Nokia Set-top Boxes to Ship with AmigaDE

AtlasT writes: "Amiga Inc. announced today that Nokia will be shipping their Linux-powered "Mediaterminal" STBs with AmigaDE pre-installed. These news along with the previously announced cooperation with Sharp for their Zaurus PDA make the future of Amiga Inc. look a bit brighter indeed. What we who use computers more often than PDAs and STBs wonder is when we'll see the release of AmigaOS 4 and new machines. If you'd like to have a pre-view of AmigaDE and some applications you can buy the AmigaDE Player for Linux or Windows. I wouldn't mind running games like Payback, a GTA2 clone, on a PDA!" The Nokia Media Terminal was supposed to be launched in the second quarter of 2001, then by the end of 2001, now... who knows. Update: 02/23 21:24 GMT by M : It seems the Mediaterminal is already available but expensive.

Comments

Zarus no longer uses AmigaDE

[jockm]

While the Zaurus was originally announced to use AmigaDE, the developer version is using QT/Embedded + the Jeode VM

Re:A bunch of really dumb questions

[ColdGrits]

No.

It is related in name only. the current owners bought the name from Gateway 2 or 3 years ago, promised the Earth to existing Amiga users, and then proceeded to do stuff all except rebadge and try to resell TAO's software.

Oh, and put out lots of announcements of annoncements.

Oh, and tell us how wonderful it is working with Corel (nothing happened), how the Sharp Zaurus (sp?) was shipping with AmigaDE (it doesn't), and how AmigaInc was helping Matroxto design the new Matrox gfx chips (they aren't).

Despite their best efforts to kill off AmigaOS, though, third parties are stilldeveloping it thankfully. However, AmigaInc has nothing to do with thateffort (other than getting huge royalties on the name when AmigaOS4 finally gets released, if ever).

Amiga

[thedbp]

I certainly hope that Amiga can make a comeback in this area. I don't really see them displacing any PC's to be honest. Its been too long, they're way out of the game, and any massive steps forward they have made with the Amiga OS have been dwarfed by the accomplishments of Linux and Mac OS X.

This scenario makes a lot of sense, however. Back in the day when video hobbyists and professionals stood by their Amigas like tenacious terriers, Amigas really WERE on the forefront of things. Massive port expansion, insane A/V capabilities, fully protected memeory ... Amiga really had their sh*t together. I think that a STB from Amiga would be an awesome product if they ever actually produce it, and put in the time/effort to make it as good as the A2000 and A4000 were.

Re:A bunch of really dumb questions

[DrXym]

Not in the slightest.

Company after company have bought the "Amiga" trademark and used it as a cheap way to garner publicity for their vapourware products. Perhaps this company actually has some real software behind it but it has absolutely zero to do with the original Amiga.

Origin of "Multimedia"

[Jhan]

...when you heard amiga you were thinking "multimedia" before that term became a buzzword on a 486PC that had a cdrom.

Interesting side note: the term "multi-media" is in fact a trade mark, much like "Ping-Pong". It was first used as the name of the presentation program Scala MultiMedia, for the Amiga of course. One of the slickest presentation programs ever designed, in fact it still slaughters Powerpoint even on a 7.14 MHz A500...

They've since migrated to PC, check it out a www.scala.com. Try doing a site search for "Amiga"... They still write about it and somewhat support it (kudos to them!)

Re:I've been wondering...

[Anonymous Coward]

Humm, C# is an open spec, no reason it couldn't be ported to AmigaDE, heck its already got C/C++/Eiffel/Java and a few others besides VP (Amiga/Tao's nice take on assembler).

Java had it half right- Amiga gives you a fast VM machine that you can program in any language from assembler on up.

Oh, yeah, Amiga has no problem with people writing GPL software, in fact they are very open about helping people write software for it, There's an SDK for Linux (RedHat, SuSE, Corel, etc.) or Windows.

Launch

[labil]

The Nokia Media Terminal was supposed to be launched in the second quarter of 2001, then by the end of 2001, now... who knows.

Actually, it's already available in Sweden, and I guess the rest of Europe, though at a price of 8.495 SEK (~ $1000), I can't imagine they sold many of them...

Re:I've been wondering...

[BlueGecko]

An infinite number of registers? Are you a troll, or just a crackfiend? You know nothing of assembly language, or you would be laughing as hard as I am now. If you emulate a cpu, and you design the virtual cpu in such a way that there are unlimited registers, they are no longer registers, but rather the equivalent of variables and/or pointers.

Neither troll nor crack, although if you haven't seen the AmigaDE documents I do understand why you think I might be. AmigaDE registers are 32-bit integers only which may be pointers or data. AmigaDE also has variables (data stored that must be fetched by pointer), just like every other assembly language. Without this, you couldn't have strings or complex data structures. It just so happens that it also allows you an infinite number of registers. In common use, I'd say a function uses maybe 12 or so registers on average when written in the Amiga's virtual assembly. On an x86, only 4 to 8 get to be lucky enough to be register variables. The rest will be regular variables, with all the lag associated with them. On a PowerPC, which has 32 integer registers and 32 floating registers (and 32 vector registers on a G4), you could fit them all in registers. On an x86-64 as well, you could fit all of them on there, and on an Itanium, with its 320 registers, you could probably keep all pointers and integers in register space. It's not really any different from declaring a variable "register" in C. The compiler tries to make it a register, and if it can't, it won't. Similarly, as long as a variable happens to be a 32-bit number, you can make it a register in VP, and if you're lucky enough to be on an architecture with lots of registers, it will be one. Further, if you use named registers, when the code is compiled, the assembler aggressively checks scoping to see where a specific register may be reused. When no additional registers are available, and for more complex data, you need pointers anyway, and you've got them.

Thus, they are not variables; but I suppose that, you are correct, they are not full registers, either. That said, you might want to be slightly less aggressive when you say someone's wrong. I understand why you think I'm nuts, but surely there was a more polite way to point that out.

Re:Do you believe?

[Jace of Fuse!]

Well, I was never much for such advocacy no matter what the system is. Though the Amiga WAS in most ways superior to the MAC, and most of the Mac emulators did much better than just 3% performance increases over a real Mac. Some of them were head and shoulders over a real Mac, but that's unimportant to what I'm going to say.

In the end I was never one to force any of my Amigas to run MAC software. If I had wanted a MAC I would have bought a MAC.

That sort of advocacy annoyed me be it from other Amiga users, from MAC users, or more recently, from Linux users.

What am I now? Certainly my Amigas, though they all mostly work, are only so much use to me. And certainly I use Windows for the vast share of software available for it. But now days I consider myself orphaned.

I use FreeBSD, I toy with BeOS from time to time, I use Windows (ME and XP), and I'll play with anything I can get my hands on just to tinker with it.

It's been a long time since I can say I loved an OS. I'm very much a multi-platform guy because no one OS is anywhere close to perfect anymore. Some would say for it's time, AmigaDOS 2.0 was about perfect back then. And others would say OS/2 hit that mark at some point as well. I don't know that I'd say I've ever used a perfect OS and I will certainly say the further along we go the further away from perfect they will all get.

That includes Windows as well as Linux.