know, a lot of the time on The Linux side, the Lubuntu side is something I keep my computer on because of stuff that make a difference in the end. Those are small stuff that can be fixed and I guess for other users those stuff are different. I keep the X1000 on Lubuntu because the GPU runs a lot cooler when it is summer time here and it gets to 35C it keeps a lot cooler thanks to a driver element which regulates the power consumption. I can also switch to my native language and use an email. I can also download stuff more easily and I know that things will rarely freeze on me when I send messages on Facebook (although it too can crush). Now, all those uses are something that should get better and of course they will and those are also uses that rarely have to do with what people would call an os. It is more of what makes people use an 8 centimeter screen while they have a 24 inch widescreen next to them. For every general use as a bonafide nerd I always prefer the non-incumbent AOS and you can't take that for granted.

@Spectre660

I run the X1000 on both os's and on AOS I can jump between stuff in an almost transparent way all while Candy is running an animation and more stuff are open, while on Lubuntu it can bring all sort unpredictable slowdowns and messages about crashes that supposedly don't effect you. Why doesn't the preferred dual core, 4GB and 1GB display memory bring with it more of this transparent behaviour often found on AOS? If there is one issue that made a difference till now that I have noticed was the fact that Nexuiz on Lubuntu on the X1000 actually ran faster and more stable than on a quad pc from a couple of years back. A beater like this on AOS would be cool...