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Amiga - Back From the Dead?
Wired has this story about the Amiga comeback, under a new company, which bought the Amiga rights from Gateway. As an old Amiga fan, I will believe it when I see some new machines. You can read more about it here on the official Amiga Web site. I really hope to see something come out of this.
My ST only has the monochrome screen. Nice for MIDI work, though, when you don't want a hard drive or fans droning in the background.
Bzzzzt!
In 1987 there were EGA screens for the PC. And they were very common by that date.
Carry on with your fantasy, though. It's pretty amusing.
You are right. Linux is too complicated for me. ,just check Aminet + there is ton of great Amiga games from 80's and 90's with much more playability than those modern games which are almost all the same, nice pictures and 3d and that's about it.
I still have hard time to print something with my Linux machine on that cheap inkjet printer I use. It is so damn complicated. It must be that I am not up to the task. It was designed for all those smart linux hackers becaue You really need to hack your machine in order to print something.
Amiga, OTOH , has this Turbo Print software, which enables me to easily print on my printer supporting all his capabilities and all that after few minute installation and setup .
Also my FinalWriter word processor is taking only 1.5 MB of ram and about 5 on HD with all the fonts, cliparts etc, it has all the featurs I need + lots of AREXX scripts to make it even more useful. Corel WP2000 for Linux takes about 350 MB on HD. Is it really 70 times more powerfull and usefull than my FinalWriter. I doubt.
I am using my Amiga, not becuse I am fanatical about it , but because I can do anything I need on that computer, and I can do it much easier than on Linux or Windows.
There is planty of software for all the purposes,
Maybe with this new Amiga there is a chance modern computing can become fun again like in 80's with all those demos and games coming out of coder's bedrooms.
Would YOU launch a fake product amongst a few thousand rabid Amigans?
I'd launch a grenade or two, just to get the idiots to shut the fsck up, but maybe we better not go there....
from http://www-classic.be.com/support/qandas/faqs/faq- 0513.html
Be is currently planning to add official support for
hardware 3D acceleration to the BeOS in the next
major release, which we anticipate will be released in
the first half of the year 2000.
We provide "experimental" support for 3D
acceleration on 3Dfx Voodoo II, Voodoo 3, and
Voodoo Banshee products in BeOS R4.5, now
shipping.
So you see, you were wrong, but this post will still get a score of 0 just like the other reply.
Bet you hire for nobody. Bet your bottom of the ladder. Your pond life.
wrong. The Elate OS will run on PPC amigas
Brilliant flamebait...bravo.
-B
It's not sick, it's when the rather large St. Louis Amiga show is on
No, I was thinking more along the lines of your whole family. Take those defective genes out of the gene-pool. :) Have a nice day.
Yes. In 1985 my jaws would have dropped.
> Remember, Video Toaster runs on Amigas
yawn. runs on windows too.
ROTFL!
Perhaps you ought to actually LEARN before you slag off, eh?
Here's a hint - they are NOT creating something new from scratch - they are developing from an existing system (TAO for those who can be bothered to examine facts).
So, they are actually doing exactly as you suggest they do. You can quit your whinging now Ethelred.
Nope, Amiga isn't coming back. No way, not never.
Oh I do. And your mother should have too.
16 truly ugly colors (I wonder who chose those...) from a fixed palette. Hardly something you'd want to do any gfx on. Amiga was truly ahead of it's time.
you moron. you can emulate an amiga with a 386DX-25. its an old shitty machine and way past its prime. get a life dimwit.
So whats the growth rate of the earths population now? I think the earth is doubling in population every 50 years or so. We are going to need more than just a war, ever heard the theory behind AIDS. Im not saying I believe it but it is plausable. Well, back on topic, so lets say the earth is full and can not hold anymore people, but we are lucky enought to find another planet just like earth, no, we find 3 planets. Well, in 50 years(I think the rate is a little less ) we will have used up another earth, and after 100 years, all 4 planets will be full. Exponential growth is scary. In the 70's we reached something like 4billion people for the first time. Now we are up to 6billion or so? If you think about it, all the things that keep population down are thought of as bad, its almost ironic. So how long can this go on? I guess we will just have to wait and see, but I doubt it will be a long wait
multi cpu amigas ? hahaha. that cruddy outdated OS doesnt even have memory protection you fucking retard.
yes you are dumb. you cant even type printtool to set up your printer or lpr filename to print. stay where you are with your cruddy hardware - you'll never learn anything worthwhile.
Gateway had everything going for them with the Amiga Inc. division. I had a chance to talk to one of the communications engineers on the PC side out of North Sioux City and found that MightySoft (i.e. Bill Gates) had put pressure on Gateway to kill any plans for an actual computer. Apparently, the internet appliance market was still safe to pursue. I wonder if Judge Jackson has any knowledge of this. The current settlement proposal from MS says they won't use their heavy hand to keep competition out of the market; but they have said that before and still been bad boys.
They are going to die sometime, now's a good time. overpopulation will kill us all, think diseases.
Don't forget the glorious RAD:!
This was the 1985 equivalent to flashing the BIOS in an x86 box.
Narh, that was pulling out one ROM and bunging in a new one!
Are you suggesting that EGA is somehow 'almost as good' as the 1985 Amiga screen modes? Do you care to explain how you've come to that conclusion?
hit a nerve eh ? you must be sore from being smacked around.
"Fortunately, the majority of people using an OS other than Windows are clueful enough not to lower themselves to platform bashing." LOL. Pulease, you say this on Slashdot? This is a cool forum. But it is 90% of the time used for platform bashing... And the majority of those doing the bashing apparently aren't Windows users. Other than that, I agree with you. I developed in my spare time for TIs almost 7 years after the company dropped the ball. Simply becaue of the user community, and the fact that the system met quite a few of my needs.
not even a 800mhz athlon can emulate a 1200 at full speed..and amiga is not old technology compared to pc's..pc is from 1976..u cunt..
"Fortunately, the majority of people using an OS other than Windows are clueful enough not to lower themselves to platform bashing."
LOL.
Pulease, you say this on Slashdot? This is a cool forum. But it is 90% of the time used for platform bashing... And the majority of those doing the bashing apparently aren't Windows users.
Other than that, I agree with you. I developed in my spare time for TIs almost 7 years after the company dropped the ball. Simply becaue of the user community, and the fact that the system met quite a few of my needs.
yeah but unfortunatly it cant play anything at real speed (50/60hz)..
JeanLouie ought to be shot for comparing Be to the Amiga.. BeOS is the most disappointing product I've seen in a while. It might have been special when it ran on PPC hardware, but now, it's just another Intel based OS that cant get out of its own way without 10,000 drivers & patches. That's some technology for ya.. I never loaded one single device driver in my 7 years of Amiga use.
turn off the lamer key..
I know this is moderately off-topic, but are there any bets on what April Fool's joke Rob Malda will try to pull on us this year? Last year's was pretty good... but he's not going to trick me this time around.
cga was much more common at the time..and ega, ome on 16 ugly cols. from a fixed palette..haha
probably be a huge improvement over your webTV.
its dead becouse u killed it with 240v..;)
I suggest you go and have a look at Tao's website and see who they have been playing with recently. Its a very advanced piece of software its not dead and is not likely to die, which is probably why people like Sony have invested in the company. Motorola use Tao's Java engine in the new Timeport phone that is getting rave reviews. I have seen what it can do and IMHO the graphics performance makes BeOs look like Win 3.x. I dont know if Amiga will make it or not, but if they get a few smart developers they could come up with a "killer app".
I never suggested killing people was a good idea. Anyone who does should lead by example.
I'm not dead! I think I'll boot up Kickstart disk and go for a walk! I feel happy! I feel happy! I feel argggh...
No, I just don't hire idiots who live in the past.
Why is it that many people in here post stuff without knowing what they are talking about? They don`t know anything about the Amigas after OCS. They don`t know anything about Tao Group either, but yet they like to pursuade people this will fail.
:) And don`t forget to ask if he can do something similar with their 1987 XT PC. ;)
For the First time in the history of mankind. The Amiga is in the hands of the people who love it: The Amiga Community!
There are alot of things going on at Amiga right now. Some of you may have read some stuff about developer`s machines, partnerships, leading Amiga people hires, etc
What is so great about this new technolgy?
Proccessor/Platform independent thus your program will be code identical on x86, PPC and other supported machines. It even supports multiprocessing of different CPUs within one system. It has a small memory footprint and it`s superfast. It supports all important standards to make it excellently suited for modern gaming. Leading Amiga folk are taking care of the way how the GUI looks, feels and works.
How Good are todays and past Amigas?
Even an old 1987 A2000 can be upgraded with G3/G4 PPC and Graphic Boards. And Amiga will support it with their new OS to the Full! Same things can be done with towered A1200s, A3000s, A4000s, new BoXers, etc.
So soon you can present your PC friends your 1987 A2000 that you upgraded with a G4 PPC and Graphic Board and do great stuff and outperform their newly bought "State of the Art" PC. Isn`t that great
Bet you can't land a job with you 10 year old Amiga experience. Go and rub your fetish.
Damn right they are still around! I am not a programmer or developer and am completey clueless in the finer points of computer science but I managed to find work in a high school radio/TV program because I can work on Amigas. The Toaster is one of the bona fide killer apps on the Amiga (Opus Magellan is the other). If you need to edit from tape to tape in real time uncompressed video or add keys, real time effect, or animated overlays to live studio broadcasts it's still about the only game in town. I know the Trinity actually began shipping last year, but contrary to popular belief it's not really PC based, it's a seperate box with custom chips and every thing. The Toaster NT just began shipping recently, but it requires a pretty high spec workstation and you have to run NT (expensive), and it still doesn't have a real time switcher. But the reason I'm responding to this fporum is because buddy, you caught me on a bad day. I've decided to stick my toe into the waters of the linux movement. I've spent the better part of three days trying to install a linux system and I'm just a little tense right now. I have read in this forum how superior Linux is and how laughable the Amiga is, but the Amiga was my first computer and I was able to insall the OS in five minutes the first try. And let me ask you this, with all the money that Linux companies are making on wall street and all great talent available worldwide, how come you guys can't write a simple point and click intaller script that installs every thing you need to run the computer INCLUDING THE GUI. And talk about living in the past, you guys haven't even discovered the mouse yet. And where are the apps? On my recent searches scrolling up and down ftp sites, I've seen a ton of developer tools, but basically mostly "utilities" to show for it and those are huge. I know I've seen Star Office and Word Perfect Available but only for Pentiums, any other word processors out there? I won't even ask about Video software or paint programs ( Photogenics soonish I guess). I started out with a 650MB partition to "try" Linux on. After two download sessions I'm pushing the limits already and I only have this damn blinking cursor to show for it. Leave the lights on OPus, I'm a coming home.
Its "Saginaw", and Sun is located nowhere near here. We have very few things around here high tech, but I did get to see one of the original pressings of the 6502 chip over at Dow on loan from Motorola for some reason (which by the way was cracked in half). I'm all for the new platform, but was it just me or is their site a little user-unfriendly? Took me a long time to find any product more advanced than the 4000 (50 Mhz of raw power!). I know "Amiga" is going to probably be another one of those darned set top things that the media fawns over then no one buys, but has anyone ever thought of making a desktop on the other end (the high one). I'd like to see somebody come up with a Dec Alpha for this generation, something to do all those high end calculations faster than just a Wintel system. Are there even any 64 bit processor computers around anymore? Any that are faster than a PIII?
Thanks for your instructions. Of course I am not that dumb not to know those commands. However, Amiga as an ancient OS has better printing support for my printer than my modern Linux. This is only point that I tried to make. Main reason software like Turbo Print could provide printing service to applications on Amiga is because OS design allowed that. I consider you dumb if you are not fair enough to admit that there is printing problem on Linux. Why did Corel few days ago published new printing libraries for Linux along with its WP2000?
My cruddy hardware can run Quake at 50fps, but somehow I rather play my old JumpingJack Son from early 90's. It is all about taste. I like elegance and simpicity. You like bloatness with questioned usability.
You'd even shoot rabbits who make generalisations ? how about Natalie Portman ?
I can't understand all the hype about a system that is so outdated. OS/2 has been far ahead of the amiga and most other systems on the mearket for years now. That's why I'm using it today. I can understand how some people might get irrationally attached to a particular software or operating system but how long can the amiga drag on?
April 1 2000? isn't that April Fools day...
Well, if you have a powerful enough Linux box, and a few custom 50Ha modelines in your XF86Config (and a gfx card and monitor flexible enough to support them), you can have a true 50Hz emulated machine.
My k6-2 400Mhz with 256MByte RAM, SBLive card, and Voodoo Banshee can just about run linux UAE at full (50 fps + stereo sound) speed for most OCS games.
OK, but you're still a karma whore.
You are an idiot. Of course the earth doesn't care what happens or how many people there are. The earth exists, and whatever happens is fine. However, people do care, of which you are one. Now say:
It would be good for people (me) if the earth were to lose about 200-500 million humans every 10 years to reduce overpopulation...
and see what an asshole you are. If you are concerned with overpopulation, why not think about birth control.
How can I possibly come up with a spin that won't get the same old flak from the same old people? I shouldn't even try. And yet here I go.
Amiga started out being able to multitask, boot a GUI from floppy, display thousands of colors, feature draggable screens, display on TV screens, and fit all this into 256K of RAM. In 1985.
Basically, 'so what?' is the response of most people to the above. That was 1985, 15 years ago. And as far as that goes, I agree. It was a long time ago. Most of the above features have long since been surpassed by mainstream technology (the notable exception being draggable screens, but I can live without those; I'd rather not have to have every screen resolution be an exact multiple of 320x200 in order for that to work...).
Amiga hardware is lagging way behind the times, as well, in most areas, and where it isn't lagging, it's outrageously priced. For the price of a PPC accelerator, I could buy a decent PC system. The graphics boards are yesterday's chipsets, too. And forget about the integrated graphics system, even the AGA chipsets in the later models. Sound cards seem to be okay, but there's only so much you can do with a sound card before the differences are too subtle to be heard in a room with a whirring fan and a humming monitor. Again, forget about the integrated sound hardware. A sample rate of 56kHz is good, but you need to have at least a second-generation chipset (ECS) in order to use it -- and the best you can do with the resolution is a 14-bit hack created by summing the output of two signed 8-bit D/A channels. Does anybody remember what the early 14-bit CDs sounded like?
What I like about the Amiga is the ability to load the OS & GUI, a TCP stack, my IRC client, and my web browser in 6MB total system RAM. And I have all this stuff plus an image-manipulation program at least as good as PhotoDeluxe, a word processor with capabilities verging on desktop publishing, and a spreadsheet that might not be as powerful as Excel (do most people use even half of Excel's capabilities?) but is no slouch, and it all fits on a 91MB hard disk partition, with lots of data files, and still has over 8MB free.
My OS partition is 6MB. It's about 80% full.
Before you pass it off to all the stuff in ROM: the ROM is 512kB in size. The 1985 ROM (actually write-once memory) was 256kB in size.
So it still has executable size going for it.
The Amiga 1200 can output composite video. So the TV display capability is still going for it.
It's apparently very easy to port Unix text-based applications to the Amiga: there's a port to be had of Apache httpd, there's an ftpd, an ircd, and others I can't be bothered to think of right now.
There are also some X-based programs that have been ported, and there's an X server.
Ethernet is not cheap for the internal expansion slots (they're proprietary and too slow for 100Mb anyway), but the Amiga 1200 has a PCMCIA slot, and laptop (Type 2) NICs fit nicely. Some people do ingenious things with the passive ISA slots and old 386-or-earlier PC-on-a-card BridgeBoards for Amiga 2000s, 3000s, and 4000s. Like using the BridgeBoard as essentially an embedded ISA controller chipset. They're not good for much else in this day and age. 386SX? Please.
Hopefully, that was a cogent look at what the Amiga is and is not. It is not a technological leader anymore, by a long shot. It is not a particularly great operating system. It is a fairly efficient system in terms of storage and memory use. It is still very useful in terms of software applications. It is still, at the native chipset level, capable of TV output.
I still use my Amiga 3000 as my main home computer. It does what I need it to do, and does it outstandingly well considering the huge technological gap between its technology and today's. I don't consider myself a fanatic, but if the latest owner of the trademark and licensee of the Amiga patents can produce a system with similar characteristics of low resource usage, tight hardware/OS integration, and video-aware display architecture, I'll buy one.
e-mail (the net is not)
I didn't know Narns had last names. At least not such sorrow free ones.
I think it makes a lot of sense to re-release the Amiga. Yes it will be all
new and improved and will be as cutting edge as the original Amiga 1000 was
in 1985. As nice as Linux/Unix is, you'll never see it become the number
one choice for home computing. Even if all other operating systems blew up
and Linux was the only system avaible, people just wouldn't bother with it
at all because most people just wouldn't know where to begin. But Linux has
a great future in the server type market. Windows is a piece of shit and
still overly complex for the average user. I keep having to "fix" up my
non-computer friend's WinTel boxes because something "stopped working" or
broke, or never installed right or is corrupted or something else just as
lame and stupid. Plus Windows is very messy with it's internals and the
registry file is a real dumb idea, but needed to help prevent total
chaos on your hard drive. Amiga is a great home computer solution because
it's simple, it doesn't "stop working", it's clean and tidy, very user
friendly yet powerful and flexible. The new Amiga will be totally hardware
independent (that includes the CPU) which allow users to install it on any
hardware they may already own at the time. So, the hardware base is already
out there, all Amiga would have to do is convince people to give AmigaOS
a try on their hard drive. A clever marketing strategy would help out there.
No, I really do believe a new, modern AmigaOS is just what people need at
home.
So I believe there's a demand and I believe it is possible. Question is will
it happen? Amiga can't afford to make mistakes, everything must be perfect.
Yes!!! I have faith in humanity again!
Yes!!! I have faith in humanity again!
The whole point is, that while the new Amiga is not going to be anything at all an Amiga again, if there will be one, that is, Amiga is a name people recognize.
Linux caught one not for its technical merits, mind I am in *nix before Linux came to live, but for marketing and other reasons.
A New TAO Computer to be introduced April 1 .. well, so what. A New Amiga to be introduced April 1 .. that is something to raise some heads.
Do not judge TAO by its history as then Windows must be considered the most advanced OS around. Just forget all about the Amiga for a moment. The Amiga is dead as dead can be, it is history, gone, end of story and while the Kitty Hawk or the first steam engine might have been ahead of their time too, no-one is going to praise their merits nowadays anymore. Just forget all about that Amiga trash, be a techie, a nerd, curious and open for new stuff. The NeXT was ahead of its time too, too much perhaps. TAO or EROS or whatever perhaps are, but do not let this be a reason not to learn about them as tomorrow you might need their todays ideas.
Some questions to stimulate the intellect:
+ Why is it that MALDA has to inflict his opinions on us? JUST POST THE NEWS!
+ Why are moderators paid to sing the VA Linux Song? And kiss Malda's butt?
+ Why DID MALDA LIE ABOUT DONATING MONEY TO THE FSF?
+ Why do WE, the REAL OPEN SOURCE COMMUNITY let them get away with it?
Moderators, paid or not, remember the simple, easy steps to keeping good karma (and a brown nose) with Malda;
1. Moderate DOWN all posts questioning or saying negative things about Open Source, no matter how reasonable or accurate they may be.
2. Moderate UP all pro Open Source posts, no matter how stupid or inaccurate.
3. Moderate UP all posts from people saying nice things about VA Linux/Andover/Malda.
4. Watch VA/Andover/Slashdot stock $$$$ rise
and have a really good laugh at all those suckers who let them get away with it.
> Also my FinalWriter word processor is taking
:)
> only 1.5 MB of ram and about 5 on HD with all
> the fonts, cliparts etc, it has all the featurs
> I need + lots of AREXX scripts to make it even
> more useful. Corel WP2000 for Linux takes about
> 350 MB on HD.
Did it really get that much bigger since WP8, or you comparing FW with the whole Corel office suite?
> Is it really 70 times more powerfull and usefull
> than my FinalWriter
Yes.
(I used to attempt to use Final Writer for engineering reports. Final Writer is not your friend.)
What were you doing on a PC in 1985? Therein lies the answer to your question.
> Why did Corel few days ago published new
> printing libraries for Linux along with its
> WP2000?
Tradition.
Telling one of these collectors to dump their '57 Mustang in favor of a "better" new car would be met with a "You don't get it" shake of the head.
Of course not. The 57 is the rarest of all Mustangs. It was only available to buyers with a time machine to bring it back from 1964 1/2.
When Bill Gates was saying that no-one could write a fully reentrant multitasking OS under 2Mb I was booting up my A500 from a 880K floppy. I learnt later to cut this down to about 100K by replacing a lot of the files with my own assembler versions (e.g. Copy 5K -> APCopy 240bytes). I miss my Amiga but boy did it teach me a lot - Vale Amiga
... save us from the heathen Amiga worshippers. I mean let's face it, the Amiga sucks in todays computing environment. The only people who are still in love with the Amiga are die-hard crazies who don't have the wherewithal to setup and run a more complicated and modern system like Linux or Windows. I mean, God, listen to this:
"It won't be a machine people just laugh at," said Amiga fan Philip Corner, a computer graphics student at the University of Teeside in Middlesborough, England. "It will be an alternative to the WinTel duopoly, a serious potential threat to the status quo."
I'd guess he's used to being laughed at personally, and by making a stupid statement like that he's sure to be laughed at some more. The Amiga is dead, was dead many years ago, and will die if it ever comes out again, which I'd say was only a remote possiblity anyway.
Those people who advocate Amigas over everything else need to pull their heads out of the sand, realise the Amiga was only a step above the Sinclair Spectrum and start to deal with computing in the 90s.
Thank you.
Thing is there isn't a PC/Mac/Etc solution that can do what my 1989 Amiga can do - desktop video with no excuses...
______A M I G A DOMINATION 3000_______
Amy
I have used many os, and haven't found yet any so compact, fast, easy as AmigaOS is. WindowsXX sucks, Linux it's nice (I use it everyday) but it's biiig, and IMHO it is not yet prepared for the desktop market. the same for other unix os (netbsd, HPUX and so on)...MacOS is a toy (broken :P)...
If Amiga Inc (i.e. Fleecy Moss and co.) will deliver something that looks like AmigaOS but a lot more powerful as modern OSes...well, things will get more interesting :)
I wish Amiga Inc all the best, and hope they will be back on track soon!
BTW there are still a lot of amiga users out there that do not use their Amiga because of nostalgia...and software is still developed for it...and yes, I agree, IMHO the Free/GNU thing could be a good way to go for AmigaOS (in responce to another message).
an Amiga user.
Now, I'm a Linux user.
In 1985 (August), I was on site in Sagiwaw, Michigan (spelling?). Sun was located nearby. But Byte Magazine had a great summary of the Amiga. I never bought one. The economy was bad. I was trying to make ends meet..
I didn't buy an Amiga. PC was the thing. Did I fail? You tell me.
You can actually use harddrives larger than 4Gb.
Religion? Hmm. I just like using it. Don't assume that everyone is a nutter.
Just turn on slashboxes, since all the good stories are covered by LinuxToday/32bitsonline/etc/etc hours before slashdot bothers to post them ;)
Just curious.... what studio would that be? We still use toasters here at ILM... not as the main engine for rendering, but they do their tasks well.
What's AMiGA? Ever heard about the scene? AMiGA is the scene =) I dont understand why people say things like: "Too late, only hardcore amiga users will use it". So? I will use it even if most users does not. How would your beloved Linux/BSD/UNIXes become that they are if noone supported 'em from the begining? No, please take a look at the new boxes, THEN they are out and tell me that you think about 'em then. Some people also says that the current AmigaOS can't run multiple CPU as ones, it does, even two differnt cpus multitasking at the same time!!! (PPC and 680x0) Hears my point of view for other OSes: Windoze Hummms, do I really have to say something about it? The nice with it is the software. The bad, which everyone thinks of immeditly is that's it unstable. But theres so much more. Look at the software, is it any good? I dont belive so. The system is big, slow, far away from efficent. I will NEVER buy or use windoze on my own computer. Linux I've used it for five years more or less, from the beging there wasn't much software for it, but that's seem to change nowadays. However, the system eats memory, not as much as windoze but anyways. and then we have that with all the distributions. If everyone used Debian or Slackware what would not be a problem. But not everyone does, and because some dists(read RedHat) wannts to change the directory structure, everything doesn't work even if it made for the same os! Thats bad... *BSD I'll player a little time with OpenBSD. Lots of people told me that it was great, but I dont think so. It was to little documentation around for it, and nothing for the average user. I've never tryed NetBSD, the fact that they support lots of hardware is great however. Currently I'm using FreeBSD which I like, it has everything a little bit more that Linux has, it's free, it does not have a corrupt directory structure, and there are very nice documentation for it out there. QNX This seems like a nice OS. I'll just checked the bootdisks and read the system architecture manual. However, the cool thing about QNX is that it's small and effecient, and has a very nice network support. BeOS This is just another try to do something that we can do better, with no support it woont work, to bad =/ MacOS The multitasking issue was sad. Now it runs MacOS X, but why not just run BSD instead? Elate This really seems like an option. Small and effecient, nice multimedia features and things like tranparency on windows and so on can make this a winner. The fact that the company was grounded by Amiga fans doesn't make it worser either. With lots of nice ideas, you know, we amigans have had about eight years to think of new ones, this will make my dreams come true. I will of course buy the new box, but I'll maybe run QNX and BSD until there are some software for it. The other OSes I've forgot Tell me about them... hagge@connection.refused.net PS. Linux will have a hard time to get there with out commersialism, sad but true. If noone can't make money at it, there wont be much support. And I really think BSD is a better alternative. Especially then you consider the fact that FreeBSD can compile most Linux code, and often run Linux binaries directly. D.S. PS2. everyone seems to talk about the fact that there maybe isn't enough money avaible. However Jim Collas sad that then he had spoken to ppl, they told him to not start the project if they haven't enough money to run it in three years without getting and money back. So Hopefully they have enough to make it come true. D.S. http://www.compsoc.net/ericschwartz/sabrina/sabrin a/SO_sm126.gif http://www.coax.net/people/erics/
Sorry for my ugly spelling. And that there where no linefeed characters in the text after pasting it in..
You have not had to load a device driver in 7 years on your Amiga, because it has not had any new technology in 10 years. BeOS on its minimum x86 or PPC requirements makes the best Amiga look like a pre XT running CP/M. I do like the old Amiga's and still use my 500 from time to time. But the BeOS rocks harder than Amiga ever did.
Amiga forever 2.0, emulating 68020, OS3.0, RTG 1024x768x24bit.
Emulation seems to be faster than A1200/14Mhz with AGA & 256 colors. Maybe like 030 & 32 color AGA.
The display refresh using RTG is approximately as fast as on Amiga with a Zorro3 graphics card.
But the CPU speed is far from 68060/50Mhz.
Maybe something like 030/50Mhz... at most.
Workbench opens backdrop pictures reeeaally slow.
Anyway there is some Amiga feeling in it. Even though the background picks are loading, it does not slow down, unlike winblows. But if W95 decides to do something in the background, Amiga emulation becomes very slow.
Too bad that the emulation crashes (the whole laptop) if I try to install (for example) the SW from Amiga Format CD.
Hey, does anyone know if Sysinfo or AIBB is freely available somewhere in the net?
God damn it, when will people learn, Linux is JAUC, Just Another Unix Clone.
Be excited about something different!
Stupid moderators, it's NOT, I reapeat, NOT offtopic!
Elate is the OS that will be used in the comming Amiga boxes, shitheads!
Now, moderate this guy back up.
virii were virii, not lame mass emailed powerpoint presentations running in fullscreen mode.
.mod player"
A nasty virus could rip through your entire collection of pirated games (no HDD back then) and you could store viruses safely and infect your friends at will.
And what about File Imploader! Back when the in-joke in software development was "Every application gains features until it includes a
Ah... Byte Bandit, such a worthy adversary.
Fuck you troll!
...and the Archimedes was infinitely better than both of them.
That is fucking sick and disgusting. Besides, are you immune to the fallout that would result?
Am I going to be reading here that the Atari will be coming back?
Rumor has it that Amiga will be making the new brain for the latest Gleaner combine. Amiga executives saw a need for the new combine brain in light of dissapointing yields in the farming sector.
Farmers are eagerly anticipating the new
combine but are somewhat wary. Last year Amiga's much heralded duck stripping tool failed to make it to market, leaving many farmers stranded with an abundance of unprocessed livestock.
And I thought my lack of sleep meant I had too much time on my hands. Is the clown keeping you awake too?
I think the spirit of the platform defines the Amiga, the elegance, simplicity, creativity. TAO most certainly is the logical porgression of anything defined as the above. A TAO based Amiga is almost more Amiga than the original Amiga IMO.
>Be excited about something different! That is illogical.
If you had seen Elate (the OS on which the new AmigaOS will be based) running and understood the implications of its powerful networking and processor independance you'd know what the big deal about the new Amiga is.
By the way: nice name! LOL
Is there a way to mark the article at redundant? I'm sure Slashdot has posted this three or four times in the past.
...
You mean this is a different article about some white knight buying the Amiga and it'll be back for real now? Uh huh. And they're going to have a BIG announcement in only two weeks? I see. Well, carry on, then.
don't resurrect a 10-year-old flamewar just for the hell of it. The Archie was a generation on from the Amiga/ST anyway, possibly the 1200 was closer in terms of gGfx, but by then CBM had kludged the machine horribly anyway
skrew u all amiga boyz...nuthin comes close to the might thrusting power afforded by the Abit BP6 and a pair of overclocked celerys. give it upski...yo' all just repressed wannabe macintosh owners anyway...admit it...except you're all too busy sucking each other's cocks to go out and cop it from clear case stevie. thankyou.
What will it mean for the rest of us? Nothing! You can't argue today with an Amiga believer, you couldn't do so in the past, and you will not be able to do so in the future. Best thing to do is to avoid them (I never hire someone who mentions Amiga on his resume), and to make some fun of them.
It's similar to the Team OS/2 idiots. They love to be kicked around by their supplier. "Please, please Commodore/Escom/Gateway/Amiga kick me again!" PLOOOP. "Thank you master."
. 'the Amiga's not dead its merely resting'
Shhh...The master is decomposing.
TAO were going to save the Acorn Archimedes with their software virtual machine and parallel processing techonology, it all seemed to be a bit pants and it quietly died a death. Looks like they're at it again!
A lot of people are complaining about this article saying things like "Amiga is dead", "Why should we care?", "It just won't be the same", etc...
This is not why we care that a new Amiga is being released. I myself have never even used an Amiga, but what Amiga does bring is some nostalga to the hearts of some old programmers and some hope to the new. Those guys innovated once and "gosh darn it" they might do it again.
Someone said that we should be calling BeOS the new Amiga, and that might be true. They carry what many might call the Amiga Spirit.
It's a lot like Linux was 8 years ago. It might not have been the best thing out, but it brought the hope of innovation. That is why the Open Source movement has beening gaining steam lately, and why I care.
(Look ma! A karma whore Anonymous Coward.)
Hardware OpenGL support will appear as an upgrade - they haven't dropped it.
As for drivers - Windows has a clear advantage here as manufacturers will always write Windows drivers. BeOS requires third parties to write drivers for the OS to have any hope of supporting the enormous number of devices out there.
There seems to be a lot more energy spent complaining about the lack of drivers rather than
actually writing them.
C-YA
Jon
http://www.dookie.demon.co.uk>
I remember getting the 'commodity'(extension) that let the '030 in my Amiga 3000 do all the blits instead of the blitter, because the blitter hadn't been updated since 1984 and was about the slowest thing in the system (except for all the other custom chips which hadn't been updated since 1984 either). I understand that 'current' Amigas have PowerPCs piggybacked in as a co-processor because the main CPU (68060?) hasn't been updated since 1992. Sad.
Cos I never had a mouse and disk drive for my spectrum. Cos some of us grew up with it. Cos it stuck around for around 10 or so years. Cos it was elegant. Cos it embarressed our PC by running X windows, playing a mod, and managing to format a floppy disk at the same time (Amiga 1500 with about 4meg of memory). That was very amusing. It was a fun machine and had personality.
If you could take what standard the amiga was at when it was released, and improve on it as much as has happened with PC and PC add ons (voodoo, gigahertz clocks etc), god knows how it would have turned out. But like people have mentioned, commodore did not run with the ball, which is a crying shame. Could you imagine an amiga with its own equivalent voodoo blitter chipset, 500 mhz cpu, improved Amiga OS etc. It would give a pentium more than a run for its money. I mean we were running a machine of around 8mhz, the PC were mostly 16 and 25 , and still could'nt touch it.
I miss watching that power light flicker on and off ever so slightly to prepare you for your guru meditation :) Brad
It is still used in many places and it still makes thing happen with less fuss than the others.
... not yet. (the CPU power is available but the needed SW is not)
My A4k 50Mhz still beats the sh*t out of my PII/400 in many basic tasks.
(it boots up faster than my laptop awakens from "hold-mode", plug&play works better, web surfing is faster...)
Sure I can not watch DVDs with my Amiga
regards
One of the 100000+ Amigans...
PS. Has someone tried wether Athlon 1Ghz can finally emulate Amiga in full (060) speed or not?
PS2. How about dual athlon?
PS3. Yep, Amiga expansions are a bit pricey nowadays....
Uhhhhh. It is called Mac OS-X.
I owned an Amiga 500 years ago that I bought second hand. I was in high school at the time and couldn't afford much else. Just about the time I geared up to buy a new computer, CBM went kaput. I bought a PC, and have been a windows user for 7 years. I honestly thought Amiga was dead, and continued to until last summer. Let me preface this by saying that I never used my A500 for anything productive. I had a small sidecar HD and a pile of games. I did some word processing and a lot of BBSing... BRE was great :) My current PC is a p3/500 128mr 10gighd Last summer I was feeling nostalgic and bought a couple of old atari game systems, and was thinking about getting an A500 for games off an online auction. I ran across an Amiga IRC channel, and got to know some of the people. I was amazed that they used Amiga's for internet, IRC, and basically everything I did with my PC. I didn't believe it was possible. I went to the comp.sys.amiga.misc newsgroup for info, and was surprised by all the bashing of the Amiga by PC users (really what do they care?). I was never a fanatic, so I decided to conduct my own test to see who was right. So far I have bought an A3000 with scsi cdrom, 33.6 external modem, and upped the ram to 18m. I have about 500m of hd space. I am going to put a gfx card in it, and an accelerator, but right now am running straight 68030/25mhz ecs graphics and os3.1. I currently have less than $200 in the whole setup, having bought most of it used. Frankly I am amazed by it. Last night I had a web browser open, was dloading a program off aminet, had an IRC client open, and was installing another program at the same time, with no visable slowdown. I was talking to someone in IRC while watching the progress of the installer...can you do that on Win? The gfx aren't very good, but for low gfx intensity sites (news, ebay, yahoo! slashdot etc) they are fine. I have installed various drivers by just draging and dropping them in the appropriate drawer. The fact that I can turn the computer on and log-on to the net, check my mail, open my browser and IRC client in less time than it takes to get a pointer on my PC is nice too (less than a minute to do all). When I am done, I turn it off. No Shut down, no wait. I have word processing, graphics editing and various video editing programs installed on it, and I am currently up to 15% of my HD space used. I am really interested in seeing how it works when I put a 24bit gfx card in... even with color quantitization and dithering, Browsing is almost as fast as my PC, and I am running a 56k modem on the PC. Honestly in a very short time I have become used to the boot speed and control of the Amiga, and now about the only thing my PC gets used for is my 4 year old playing "jumpstart." I am not saying that its right for everybody, or is just as good as a PC, but it is very useful. A computer is just a tool, and you judge a tool by how well it performs the task it is used for. If you need a tool to play the latest games, the current Amiga isn't the right tool. It is up to many tasks however, and calling people crazed fanatics for using them shows ignorance. I bought it to see who was right... so far the nod is going to the Amigans. If Amiga can bring the level of control and power to modern hardware that they had on the old systems, I will buy. And before anyone says "try linux" I did... None of the current distributions support my gfx card, and xfree86 is a pain for a novice to obtain, much less install.
Well lets all just see and wait, no harm in that. If it doesn't appear (which I resigned myself too long ago) then at least i still have my original to play with whenever. But if a new one does arrive and it is good, it will be a big bonus. If its shit, I'll be disspointed but we still have Linux etc. Lets not jump the gun.
Quote from their site:
It has been designed to run very fast as both stand alone and co-existing with host operating systems across any kind of processor.
That doesn't sound like a complete OS to me. It also sounds like it won't work with any existing mainstream OS without a wee bit of work. Doesn't sound like a recipe for success IMO.
You've understood that wrong. When they say co-exist they mean "run hosted on". Elate can run on its own or ON TOP OF LINUX AND WINDOZE.
As for not being an Amiga, there quite simply isn't a better successor that captures the spirit of the Amiga (i.e. everything that is Amiga) as perfectly.
Read what I say with the background knowledge about TAO's products and you too will know why traditional operating systems (including Linux of course) are living out their last of their days as the best tools for the job.
I've always knewed that amiga kicks.... And it will always do that, even without new hardware and a new os... But it will however be a lot better soon =) hagge@connection.refused.net
u all are speaking of what Amiga was in old times :). Let me try to update your knowledge a little. Recently we got an update to the OS (3.5) that is 5-6 years since the last os :/ We got 603 / 604e cards, bringing the amiga to PPC speed. G3 cards are just around the corner. We got good gfx / sound cards, we got networking cards (only 10 mbit) etc etc. So we almost got all what pcs got, to the double of the price :( now its being worked on getting the os over to ppc, since the 68k is outdated , cant hardly get 68k cpus any longer too :/. I really looking forward to hear what they announce 1 Apr, since new HW is a must. I am using Amiga daily and its fast enough, i even got linux installed. the only thing i miss is up to date games. and therefor i also got an psx :)
Maybe we'll all get lucky this time, and actually something will be released. I"m tired of all this speculation and hype being spread from one place to another.....Someone please make a product and ship it!
-Julius X
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
THIS IS NOT FLAIMBAIT. THIS IS A SERIOUS QUESTION. I'm curious, aside from not being wintel and therefore spiffy, what's the big deal bitch? what is or ever was so great about amiga anyway. THIS IS NOT FLAIMBAIT. THIS IS A SERIOUS QUESTION.
My pet project, PerlOS, is a microkernel running through a custom Perl interpreter, and as a bonus, uses a Perl shell for UI. Okay, so the performance isn't so hot ;-), but it's fun to play around with. Anyway, I also provide a Perl-to-binary compiler, and the resulting code will boot on all but the most ancient Amigas. It works pretty well, IMHO, considering...
And yes, it's GPLed.
Too hot for CPAN!! Get PerlOS now from
Keep in mind that when I bought my used Amiga 1000 in 1987 for $600:
The Mac II wasn't out yet, ALL Macs were 1 bit black and white with those little 10 inch screens. And they cost $2,500. The Mac II with 256 colors (and almost no color software), would soon come out at about $4,000, and it wouldn't multitask at all without a primative one-task-at-a-time add in.
PCs were even worse. Almost none had sound cards, video cards were CGA (something like 4 colors out of a 16 color fixed palette) at 320 x 240, and the OS for them was DOS, no GUI. And they still cost $2000 or so.
The responsiveness of the Amiga was incredible. You clicked and it did something. You moved a window and it moved at 60hz. You played an animation or a game, and it played rock solid and smoothly. You switched tasks, and it did it instantly.
But the main reason for loving the Amiga was that in 1987, it was the only computer that would let me do full color, full screen 3D and 2D animation, compose music with stereo sound and samples, play the best games available outside the arcade and run a word processor. That still sounds pretty good.
...an especially appropriate strip.
:-)
The whole archive is here, and the original strip here.
OG.
PS: The author is obviously an Amiga lover too
> It also needs an underpowered CPU with all the load taken by the most sophisticated graphics chip ever created.
So a Pentium III with a geForce or NV15?
-- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
> such as the blitter chip - A much more sophisticted one than the simple rectangle movement chips in a lot of SVGA cards too. This could take 3 sources and AND and OR them together.
I once programmed my A500 to run the cellular-automata Life simulation using only the blitter. I think it used 4 memory-blocks (1 displayed, 3 for calculation) and about a dozen blitter operations per timestep. At the time, it was a lot faster than using the CPU (though this advantage went away in later models like the 4000).
I don't remember anything about ST:TNG being rendered on Amigas. Are you sure you're not thinking of Babylon 5 (which started on Amigas, though they later switched to x86)?
Not anymore. After a storm I saw a Windows login screen.
--
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
This is the same idiot who wrote about the supposed hack for averting amazon referal fees a few weeks. All this guy/girl does is spew up ALOT of un-researched incorrect crap! I knew as soon as I saw the link to this article that it was probably written by Leander. There are some good journo/writers at Wired.. Leander ain't one of them.
This is the same idiot who wrote about the supposed hack for averting amazon referal fees a few weeks. All this guy/girl does is spew up ALOT of un-researched incorrect crap! I knew as soon as I saw the link to this article that it was probably written by Leander. There are some good journo/writers at Wired.. Leander ain't one of them.....
Ah Amiga, we hardly knew ye. Denise! Where are you? Fat Agnes? Gary? Paula? Ah, history.
The Amiga fanatics are a strange lot - I counted myself amongst their number until recently, when I rediscovered beauty in computing with Linux. Such a joy to be incharge of your own destiny, and not to be at the mercy of a single badly run company.
Speaking of which - does anyone know where I can get a copy of the Commodore Deathwatch video? Made by Commodore employees watching the slow march of Commodore into the black pit...
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
Come on... You have Hardware _and_ Software under one roof, and can develop both quickly. Given Apple's recent rebirth (Thanks Mr Jobs) It would be so tempting to go this way. You can't do that in the wintel/amd/linux world with a zillion different people doing different things and hoping they can market their product into being the standard.
"Don't Call this a come back I been here for years"
Seriously Amigma will never die as long as the users want it to be around it will it seem that alot of people love amigas. You use what you want not what you need so I see amigas being around for a long time
http://theotherside.com/dvd/
So why all this reviving of unix then? :)
We sure do. Or I do at least. Viva Amiga! The pissy "architecture" is a bad joke perpetrated on the computer-buying public for the last 20 years (my god, has it really gone one that long? *sigh*).
:(
I blame Compaq. Bastards. RIP DEC
The Boing Ball.
;-)
Bah. We had the Boing Ball on the Atari ST too.
.. and, btw; Atari ST r00leZ!
I saw this demo on the Atari 800 long before I'd heard of Amiga. Only years later did I make the connection between the Boing! and Boink! demos with their red-and-white checkered, bouncing balls. How appropriate, considering both machines had the same designer work on them.
Ah, nostalgia. I'll have to dig up a copy of that demo on the 'net, if possible, and let the Atari 800 emulator chew on it....
With the replacement of all Previewguide boxes on cable tv with the TV guide boxes, the last use of amigas is now done. The new Tv guide boxes are PIII machines running some really cool hardware.
While the amigas did great with video toasters in them.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
For those who can't wait and want to play their old games/demos, get UAE.
It's cool! I just love watching those old demos - State of the art was a classic!
Oh, and there's WinUAE, too.
While talking about the old Amiga's hardware capabilities, I think you left out her main strength. I'll explain...
I just assembled my new Linux box this weekend, and I'm running it side-by-side with my Amiga. This new Linux box will be useful to me in a lot of ways, but it's already shown itself to not be a superset -- it can't replace the Amiga.
For example, while I was installing the Myth2 CD, I was also downloading Myth2 patches (to be installed right after the CD install) with Netscape, and Netscape seemed really sluggish. I don't mean the network connection, I mean the GUI! While multitasking (and they were only two I/O bound jobs!), the machine "felt" noticably slower than while singletasking. The Linux box is an Athlon 700 with 256MB of RAM, Matrox G400 MAX, ATA66 hard disk (supposedly DMA?), and a SCSI DVD-ROM. Except for the fact that I wussed out and used ATA66 hard disks instead of SCSI, this should be a top-notch machine. And yet it was performing in a manner that no Amiga user would ever find acceptable. I would have trashed my Amiga years ago if the mere act of installing a game from CD were enough to make my web browser's GUI seem slow.
(Interestingly, someone makes a replacement scheduler for the Amiga (called "Executive"), to make its multitasking more Unix-like. Is that fucked up, or what?)
As long as people keep using computers interactively, where instantaneous response time matters, there will be a role for some Amiga-like OS. Linux isn't it. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate my new Linux box, and it will be useful in ways that my Amiga could never live up to. (For example, there's no Myth2 port for the Amiga. And I imagine that once I get the audio working, it will be able to play MP3s at considerably less than the 50% CPU usage that my Amiga's 50 MHz 68060 needs.) Windows, OS/2, and MacOS 9 aren't it either. I don't think they ever will be, because it's not a matter of technology, it's a matter of values. None of the mainstream OSes are even trying to top the Amiga. Maybe this "new Amiga" will, but I'm even skeptical about that.
And that's the real question on my mind: assuming that this new Amiga isn't just another vaporware announcement, will it perform as well as the original Amiga? Or will it turn out to just be another Windoze-wannabe, that has to make sacrifices in order to compete? How many more years am I going to have to keep my A3000 running before someone finally makes a worthy replacement? The whole computer industry is starting to look like a really sick joke.
About Be... yeah, Be might be it. I'm also trying BeOS 4.5 on this new box. Alas, it doesn't seem to like my G400, so it's running in 640x480 VGA mode, and kinda slow. And it doesn't seem to like my 3c905c. Maybe if they update their drivers (or if I downgrade to better-supported cards), BeOS will impress me. Supposedly, QNX Neutrino (along with the Phoenix consortium) is going to try to do it also. So I guess things aren't completely hopeless yet...
But I want an Amiga-like OS, and for now, AmigaOS 3.5 is still the best I've seen.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Thank god the truth has finally been revealed.
That must be the understatement of the day. Too late. It was already too late when Commodore went belly-up. A year after than, when Escom came to the picture with its 'Ja'-speaking Germans, it was late too.
The frontier, the innovations are elsewhere. Mobile computing will might eventually become more important than traditional desktop use. Every electronic appliance you have could have an IP. The net will invade our lives in a way that will make us wonder where it ends and real world starts.
Can Amiga make a comeback ? It's possible. Will it become popular ? Doubtful. Will it be innovative, like the old Amiga used to be ? Dream on. True innovations, those that really shape our world, are going to be made in entirely different arenas.
Perhaps this analogy will help: There you are playing with your brand new Nintendo Entertainment System, and your neighbor shows you a Playstation. Does your jaw drop or what?
Okay. I can see that. How about this? Your friend shows you his playstation, and you show him your 1 Gigahertz multi-processor PC running Quake 3 on a GeForce card at 1024x768, 200 fps. Then you tell him it cost the same, because the playstation is outdated, old, garbage and prices have dropped considerably since then. Then you show him your playstation emulator, pop in the playstation disk, and play the exact same game.
This is kind of how I see the Amiga comeback type of people. Sure, it was good for it's time. However, it's time has long since passed. Any "new" Amiga won't be the same in any way. So what's the big deal? Just whip the old Amiga out of the closet (or dumpster) and there you go.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
yup...reminds me of the guy who owned George Washington's axe, the very axe he had used, presumably, to chop down his father's cherry tree...of course, the axe head had been replaced twice, and the handle had been replaced seven times, but it was George Washington's axe...
Yet another iteration of "It'll be back, and it'll blow your socks off, you stupid PC l00zurz!!!!!", eh? No thanks.
As if there weren't enough noise on comp.sys.amiga.advocacy already :-)
- I was about to say you can boot up to GUI from a floppy, but there is a 192K (I think) ROM helping out but then I thought that 192K is pretty small too
It was 256K for the 1.x series of Kickstarts. 2.x raised it to 512K, where it's been since.Actually it's 512K.
_______
Scott Jones
Newscast Director / ABC19 WKPT
Commodore 64 Democoder
FC Closer
I can't thing of any feature of the Amiga (other than multiples "screens" visible at the same time) that is ahead of the current state of the art in either hardware or software. Pseudo 14-bit sound! Must chuck out my Awe64...
Well, how about the size of the OS itself, the fact that you can boot to the GUI completely from floppy (ok, ok, Linux sorta can too - but it still uses X on the HD). What about it's rock-solid stability in later generations (I admit, AmigaOS was extremely buggy up until 2.x).
As far as I'm concerned the C64 was the best at the time but I'm not pining for another
Completely agreed! I still code for the C64, but more for nostalgic reasons than for any technological ones.
_______
Scott Jones
Newscast Director / ABC19 WKPT
Commodore 64 Democoder
FC Closer
Amiga has been under a lot FUD recently. Unlike popular claims, Development is not dead and to
show this we are proud to present the developers show: AMIGACON3000
To been shown:
AMIGAOS 3000: All the features that were promised for AMIGAOS 2990, which was unfortunatly not released, were bought by XYZ, who have developed the concept way beyond the original. Allready, at the demo state, all the necessary
#include
features of a modern operating system.
signatures pending - ansa@kos.to - (dont mail there)
Why don't you check it out for yourself?
The Amiga Research OS (AROS) are making an Amiga OS "clone" running on standard pc hw. It's even possible to run it under Linux.
Aros is for Amiga kinda what Wine is for Windows. You can even play AmigaQuake under Aros under Linux. Great stuff.
We Amiga users have learned not to get our hopes up with every new announcement. And the fact that "they" are unable to deliver a new Amiga doesn't render my "old" Amiga useless.
When it comes to something that have a chance of success I'll have to agree with you that Linux might have a chance of survinving (due to massive hype lately), sad as it is. I kinda like Linux and have used it for years, but it isn't exactly state of the art (monolithic kernel and all) and it's not something I'd really like to see the computing future built on.
The best thing would be to start of with a nice, clean etc. kernel like QNX or something. Too bad it won't happen.
This is the Amiga Boing ball from one of the first demos of the Amiga. It featured this red/white ball bouncing across the screen going "boing".
Oh, don't they though? Remember, Gateway still own the Amiga patents; they're only licensing the patents to Amiga Inc. The common fear seems to be that Gateway will pull the carpet out from under Amiga Inc. without any warning, and given Gateway's lackadaisical attitude in the past, I have to confess it doesn't strike me as a completely implausible fear.
Ah, the good ol' Guru Meditation screen, I can remember repeatedly flipping past the program-listings channel, seeing the "Click left mouse button to continue", and pausing to look at the remote a few moments before thinking, "Wait a minute...!"
That was a long while ago, though. I think they've gone Windoze now, spit spit.
Hehe. Yeah, that's a feature, the PCs are lacking today. Besides, I still consider the "Guru" more stylish than the BSOD. =:-)
About the flashing LED: When I got my first PC in 1996 (IBM Aptiva) it came with APM and all that stuff. Gee, I remember looking all puzzled as the screen went black and the Power-LED started to blink (showing the Compu was in power-safe-mode).
Amiga was a great machine. I guess I need to replace that broken power-supply on my A3000-T someday.
--- If OS were buildings, then the first woodpecker to come around would erase 95 % of civilization.
Celebrate it!
Open your Window (nah, those in the house, man!) and shout "Guru Meditation" to the world!
--- If OS were buildings, then the first woodpecker to come around would erase 95 % of civilization.
You would be better off comparing AmigaOS to QNX or OS/9 ..both can boot off floppies and QNX comes with a web browser and a desktop environment all on a single floppy. these are all RTOS derivatives. and they're all stable. I dont know why the amiga crowd tries to hang on to an outdated platform..guys, theres no further use for it. give up.
Community, feh, yeah, right.
In my experience it's just as bad, if not worse, than any other "community"... there are some cool people and some lame people, like anywhere.
I use my Amiga because I love Thor, GoldEd, AmIRC, ARexx, and all the little things that make my life easier; a big reason is that I know the system so well, I can do most of the stuff I could do anywhere much more easily.
What do you think it's the reason people run those boxes as their primary computers? The software available? Not likely. What was only available for the Amiga has long since been ported or replaced on other platforms. The OS? A very limited single-user OS holding up to Linux or BeOS? I don't think so. The hardware? You gotta be kidding me, even with a powerPC-addon, any pc still laughs at the Amiga.
Could it possibly be... the community, then? Consider a community where people actually are more interested in getting things to work and doing cool stuff instead of screaming "Bill Gates can su*k my di*k" all the time (even though the ami-community has its fair share of those as well). Posting this here might be considered as swearing in church, but as far as I've had anything to do with any of the two communities, the Linux-jyhad still has something to learn from the ami-fanatics.
(Note that I don't take any sides here, as I don't use either Linux or Amiga as my primary OS)
So would somebody please tell us all what was so great about the Amiga?
The very short and simple answer is that when it was introduced it was at least ten years ahead of anything else on the market.
Perhaps this analogy will help: There you are playing with your brand new Nintendo Entertainment System, and your neighbor shows you a Playstation. Does your jaw drop or what?
I've never seen or used an Amiga, so can someone explain why they use that red & white ball to me?
It was an example of the hardware's ability to quickly and easily (ie, low CPU usage) move a big bunch of bits hither and tither. You could never have pulled that off on a PC or Mac at the time ('85). Way Back When it was impressive... but then, so were 3 1/2" diskettes.
Sure, it was good for it's time. However, it's time has long since passed. Any "new" Amiga won't be the same in any way.
I agree. But the question wasn't "What is so great about the Amiga", it was "What was so great..."
People have been obcessing over obsolete hardware for a long time - witness the number of vintage car collectors. They buy, sell, trade, refurbish (even replicate!) particular models that they especially love - even if by today's standards those cars are inefficient, bad handling, polluting or whatever. Telling one of these collectors to dump their '57 Mustang in favor of a "better" new car would be met with a "You don't get it" shake of the head. Same thing applies here, I think.
Pity that Commadore couldn't market eternal life if they'd had it in bottles.
I know this is an awkward question but what defines an Amiga?
The Boing Ball.
Well, actually I would have thought the Operating System, maybe I'm missing something.
Bah. We had the Boing Ball on the Atari ST too.
And the ST sweat blood making it move. On Amy it took maybe 4% of the CPU. Ah, the old flame wars...
Has anyone bothered to emulate the ST? For reasons I cannot explain I've decided I need to emulate everything I can on my new Laptop. I've already got the Atari 800, TRS-80, Atari 7800, Amiga, Odyssey2 (ok, so I'm a sick puppy), Game Boy... must have more! MORE!
(Shoot! Amost forgot, need to d/l a Z-machine for it)
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Handy: A Lynx (um.. the handheld machine) emulator
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Actually, it was almost exactly like comparing an Atari Lynx ( a.k.a Handy, note the historical Amiga link
) to a Gameboy. I got a Lynx, my brother got a Gameboy. It should've been devestating, I should have been able to laugh at his pitiful, mono-color handheld, sneering at him with contempt. (This was what we did for fun, besides playing games. Knocking each other's console of choice was great sport.) Instead it was he who got to be contemptuous, "Where are all the games?" he'd sneer, as he'd show me the latest Castlevania or Mega Man for his system, while I had to put up with stuff like Viking Child and extremely rare releases. I'd be incredulous, "Bbbutt, bbutt, my hardware is clearly superior! Hardware scaling and rotation, a color LCD, why is this happening..."All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
I've seen a similar message on our Prevue Channel (the channel that tells what's on each channel for the next hour 1/2). Somehing like "Insert Laser Disc and Press Any Key To Continue" up there for hours at a time. With a [Copyright 19xx Commodore Amiga Corp.] or something at the bottom.
Good old laser discs.
Anything could be the 'greatest ever' only if it was developed better. Duh.
--
Don't lead me into temptation... I can find it myself.
I have an old black-box NeXTStep sitting here beside me right now (and running) - one of the screensavers for it is the red & white ball that they always show for the Amiga. I've never seen or used an Amiga, so can someone explain why they use that red & white ball to me? I always think "NeXT" instead of "Amiga" when I see it...
Adam
Crimson Networks
Not yet, at least not from what I've seen in DP3, although X should be a lot more polished when it finally reaches Consumer release, whereas Amiga OS does exist in a polished form now. One major shortfall is the realtive isolation of the "Classic" environment. At present it needs an entirely separate IP from X, and a lot of "Classic" apps are more than likely to take a significant speed hit when running under this environment.
Sick? No, it's just unfortunate. Besides, it's only the launch of the developer box. I bet someone has some hideous trick up their sleeves, but it ain't gonna be to do with the launch. :) I doubt Fleecy and Bill would, either :)
If you look, you'll see that the "launch" is happening at the St. Louis Amiga Show. Would YOU launch a fake product amongst a few thousand rabid Amigans?
Wrong bet :-) I never gave her a name !
I kinda see Amiga as the Libertarian Party. Back in the highly entrenched days of the 80s, the voice of an alternative that could stand up to the establisment was heralded as revolutionary. Eventually everyone else caught up with some of the things that had been said. So now the establisment has adopted some of the things that they were doing back then. And the alternative, even though it still holds some minor attraction, we're noticing its eccentricities, and maybe they're not so great as we once imagined. So any hope that they may unseat the status-quo has been dismissed, and we just mention them every once in a while partly to remind people that there are alternatives, but mostly for the entertainment value.
And then there's the BeOS-Reform Party....
Any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from Gods.
Maintaining? I don't think so. All the major supporting firms are dropping out even as we speak. Offcourse I don't know about the situation in England (the home of the Acorn machines) but overseas its over. The result being to much cost of ownership and almost no income from computer sales. A brave effort but with no hope.
Im an old Amiga guy. But its dead. I wonder what they mean by Amiga powered? Netscraft reports www.amiga.com running IRIX and www.amiga.de running NT4. Why not change the logo on the page to IRIX/NT4 powered?
you could order it from IAM a while ago but I think they've stopped selling it. BTW it was called "Deathbed Vigil" and was made by Dave Haynie(correct spelling?). I even have the T-Shirt :). It has the signatures of all the engineers and a big boing ball at the back...
Erik Dalén
Dear Mr. Amiga,
PLEASE consider this time to build a computer and not a buzz-word thing like an Amiga Multimedia Convergence.
Or, if you don't feel able to build good hardware, why not a good software offer ? An OS ? Or better, some extensions to Linux to make it a real desktop or, even better, real time multimedia machine (two domains where Linux is still far from what other less meritant OSes can give).
But not a stupid Multimedia Internet blah-blah-blah ! That's just not what Amiga followers want.
Stéphane
Instant Karma's gonna get you, Gonna knock you right on the head (John Lennon, 1970)
What then? Coding of course :) I was a good demo coder back then, nothing has changed. Sure - PC demos and the Playstation 2 looks better, but it's still the same thing for me.
Nostalgia - or maybe "therapy from the boring stuff at work" ;)
I wouldn't want a new Atari (they do exist, as clones) - and I agree with the previous posters that there's no need for a new Amiga. If you want to revive your old memories, just buy one used! :)
it's in my head
For some nostalgia, have a look at our webpage ;)
Sync - one of the truly great Atari ST demo crews
Red Fox / Sync
it's in my head
Sorry for the flamebait but the Amiga hackers should start on Free Software stuff. The Amiga was just another old (but nice) OS gone stale.
- -
The only way I want to see Amiga come back is if the GPL the lot and any nice bits can be put in Linux
-----------------------------------------------
"If I can shoot rabbits then I can shoot fascists" -
I was joking Or maybe you're trolling. God only knows.
- --------
I can't thing of any feature of the Amiga (other than multiples "screens" visible at the same time) that is ahead of the current state of the art in either hardware or software.
Pseudo 14-bit sound! Must chuck out my Awe64...
As far as I'm concerned the C64 was the best at the time but I'm not pining for another
----------------------------------------
"If I can shoot rabbits then I can shoot fascists" -
You forget, there was another female computer. The Apple LISA!
Don't you really hate what happen to the amiga, a at time the fairly descent be of technology gets brought up, is left to linglish we no surport or developement and then is finally its dead husk is sold off. What a stupid waste of effort, right up there with burning up those 6 billion dollars worth or iridium satellites. Way the hell did gateway buy amiga, when they couldn't do anything with it.
The Amiga was great!
It had good graphics and sound capabilities for its time, and the OS was quite innovative and stable.
It's not a coincidence that most Star Trek:TNG and SeaQuest DSV was created and rendered on a bunch of Amigas with VideoToasters and Lightwave or that other great 3D app Imagine 3D.
And it was relatively cheap, too.
ftp.apple.asimov.net is a great place to find Apple II emulators and disk images for Windows/Linux/etc. I've used Applewin for Win9x quite a bit and it works well. I haven't tried any of the Linux ones because when I'm in Linux I don't have time to mess with it(too much work getting done). You could try www.emulation.net if you are running Mac OS. They have dozens of emu's for Mac. acorn-gaming.com has some emulation news/emulator links/etc. Happy Hunting!!
The comeback of the Amiga would have a lot to offer the tech marketplace. I 1GHz Amiga would be crazy cool.
Eh...
Oups, I almost forgot to say that Amiga was a she computer ;-) The only female computer in the world.
Yeah, I bet you gave it a name too. Come on. Own up. what was it?
--
Luckykaa and Minerva the Amiga
Well, I was thinking a Crusoe would be better (although those are still pretty speedy).
I'm Not quite sure what to do with the graphics chip, but there must be some things that the CPU still does that could be moved onto custom chips.
When I had an Amiga, I wasn't remotely impressed with the OS. I assumed that everone had proper multitasking and couldn't imagine using a WIMP based machine without it.
The reason I bought one was the hardware.
So all we need is a $400 machine that has video in, out, independent monitor out, and D connectors for the joysticks, as well as a DVD drive, a CD rewriter and USB connectors.
It also needs an underpowered CPU with all the load taken by the most sophisticated graphics chip ever created.
It needs Amiga style screens (Sorry, I seem to keep going on about this as though its the ONLY thing that was any good about it). It needs to be able to make a machine that costs twice as much and appears (on paper) to be 4 times faster look like an electric pram.
It needs to be the forerunner of a totally new desktop industry (Like the Amiga was the forerunner of Desktop Video)
Hey... Just 'cos you had 4 times as many colours on screen, a faster CPU, and better sound doesn't mean it was better.
Well, maybe it does but I'm biased.
I actually heard about this several years ago when It was still Taos. Its really quite impressive in that the software will run on any CPU as long as its running the right OS.
This is a major benefit. It means that there will be none of this annoying lock in like we've got with the x86 series. They can just build a new machine with a new processor and the same programs will still run.
I keep hearing people say how nice it is to program on an ARM. I've never tried. What was so nice about it? And did you still feel it was nice after finding that you had to do a divide (or was there a macro for this?)
Elate FAQ
A s well as new hardware, the St. Louis show also promises a first peek at the new Amiga OS. It is expected to be based on the Tao Group's Elate operating system, a cross-platform, multimedia OS that runs on a wide variety of low-end hardware, according to sources.
However, Amiga officials would not comment on details about the new operating system.
I am not offtopic...
In some respects, an Amiga is faster than a Pentium. Mostly because the software that was written for them was written when programs still fit on floppys. So, a lot of the stuff that bloats programs today isn't there. When there is less to run, it runs faster.
The Amiga comes back from the dead so often I think it now qualifies for Messiah status...
Windows 2000 could be the greatest ever if only it was devloped better.
Beos 'lost the battle' before the first shot had been fired thanks to their shitty hardware support. Stop giving them free advertising space. Noone will take a second look at their OS until the company themselves get their act together on the drivers issue. I know it's hard with such a variety of devices out there but supporting at least three major brands (NVidia, Matrox, ATI) is the bare minimum. Or is that too much to ask for?
Given the hardware/software compatibility issues that all the OS's struggle with today, Amiga might succeed if they avoid it by selling a tightly integrated software/hardware package.
For me what defined the Amiga was it's (now most certainly outdated) hardware. Can anybody say blitter?
:.:: brasse
there's no further use for it? It seems to be doing just fine for email, web browsing, playing MP3s, etc. Seems there are quite a few uses for it... Otherwise I'd be using the PC next to my A4000T more often, but my Amiga gets most fo the use...
But yes, there are weak spots, no memory protection, no resource tracking. Not a big deal for me, as I'm not doing any software development. No JAVA, yea, that's one thing that I would like to have. No EDA software for verilog simulations, would be handy but I could always port one of the linux GPL simulators if I had the time. Modern games, well we don't get the absolute latest releases right away, but have had Myst and Quake for a number of years, have Heretic II coming next month, Wipeout is already here, SiN, Freespace, Shogo, and a few others on the way. I'm going to buy a PowerPC G4 board when available, which will then give my "obsolete" Amiga more horsepower than my K6-2/300. And then once LinuxPPC is set up for these G4 cards, I'll do some benchmarks between it and the K6-2 Linux and see what they have to say about obsolescence.
Besides, the new Amiga company isn't going to be doing much for the existing computers. They are breaking away from them, and doing something completely and totally new, basing the new "AmigaOS" not on the current AmigaOS, but on the Elate RTOS from Tao. The OS is hardware and platform independent, using some virtual CPU thing, so it can run on an Athlon 1GHz, P3 1.4GHz, IBM POP PowerPC motherboard, a PowerMac (if tech info was available to do so), a MIPs machine, etc. So don't base your judgement of the current company's worth while-ness on an A500, as the two things are completely unrelated except for the name. There have been rumors that the new OS will be available for old Amiga computers that have PowerPC processors in them, and that's fine with me, but won't be a requirment, and probably will be recommended to get a more modern hardware setup instead, this recommendation coming from Amiga themselves...
So please stop saying stuff like "it's dead", "give it up", etc. You're talking about something completely different than what Amiga Inc. is talking about. The new product can't be dead already, it isn't even born yet...
I'm going to have to get a bigger hard drive, as I hope to run this Elate stuff on my PowerPC Amiga, along with AmigaOS, QNX, and of course LinuxPPC. My 2gig drive is already full of AmigaOS stuff, so have to find room for the other OSes out there...
It's interesting to note that IBM intends to leverage Linux to gain the leads they lost to Sun and Microsoft, yet this little company (Amiga) think they can leverage Tao to gain the leads they lost to: IBM, Sun, Microsoft, Apple, just about everybody and their pet turtles when they went into hybernation ten years ago.
Am I out of touch with reality or are they?
Maybe we should try to have Microsoft buy the Amiga rights, so they would be affected by the Amiga curse ;).
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
I think I have to agree with this... What would it be? They admit to using off the shelf parts, which will almost certainly include an existing processor. The reall issue then is the OS... writing a new OS might be a great idea considering the market focus on alternative OSs, or perhaps the market is already flooded and overflowing. Would it make more sense for them to write the OS and port it to every platform and then sell pre-loaded Amiga boxes, the only difference being that it has an Amiga sticker covering up the apple sticker or whatever? Probably, considering he worked for a pre-built system distributer. We will see, but you can bet the graphics won't be the revolutionary dazzle above the competition like it used to be, and they'll probably have hard drives this time. ;) -Effendi
-Effendi
Anyone else notice the launchdate
April 1st?
Bit sick, huh!
...Upgrade now to Schrodingers Dog...
Amiga the definition of multimedia before Windoze screwed it up...but seriously no more vapourware Amiga we want some revolutionary again and fast!
... 'the Amiga's not dead its merely resting'
Failing that theres also Phoenix developing a new O/S in the spirit of Amiga based on the QNX RTOS. So there maybe some choice out there for all us Amigans...who knows ?
Classic Amiga's may be stale but have you ever played Sensible World of Soccer on a miggie... the graphics may be tiny but what gameplay!
hehehe ive still got SEVERAL HUNDRED games for my amigas! :)
w00h00! Amiga RULEZ!!!!!!!!
Gimme dem G3 cHIps fool'! w00h00!
(c)Mastah_Monkey
w00h00!!!
Amiga rules!!!! YESYESYES
Guru Meditation iz BACK! - GImme Dem Gurus!
Ill take dem GURUs anyday over dem damn Blue Death screens! GuruS RuLE!!! w00h00!!!!
(c)Mastah_Monkey
So would somebody please tell us all what was so great about the Amiga? I remember it had nice graphics for its time. That's about it.
BH
Fools! They laughed at me at the Sorbonne...!
If, in all of it's attempted reincarnations, it ever get's packaged as an "Internet Appliance", we know it's all over.
I wanted to start with something harsh and crass, but I will refrain.
If an Amiga (anything) can beat your PII, I would seriously examine to issues with your PII, as it is either dead or dying.
As an animation freak, the Amiga was a superb tool when combined with a Video Toaster, in 1992. However, it was quickly passed over by a lot of animation software that worked quite well on a 486dx4/100. No one in the studio I worked in would touch the amiga after the Pentiums were released.
Any Amiga fans need to accept the fact that the Amiga is dead and should remain so.
Amiga OS ain't As Stale as Windoze and it's not not bloated like linux. The only good thing about linux is that it's a more stable alternative to Microsoft. There is no no inovation in the linux OS and there never will be. I use My Amiga Most days and think its way better than the Pointless Crap I use in work. I can't Wait for the ne OS to blow the competition away!
This is what, the fourth time now? At this point, we can start telling the story about the little boy who cried "Amiga Comeback".
What makes them think that this time they will succeed? I'm not faulting the OS itself, but it already failed. Several times. One would think that they would catch the hint.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
IMHO, too little, to late. I truely feel that this 'new push' on Amiga will provide quality products and services, but, simply to late.
Amiga has already been dragged through the mud, and to anyone but the hardcore amiga users, it will still remain dirty. I'd honestly consider a name change. 'Amiga' to most people bring up memories a failed product.
Best of luck, truely, but I just don't forsee it taking off.
-- I'm the root of all that's evil, but you can call me cookie..
In terms of booting, the Amiga is much faster than any x86 box. My A4000 gets to a graphical desktop before my x86 box finishes its BIOS startup stuff.
You cannot emulate an Amiga in real-time with a 386DX-25. I haven't tried a recent version of UAE, but the last time I did it was slower than the real thing (25MHz Amiga, 233MHz K6).
I am not disputing that for CPU-bound applications like rendering, any modern x86 box will blow a classic (680x0) Amiga out of the water. But when it comes to responsiveness of the user interface (including non-CPU-bound applications like word processors), the old Amigae still have an edge. I'm sorry, but GNU/Linux with the X Window System is a bloated hog. Less bloated than Win98, but I think it's more useful to compare yourself to the best than to the worst.
The Amiga will be dead when everything it does is done better by something else, and not before.
What remains, you ask? What remains is a spirit and a memory of how, briefly, someone Did It Right.
The Amiga circa 1985-1991 represented power and flexibility and ease of use that did NOT compromise each other - sort of like a nonpatronizing Macintosh with a command line. It also represented (at least in the early days) a price/performance curve totally unconnected to the rest of the industry, perhaps more accurately reflecting what silicon could do at a given price point than the overpriced PCs and Macs of the day might suggest.
What about today? Linux can be made easy to use, but it'll be all too easy for a casual user to "fall into the basement" and end up dealing with the Linux underneath. The rest of us are fine with Linux as it is, not because it's intuitive, but because we've memorized it. The Macintosh has a lot of the usability issues solved, but at the expense of coming across with a patronizing attitude - Steve Jobs has encoded too much of his personality into the OS, and it speaks to you with his voice. Windows has the worst of all worlds - it lacks power, it lacks ease of use, but still speaks to you in Bill Gates' patronizing voice.
Hardware-wise: wouldn't it be nice to see hardware revolutions coming from somewhere besides Apple?
Community-wise: What, fundamentally, is the difference between an Amiga fan and a Linux fan? That Linux runs on newer hardware, that's about it - each platform has its failings. And indeed, for many people, Linux has BECOME their Amiga - insofar as it does all they feel they needed from an Amiga.
I'm not defending Amiga Inc, I'm gonna wait for kickable hardware just like the last 107 times. All I'm saying is that maybe there's something the Amiga had, that could be useful again - and the Amiga "faithful" (the level-headed ones anyway, not the goobers who think Q3A should run on a stock A500) are just the people who agree with this statement.
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
Every now and then you can see the Amiga desktop on the local TV channel instead of the boring fixed-image ads for shops.
--
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
The words "horse", "dead" and "flogging" all spring to mind. Everyone who's tried to rise Amiga from the ashes has got their fingers burned. I'll believe it when I see it.
Now weary traveller, rest your head. For just like me, you're utterly dead.
like this.
:)
Of course, the last time we saw an Amiga was when Elvis brought one out of a flying saucer.... (there's a UF comic about that somewhere
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
How so? I really don't see how. What made Amiga so revolutionary wasn't just that it something new, but that it was something new that was awesomely powerful with the existing hardware technology at the time--and cheap. That's what earned Amiga the adulation that it got (deservedly so).
But all that I read of Tao doesn't strike me as being all that wonderful. I really don't see any particular benefit. Yes, it's interesting to see a proto-OS able to run with other OSes, but what about the hardware? Yes, it's interesting to see this proto-OS idea (or maybe meta-OS is a better word), but there are other concepts out there like microkernels (Mach and HURD) as well as more exotic things like exokernels, but nothing to say definitively if they are The Answer(TM). Feel free to disagree, but I'm very skeptical.
Read what I say with the background knowledge about TAO's products and you too will know why traditional operating systems (including Linux of course) are living out their last of their days as the best tools for the job.
Whoa there. Hold on. "Living out their last days"? That's a tad extreme. There is nothing to suggest that there is a need for a type of OS software like Tao on a mass market. Yes, Elite is intended to be highly portable and connectable, but Linux, for example, already is quite portable, even to handhelds or smaller devices. So is Mach. If you want _really_ high levels of modularity, you've got the exokernel idea. Yet with increasing processor power and decreasing size and power use, the need for extremely slim clients starts to unravel--and consumers want extra bells and whistles for consumer devices (otherwise, why are Pentium IIIs and Athlons selling so well, even though most people don't need that kind of power?), so that added power will be needed. And available.
So the Tao idea sounds interesting, but I honestly don't see how on Earth it should hasten any conceived "extinction" of a traditional operating system. Some of them will die out anyway, like the old MacOS (not OS X). Maybe Windows, too, in the long run (ten years or so). But we already have a high degree of portability and modularity with existing UN*X kernels and low-level layers, so why do we need something as new and different as Tao?
The desktop OS paradigm also has quite a lot of life left in it, if it ever dies at all. There will always IMO be a need for a central workstation, which will need a traditional OS. Interconnected devices are nice, and so is the idea of ubiquitous computing. But I don't believe at all that you can get away from using a more traditional computing device in some form--with a central "desktop" (or whatever you prefer to call it), documents, storage volumes and so on. All that will be networked, sure. The physical computer device may also vanish. But there will still be a need for the OS in the end.
And none of this really explains why it makes sense to use Tao for the new Amiga-named thingie, nor does it explain why the new Amiga-named thingie will be a compelling alternative to existing OSes.
We have RTOS versions of Linux, for example. We may even see RT versions of Mach (and therefore OS X) in the near future. What is the compelling reason for the mass market to switch to Elite?
(Consider this an open invitation for a sales pitch. ;-) )
cya
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
To create a new consumer OS from the basis that they are using is tantamount to creating a new OS from scratch. Elate is merely meant to be a core, not a whole consumer OS.
Quote from their site:
It has been designed to run very fast as both stand alone and co-existing with host operating systems across any kind of processor.
That doesn't sound like a complete OS to me. It also sounds like it won't work with any existing mainstream OS without a wee bit of work. Doesn't sound like a recipe for success IMO.
Furthermore, it still isn't an Amiga.
Back to you:
Perhaps you ought to actually LEARN before you slag off, eh?
Perhaps you ought to sit back, relax, take a deep breath and join a civil discussion rather than resorting to flames and posting AC. (And yes, I did read up, long before posting--or long before this was posted on /.)
Rather than questioning my integrity, perhaps--just perhaps--you should try to support your own argument like an adult.
Feel free to convince me. But please don't behave like a fool.
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
I really think I've seen this story many times before. How can zealots still believe in it.
From all the cool stuff that made the Amiga success in the late 80s, what remains? Why not tryings to add cool hardware and software to architecture much more widespread now.
Because you where right once, it doesn't mean you're still right now. Amiga didn't adapt.
When I'm thinking to Amiga, all I have is a bunch of good old souvenirs and some regrets for the stupid marketing choices that have been made.But now rest in peace Amiga.
...why should this be any more real than previous attempts?
Because this is the first "attempt" where Amiga Inc. doesn't have a parent company above it to choke it with bureaucracy and side interests. The current Amiga team has no focus besides making this "attempt" a succes, which is for the first time in 7 or so years.
Besides, what does this have to do with the "original" Amiga? Nothing but the name.
Yup. But I consider this a good thing. And one thing we will definitely inherit from the old system is its philosophy: simple, small, fast, elegant.
wouter@amiga.com
In many ways, what defined the Amiga was the culture that grew up around it. The Amiga crowd resembles the Linux folks in many ways, after all there is a good deal of overlap.
A key difference however is ease of use. AmigaOS has some of the better advantages of Linux/Unix, i.e. pre-emptive multi-tasking, virtual screens, but it was and is a lot easier to install and configure than Linux with X. BeOS tried the "new Amiga approach", but it's barely more active than Commodore was during it's fading days.
An operating system that brings the power of Unix with the ease of Amiga OS can rightly claim it's mantle, provided it develops a similar following.
At the risk of sounding cynical, I believe that this article is just one more that fits into my theory that any Slashdot headline that asks a yes/no question can be made more accurate by adding "No, of course not" to it.
Examples:
The End of Unix? No, Of Course Not
Linux Approaching A Fork In The Road? No, Of Course Not
Do Geeks Have A Political Voice? No, Of Course Not (okay, so I'm pessimistic.)
Gnutella 0.5c Still Going? No, Of Course Not
Amiga - Back From the Dead? No, Of Course Not
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
No it doesn't. The windows video toaster is essentially an Amiga on a card, it runs on a PC, at the same time as Windows, but it doesn't run ON Windows. You're better off having the whole Amiga box.
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
I'm sorry that I'm commenting on an article that is considered old news now, but I thought I'd put in my $0.02
The Video Toaster on the PC IS an Amiga, just stripped of the keyboard, video drivers, mouse, and all I/O stuff except for a simple serial port. So when you are using the Video Toaster on a PC, just remember what you are working with. IMHO this was one of the few smart things Comodore did with the licensing of Amiga hardware. I'm not sure what they are currently doing for hardware, but I'm pretty sure you could hack into that box and get the Amiga running as a stand-alone box from the Video Toaster if you tried.
"Do we need another OS?" I say yea.
Whatever inspires people to do something is valuable. There are thousands of superbright people out there who couldn't care less about linux, bsd, macos, beos, or any other new system. If the amiga captures their attention then they are bound to come up with some cool ideas that haven't been thought of.
We should embrace any and every attempt at growth because that is the nature of evolution. It could all be a miserable failure, but even by learning what doesn't work, we still learn.
s
Later on I got my PC and now, with a very good middle class PC, when I look back I think the Amiga was but still is one of the best homecomputers around for that time. But face it; its time to realize the era has come to an end. Sure; not for the local user groups around which still have & use the Amiga. But for the general public the Amiga is gone, yesterdays news.
Articles like this may give some of you around hope that, one day, we'll see a new model. Just like the old one with all the features of today's modern computer. It's not going to happen IMHO and to put it even more blunt: be glad !.
Before you hit that reply button: no; this has nothing to do with some 'lame' idea of mine that we should never see an Amiga again. On the contrary; I think that if we do the Amiga will truly die. Imagine this; there will be another Amiga but unfortunatly the firm which is making them uses a complete other line up then Commodore once used to do. The result being a computer you would not even let your dog get near to because if someone associates the dog with yourself your career is truly over. Do you think that will benefit the Amiga?
"It won't happen". Duh, guess again. Chances are pretty good that it will. Does anyone know the Acorn Archimedes? In its own time (around the 286) it was way ahead of its time, it did things which just became possible when the PC architecture reached 386+ and the 486. Now I ask you; before reading this article did the name "Archimedes" ring a bell?
Like I said; its an Acorn computer (British brand) which was in a later stage sold to Olivetti. The latter just used the technology (I guess) but even despite the rumours there would never be any new model. The "latest" design (few years back) was just more of the same. Period. The result; the Archimedes still lives on. Sure, not for the major public but for its fans. Heck; I've even seen Archie's running stuff like Linux & Win95 and no; we are not talking Intel based computers here. Nor DOS based and/or whatever there is out there.
The machine does not have to live up to its name. Its an Archimedes and thats basicly it. If these boys want to keep the Amiga alive they'll do the same. If they don't I'll bet it will be the end for the Amiga. Don't get me wrong here; I would not like this outcome as well.
At the time it was released, the Amiga's capabilities were stunning. A huge color pallete, video titling (editing and f/x with a Toaster card) and a relatively stable OS.
But time has moved on, pretty much every computer out there now supports millions of colors, the type of video f/x that the Amiga was worshipped for has been passed by the combination of DV, Firewire and large capacity drives and with OSs like Be OS and Mac OS X, stability is no longer an issue.
The question I raise, is do we need the Amiga? Do we need another OS? I say nay, if anything we need to throw more attention to OSes like Be, which could be one of the greatest operating systems, if it was developed better.
well, that's my 2 centavos for today.
-jesse.k
The Amiga is back is it?- ---------
As far as I can see it's a completely different OS on different hardware. Am I right in saying that the only "Amiga" thing about it is the name. I know this is an awkward question but what defines an Amiga?
Multimedia? Why not call BeOS "the new AmigaOS"
Seamless emulation support for the old apps is probably the only distinction and I have UAE running on my computer
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"If I can shoot rabbits then I can shoot fascists" -
OK, I know how lovely the Amiga was as a platform.
Question is, is there really much point in releasing new machines on it? I mean, it was around before Win3.0, when the 68000 was a hip processor.
Computers are enormously more powerful, and interfaces are (really they are!) substantially more advanced. Is there much call for reviving a dead platform, other than nostalgia?
Not trying to flame anyone here, but I just don't see that reviving the Amiga makes any more sense than reviving the Atari ST. (and only marginally more than the Atari 400)
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Does anyone know the Acorn Archimedes? In its own time (around the 286) it was way ahead of its time, it did things which just became possible when the PC architecture reached 386+ and the 486. Now I ask you; before reading this article did the name "Archimedes" ring a bell?
Funny you should mention this, particularly in this thread. Acorn binned their workstation division two or three years ago, and it looked like the Acorn line was finally hitting the same wall that Amiga hit so many years earlier - a small computer firm with an enthusiastic user and programming community suddenly decides that all that good will in the grass roots can go hang.
At this point, I assumed that that was the end. Finito. Kaputt. Amazingly, and in rather less time than the Amiga people, several firms have stepped into the breach and produced new machines, such as continuations of the original RiscPC designs, the RiscStation, the Imago, RISC OS Ltd has produced a new, faster, leaner OS and things are looking more hopeful for the fan base. So even a small computer platform can maintain itself outside the Mac/Windows hegemony, and it doesn't hurt the mainstream to have something different at the edges. Besides, the Open Source movement has facilitated the development and porting of numerous tools to these platforms, extending the minority platforms usefulness further. And Linux ports exist for those who need some more mainstream OS stuff from time to time.
And to those of you who keep pontificating that we don't need another platform, one of the things I like about Linux is that it provides me with choice. One of the things I like about lots of platform is that it gives me choice.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
Check at your local TV station. Remember, Video Toaster runs on Amigas, and it's one of the best low-budget titler/switcher programs you can get, at least from anyone other than Avid or Chyron ..
.. as much as M$ would like that to happen ..
Like I remind customers every other day or so, discontinued does not mean obsolete. Just because the company doesn't make them anymore doesn't mean they stop working
73 de N5VB (ex-KD5BIV) AR SK
How about waiting until the given date and then commenting things that happened or didn't happen on the show sensibly and rationally, in a way that doesn't give the impression of screaming teen-aged religious fanatic that wants to kill everyone who doesn't agree with his/her view of world? Honestly, that's the feeling that most of posts in one way or other has given so far.
Sorry for sounding pissed off, but that's the feeling that any kind of fanatics generally give me.
Everyone who makes generalizations should be shot.
The Elate RTOS
--
April Fool! April Fool! April Fool!
Nick Waterman, Sr Tech Director, #include <stddisclaimer>
Besides, what does this have to do with the "original" Amiga? Nothing but the name.
I remember using an Amiga 500 with a friend and being knocked sideways by its sheer power. I remember an innovative system that in many ways was too good for its time. But please, this is starting to border on cruelty -- every few months there is a new apparition on the horizon, and old Amiga users look up in hope, only to have those hopes dashed.
Face it: this won't be an Amiga. There is little to no chance that it will be as revolutionary as the original Amiga; at best, it will have a few nice things but will mostly be hard to find a reason to buy it (short of the name).
Pin your hopes on something else that does have a chance of success: Linux, or maybe Mac OS X, or maybe BeOS, or *BSD. Whatever strikes your fancy. But a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush...
cya
Ethelred
Everyone wants to be Ethelred. Even I want to be Ethelred.
But that was not as spooky as a ZX-80 running a nuclear power plant ...
threadeds blog
...Amiga's back from the dead again.
Refered as my own experience, what made me love Amiga was that I could pay myself without breaking my mother's purse, that you have lot of informations for programming at the price of floppy disks and that for only $100, I bought a C compiler and could run the whole thing with only two floppy disk drives on my A500 (it's true!), and nevertheless have fun with beautiful games. :-). So without money, I have to drop my Amiga (and started with linux few months later after the discover of the sad and flat Windows world)
I started with a A500, continued with an A1200 two years later, and boost it with a 68030 processor card a year after without breaking my whole (and old !) software and cut budget's familly for food and clothes. I could work with LaTeX for editing, play funny and beautiful games, discover programming in GFABasic, Assembly language and C language. In 1996, the hard disk crashed just after I bought a expensive PC (at least for me, a poor student) for working at my school because everybody used to work on PC with windows (may be evil waves from the PC ?
Oups, I almost forgot to say that Amiga was a she computer ;-) The only female computer in the world.
Today even with linux for free, If you want to both play good and beautiful games, discover programming and work, you need an expensive PC. why ? because:
So, there are rooms for low cost and easy systems. Maybe we can call it Amiga in old days when computer was also for pleasure and not only for taking your money.
I just want to come back in happy days when just plug a card under the keyboard was enough to boost my computer, when nobody spoke about plug and play because it was already there, when having a Command Line Interface in the corner wasn't a shame.
Today when I speak with people, ever non-programmer, old enough to have worked on an Amiga, I never meet someone saying that it was a bad machine. Everyone remembers how easy of use it was, how easy it was to just put a card in it and use it without pain for lucky owner of A3000 and A4000. They also remember the low and affordable price of A500 and A1200 computers. It was the days of computers at purse scale.
1. Multitasking Desktop OS (in 1985 this was unheard of, although Most Amiga owners just assumed that all OS's had Preemptive multi tasking)
2. 4096 colour pallette. (Once again impressive in '85) as well as custom hardware such as the blitter chip - A much more sophisticted one than the simple rectangle movement chips in a lot of SVGA cards too. This could take 3 sources and AND and OR them together.
3. Stereo Sound. Not the best sound available at the time, but certainly very impressive. 2 8-bit channels per speaker allowed a crude 14 bit sound format.
4. Small fast efficient Os. This would work on a 512K machine with no swap space, and still have room for applications
5. Stable. Ironically, This was down to the absence of memory protection. If your program crashes it brings down the whole system.
6. Screens. Something that no other Os has done as well, although the multiple consoles on Linux gives a similar feel. Essentially each application had its own screen at its own resolution and colour depth. This is available on other operating systems now, but it was part of the whole look and fell of the OS.
7. Cost. This was priced competitively against consoles. The small amount extra was considered worth it for the added benefit of having word processors, and paint programs. (Not to mention pirate games)
I'll let others go into the disadvantages. I'm too much of a fanatic to seriously believe that there were any. (It's all lies from the un-Amigaly who will go to silicon Hell)
The people who are making this attempt to rejuvenate the Amiga are in it because they love the platform, they find it worth their time and energy, and they want to see the Amiga continue. Open source/Linux, etc. fans should start to see the parallels here... right? Now that I think about it, I'm uncertain whether to be more amused or sad at the attitudes taken by the supposedly open-minded and enlightened people here.
Herbie J.