Subj : Re: Portability of Amiga games to Linux
To   : Benny Pedersen
From : Rene Laederach
Date : Thu May 29 2003 21:42:46

Hi Benny!

Benny Pedersen wrote to Rene Laederach:

BP>  RL> I got rid of my ArcNet cards some six years ago when I got my 
BP> permanent
BP>  RL> connection to the internet.
BP> 
BP> i know you are a hunter, but this seems to me you hunt your self here :)

Not forcibly. Back at the time, the decision made sense. I had three options:

a) get an ArcNet interface for a Cisco 2501, which means this would have cost
   me approx. 1500 Swiss Francs.
b) get another Amiga, pop in some sort of accelerator, and a hard disk, and
   have one ArcNet and one Ethernet card inside (about 1200 Francs)
c) get rid of all ethernet cards and sell them (400 CHF +) and then buy 4
   Ariadnes, which cost me about 300 Francs per machine. 

BP> i did not know cisco made arcnet at all, but money will make anything :)

They did, and they had token ring, V2 and some other asynchronous serial 
stuff
as well. The 2501 could even accept FDDI and ATM interfaces.

BP> i remembar the game "rocky" from c64 and amiga, now its back in my 
BP> cellphone

The day they have Uridium, Paradroid and a few other BrayBrook games on it,
I'm sold to the idea I *need* a new Java, MMS and what-the-heck enabled
mobile phone. Not before.

BP> troble is what will it cost in store, and how many will bay it ?

A good question. If it's some more-or-less standard PPC motherboard, and
mass-produced to the extent we can call it "mass-produced", the price might
well be affordable for Joe Average.

Graphics boards seem to be pretty standard and I'm sure somebody will start
writing drivers like hell. And, oh, we already have quite a few open-source
graphics board drivers, so it won't be too hard to port them, I suppose. I'm
currently battling the softmodem in my laptop, so it's not entirely easy, but
we're making progress AMR modems right now.
  
BP>  RL> It's not forcibly the price, if you look at the current PowerBooks 
BP>  RL> and PowerMacs. It's the problem that we need a viable and 
wide-spread
BP>  RL> software platform. If we have this, we can possibly win back the 
BP> hearts
BP>  RL> and have a following like the Mac platform.
BP> 
BP> i wonder if amigaos 4 would run on mac os x in someway, the hardware 
BP> requirements is there, but software ?

Depends. Probably not concurrently with MacOS, but it might work. The more
important factor is if AmigaOS 4 is designed to be somewhat hardware
independent.

BP> on the road to cheaper software and more stable its not bad, hopefully M$ 
BP> take notes :)

They already did, and lots of people at M$ seem to be annoyed.

There's been an anectode on how to make M$ offer you cheaper prices:

1. equip a few desktops and a few servers with Linux
2, invite M$ sales rep
3. explain to M$ sales rep that if the prices don't go down enough, you'll
have to use linux
4. ???
5. Profit



-- 
email: mussi@snoop.alphanet.ch | "If you're taking flak,
Fidonet: 2:301/133             | you're above the target."


--- MBSE BBS v0.36.00 (Linux-i386)
 * Origin: Snoop InfoSystems - a Micro$loth Free Zone 4ever (2:301/133)

.