IRC log started Thu Dec 30 00:00:02 1999 [msg(TUNES)] permlog 1999.1230 -:- Tril [dem@bespin.dhs.org] has joined #TUNES -:- mode/#tunes [+o Tril] by ChanServ hey, uh water.. i know you are watiing for me but I'm sort of playing games with my friends -:- SignOff eihrul: #TUNES (Ping timeout for eihrul[usr5-ppp208.lvdi.net]) 12:10am -:- eihrul [lee@usr5-ppp208.lvdi.net] has joined #tunes -:- SignOff eihrul: #TUNES (Ping timeout for eihrul[usr5-ppp208.lvdi.net]) -:- eihrul [lee@usr5-ppp208.lvdi.net] has joined #tunes -:- SignOff hcf: #TUNES (Read error to hcf[me-portland-us214.javanet.com]: Connection reset by peer) -:- hcf_ [nef@me-portland-us326.javanet.com] has joined #tunes -:- hcf_ is now known as hcf -:- SignOff eihrul: #TUNES ([x]chat) -:- SignOff Tril: #TUNES (Ping timeout for Tril[bespin.dhs.org]) -:- Downix [down@d-gnaps-28.ici.net] has joined #tunes hey-lo all Anyone awake? -:- lar1 [larman@1Cust198.tnt22.sfo3.da.uu.net] has joined #tunes Hey Hey lar1, one of the men I was looking for Ah. What for? To meet you, actually At the hearing you mean? No, just to meet you, here * Downix/#tunes is in New England, the hearing is quite out of the q Ah, I see * lar1/#tunes woke up at 1 pm yesterday The hearing was a few miles from my home Oh well I wish I could have gone * Downix/#tunes would have brought floppies too I got a huge box of 150 of them Wow Anyways, is there somthing inperticular you need? Not really, I mostly wanted to introduce myself properly and see what was going on in your head Ok Right now, I can't sleep, so too much is going on in my head I guess ;) Same here * Downix/#tunes is pondering his memory arch now 01:30am Know much of what I'm doing? No. What are you working on? I'm designing a computer, similar principles to high-end workstations and similar computers such as the Amiga and Atari 800 Around existing chips? Or are you fabricating your own chip designs as well? New chip designs existing chips are made through the "brude force" method for performance Namely "Since we don't know what else is on the system, let's push ours as far as it'll go and hope nothing else breaks" What do you mean? Ok, say you're manufacturing a video chipset you may make specific functions in it that hurt company B's USB control chip like trying to map the same space of RAM or overlapping commands Thats not good In an "off-the-shelf" system such things are common Really? So what manufacturers do, a lot of times, is use the CPU to override these problems by off-loading work to the CPU of course this slows the system down Ever notice that you never get much of a performance benefit with these newer CPU's? I haven't gone above 350mhz pII over here, but I do see your point * Downix/#tunes nods Perhaps more standards of computer design are in order? Perhaps, but standards only lead to abstraction and abstraction leads to degraded performance -:- Tril [dem@bespin.dhs.org] has joined #TUNES -:- mode/#tunes [+o Tril] by ChanServ -:- SignOff Tril: #TUNES (Read error to Tril[bespin.dhs.org]: EOF from client) 01:40am So how are you going to solve the problem? What we've done is taken the opposite approach, designing a chipset that is integrated so in the end, the seperate chips function, think and act together Like a form of decentrilzed proccessing? Right Same trick that made the Amiga at 7Mhz do tricks that PC's at 800 can't I am not very familiar with the Amiga Well, the Amiga is a semi-decentrilized design Ours is almost a complete decentrilized computer Almost? We have only core elements from a CPU But we do have them Saves a lot of work by doing so One way to look at the design is a SOC, but that's not quite true SOC? System-on-chip We mostly just abstracted the system to the bare necessities, to avoid the costs normally assosicated with such designs as the AS/400 And still achieve the performance 01:50am Why are new chips needed? Cant decentrlization be done with current cpus? Afraid not and achieve a cost-concious design If we used stock chips we'd raise the cost 400% As is we can deliver performance equal if not better to $8000 workstations for $1000 or $3000 PC's for $500 Has this been prototyped? Not directly, it's direct ancestor design was, and proved the concept But that was in 1994, and times have changed, needs have changed How does your chipset design differ from stock chips? We're finalizing the new design, and (if the gods smile) we should be prototyping in June lar1: Flexibility. Try getting a 3Dfx to display to a TV screen or a HDTV or a video monitor lar1: We can do that w/o any additional firmware or hardware, with 3Dfx you need add-ons, which raise the cost Hmm, I didn't think of that lar1: Also by having a synchronized design, you remove the need for an external synchronizing element, like the CPU How does the chipset synchronise? So multimedia presentations take less work A single clock cycle One clock rate == synchronized design And since the chipset is designed knowing how all of the parts work and interwork, less clogged bandwidth And less wait states for the slower buses? Right So we get the equivelent of a higher-end system w/o paying for it Makes sense I had a similar idea a year or so back But I didn't have the resources to persue it I began mine 27 months ago 02:00am Are you doing this by yourself? Not at all * Downix/#tunes hired the guy who developed the "ancestor" design to 'refine' my ideas, inject his own and then develop the machine as it's found now Cool Very You will be in need of an operating system soon then? Within 6 months Hmm lar1: get working! ;) Does not have to be production quality, but it does need to work. core's done a good pitch of his Clementine, but I'm still open to bids Do you have a virtual machine to 'emulate' your system? Not yet, trying to figure out how to design one * Downix/#tunes has been studying similar virtual machines to figure out how to design one, BOCHS and UAE to be exact Of course both are in C and Fufie's persuaded me to learn LISP Do you have documentation you could send me? Nothing that's cleared the NDA's or legible But hopefully shortly, we're working on the final parts (sound and I/O) now hold on, one doc I can send you Ok it's the original draft concept I assume for the operating system, you will look at a current one and have it ported? Right which is where Clementine came from However, I'm not opposed to making one on our own How much of the system do you need in 6 months? Full blown or bare bones proof-of-concept? base bones we're aiming for a release by 2001, but planning on 2002 JIC something happens You system kind of leans toward the uK design, no? uK? uK is probably microkernel Are you familar with microkernels? I know some about them OS theory is not my strong suit 02:10am microkernels is keeping the kernel very small and then using packets to allow the external components of the OS to communicate with each other, correct? Yes As in Minix, QNX, OS/2 v5, etc, right? Alright Not familiar with all of those, but I belive so As opposed to Monolithic kernels such as AIX, BSD and the like Yes where all parts of the OS are in one gigantic file I am working on a monolithic kernel currently * Downix/#tunes nods I understand no-kernels the best hardware exposed to software I also know the dangers of it I don't understand how one can have a stable system with no kernel Thats like removing traffic signals from the roads lar1: You can't, period end of report. There must be some form of a Kernel Thats what I thought lar1: i put it more like a dragway, pure unadulterated engine power That works as well Total rush, but when things go wrong, you are in SERIOUS trouble If youd like I can get you some documentation on my operating system Looking at how core explained Clementine, there IS a kernel, but it's not mono or mini in any classic sence * Downix/#tunes nods, that would be great Cool AmigaOS was a non-kernel, but it wasn't quite raw hardware either Hmm the end result was something quite fast yet stable... but not perfect What were the downfalls of AmigaOS no memory management often times rushed out the door before it was debugged Uhh, no memory management? How could a system without memory management be stable? often times only through excellent programming 02:20am poor programs crashed the system, and were not used In an ideal world, only excellent code would be relesed Agreed Well, I belive there is a minimum overhead when it comes to proccessing... time must be spent doing things like memory allocation. Whether the kernel does it, or the applications do fancy stuff to allocate themselves memory, the cycles still need to be spent. * Downix/#tunes nods and agrees * lar1/#tunes smiles wide! AmigaOS's main shortcoming was this however And it is not an easily rectifiable one I am glad to see somone aggrees with me on that Ah Little off topic, but how much do amigas go for? Ah well Depends on the model a used 500 goes for $50 Woah while a brand-new 4000 Tower runs close to $2500 I would like to get a old but usable one, a '486' type if you will. They sound very interesting depends on your options a 1200 w/ accelerator card would work but I'd recomend the older models the 3000 in particular Where does one find these things? (not exactly your frys item ;) ) http://www.cucug.org/amiga is the place to go that has links to all remaining dealers remaining? The amiga is dying? Amiga has been dead for years they keep shipping back-inventory left over from Commodore One manufacturer, Micronik, remains, but it sells in Germany for the most part Hmm, but how is the amiga community? Still intact? Still intact, but growing smaller 02:30am Well as long as its there :) Gateway wants the community dead I hate gateway Real men assemble their own boxen! I do as well Real men don't ship used equiptment as new And Real men EXPLOIT technology, not repress it The 3000 was made in 1990? Yes and it is the best Amiga model ever made 68030? Drool... I love the 68000 series! lar1: They have expention cards for the 3000 up to an 060, with a PowerPC "accelerator" running alongside it for those apps that need the horsepower * lar1/#tunes makes it a note to add m68k asm higher up on his queue * Downix/#tunes nods The Amiga is a marvelous machine and it's nothing compared to what we've got a foreshadow How much would a 3000 go for? $400 $800 for a 3000 tower model, which has 3 more Zorro 3 slots Hmm A tad out of my range I am afraid Well, for a very flexible solution, try the 1200 you can find them for $250 in good condition but they're not as good as the 3000, and cost more to upgrade Hmm Being 14 sure makes this hard ;) I know hehe I'm buying a 2000 shortly $250 Much less advanced than the 3000, but as expandible How many of these guys do you own? 4 working, 2 more not Wow p A1000 (the original and still the best), A500, A1200 and CD-32 s/p/ the 1000 is better then the 3000? A1000's you can't get for under $600 Better, yes A500's for $50 A1200's for $300 I take it biger number means nothing 02:40am and CD-32's for $150 lar1: Bigger # means newer Well, not true A500 is newer than A1000 the 500 I could afford, and that CD-32 too. it's complicated :) the CD-32 is a nice box but it's a game console Are there many amiga games? thousands many of them ported to the PC Woah Worms is a prime example same with "Syndicate" and "Sam and Max Hit the Road" I just bought worms 2... Cool game, huh? Classic Amiga game Yes, very I take it no more games are being made? I have AmigaQuake on my system here lar1: Hell yeah games are being made For a dead hardware with a shrinking community??? Quake, Quake 2, T-Zero, Nightstalkers, Quake 3 lar1: The "shrinking community" is still 300,000+ people and the dead hardware is still being upgraded. It's the AMiga's strength that it CAN be upgraded after all of these years it's Zorro slots are equal to PCI, and the new Z4 slots are faster than AGP I salute those companys! 300,000 is not very many in comparson to the countless x86 users. Wow Damnit! See what you've done... all I wanted to do was clear my mind and now I am going to by a box. Your a dangerous man ;) Plus with PowerPC accelerator co-processors to the 68k series, the Amiga is better than the Macintosh lar1: Imagine when my hardware is done I will be the first to buy get in line * Downix/#tunes has a "I'll be first to buy" list of 400+ people Woah half of which from when I did not even have a hardware spec done * Downix/#tunes should have been a car salesman 8) Heh I swear I should just go to the VC's as/is and pitch it, I'd walk out with $150mil right there What stops you? I need the financial analisys done and not looking like I've got 2 extra zeros at the end I keep shringing our market share and scope to look less like a pipe dream 02:50am Are you allifiated with the freedom cpu project? Yes I like them, so I give them a hand as I can Hmm Are there any perticulars you would like to see in the os? just be as flexible as the system, and be capable of handling varying "work environments" including as a single-tasking system I have very minimal requirements mostly I need speed and be intuitive to the end-user This involves a working gui at the time you sit down and decide? No GUI is nice, but not a deciding factor What makes a text system "intuitive" to you? Not the text-system, but the underlying structure Isn't that the part that the user will never see Yes, but you can tell by looking at it how hard it would be to impliment an intuitive GUI on it Ah Like, look at DOS and see how much of a pain Windows is I see what you mean Right Do you have a formal listing of requirements? Let me see if I still have them on this system Ok Thans no problem the osideas is a discussion about OS's that I had ok the other is a basic list of requirements 03:00am How many other operating systems have been presented? So far Clementine... and Alonzo's Plus I have QNX on file Which is a "If nothing else works" choice POISX... uhg As for the rest of your requirments Well, it is an industry standard Raven will meet them * Downix/#tunes nods POSIX is not a "critical" one as I noted Ok Neither is multiuser? and if it'll compile basic ANSI C software I don't care Neither is multiuser Ok Could you elaborate on RT envrioment? Amiga is not POSIX, but it's UNIX Sys V complient RT simply means saying that the mouse pointer is more important to the multitasker than compiling program xyz Oh, ok, that had me worried :) Ok And it's nothing to worry about really the hardware does almost all of the work already What I don't understand is, if your harware is so radically different, wouldn't a os designed just for that hardware make more sense? lar1: It would, but I lack the resources or contacts to make it. Perhaps once you get it off the ground the os could be tweaked further * Downix/#tunes shrugs I lack OS design knowledge and only Alonzo is willing to make an OS for me, but it's ATG.... I am willing to make an os for you 03:10am Well, then I'll put you next to Clementine and Sphere... ok, just Clementine Sphere? Sphere is Jim Little's Sphere project, at http://www.teleport.com/~sphere * Downix/#tunes has yet to see anything of Sphere other than a stolen project name Heh AlonzoTG used Jim Little's project name for his OS it's sad * lar1/#tunes is having trouble finding an Amiga dealer in CA... Paxtron is the only one I know of Ok And they're... dirty dirty? They like to play games with other dealers and are mob backed Yuck Yeah but they have good connections, and can get anything you want no questions asked How are they treating customers? Especally someone like me? VEry nicely after all those customers are the key to their fencing operation they sell merchandise under cost, and then pad it with "funny money" to make it all seem legitimate Similar trick to mob-backed car dealers funny money? stolen money, money from drug deals, etc. Ah Anyways, they are a good source I just dislike their, um... tactics Is the 500 worth getting? Not really not enough expantions for them you can get it to an 030 CPU maximum 03:20am * lar1/#tunes is checking eBay * Downix/#tunes nods on eBay Amiga's go for higher prices, but you may luck out All I see is some parts, 2 500s and _lots_ of programs * Downix/#tunes nods Well, for the 500 I can point you to where to buy the 030 expantion for it I have a bodega bay for it, which is NICE bodega bay? It's an external case that gives the A500 3 Zorro 2 slots Amiga is a very expandible design What would I put in the Zorro slots? GFX card, Video Toaster, more RAM, hard drive controller, whatever you felt like What exactly is a Video Toaster? High-end video editing system made for the Amiga Nice, I want one :) Umm used in such things as Babylon 5, SeaQuest, Star Trek: Deep Space 9 $4000 for one this 500 looks like an apple IIe it's smaller than one and much lighter but similar concept, keyboard computer case no HD controller in an A500 Eww Auction is at $26 with 1 day to go Go for it err 2 days a HD-controller for it costs $50 Hmm I don't know including a case to hold a standard 3.5" HD and up to 8 megs of RAM Well, it's up to you What can I _do_ on this box? As is, play Amiga games, early demos The A500 is the most primitive Amiga made even the CD-32 can do more Its comparable to the Apple IIe? No For it's niche, it's comparable to the Pentium-90 out of it, 386-40 03:30am I hate the p90... my 486 100 is better! Agreed These guys have no moniter But for what it's made to do, the Amiga 500 IS an Amiga They use TV's Regualr TVs? Yes Hmm All amigas or just the 500? All Amiga's Use TV's or RGB monitors but there's an adaptor to get them to use VGA Hmm Or you can plug in a vga card But getting VGA to work on the Amiga is strange, however it improves performance a great deal