PPC Amigas Go On Sale

nastyphil writes "After a wait of almost 10 years and passing through a series of owners' hands, new Amiga hardware is on sale. G4 processors at up to 800 Mhz. Development of AmigaOS 4.0 has been continuing at a steady pace by Hyperion and will be ready for release early 2003."

Comments

Re:GUI

[nicomen]

I'm going to disappoint you, but the GUI _is_ adjustable just like AmigaOS GUI always has been.

Those screenshots with brown, blue, green and whatnot is the preferences of that specific developer's computer. Actually those screenshots aren't even of an AmigaOne PPC. It's PPC version of Workbench running on a classic 68kAmgia with a PPC-card in it.

Beware though, according to this interview with Ben Hermans, Hyperion (makers of OS4.x) there will be more Intuition (Workbench) screenshots soon.

Re:Amiga & OS X

[commodoresloat]

Just looked through the mol docs and didn't see anything about Apple's EULA. What I did see is this: "MOL can run on non-Apple hardware. APUS hardware (Amiga PowerUp System) is currently unsupported, but work is in progress." So apparently it doesn't run out of the box on Amigas, though who knows about the new G4s.

Another interesting tidbit from the front page -- "Linux can be booted inside MOL" ... is that really necessary? Can you run mol-on-mol like this, and keep going until your computer explodes?

What would be really cool is if the MOL guys figure out how to install AmigaOS 4 on Apple PPCs using mol.

Re:Paula? Is that you?

[Simon Kongshoj]

Actually, they were named Agnus, Fat Agnus, Super Fat Agnus, and Alice. Alice was the final incarnation of the chip, from the Amiga 1200 and Amiga 4000's AGA chipsets. There might have been others in the specialty Amigas, such as Dave Haynie's prototype "A3000+" which was (according to rumor) only produced in two specimens, but there was no Obese Agnus in a general-production Amiga. :)

Re:Amiga & OS X

[Jace of Fuse!]

What would be really cool is if the MOL guys figure out how to install AmigaOS 4 on Apple PPCs using mol.

This might be difficult since the new Amigas have special Firmware, very closely related to the classic Amiga's "KICKSTART" roms.

Re:The old days

[WowTIP]

Back in the days the Amiga was easier to configurate, had better multimedia capabilities than *any* platform, the best multimedia applications (video, at least). Some video/audio apps still outperform anything you can get for linux today.

That said, I am still not sure why a "normal" user should get a new Amiga instead of a Linux box today. No memory protection (planned, though) and no application advantages.

But, if you are an old Amiga user, interrested in the latest Amiga technology and also have an interrest in running a pretty cheap PPC box (LinuxPPC?), then this might be something for you.

For the latest new on AmigaOS4/AmigaOne

[Mike Bouma]

Here you can find a summ up of what has been announced at a recent Amiga show held in the UK. The article includes links to show reports and Audio recording from the presentations done by Amiga Inc, Hyperion and Eyetech.

Here you can read an article which takes a closer look at the AmigaOS4/AmigaOne solution. The article is a couple of months old and does not include the latest informations given at the WoASE show.

And finally here you can find more information about MorphOS/Pegasos, a promising Amiga-like rival system.

No Amigas

[Seehund]

This "story" is horribly misleading, it's almost as if somebody made a cut-n-paste from the Eyetech marketing...

No, there are no "new Amigas." No, nobody will make any "new Amigas."

Hardware has no longer got anything to do with anything "Amiga."

Once upon a time (almost two years ago), the UK Amiga shop Eyetech became "hardware partners" of the new company "Amiga Inc." They were to provide actual new PPC Amiga hardware, and contracted the German firm Escena to design it. This failed. I'm sure those "AmigaOne 1200/4000" motherboards are still praised somewhere on the horribly outdated amiga.com web site.

Instead, AmigaOS 4 and newer will run on third party PPC hardware. That could of course have been fantastic news, but for some reason Eyetech, as a thank you for services not rendered and already being a "partner," got to invent a compulsory hardware-licensing scheme.

In order to see AmigaOS run on a piece of hardware, a hardware vendor has to:

• Get a license from Amiga Inc., both for himself and his hardware.
  
• Become an AmigaOS vendor, distribute AmigaOS together with his hardware and provide software support.
  
• Apply some form of hardware-license verification mechanism, a dongle, to his hardware.
  

AmigaOS will NOT be sold separate from hardware.

Not very surprisingly, Eyetech is the only distributor that has accepted Amiga Inc's and Eyetech's rules. They are now distributing Mai Logic's Teron CX and Teron PX POP motherboards under the trademarks "AmigaOne SE" and "AmigaOne XE" respectively. (NB: the 4 figure price listed on Mai's Teron CX page is for a developer board including unlimited dev tech support, they sell their commercial version for $500). The market for the exact same hardware is split up into one microscopic "for AmigaOS" part and one "for everyone else" part.

If you're interested in AmigaOS, you're not allowed to buy it. You have to buy a new Teron board via the sole Amiga Inc-licensed hardware distributor Eyetech. You aren't allowed to buy a board cheaper directly from Mai. A very easily made port to other POP boards like e.g. the Pegasos, or to (in comparison) cheaply and abundantly available PowerMacs can't happen until someone decides to become an Amiga Inc licensee and AmigaOS distributor, and renames the hardware to "Amiga."

In one blow, AmigaOS by default lost every possible hardware option on the planet, except for the "licensed" one.

"Why do they not want to sell AmigaOS?" you ask. Who knows. Amiga Inc is a newly formed company that has nothing to do with AmigaOS (and certainly nothing to do with any hardware), their interest lies in selling their "content engine" AACE/AmigaDE to PDA and mobile phone vendors, and distributing third party developers' little games for that thing. Apparently, and judging from their silence in response to e.g. this petition from AmigaOS fans, they seem to just not care as long as they get some licensing cash from a few Teron boards sold to trademark fanatics. The only apparent beneficiary of this damn ludicrous mess is the sole licensed hardware distributor, Eyetech. Hyperion, the company that has taken over AmigaOS development, has repeatedly stated that they themselves naturally are interested in seeing AmigaOS run on as much hardware as possible, and since AmigaOS no longer is tightly coupled to custom chips or something like that, the HAL is very easily portable.