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Funny, I remember back in 1984, a new computer came around. The Amiga had a handful of custom designed chips (running concurrently with the CPU) to handle display, I/O, animation, audio. You could actually move the mouse arount without seeing the CPU loosing cycles. Maybe the industry is finally moving a bit closer to this design which, back then, simply made sense... and still does.

Now add to this an OS that can be distributed accordingly to the type of operations operations (like Plan 9) and over multiple CPUs (Apple OS X, or Linux), with a solid filesystem (get the ideas from BeOS)...

Also, I don't want to upgrade my CPU anymore, I want to add CPU power to what I already have. Give me a scaleable hardware architecture (with a lot of empty CPU slots), with the OS supporting it. Add a 'cheap' factor. THIS would be my ideal computer... for now! ;-)

Most early PC users were jealous because their 3,000$ machine couldn't match the specs of the C64, let alone the Amiga, so now they're trying to hide the fact that the system which finally conquered the market was was the most dull and uninspired of them all.
While people thank the PC for standarizing computing and bringing it to the masses, I feel that the computing world has become more and more boring than ever. All you can expect today is the lates incarnation of Windows, whose only innovation is taking double the space on your HD and eating double the RAM.
The era of computer hacking is long gone, with O.S. manufacturers trying to hide the inner workings of their software in order to appeal to the masses of illiterate users who couldn't care less about how it all works.
Windows is going the way of MacOS; it's extremely easy to write a Word doc, but try configuring Windows for your needs, changing system paths, or putting some order in the amazingly convoluted mess that is the Windows directory. All they want is to have absolute control of what we do and turn our pcs into "black boxes". Don't mess with our O.S., unless you've paid an absurdly expensive developer license.
Im happy I still posess the last real computer made.

Too bad. What did it talk about then? Nibbles and Moppyranger?
"PC" and "gaming" didn't get along too well at that time. If you had a clue you got either a console or Amiga.

Jihad Speak for more info.

For nostalgia lovers here's Everything about the Amiga Custom Chips

I don't understand why everyone keeps fawning over them [Amigas], much less why they're still relevant to any of us

The Amiga is relevant because it has always had a powerful-but-easy-to-use design philosphy. Linux/Unix is powerful, but can it ever be easy to use (for Joe L. User)? I know, people are working on it, but Linux's hardcore-nerd roots make it very challenging. And Windows of course is easy to use, if you want to do easy things, but difficult if you want to do powerful things. So, there is a big opportunity here, don't you think?

Certainly Amiga has had many abortive attempts at rebirth since Commodore went under many years ago, but the latest attempt looks to me like a winner. Here is a press release from jan 8:

Amiga Incorporated has entered into a strategic relationship with Tao Group for the New Amiga

These guys who bought Amiga have some very interesting ideas to do with an Object Oriented Operating Environment; and the underlying OS, Elate from Tao, looks very interesting too. Some highlights of Elate:

• real time (important for multimedia)
• object based from the ground up
• easy porting to new platforms (just one part of it needs ``just a few weeks to be written'' for a new platform).
• hardware independant executables
• can run hosted in another OS, so it can get on peoples computers by stealth (Be seems to be doing this too). If they like it, they can install it natively.

More info on Elate can be found at www.tao-group.com.

But it's still very early days, so don't get too excited just yet.

Press release

Speculation

Hate to spread ill will, and all, but you have to understand that to some people (A lot of whom are Linux/Slashdot regulars) these things matter. Keeping alive memories of a time when MS were only king of the hill in the US, and different thinking was embraced.(not Apple's 'Different Thinking(tm, patent applied for)). That the ethos that made this possible (allowed international users the ability to hold off MS domination for 10 years) is still present, and those that share it are now doing something tangible about it, IS geek news. Geek news is about using technology for the good of more than a select few, NOT just restricted to x86/Linux issues.

Being in the majority does not automatically make you right. (Otherwise umpteen-million Windows users couldn't be wrong ;-) )

I'd never agreed with the 'Open-Source, Closed-Minds' sig until today, but you have swung my ideas firmly in that direction. If you persist in this attitude, in a few hours, time and story posting will remove this story from the front page. Given that Amiga stories are a relatively few and far between occurrence, you will not have to worry about this until next month. But you're shutting off a world of experience if you discount everything beyond your own sphere of interest.

Man couldn't fly without studying birds. Evolving wings is an obsolete notion, but if you can build on that to make something new and good, surely that merits some attention?!

Actually, as of late the ROMs have been selling in higher quantities, because hardware ROMs are required for the latest 3.5 release of the AmigaOS (http://www.amiga.de/amigaos35). It's forcing everyone to abandon their softkick ROM emulation hacks and go out and buy the real thing. Amiga Inc. is bundling the upgrade chips with their OS software for that segment of the population.

Anyway. This is getting a little off topic. Where were we? Oh yeah... iWin sucks. :^)

It's amazing how this all changes given enough time.I, as a former/current Amiga user, remember all too well the snide comments from the PC crowd."Get that gaming machine outa here!" & "Come back when you have a real computer, not just some over done console with a keyboard".Well, back then as now, games push the technology farther than any "business" software can ever do.If my machine can run Quake3 @ 100FPS what do you think it can do with Word/Excell/etc.!!

I am pressed to communicate the Linux decision before the technology brief because of information released by QNX in the last few days. This
information had not been reviewed or approved for release by Amiga. In light of our Linux decision, this information is confusing and misleading so I
would like to take the time to clarify the situation. I can't disclose any details of the Amiga/QNX discussions because of legally binding confidentiality
agreements but I can talk to you about our decision to use the Linux kernel. I think that you will agree that this is the right decision once you
understand the reasons for this decision.

the proper link should be http://www.amiga.de/diary/1999/990709- e.html

According to a Q & A list at the site of the OS folks, a processor hasn't been decided upon yet.

But why the fuss? It's perfectly normal for development systems to

1. come out long before the actual system, so that the system will/might have software on release, and
2. run on a different architecture than the deployment platform. Ever hear of cross-compiling?

Heck, if they have finalized the Amiga OS 5 Java APIs people can start writing apps for it using their favourite Java 2 development tool... :-)

Try this. (Not really any info.)

You should really get the Amiga RKRM but dunno where you can find them on the web, I bought them.
Any1 can point him to some RKRM place?

I just don't get it. *How* could use a computer about as fast as a 386 to edit graphics??? You need LOTS of RAM and LOTS of megaflops to do that.

Err. Obviously you originated your computing experience on a PC. The Amiga 1000 had Genlocking capabilities as it's video bus could be sybncronized DIRECTLY with NTSC or PAL video. (Graphics on top of live backgounds aka. character generation etc..). It also had Video Capture devices, could move LARGE amounts of screen data around very quickly (Full hardware Blitter.. remember this is all circa 1985!), had 4 co-processors for DMA, I/O, Sound, and Gfx; including a Split bus system design which let the co-processors work on one area of system ram, while the CPU is reading/writing to another area of system Ram. (Hah! try that on your Pentium II PC system)


Unless of course you actually means something like a paint program - but I could do that on my 386.

And directly output it to VHS tape?

How could you use 65 meg HD to store graphics and music??? They just wouldn't fit.

Err, pseudo-12 bit per pixel color (only 6 bits used!) at 640x400. Do the math. You can store more than 350 high quality images with no compression like that. Add rubn length encoding, etc.. and you can put craplocads more. I actually saw 7 minutes of "Star Wars" being played back REAL TIME from a STANDARD A2000 (68000 @ 7.14 Mhz) at 30 fps, with sound! (BTW, 4 channel stereo 8 bit quality sound was also standard on the system!)

And finally, how can you squeeze a GUI in 300k??? It just doesn't make sence. I think you are exagurating.

Err, Nope. That is not an eggsaduration. The original ROM (1.0 to 1.3) was 256k. That gave you a Full GUI, Full pre-emptive multitasking kernel, nice shell, screen, audio, SCSI, plus all the I/O subsystems. And the machine POSTed in less than 2 seconds. From HD, I could be up and running in less than 10. (heh, reminds me of BeOS). :)

And finally, how much did your A1200 cost? My 386sx25 with 2 Mb RAM, 100 Mb HD was $1050

About $600.

Finally, there were *tons* of games for PCs. Of course Doom didn't run on my system :-( but I did play Wolfenstein, Civilization, Prince of Persia, Golden Axe, +lots of other awesome games. Did you have anything like it on your Amiga?

Name one game from 1985 to 1990 which DIDN'T come out for Amiga FIRST, and then get ported to PC!

4 off the top of my head:
Sim City
Populous
Falcon
Test Drive

Oh, btw, was AmigaDOS 32 bit? Was it Unix-like?

Of course. Full 32 bit pointers; an orthangonal processor instruction set with a flat (non-segmented, no 640k bullshit here!) memory model. For more info on AmigaOS, try http://www.amiga.de/gb/Infos/OS.html

AC #7133925
(chrisk@distributel.ca)

Right On!
Im really happy to actually see support for amigaos (i run a cnet amiga bbs)

does anyone know if gateway is going to do anything with the amiga platform? everyone i know has pretty much given up waiting... but i would still like to see something new come out... nothing quite beats a complete amiga setup with the newest version of Directory Opus - MagellanII.....