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."

Comments

The Spec

[small_dick]

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

At least SOMETHING is comming out this time.

[tcc]

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.