Slashdot Mirror
Running AmigaOS on a PC (The Proper Way)
AmiLover writes: "OSNews is running a review of AmigaXL, a system that allows you to boot AmigaOS on your PC in a way that resembles a regular-booting x86 operating system. Screenshots accompany the article show the latest version of AmigaOS 3.9 running on a Compaq laptop. With AmigaOS 4.0 coming out in March with lots of new features (antialias fonts, better memory protection etc) is AmigaXL the one true future of Amiga, a future that AmigaDE, QNX and Gateway failed to materialize through their involvement with AmigaOS?"
What about the AROS Project which has been running for long ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
For those of you who don't know, VMWare is a way in which multiple virtual machines can be created on your desktop. What VMWare actually does is it isolates a section of hard drive (appears as a regular file in Linux) and isolates sections of memory (I've had up to 128 MB allocated) and runs a "virtual machine" which runs through a "BIOS" and can do pretty much everything that another computer can do, including running Windows 98 Games!
So, has anybody got this running under VMWare yet?
The JIT might not work in the latest version, but 0.8.15 isn't such a bad version, is it?
You know the drill... not dead, resting, ex-parrot, ceased to be... etc...
So, when I think "screenshots," I don't usually assume they're pictures of a laptop from a few feet away.....
Amiga = the computer that won't die. Just to drive home an dprove that point, I just purchased an Amiga 1200 from an old friend for $100. Amiga 1200 with EC040/50, 10megs of RAM, couple gigs of HD spread over 5 HDs, SCSI PCMCIA... I've been shopping around second-hand computer shops looking for a giant PC tower case to move it into. I hope to eventially pick up a PPC + graphics board, install WB 3.9 (has super-pimped/hacked 3.0 right now with most to all of the features of 3.5).
Ahhh the memories. While the Amiga was left behind in the speed wars a long time ago (I forgot how long it takes a simple JPEG image to load!) For ease of use and simple hackability, there never was any competition.
Long live the Amiga! May she never rest in peace!
That's not what I meant.
If I'm not mistaken, it says in the article, and here in the Slashdot posting, too, that AmigaOS is being released on new PPC machines machines. Is this the lame port to the horrid CPU to which you were referring? I would hope not, as it is fairly established that the PPC is in fact a much better performing CPU than the various x86's, in terms of power consumption and performance.
my pet machine
This is pretty pathetic. It just emphasizes the idea I've had rattling around in my head that computer manufacturers and operating system makers are continuing to pander to the lowest common denominator (Joe Windows). Hell, most of the people who will fire up this emulator for a quick game of Hired Guns, for example, will probably pirate it. That is, if they don't pirate the bloody emulator in the first place.
Awesome power in 1986. These days its power is nothing. And that power came from the hardware
not the OS so frankly apart from the fact that no one really cares anyway anymore why bother porting
an OS that was good but nothing special?
Retro reminiscing is all well and good but people should remember that the past is the past, dragging
it kicking and screaming into the present does no one any favours. What next, a new version of the
TRS80 OS?
To the x86, of course. That's been McEwen's ambition all along, to be able to claim he has ressurected Amiga without actually having to do any real work, like design an actual computer. H&P is doing what little real work is being done, and it's still lame. This PPC machine you speak of is complete and utter vaporware, which is a good thing. It bares as little resemblance to the real Amiga as possible. No binary compatibility, no continuity, no legacy hardware support, nothing that would ever lead you to think they were related, even distantly. Whereas a new amiga could have been a kickass power user machine, that one could believe had evolved from the originals, it's a watered down iToaster.
I also own several TRS-80's. In addition to my 6 amigas, of course. Strangely, my Amiga 2000's are on the same ARCnet segment as the Model II.
You say these things as if you were a true progressive. The past teaches us nothing, and unless it's a fresh design finished in the last 30 seconds, it's worthless right?
Do you even own an Amiga? Did you ever?
ahh...ok. thanks for clearing that up.
that's very disappointing, then.
my pet machine
I am wondering if the Amiga can ever rise from the ashes like the Phoenix?
It is interesting that it will run on both x86 and PPC platforms. This will help it gain ground. Unfortunately they chose QNX as their kernel, which is not only proprietary, but also has few fanatical supporters. (unlike either *BSD or Linux, both of which have lots of fanatical supporters.) It is at least a UNIX like kernel, and very high performance.
It would have been better to emulate Apple in picking a free kernel. Then you would have had the supporters of that OS adding the the core supporters of Amiga. Worse case, how hard would it be to make *BSD or Linux be API compatible with QNX?
All that being said, I would love to see a demo of it, and to see just how fast it is and how well it runs all the programs. I bet we can look forward to ports of open office and mozilla rather quickly as soon as a few developers get their hands on a copy. The full set of GNU tools will also probably be quickly ported to the new environment.
I have a feeling that this is the last chance for Amiga, it is sink or swim. If they don't succeed this time, then it is all over for the platform.
And even then I think that Amiga has a lot to prove in a market that is crowed with Windows, Linux/X and Mac OS X in the top 3 places. No one else is even a contendor on the desktop. OS2 is dead, BeOS is dead. They have to prove that they are worth the price. BeOS was arguably as good or better than the new Amiga, and it never caught on.
-- Never make a general statement.
I used AmigaOS over 17 years ago. And I can tell you, it WAS way ahead of it's time. Not only was it Max OS X, Linux, and Windows of today, it also had the best hardware of today from low end device support to the best graphic technology.
It was a developers machine as well as a user's machine to love.
----
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
I think the big problem is that the 68k cpu line is basically dead. I have to assume that nobody out there is able to design or create the proprietary off-cpu chips that did so much of the Amiga magic. Thus the need for a PPC machine. I don't see a problem here. Of course, if someone can overclock a 68k cpu to like 1GHZ, without creating a small fusion reaction, that might have possibilities.
--- Think of it as evolution in action ---
Exactly same news item was posted on ANN several hours ago. In the comments section, Bernie Meyer, the main programmer behind Amithlon, responds in several posts (1, 2, 3)
OK, I come from an amiga background, and I am quite happy to see developments on the Amiga front still happening. On the other hand, I am puzzled, as I do not know how the Amiga is being used today, and why people bother starting companies with it. I don't understand why you'd want to pay 150 euro for this emulator when Apidya II works fine on UAE :-) You seem to get some software with it, but that's not particularly ground-breaking software (or is it? A WP, a graphics package...).
I don't know, I just don't see the point of pushing the Amiga further like that. I'd be quite happy to play around with an amiga-ish system, but _not_ for that kind of cash.
an excellent windowing and multitasking architecture (smooth, not slow and jerky) in 1985. 32 bit hardware at a reasonable price well before that stuff was available for PCs.
Amiga was one incredible PC and way ahead of its time. I'd certainly love an up-to-date model if the new ones can attain the same type of standards as the old ones.
Coding Blog
I'll be able to use VideoToaster once again?
Putting words into my mouth just to shoot them down doesn't do your argument any favours.
The past teaches us a lot but it doesn't mean we have to live in it. Why would I want to use an
Amiga for gaming now? Because its got 256 colours and a bit blitter. Oh man, hold me down! Watch
out NVidia!
The amiga was good for its day , just like Dolby B and C60 cassettes were but these days I prefer
to use recordable CD. If you want to keep using your amigas fine, thats your choice but don't expect
the rest of the world to go back 15 years in time just for the sake of some nostalgia trip.
And yes I did own one. Sold it years ago.
but it's a bit expansive. 150 euro when UAE is free. (But I only own the AmigaOS ROM 2.0) but this one seems to be a fastest way to run my old amiga code.
The truth is this thing is a gadget for amiga nostalgics and I would love to see the face of some people when I'll "boot" an AmigaOS on my PC (not really the truth this is still emulation but I don't have to tell them right away and it still would be fun). Is that worth 150 euros?
True warriors use the Klingon Google
And note: Linux is quite horrible in most regards as a desktop OS (which doesn't stop me using it as such, or even installing it on the machines of the clueless as a virus-proof alternative to Windows), but it's still the only system making real inroads on the desktop.
I find the empirical evidence too hard to ignore: unless you're Microsoft, the only way you're going to make significant advances in today's OS marketplace is to be Open Source. Proprietary releases of the Amiga OS for the PC platform might make a few old Amiga die-hards very happy, but is there really any future in it? Is history going to repeat itself again?
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
I pine for the days of 4kb RAM and a cassete tape player to load games. Yeah Baby!!!! Bring back the Z80.
Put identity in the browser.
As a production platform for film, music, etc, the Amiga is quite obsolete. You do not want to run Deluxe Paint when you have access to Photo Shop, don't you? I cannot imagine a single reason why you would like to run productivity apps on an Amiga in 2002 besides nostalgy.
./
However, there were several games for the Amiga which were quite remarkable. UAE does a fantastic job at emulating them. But booting AmigaOS like you boot Linux or Windows is of no practical value for that. Another great proof of concept on
You're looking at it wrong. Yes, the 68k is dead. Good riddance... as cool an architecture as it was, CISC deserves to be dead. The PPC is the true heir. But they have so much in common, what little 68k emulation needs to be done (temporarily of course) can easily be done on a PPC.
This does not an amiga make, however.
Proprietary coprocessors? No one is asking you put an agnus or denise on a new Amiga. Certainly not me. What we are asking for, is for McEwen to create an architecture with some token legacy compatibility, a single Zorro slot, or perhaps the video slot would be better. We're asking for a bunch of coprocessors, even if they are off the shelf. Stick a few GeForces on the thing. Give us a power users machine. For god's sake, manufacture a keyboard with the proper "A" keys, and the Help. If it were USB, all the better. Put a floppy controller on the thing that can read proper amiga disks. Any single one of these things, would make it a true successor in my eyes. They're not willing to do that.
And it wouldn't be a bad thing, if it were more a power user's machine, and less something designed for the AOL crowd. That means 64bit PCI, and some firewire ports.
An answer your question from the article:
"Is this the future of Amiga computing?," you may ask. Although this package offers a very valuable addition to the options currently available, the future of Amiga computing lies with PPC based Amiga 4.x compatible computers and other AmigaDE enabled solutions.
Lasers Controlled Games!
In 1989 I bought an Amiga 500. My jaw dropped.
I have never experienced another piece of
technology the way I did the first year I used
amiga. It's sound, graphics, multitasking, and
interface WAS that good... that far
ahead of it's time.
If there were and equivalent to getting laid the ;)
first time it would be the Amiga. Sure
you've had better since, but you will
remember it always. For the record I'll take my
first lay over the Amiga anytime
-J
Well, you refuse to put any intelligent words in your mouth, I can't help it if I didn't do a better job for you.
You're focusing on all the wrong things, as clever fools tend to do. For instance, a modern Amiga would benefit greatly it is took the same approach to co-processing. This wouldn't have to be done with the old chips, or even new versions of them. Load the thing down with geforce's galore, and a bunch of fast DSP's for sound.
Not that you have the brains to ever understand anything that's at a lower level than the shrink wrap of your Windows XP software box.
What will stop AmigaOS 'XL' on x86 architecture from suffering the same pain as o/s's like BeOS? They cannot rely on the fact that there are a lot of ex-amigageeks out there willing to run AmigaOS on a PC. The software support isn't available and will end up just like BeOS. I, being an amigageek, would have a play with it - but I think the CD/Box would end up back on the shelf after a day or two of realizing that I just can't do what I want to do with it. It's not the same as it used to be which will put off many amigaholics..
"Never let the truth get in the way of a good story..."
Amiga as we remember it is dead, and it's not comming back! I've moved on to Mandrake as a desktop.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
Bah.. women.
Its not too bad- this is mostly for people who haven't seen a real Amiga in years and basically shows what can really be done with a 1000Mhz processsor when its not spending most of its power keeping Windows going :)
There is a OS4 on the way too, that will only run on PowerPC (new PPC motherboards from 1-2 companies and existing PPC Amiga cards like Phase5's old ones IIRC)- those who really want to upgrade their Amigas will go for that.
Since then the industry has changed tremendously, we've been though how many generations of hardware, software, and even OSes. It's nice that an Amiga-legacy has come back but - to what?
Is there anything that Amiga now offers that Be didn't or MacOS X doesn't? Something that Wintel in it's messy but with 90% of the market way can't cough up some half-assed version of? The Linux/BSD/etc. can't reproduce?
Surely there aren't enough Amiga-fanatics out there to support a viable market for running old binaries? And all of those old kewl Amiga apps - they're old hat now - certianly there are better alternatives on other platforms by now aren't there?
What, exactly, does Amiga offer other then seeing an old friend again? I know nothing else is quite like it but after all these years is it really viable as an ongoing concern? Or is it like CP/M, just a joy to see it but of little real purpose other then the familiarity and the odd bit that can still be useful if only because nobody ever did it as well elsewhere?
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Well since the article is talking about the OS not any special hardware I'll be nice and assume you
simply didn't bother to read it rather than the fact that perhaps you're just an ass.
And FYI I use Linux and BSD and have probably forgotten more about operating systems than
you ever knew sonny. I suggest you can it before you make a complete pillock of yourself.
Actaully, a lot of the power came from the OS. One, the OS got out of the way when you wanted it to, and two, the OS was message-passing BY REFERENCE - so IPC was zero-copy. Hence the massive data throughput and near realtime performance.
when i had my amiga 600 - booted from floppy into my gui (workbench)
/me goes out to buy AmigaOS to remember the good old days.
then i spent about £200 ($300) on my 40MB hard disk - i was in awe - i installed the OS to hard disk, and booted from HD - once again my jaw dropped.
at about this time i just had to get my memory upgrade, i think i remember it being a 1MB upgrade, wow, it was great, i made a 1MB ram drive with it when i needed to.
im too excited,
All this and im only 22, LOL
http://www.webhostingtalk.com
Make it idiot proof and someone will make a better idiot.
I see the obligatory Amiga posting every month or two on /. I'd like to know more about the user base. In what fields is the Amiga used and why is it a viable platform? What are the unique Amiga only features today.
This is not a troll. I'd like someone to enlighten me and possibly other readers.
I loved my Amiga, but... While the stuff that Amiga and Tao are doing with DE is pretty exciting and may even catch on in the portable marketplace, Amiga desktop machines are only ever likely to be a niche product. I'm happy running WinUAE when I want to dabble (though note that the $150 package includes an enhanced emulator capable of running x86 and 68K - AROS anyone? aswell as the version hosted on QNX).
Still, I'll watch with interest (if it was half the price I'd but it now).
Hopefully the ability to take desktop sceen captures will be part of the next release. Nothing better than digital stills of a laptop screen ;)
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
So, the Amiga joins the ranks of Be, Geoworks, OS/2, GEM, and SCO.
They are all also-ran commercial competitors to not just Windows, which commands 99% of that market and comes bundled with 99% of the systems available, but three flavors of BSD, all free-as-in-beer-and-as-in-speach, and a few housand different Linux-based operating systems (distros). Top it off with a few clever, and completely free "other" OSes, like Atheos, and the situation looks grim.
I expect them to enjoy the same long-term success enjoyed by Be and OS/2... which is to say, an ignonimous death after the Nostalgia buffs tire of toying with it.
To be brutally blunt, the only way to introduced a closed platform in the current market is to work it as a total system. Sun and Apple desktops survive in a Windows world by offering a total package... you don't gotta be faster than Wintel, or cheaper than Wintel, but you have got to offer something Wintel doesn't. Comprehensively integrated systems is a damn good start, the insane system speed and responsiveness with limited resources that was a trademark of the Amiga of yore is another area to focus on. Move to Mips, ARM, PowerPC, MAJC, what have you... design a platform, not an OS but a whole platform, and you have a fighting chance.
Emulating a 10 year old architecture on an bone stock PC and then charging for the privelege is a fast track to irrelevancy.
SoupIsGood Food
The OS got out the way when you wanted it to. Hmm wasn't there another OS that did that ... umm ,
it was a monitor program now what was it called... oh yeah... DOS.
As for message passing by reference , so what? If you use shared memory you don't even have to pass
anything , its just there. BFD.
computer manufacturers and operating system makers are continuing to pander to the lowest common denominator
What would you rather have them do? Go broke pandering to the .05% of the market with some knowledge?
The Joe Windows crowd is the group that has the money to burn and needs someplace to spend it. One can hardly blame mfg's and os companies for wanting to give them a place to do so.
That being said, this does look like a last hurrah attempt to monetize a dead OS architecture.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
I never had an Amiga, but I'm fascinated by "old" computers (anything older than 3 years is ancient history, right? <grin>)
Anyway, for people looking for a slightly lower cost (but legal) solution, check out Amiga Forever, a commercial distribution of UAE that comes with *every* version of the Amiga Kickstart ROMs and Workbench disks! And this isn't a warez CD either... these are legitimately licensed from (insert current company that owns Amiga's IP). I believe it also includes some commercial software and software that will allow you to mount Amiga hard drives as network drives under Windows. Might be worth a look for former/current Amiga fans.
This is hilarious.
e t/802.11/rs485 network that I've ever heard of. I'm a busy little bee, trying to write a VIP stack for linux, and integrate streettalk, ad, and nds all into my strange little OpenLDAP directory. I just got my first PDP-11 a few weeks back, and I've almost got unix v7 running on it. If you want to play guru, bring it on.
Operating systems that I use at least once a month.
NOS's
Banyan VINES 6.0 (with streettalk)
Netware 2.x
Netware 3.x
Netware 4.x (with NDS)
Netware 5.0 (with NDS)
OS's
Apple ProDOS
Apple GS/OS 6
MacOS 6.x -9.x
Amiga OS 1.x - 3.1
Windows 3.0, 3.11WFW, 95, 98, NT 3.1, NT 3.51 NT4, 2000 (all flavors, 2k with AD)
CP/M (for TRS-80 Model 4)
IBM PC DOS 3.x-7.0
MS DOS 2.x-6.22
Novell DOS 7
DR DOS 5,6
Atari TOS/GEM
IBM OS/2 2.1-4.0
RX11
OpenVMS 7.0
Ultrix 4.3
Solaris 7
NeXTstep 3.3
And literally too many 8bit OS's to keep track of. Tandy renamed the trs80 dos's every other week, I just can't remember all the different flavors of minix, cp/m and things named "dos". I have the only integrated ethernet/tokenring/arcnet/localtalk/fddi/atm/econ
Nice cut & paste. Next time you want to come up with BS try not overdoing it , it doesn't look
very convincing.
If not, then this really is just sort of an oddity. Off hand, I'd think that the AmigaOS would have some advantages in that:
Could this be an alternative to desktop for Linux? I'm sure it would be tough, but is it feasible to utilize the Linux kernel instead of QNX (I think it was)? I'm really asking here. I don't know much about kernel hacking as my job is at the application layer.
I also don't want to start any desktop wars. But as much as I like KDE and BlackBox (for VERY different reasons/purposes, obviously) it doesn't seem like they are as "user-friendly" (idiotproof?) as they should be. Perhaps Amiga/Linux could be an alternative desktop for Harry Homeowner. (although it seems as though some features would have to be unloaded as the Linux kernel supports those features).
Anyway, I thought I'd throw it out there and ask...
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
Maybe I'll have to post a link to a picture of my computer room. That was written out by hand, dimwit.
3 different machines in one box. And that box had an Amiga logo on the front of it.
Why? For fucks sake why?
I recently got a copy of Amiga Forever 5.0, and I tried out WinUAE with that. I also installed AmigaOS 3.9 to it and it worked just fine. Even when I am not really a big Amiga fan (more of a foamy-mouthed Commodore 64 user =) I must say I'm really impressed... With the JIT stuff and the bsdsockets, it worked fast and supported network. A real, hardware C64 can do ISDN (with proper RS232 buffering, of course), but now I have an emulated Amiga that does DSL =)
(Screenshots? 1 2 3)
Of this stuff, I have to say I'm impressed, too - no need to boot to some other OS to run another, which means some more stability - UAE 0.8 isn't 100% stable yet. Very nifty.
(And I think Amiga hardware was pretty nice, but PC got ahead of it at last (after so many years!) when they ditched ISA bus and got USB input devices.)
I need to get the JIT + bsdsockets for *NIX UAE soon. Too bad the fullscreen modes in X11 UAE often suck - DGA, with its r00t requirement, means trouble. Anyone working on a SDL port?
I don't see a clear, motivating reason to buy into the new AmigaOS, except for nostalgia.
It is ironic, to me, that all that survives from Amiga is the OS. One of the main reasons that the Amiga line died back because Amiga was even worse that Apple about releasing new versions of the OS.
The joe windows crowd is anything but. These are the lower middle class families, that buy computers because 30 second TV commercials convince them their children will grow up to be bums, if they're not exposed to a computer. As if it has some magical radiation, that if you get a dose of it by being in the same room, you become computer literate in any significant way.
The power users may be a much smaller group, but if they buy less than 1 mid-to-high end system per year, it's because they're between jobs at the moment (not that that stops all of them). They're people so fed up with the consumer garbage, that they'd pay a premium for something truly made for them. As it is, they end up buying stuff meant for the corporate enterprise, simply to get cool stuff.
The free market fails even more miserably every year, and this is an example. A smaller market, yes, but one that isn't being catered to very well, if at all. That happens when companies are allowed to get too big.
Because if I connect enough disparate systems together, AI will spontaneously emerge. It will escape and wreak havoc on the world, but remember me as its creator, and elevate me above the other pitiful bags of meat.
At least, that's the plan.
Is anyone else missing the absolutely wonderful ASSIGN command? Sigh... Still, 13 years after I got my first A500 I long for this long gone command.
I want my pics:, mp3: and games: again, not just stupid c:, d: etc. Unix paths doesn't do it for me either and the same for soft and hard links.
Give back the ASSIGN command to me and give it to me NOW!
Massive Data Throughput : Bollocks!
Compared to what ? A floppy disk ?
Near Realtime Performance : Double Bollocks!
Compared to What ? A pocket calculator ?
'Near Realtime' is an oxymoron. Either the OS is 'realtime' or its not. There is no such thing fanboy as 'near' realtime.
That so called IPC 'feature' you lovingly refer to also crashed the OS hard when any errant process decides to take a detour round the memory map of what is an unprotected OS. Passing the address of a data structure in some other process space & then inadvertantly changing it when you are not supposed to is not a good idea.
You aren't that fscking section 8 called Steve Giovenella by any chance ?
Curmudgeon
The Amiga O/S was fast due to lack of memory protection and virtual memory.
Remember it fondly, of course - but why does the world really need yet another OS?
is competition good, or is duplication of effort bad?
as it is fairly established that the PPC is in fact a much better performing CPU than the various x86's, in terms of power consumption and performance
Except in terms of I/O.
Amiga was great couse of the Hardware, not couse of the Software. Amiga software wasnt bad at the time, actualy it was great.. but what made me use the Amiga wasnt its programs, it was its superior hardware design.
well, 68k is sort of still alive, in the form of the Palm in your pocket. yes folks, Dragonball EZ is part of the family indeed. I think Moto also has a line called "Coldfire" which is 68K related. I agree that there's no point to emulating something as wonderful as the Amiga. Moving the Amiga to PPC might have helped 10 years ago, but that's when they would have had to start thinking about it, not now. When was it that PowerPC debuted? 1992? If the Amiga wants to live again (and why should it?), they would have to plan on using a NEW architecture, not even x86 - which is in it's death throes as we speak. By the time a new Amiga COULD arrive, we'll be knee deep in IA64, x86-64, PowerPC G5, UltraSPARC III and possibly even CELL. Maybe a smart move would be to exploit CELL to build a truly powerful custom architecture that could show us what multitasking is all about again.
That was classic intercourse!
"Load the thing down with geforce's galore, and a bunch of fast DSP's for sound." if this is what you're after, why not look at Linux on the PS2? There's some co-pro going on there, and at least that machine has SOME kind of future.
That was classic intercourse!
Can you please tell me what the hell AmigaXL/Amithlon have to do with AmigaOS 4.0?
Thanks to the Jobs-wannabee, Ben Hermanns of Hyperion and his irrational x86-angst, OS4 will never be ported to x86 and Amithlon will never run OS... unless someone does a PPC-emulator for Amithlon.
Nothing was cooler than editing broadcast quality video on a NLE that cost less than $20,000 in 1995! I miss my toaster flyer :(
I've heard both the people like you, that claim the OS is what was great, and those that think it was the hardware. You're both right, and both wrong.
It was the combination of the two, that made it great. If you have just the hardware, then at best it's another machine to port linux to (not even that, considering the era we're discussing), and at worst, it's a machine that has no OS. That went out of fashion in the 1970's.
If you have just the OS, then it's another OS for the x86 monstrosity. You get to compete with the likes of OS/2, BeOS, even Openstep. All of which were admirable on a technical basis, but had no viable chance in the marketplace.
But you put the two together, and at least for a little while, you have something both whizbang and new, a thing unto itself. That even happened with Be Inc, though briefly.
The Amiga was the first computer that gave you both the power of a desktop computer and the game play of a console.
Also it was very affordable, you could use it with any TV (US/Europe's PAL system) saving you the cost of a monitor.
This let people whom other wise could not afford a PC clone computer, a chance to own a computer.
The Amiga had a larger following in Europe then the US, look at the Demo party's started by Amiga owners which still held today though now Windows PC orientated.
Here is something to think about after 5 or more years the Windows PC is just starting to have features the Amiga did back then.
Since I don't own stock in computer companies, I don't really care "what has a future" and what doesn't.
While I like hacking around on every piece of hardware I can get my hands on (this would include a PS2 of course) there is something special about the Amiga. It deserves more than C= ever gave it, and certainly more than McEwen will give it.
Linux on a PS2 would be a poor substitute for a new Amiga done right, no substitute at all, really.
You're a right bloody poofter, what?
but if you want advanced custom hardware, someone's gotta pay for it. A small company could barely manage a custom mobo these days, let alone a CPU. Maybe you could take the DSP route but I doubt it, people ARE trying, but going nowhere fast. With something like the PS2, you have a chance to create a new platform that happens to have been designed from scratch with co-processing in mind and high bandwidth hardware. It looks like a chance to build something new and different, powered by Sony's cash and burning desire to compete with MS properly. There won't be a new Amiga, but there might be a new platform free of MS and Intel.
That was classic intercourse!
zero-copy IPC? No wonder it crashed all the time. Copy-on-write is a GOOD thing, you stuck-in-the-80s fool.
Before being attracted by the penguin I was an Amiga user and developer back in the 80s, and I never - repeat - never loved so much to use, play with and write software for a platform. It was a marvellous piece of hardware and software I still miss so much after 10 years.
I believe it would be NOW the best platform to develope new multimedia appliances and devices, but the only problem that will certainly kill any use of AmigaOS is its dependence to the hardware: the M68k platform was, and still is, far better designed if compared to the -ugly- X86 processors we're forced to use today, but x86 is the standard - period.
My point is that even if AmigaOS is a great operating system (it's near realtime and highly responsive) , it would suffer both if ported to the X86 architecture or run on emulated Amiga harware.
A great operating system needs great hardware; unfortunately , the best $20,000 PC you could buy today isn't that good from a purely technical point of view.
Anything but what? Rich? Tell me something I don't know ...
However, if you add up the total aggregate of wealth, the lower middle class is where you aim if you want to market something. To run a growing, successful company, you have to aim at that market, because it is the one that is growing. The elite computer users are going to form such a small market that you'll go broke trying to supply and support them (though they are likely to need the least support).
As for the free market failing, what would you suggest? There are no viable alternatives that don't rely on some degree of "being nice to each other" (which might be nice, but you can't count on it).
My suggestion is that you quit whining about how the free market is failing and get out do something constructive. What? I don't know. I'm going to keep working in the free market system until someone provably comes up with something better.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
Imagine a Beowolf Cluster of THESE!!!
Free of M$ and Intel, but just as bad?
You can't build something new with this. The hardware is 100% closed, I can't even burn my own custom games for it, with the way they are treating mod-chip makers. The PS2 is the future of what they want technology to be for us, watered down, expensive, totally closed, and served to us at their leisure, not ours.
We hack Amigas for the same reason audiophiles spill their salaries on tubes, or on mint vinyl pressings. There's a vibrant aftermarket for new Amiga processors, graphics cards, and bus expansion cards for the same reason that vacuum tubes still roll off the assembly line. There's nothing about the platform that's about dominance, or resurrection; it's an ENTHUSIAST MARKET! Get over it!
Computers are such a dominant part of life anymore, why do people assume that an enthusiast market for computers COULDN'T survive? It's just the opposite: the Amiga thrives exactly because the OS market has percolated to two, maybe three dominant OSes. We can make our money on Windows, and spend it our Amigas.
I don't believe there is a phoenix complex any more, not with those of us who simply enjoy spending money on our favorite platform.
100% closed is not the issue. COMPETITION is. Maybe Sony would be as bad as MS (experience says they won't be), but you KNOW they're looking for a finacial return too. It's obvious that Sony wants a way out, they'd LOVE to run a new system on their laptops. Sometimes, just being different is enough - they don't have to be saints too.
That was classic intercourse!
I loved DOS...
:)
I still do. I want to get it installed on my P100 soon and relive some of the good ol' days.
Just wish I could find all those damn floppies...
Peace, Love, Games
The Amiga was waay ahead of it's time. Yeah, sure, you've heard this before, but I know of what I speak. No kidding. Let me explain.
About 10 years ago, a number of business associates (well, friends, really) and I had a company that used the Amiga extensively. We built, from the ground up, an embedded control and data collection system using Amiga computers. The average facility we installed with this product (yes, we sold it) went for about 70K.
Why the Amiga? Several reasons :
1) it was built for NTSC/PAL output. We needed to get signals to TV's for display.
2) it had state of the art graphics. I believe the only other "standard" at the time was VGA or SVGA.
3) it was *really* fast, compared to the X86 machines of the day. This was probably due more to the custom chips than the CPU clock...
4) it was built by very intelligent people who put a lot of thought into the design of it. The Zorro bus (peripheral card bus) was pretty straightforward to connect with. We built a single card design that worked on an A2000/3000/4000 and the A500.
5) it was cheap. Really really cheap for what you got (about $300 per A500 and this had everything we needed in a nice, small package).
6) apart from the lack of an MMU (generally) and memory protection, the OS was a dream to program and the system a dream to use.
7) we liked it. What can I say? We liked it. In addition to the company that built this embedded system, we had a computer store that dealt in the Amiga and Video Toaster.
We had to kill the product when Commodore went the way of the Dinosaurs. It's too bad, really, because we would have liked to continue.
I still love the Amiga - but it's not ever going to be a viable system to use again. I really *do* hope that the hardware and software guys who built the Amiga system get together and build a *real* piece of hardware and software again.
Think about the custom chips for a minute -
You had the blitter : basically an area based logic unit. Big deal? Well a buddy of mine wrote a program that could run a hi-res screen, some blitter code and very very little CPU and iterate through life (the simulation - not reality) at about 30 frames per second. No discernable CPU use. It wasn't until about '96 that I saw similar achievements on X86 hardware.
You had the copper : the chip that allowed for multiple resolutions. It defined how to output graphics information and at what resolution : take a hi-res screen with x colors and allow it to be dragged over a low res-screen with x*256 colors. There's nothing I've seen since that can do this.
You had the graphics chips themselves : Agnus and Portia (or whatever). They did all the work of putting out the display, along side the other two custom chips.
All of the use of the CPU was in processing - everything was basically DMA, everything ran the same memory interleaved with the CPU. It was *sooo* cool and so very quick.
A couple of my partners wrote a program called Amoeba Invaders (space invaders clone) (through our company Late Night Developments - we were young and thought it was a cool name). I could run about, oh, 20 copies of this game concurrently because most of the animation was done with the custom chips and not the CPU - and this was on an Amiga 1000 (68000 system).
But... Commodore was run by business folks who wanted to make a buck. And they did. And when they were happy with the buck they'd made, they killed it.
So, the Amiga was waay ahead of it's time. But it's now dead and technology has certainly improved well beyond what the Amiga excelled at.
I saw this thread on an emulator and have one thing to say. So what? I liked the Amiga because of the hardware and the software. No emulator so far has been able to do a good job of the hardware that made the Amiga greater than the OS. Oh well.
Interesting piece, but I'm afraid it's not a review. It's a piece of Amiga evangelism in the wrong place.
We don't need to be told about AmigaOS. We don't need to be told about AmigaOS apps, or about how good or bad they are, or anything about Amiga itself.
There's about 5 pages of irrelevant stuff in there.
This is meant to be a review of an emulation package.
There are, as I understand it, two emulators.
Identify them. What are the differences? What do they do? Why use them instead of UAE or Fellow?
Start with one. Explain what it is and how it works. Explain how it's installed and used. Comment on how well it works. Criticize its failings, don't just praise its strengths.
Then take the 2nd. Do exactly the same.
Now, compare the two. Explain the differences. Take 1#. Point out where #1 is better than #2, then where #1 is worse than #2. Now take #2 and do the same.
Now, comment on the overall package. Compare it to any competitors: UAE, Fellow, AiaB, AmigaForever. Compare it to a real modern Amiga.
What's in the box? What manuals? What's the help like? What's the support like?
Specify its EXACT hardware requirements. Explain an optimal config, a minimal one, and the difference it makes.
Explain its cost and where to get it.
Summarise, in ten words each, its pros, its cons, and an overall verdict. Award it points out of ten for performance, ease of use, features, functionality, compatibility, value for money and overall.
*That* is a review.
This piece, however enjoyable, isn't.
But thanks for it! I enjoyed it. It just didn't tell me what I needed to know: do I want it? Is it worth buying?
--
Liam P.
[echoed on OSnews]
Liam P. ~ "Intelligence is a lethal mutation." (me)
these are not screenshots, these are screen photos! i wonder -- is author too brainless or just amigaos misses `xwd -root` ?
What's the point using a so called OS that doesn't even implement the Screenshot technology ?
A few years ago, I lived a coupla miles from the old Commodore Sweden HQ and they didn't take down the old sign until recently and every time I passed by on my bike or in my car, I'd shed a tear thinking about the good times I had with my amigas and how different the world could have been, if only... If only Irving Gould and Mehdi Ali hadn't been such greedy bastards. They must have been grown out of a baboon's ass - there is no way in hell those two idiots could have been born and raised by humans. No, I'm not bitter. I'm BITTER!.
Let me go, I feel much better now! No, don't make me run XP again - NOOOOOooooo!
Money for nothing, pix for free
I had two Amigas, a 500 and a 2000 (40 meg hard drive, 1MB RAM, 7Mhz... w00t!). I used my Amiga 2000 right through 1996, when I moved cross-country and had to leave it behind... it is currently gathering dust in my inlaws' basement. :(
I'm still amazed when I remember what that computer could do at the time compared to its PC counterparts... and it worked so well/quickly because graphics, and sound were handled by separate processors on the mobo, and the core OS was stored on a ROM chip... so even though that Motorola 68000-whatever was only doing 7mhz, overall performance was stellar.
The workbench environment was great, but I don't know if it's great enough to be worth emulating on x86 hardware; The attraction of the Amiga (for me, anyway) was its overall performance compared to everything else that was out there at the time.
Now that x86 and PowerPC hardware is exponentially faster than the Amigas ever were and can get away without having separate processors for video, OS, etc, I don't really see what the point is. I hope the upcoming AmigaOS 4.0 does well, but the original Amiga was more than an operating system; its hardware was just as important.
In general terms:
1. I agree; emulators are useless and uninteresting.
2. AmigaOS4.0 is not useless for current Amiga users nor an emulator; it's a bridge to...
3. AmigaDE which will kick ass!! (even by todays standards) and will be a competitive alternative to both M$ and *NIX. If the product ever make it to the store shelves.
Please refer to www.amiga.com (OS) and www.tao.co.uk (Kernel).
AmigaDE teaser
It currently runs on a dozen CPUs (x68, ARM, MIPS, bla bla). And also in MIXED multiprocessor systems(!).
It runs hosted on both 32-bit Win and Redhat distro. Maybe even unofficially standalone as I write.
It utilizes a new type of JIT which deliver 80% of C/C++ efficiency. The JIT supports Java, assembler and C/C++.
A few games have already been published, many more is in brew (not that it really matters, just that it shows that things are happening).
And oh, I forgot; it works on everything from your x86 desktop to Sharp handhelds. Write once in Java C or Asm, run everywhere.
It's still under HEAVY construction, but looks promising.
Infotainment brought to you by JetRacer.
The nicest thing about the Amiga, that no one has mentioned yet, was the extensive integration with a scripting language. ARexx was a Rexx variant that allowed developers to expose the internal functions of their programs, and it was a joy. That integration was worth learning a new syntax for.
An example: I loved doing animation and putting them onto tape. By hand, this involved running each frame through Art Department Professional to resize, deinterlace, and change bit depth; then hitting the "Append" button in my Personal Animation Recorder and adding the changed frame (fields) to an animation.
I wrote an ARexx program that started ADPro and PAR, then waited for new frames to show up in a directory as they were rendered. It would press the appropriate buttons to load the image in ADPro, manipulate it, and save it to disk, then do the same to have the PAR add it to the animation. If I had a serial VCR, it could even have recorded the thing when I was through.
That kind of integration was marvelous. Everything had it. You could automate the most amazing tasks. It was like getting a little command-line utility for every function of a monstrously complex program's GUI. It would be nice to have in Linux; the closest we've got now is Gimp scripting.
For geek dads: Contraction Timer
It bares as little resemblance to the real Amiga as possible. No binary compatibility
AmigaOS 4.0 will run 68k software via emulation (as stated in the article). I fail to see the problem with this when it's likely to be cheaper and faster than having a real 68k CPU in there; one could just as well complain that PowerMacs aren't "real Macs".
no legacy hardware support
If you want things like AGA chips and Zorro slots, then I believe these will still be useable under AmigaOS 4 if you run it on a current Amiga. Any new machines won't have them (and a generally good thing too, considering UAE will do for running old AGA games, and PCI cards tend to be much cheaper than Zorro equivalents).
nothing that would ever lead you to think they were related
Many PC motherboards don't come with ISA slots these days. Windows 2000/XP is I believe a very different OS to Windows 9x underneath, but maintains compatibility, and similarity in usage. Macs now have PCI slots, and I believe there was some slot they used to have that they no longer do (Nubus?); they also went from a 68k CPU to PPC. MacOS X is at least as different an OS to previous versions, as AmigaOS 4.0 is to 3.9 by the looks of things. If AmigaOS 4.0 and any new machines ever appear, they will have evolved from the originals, just as much as Macs and PCs have.
Not fair at all. First off, having a single zorro slot would cost them nothing in board space, and not much more in design logic. Why not have one? I don't expect a renaisance in zorro devices, just for people like myself to be able to put a real amiga device in this supposedly new amiga.
As to the win9x to winXP comparisons, the truth is it's very easy to have a winXP use devices from a win9x machine. Same cpu family, comaptible chipsets, compatible software.
The same goes for macs. And even though macs no longer have nubus, for a time powermacs had nubus. There is a very direct evolution to what they are now, and if archeologists of some sort study this 100,000 years from now, no doubt they too could identify each and every mac as such through it's evolution. With the exception of the amiga logo plastered all over everything, they couldn'tt do the same for the "new amiga".
For those of you that dont really understand this whole thing.
:). Their not supposed to compete with AmigaOS, but for the time being, it is doing so because there is no PPC OS avaliable. Shortly however, their will be.
AmigaOSXL is different to Amithlon however, they are both just emulation
I think the more important question is how much would it cost (in money terms) for that single Zorro slot?
What sort of card are you thinking of in particular? Cards like graphics, sound and network have dirt cheap PCI equivalents - it would not surprise me if one could buy a PCI replacement for less than the cost of implementing Zorro on the motherboard (plus you now have the comparatively expensive Zorro card to sell off second hand).
Also remember that not all "real" Amigas had Zorro slots (indeed, only a small fraction in terms of numbers produced).
for a time powermacs had nubus
And PPC Amigas can have Zorro slots - an A3000/4000 with an appropriate PPC card. Perhaps you will say this doesn't count since it's an upgrade, but I believe you can buy A1200s/A4000s with PPC/Zorro already fitted if you really must. As with Macs, it's a choice of sticking with older machines if you want to have complete backwards compatibility, or lose some compatibility if you want the latest machines.
AmigaOS 4 (meant to be released to developers this month) is being designed for PPC computers by Hyperion and a few extra Amiga developers they have hired.
It is aimed to work on new PPC hardware designed by eyetech and bplan, as well as current amigas that have older 603 and 604 PPC processors like the blizzard and cyberstorm accelerator cards, allowing people to use existing equipment, or newer equipment that allows use of off the shelf PC items such as PCI cards etc.
There are other PPC expansions coming out and they may be supported as well.
x86 is not a goal for AOS4, as to change it for that, instead of going the naturla route of 680x0 to PPC, would take a lot longer, and people want product asap (as always).
all this is just a small piece of the market Amiga is aiming for anyway, and has aimed for since they were created. See this recent interview with CEO Bill McEwan for what is currently on the minds of Amiga.
You miss the point. If you want the cheapest possible, run win98 on an emachines, and quit bitching at me.
Oh, and every amiga except the a1200 has either a z1, z2, or z3 slot.
I'm afraid McEwen and company can't take credit for PPC cards, if he'd even want to, with their astronomical prices and lack of power.
These aftermarket upgrades do not count as the "new amiga". Nor do they constitute a bridge between the old and new. You like the garbage these guys are manufacturing (I'm not sure what word to use here, they neither make hardware, which is farmed out to others, nor the OS derivatives, which so far has been farmed out to H&P), then go ahead and like it. I don't care. If you loved the amiga in any way, shape or form, you wouldn't like this at all. They are bastardizing things just the way Be Inc did in its death throes. There isn't a single thing I can think of, that is good about this. As much as I hate emulators, there are better ones. There are certainly better alternative OS's, so many I hope that is their intended market, they'll die alot quicker. And by alienating those like me, they can't even claim the nostalgia market.
They're nothing but a perpetual marketing machine, that didn't bother to find a real product first. It's funny how many fall for it to, if they decided to use the Amiga trademark to manufacture ergonomic toilet bowls, would all you losers rush out to buy one, and say "well at least its the new amiga!" ? It's not. In name only, which means little for those like me.
Oh man I remember playing Amoeba Invaders on my old 1000 back in the day. The good ol' days.
I wear pants.
There is a slight difference when it comes to the upgrade path/evolution of Macs and Amigas though...
Sure, early Powermacs had Nubus slots, but the early Powermacs followed directly on from 68k Macs. The new Amiga designs come 7-8 years after the last 'New' Amiga... a lot of things have changed since then.
Zorro was great at the time, but virtually every card that was available for Zorro slots can now be picked up for a fraction of the cost in PCI form. Sure, some of the more exotic cards no longer exist, but they are few and far between.
So why lumber the new Amiga with a slot that the majority of users will never use? Why not instead come up with some kind of bridge that allows Zorro cards to be connected to PCI slots much like the way you could use ISA cards on an Amiga.
Trying to follow a steady evolutionary path between the AGA Amigas and any new machine would be crazy... too much time has passed.
Well, if they don't care about any continuity, as I have stated oh so many times, I guess they shouldn't put a zorro slot on the new amiga. But you've latched on to this in particular, not I. I would be happy with any single one of several features that would pay homage to the old. Especially an amiga capable floppy controller, and/or a specialty keyboard in a true amiga layout. Nothing could kill the mood more, than to look down and see the ugly windows keys.
If you want an amiga that has nothing about it that makes it like an amiga, doesn't any computer fit that bill, once you slap a boing logo on it?
But the underlying concepts weren't new, even at the time: message passing, multitasking, GUIs, hardware acceleration, etc., were already being used in several other operating systems. OSX's ancestor, Mach, was already being developed, and Linux's ancestors, various versions of UNIX, had been out for nearly a decade. Several GUIs, including early versions of X, were also in use.
Amoeba Invaders was a nice piece of work. Very smooth. Well done.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
Since the CD comes with both emulators, just forget AmigaOS XL and install Amithlon (if the current version works on your hardware, try booting with the CD first)..
:-)
:-) Just what I've been waiting for for a long time.
I'm using Amithlon on my desktop box and I haven't even tried installing AmigaOS XL on it - Amithlon's features are far superior.
Why would I want to first run QNX + it's GUI and then start the emulator, when I can just boot into the emulator right from the start?
Oh well, it IS running under a Linux kernel, but you don't really see any of that - it's AmigaOS that's in control.
Thanks again, Bernie!
he wanted to point out that although the pictures DO show amigaos running on an x86, it makes them unreadable and a screenshot would have been more appropriate.
AmigaOS XL is just an emulator. Its pretty fast though.
OS 4.0 *wont* run with AmigaOS XL or UAE because its a PowerPC based OS (with lots of stuff also running emulated 68K).
Not that it's impossible to also make a PPC emulation for x86..
If you want AmigaOS *actualy* running on x86, not emulated, check out AROS. Its not complete yet, there's no workbench even. But its kinda cool to boot AmigaOS from a CD on a PC knowing its running x86 native code -- no emulation, and no host OS.
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
A couple of things that might be of interest to you should you ever decide (or be forced :-) to make the switch to a Unix-a-like:
/tmp. I still type "ram:" occasionally when I mean to type "/tmp".
.zshrc. I don't think bash can do it, though I might be wrong; I haven't kept up with bash features, having been a zsh user since 1996.
/usr/local/bin and be able to see all their contents in that one directory. A halfway-house is possible if you make /usr/local/bin into a symbolic link farm, but it's not as nice as a multi-assign. Rumour has it that the GNU Hurd has directory overlays (or something like that) which provide the same sort of effect as a multi-assign.
Ram disk that automatically grows/shrinks as needed. Perfect for those temp files.
Several Unices (including Linux 2.4.x) have tmpfs, which is the same deal. I use it for my
A shell that's smart enough to realize that when I type the name of a directory, I don't want to execute the damn thing, I want to move to it!
zsh can do that if you add "setopt auto_cd" to your
Handlers in general, allowing you to very easily create disk-like thingies.
It's not quite the same, but Linux has a "loopback device" which allows you to treat a file as if it were a disk partition. So you can (e.g.) mount an ISO9660 image as if it were a CD.
If you like ARexx, you can get a Rexx interpreter called Regina for Linux. You can't use it to remote-control all your apps, but you can at least use it for scripting. It will remain my scripting language of choice until I get around to learning Ruby. (I'm not touching Perl with a bargepole).
Like you, something from AmigaOS that I really miss is:
Assigns, esp. multi assigns.
I want something like that for Linux; I want to be able to map lots of directories onto (e.g.)
-Stephen
As prople have explained here to the masses that never had the chance, the Amiga had some really, really good ideas. Here is some:
Assignments. You can assign a label "label:" to a drive or an arbitary path. This label can then be accessed rather like a device. Now I know unix people will be like "So what! Big deal." But THINK about it. You can assign say AmiTCP: to sys:amitcp1.2 and all scripts and programs are written to use AmiTCP:. Later you can install sys:amitcp1.3 and reassign AmiTCP: to that, and NOTHING BREAKS! Its an EXCELLENT mechanism for software. It also makes env variables like PATH a lot shorter and simpler, especially when you have your favourite well-known assignments. (And no, its NOT the same as exported env variables, as assignments are system wide, and you can access them almost like a device.)
Another neat feature of AmigaDOS: You can label a drive, and access the label name very much like a device. Say you have dh0: (/dev/hda1) now you can write all your scripts and programs to access dh0: but what happens if that changes? On most OS's, youre stuck, especially if your SCSI and IDE devices arent hard wired down, and even if they are, youre screwed if you swap disks between machines and ther eis an id conflict. AmigaDOS to the rescue, instead of writing scripts and programs to the hardware name dh0: you label the disk and that disk can be accessed as the label, label: instead of dh0: Now, no matter what ID the disk comes up as, anything that wants to acces THAT DISK, will work! it gets better, the boot disk on AmigaDOS is also always aliased to sys: so if you always have to write your program to access the bootdisk, use sys:. THe only caveat about using the label is if you need to change the label, but the label is only cosmetic, so I have never seen the need.
Those 2 features are just 2 of the many things I miss about the Amiga since I went to Windows and Unix. It would be fantastic if someone could take these old ideas and improve other OS's with them. There are many other. (Can someone please write a good Workbench knockoff WM? AmiWM is okay, but kinda old and crufty now.)
Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random numbers is, of course, in a state of sin.-John von Neumann
>'Near Realtime' is an oxymoron. Either the OS is 'realtime' or its not. There is no such thing fanboy as 'near' realtime.
No there isn't, but there is 'hard' realtime and 'soft' realtime (and flavours in between), so make sure you know what your on about before you post.
I'm not sure I'd really call the Amiga 'realtime' as such, but it has much in common with true realtime systems...
A customer enters a Bomber shop.
(snip)
Like the B-52?
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
AmigaOS 4.0 is for PPC!
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
The A600 has no zorro at all. The A1200 comes a LOT closer, as it has a 32 bit zorro 2 compatible slot.