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Amiga, Inc. Announces AmigaOne Spec... Sort Of.
An anonymous reader says "Amiga has released the specification for the upcoming AmigaOne computing platform. Details are vague, but EyeTech will construct the initial products: PPC systems that can hybridize with late-model Commodore Amiga motherboards. (The classic Amiga can use the new mainboard as an accellerator.) The hybrids are coming in Q1 2001, expect 100%-NG systems in Q3, and the DE shrinkwrapped for Linux/standalone use somewhere in between."
Okay, so the CPU being a wide variety is cool, I can handle that. 64mb, well, that's more than you need for QNX, but perhaps they'll hand you a richer set of APIs. But the real disappointment is the video specification; The past seems to show that by specifying Matrox, they're dooming themselves to a life of mediocrity.
I'm also hoping that by specifying USB 1.0 they're not saying that they'll be sticking with 1.0. I doubt it means that, but previous incarnations of Amiga have demonstrated an unwillingness to get with the times. I suspect that's an arrogance left over from having been the state of the art in home computing at their inception.
Also, what's with the 10GB+ disk? I mean, I strongly doubt that you'll need more then a couple gigs to get rolling. Why even mention the hard disk at all? It looks more like they wanted another line item to pad out the list. Mind you, since bundling less than a 10gb is pointless these days (unless you go SCSI, which they probably won't in the stock config) I guess the number makes sense.
I also wonder what buying the upgrade boards for the 1200 and 4000 buy you, except maybe still being able to use the VT4000 if you have a 4k. But 1200 owners might as well just transfer data to the new hardware, and get it over with. I'd personally want to offer them a trade-in and sell the old machines to developing countries which will be glad to get something like the A1200. (I still have one in a suitcase someplace.)
As for "Amiga is also very close to signing up partners for a standalone AmigaOne machine." -- This means nothing. Thanks, Amiga.
The only exciting part is that they're planning for user release in Q3 2001, which means we should start seeing demos and betas be Q2 at the latest if they're on schedule. Hopefully this is an IBM-like date, and not usual industry fluff.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I do believe my PC clone is already an "Amiga One/AmigaDE" compliant platform, 'cept for the matrox and EMU sound chips.
Both of those should be abstracted by the DE anyway, right? After all, it's a "platform independent SDK", yes?
1) One AmigaDE friendly host processor (PPC, x86, Arm, SH4, MIPS)
2) 64MB+ memory
3) Next Generation Matrox graphics card
4) Creative EMU10K1 based audio card
5) 10 GB+ HD
6) CD/DVD
7) USB 1.0
8) Firewire
9) 10/100 Mbps Ethernet
10) 56k modem
11) Spare PCI slots for expandibility
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It doesn't really matter what they target, now does it... since Amiga uses Tao elate as a basis for their OE/DE/OS. elate already supports multiple processors and everything written for elate is basically hardware-independant.
What the guy at Ace2k said was that 3.9 was an upgrade that would add lots of new features as well as provide a migration path to the next version of stuff.
Why? Look at what happened with the old Amiga -- it was long held back by having a specific multimedia chipset. The worst thing a programmer could do was release software (other than drivers) that directly banged hardware. And in the end, even being tied to a specific processor family (68k) put a limit on how fast the CPU could be, since Motorola stopped developing the 68k. (A 50MHz 68060 is fast enough for most non-MS applications these days, but it's hardly something to boast about.)
By being intentionally processor-independant, Amiga has guaranteed that that they will never be hostage to any hardware architecture or supplier. That pretty much addresses one of the biggest complaints that Amiga users have whined about over the last 10 years. I know this because I was one of the whiners who wanted to upgrade from his A3000 but couldn't because there has been nothing to upgrade to. Perhaps Amiga has choosen "Never Again" to be their new slogan. ;-)
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Most of the people will say, too little too late.
:) ).
Others will say, "This a a platform for computer hobbyist, nothing more".
And some other clueless whiners that never even touched an amiga before nor have a clue about the people behind it will say "Bah it sucks for X (most of the time clueless), reasons".
The truth is, having choice for platforms is good. Else most of you people wouldn't be running linux and be stuck with MS. Now, how do you feel when windows people tell you "linux is not ready for primetime, it's not a desktop OS, it suck, it cannot play 90% of the games out there, it's too hard to configure, it's not user-friendly, bla bla bla"?
My point is: I do remember back in end-80's early 90's that the amiga was: "not a serious platform, only good for gaming (that was the argument that was pissing me off the most, look where gaming is today and the market behind it!) and there were no "tools" for it (yeah of course, wordperfect wasn't a tool I guess, Final writer didn't do it's job neither I guess? all this without mentionning all the AWESOME graphic apps/HW that were available (Art departement pro, lightwave, ImageFX, Deluxe Paint, the video toaster, to name a few). People were still bitching about it, bigmouths were bashing it against their 286 and after 386's... heck, an amiga could have a lifespan of over 5 years: just stick in an accelerator and you're back in buisness (exept when the AGA machines showed up). People were bitching at something they didn't even try out nor understood, *almost* everybody that learned how to use that platform fell in love with it, I'm not talking about the people who popped a disk and played speedball a few times, I'm talking about normal users, programmers, people that would rely on this platform for their daily work or dose of entertainment.
Well I've thought the linux community would be happy to see something this good to be kept alive. The amiga always did MORE with LESS hardware. The fact that today you find normal an OS like win2k pro needs 128+ megs of ram just to sit idle without burping on the harddrive is what makes you go "yuk... 64Megs". The Fact that you're driven with 100+fps (who needs that anyways? I'm still using a TNT2 and I'd like more 3d functions over raw speed, more realism, and that's what matrox said they would targer in their next generation products. Yes I know, NVIDIA are working on that too.) NVIDIA is the leader, that probably makes matrox sucks right? Well remember just 2 years ago, 3DFX were the leaders, and remember 2 years before that 3D franzy, Matrox were the 2D leaders. Things can change quickly. I'm not saying matrox will come out with a GTS killer, I'd doubt it, but they always find a good balancing to get into a part of the market. If amiga can exploit the new hardware from matrox correctly, it could e really get interresting.
Amiga was about hardware, today, you *CAN'T* compete against PC hardware, mainly because each parts of the PC motherboard gets a buttload of R&D from so many different companies, that if you are "smaller" you need to use off the shelves parts. Even apple understood that when they've chosen ATI for their graphics card just a few years ago.
Today, amiga is about software, OS, it's still "early" in developpement, it's *NOT* based on the 1985 model, so people saying "you're reviving a platform" are just CLUELESS about what's happening here and you only show sign of stupidity and ignorance publicly, the stuff being made today won't run on my Amiga 1200 for example (unless I add an accelerator or expansion module again
Bottom line is, bitch on something you've tested and played around with, and don't act like the windows users did with linux, and previous amiga models. If Amiga would have had good people at marketting and not an asshole for president, it would be far more advanced than apple is today, and if you think apple users are loyal, you haven't seen real amiga users in your life.
One funny thing is, I've never seen any java implementation on amiga, and now a java-tech company is Using amiga's name for the new OS, kind of ironic.
Anyways, competition is a good thing, What good is it to have a K12-40GHZ and NVIDIA DESTROYER XTREME XDS 2000 and 30TB of ram if you're running windows 3.1? I'm not saying others os won't cut it, but another good OS that could have a drastic approach and new concepts applied could be interresting to see. New stuff always gets criticized anyways, it's only history repeating itself. I wish for them to succeed this time.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.