amiga-news.de - Fortnightly Q&A's with Fleecy Moss

04.Aug.2003
AmigaWorld (ANF)

Fortnightly Q&A's with Fleecy Moss - episode 16
The English online magazine AmigaWorld has published episode 16 of the regular questions and answers session with Fleecy Moss, CTO at AMIGA, Inc. (Update 2012-03-15, cg: as the original document is no longer available, the following content was moved into our database):

1) CanGuy: I'm getting into wireless technology at the moment and see a lot of applications for it. Is it likely that AmigaOS will contain something like Zeroconf (aka Rendezvous in Apple-speak) in the next year or so?

Fleecy: Part of the remit of AmigaOS4 is to ensure that devices that use it can work together with each other and as part of a hetergeneous network. We are already working on this with the tethered connection and this will be followed up relatively quickly with the untethered technologies, initially 802.11 and then Bluetooth.

2) ikir: OS4 supports multiprocessors so.... any idea when a double G4 AmigaOne will be realesed?

Fleecy: AmigaOS4 will support SMP first and then AMP second but it is more important for us to have a shipping product running on one processor first. I believe that a double G4 AmigaOne will be out in the next year - indeed a prototype dual processor module is already in our hands.

We have a lot to do already in developing AG2 - graphics, audio and a new user environment to name but a few. These are much more important than supporting SMP in the short term and as I have said before, I see AMP as being far more important in the long run.

3) Turbo: SoundBlaster Live! & SB512 support 128 instuments & 10 drums. Hercules/Guillemot have several high quality sound cards available, most of which have a Yamaha Synth with 676 instuments & 21 drums combined with a CS4624 or CMI-8738 DSP. Are there any future plans for Amiga OS4.x to support alternative sound cards when a higher Amiga user base is established?

Fleecy: Very much so. However, as always, until the AmigaOS4 market grows to the point where audio card companies will write the drivers themselves, we have to expend our own resources and thus will be limited in what can be supported. Our initial plans are to support one card each from the three natural groups. As an example (and only an example), AC-97 on-board audio for desktop, SB Live!, Audigy or Terratec for gaming and Echo for pro-audio.

4) Hondo_DK: Has Amiga Inc. at any point, contacted third party commercial/brand making companys, to develop a path for the future amiga platform? And can we expect amiga commercials in magazines, tv, internet, etc?

Fleecy: We have a very definite path already mapped out for the Amiga platform as both an overt and an embedded solution. In talking with OEMs, IHVs and the like, these plans have been developed further but many of them would involve Amiga technologies within their own branding/marketing strategies.

We do intend to make use of the full spectrum of marketing and advertising media, as well as visiting a few unorthodox efforts.

5) Darth_X: If we wanted to start a project, like AmiZilla, to port OS4 to the Pegasos, how much money would we need to raise? :D In other words, what is the minimum amount of $$$ needed to port OS4 to the Pegasos?

Fleecy: There are three possible routes in considering AmigaOS4.0

We see an existing market in which AmigaOS4.0 makes commercial sense.
We see a developing market that we believe will deliver commercial success.
A third party approaches us with enough money to make the creation of a port a commercial success regardless of its sales.

Since the Pegasos is a deprecated product, its sales would be minimal and so the amount of money needed would be excessive to a community driven project. Of course if an eccentric user turns up with a few million Euros then we'd certainly chat with him or her.

6) Eric_Z: There has been a rather interesting discussion over at Aorg latly on the possibility of using an Elbox SharkPPC card in a PC/MAC as an inexpensive way to run OS4. Do you know if this is possible and do you think that such an product ("OS4 on PC") would be desirabe to have in the "Amiga hardware matrix"?

Fleecy: On a general level there is no reason why it shouldn't work, although you'd have to look at the effect of having the processor board on the PCI bus. In terms of is it desirable then you have to look at the usage equation. If you have a PC that can easily jump between the huge mass of PC applications and the smaller amount of Amiga pplications then would there be enough of an incentive for native Amiga development to take place if users could just as easily use Photoshop or Cubase or play UT2003?

7) Asemoon: I have read that parts of AmigaOS4 could be stored in ROM. Could future Amigas using such a ROM start multimedia software from CD/DVD/Disk without going through a fully running OS (like classic systems and consoles do)?

Fleecy: Yes.

Seeing AmigaOS4 as a solution for such products was part of the plan from the start.

8) Asemoon: I heard debugger software will come integrated into AmigaOS4. How would this work?

Fleecy: When a program crashes, you'll get the option of starting a debugger and attaching it to the crashed task. From there on, you can fully debug the program, probably including the possibility to re-start the crashed task.

9) Herewegoagain: I am familiar with the OS4 feature list, but I would like to know if there will be any driver support for Serial ATA controllers and drives for OS4? Possibly in a boing bag update?

Fleecy: Yes, although I can't give you a timescale at this point.

10) CanGuy: This new "Bowser services" mentioned at the AmigaWest Q/A sounds very interesting, probably more useful to programmers than "just another browser". Will these services include a JavaScript engine? and will it support web standards like DOM1, CSS, etc.

Fleecy: Precisely. The aim is to provide core services rather than a monolithic application. We already intend to use a few of these services for the new documentation, help and user guide system and of course they will be completely open to developers to use for their own projects, in both traditional and non traditional projects.

HTML/XML rendering and processing, Javascript and CSS will all be part of the initial service set and others will follow.

(Copyright © 2003 Amigaworld.net. All rights reserved.
Originally available at http://amigaworld.net/modules/fleecymoss/index.php?cat_id=17
You may freely redistribute this article, providing that a URL is provided to the original source,
and the copyright notices remain intact) (nba) (Translation: sk)

[News message: 04. Aug. 2003, 09:52] [Comments: 0]
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