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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."
Well, as a bit of a Mac zealot, at least now I know that my kind aren't nearly the most fanatical people using PPC these days.
I'm only interested if they rename the PPC chip "Even Fatter Agnus".
Agnus was just a memory controller and blitter (Block Information Transfer Chip), with extra hardware to control the CopperLists (Coprocessor Instructions for such things as Colour Register manipulation and handling of sprites).
Agnus was replaced by the Fat Agnus which could allocate 1 meg of ChipRam (Video/Sound memory - memory that could be access by Denise and Paula).
Later, Agnus was replaced by Super Fat Agnus, which could allocate a full 2 megs of Chipram.
Finally Agnus was replaced with Alice, the AGA version, and Denise was placed with Lisa.
There would be no reason to call the processor by any name other than it's own. And since the new Amiga design does not have a truely Custom Chipset in old Amiga fashion, this new Amiga isn't truely an Amiga in anything other than name.
Very sad indeed that they're praying on the hopes of the few remaining Amiga fans. I would support this platform by both switching over to it and developing for it, but the hardware is only so-so at best and the OS is obsolete before even being completed.
If they want me back, they're going to have to do a whole lot better than this.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
I really don't care if AmigaOS "makes a comeback", I want to continue using and developing AmigaOS, and as such I am dying to get my hands on an AmigaOne XE and OS4.
:( Use a MAC. I know... I know... but hey!"
I agree that there are certain things about the AmigaOS that I absolutely loved.
the C: and DEVS:, and LIBS:. The way everything in the S: directory was there for a reason. I loved how STARTUP was handled, and I loved how you could modify the icon properties to change startup options of programs.
Some things about Amiga OS have not been matched since, not even by Linux or BeOS (Yes, Linux fans, AmigaOS did some things much nicer than your precious little unix wannabe.)
On the other hand, most other operating systems have completely evolved past the Amiga. Protected memory, built in virtual memory. REAL retargetable graphics instead of a nasty hack. REAL retargetable sound instead of a nasty hack.
There are checks and balances when comparing any of the many operating systems, and what it boils down to is that none of them are perfect.
Amiga OS suffers from severe obsolescense, lack of modern software support, and a GUI that is over 13 years old.
Linux still suffers from the "let's throw files in places that only a seasoned unix user will think to look for them" mentality that is standard with all Unix workalikes, and the commercial industry still touches on it with a bit of uncertainty and a whole lot of fear.
Windows sucks on too many levels to mention, but at least it has market dominance and a whole ton of games (for what that is worth anyway).
Mac OS X has a whole lot going for it, but unfortunately it draws in a whole bunch of moron users and thus using it might be hard for the tech-savvy user to admit. "Yes... I... uh... hmm.
BeOS is dead kind of like the Amiga, only it's not quite as rotten yet.
Of course, there are going to be tons of morons who will swear FreeBSD is dead, but blah. It's like all the other Unix operating systems. If you love Unix, you won't use anything but, if you don't already love Unix, it may take you years before you ever get comfortable enough to try it.
When comparing all of the operating systems, it's not easy to choose one that I would say is "On top", but it's pretty easy to pick out the ones that are certainly on the bottom, even if they don't necissarily deserve to be there.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
How can these machines be called Amiga. They have nothing in common with the original Amiga and are just pretty standard and boring PPC machines.
You might as well put an Amiga sticker on your mac or PC...
True warriors use the Klingon Google
The point is, the Amiga is not dead (and I have an A3000/68040 in perfectly good shape on my desk to back that up), but it hasn't evolved for more than 10 years and this new toy is the proof: it's just standard PC hardware with a PowerPC CPU. Nothing in there remotely resembles the Amiga hardware. You might as well spend the same money on an Athlon + modern mobo + lots of memory and get far superior performance; if you really want some Amiga feeling from time to time, just install UAE.
What defined the Amiga was the integration between the OS and the hardware. The OS alone on standard hardware doesn't make much sense IMHO: Linux or *BSD or, hell, even Windows is better these days. I don't know what hardware does currently offer something like the extreme multimedia capabilities of the original Amiga hardware+software because I'm not interestad in that kind of stuff, but certainly it's not standard PC hardware. I guess you would have to buy a Silicon Graphics or something like that.
...was two things:
... Then there was PAL/NTSC compatibility of course.
;-)
1) Cool hardware. It could do cool stuff: colorful screens, good sound, Hold And Modify mode, everything DMA-driven to waste as few CPU cycles as possible, blitter, copper,
2) Cool OS. Incredibly efficient, multitasking, windowing, and yet understandable. Files had logical names. There was a pervasive system-wide scripting language. You could modify OS-behavior in any way you saw fit. It did what you wanted it to do, without ever bothering you.
Amiga users like either the hardware or the software, but rarely both
The new hardware is not all that spectacular. Sure, PPC is nice, so is a big fat 3D card, but it isn't _cool_ like the old hardware was. You cannot fuck around with it and do cool hacks. Everybody else had it a long time ago.
The new software is not all that spectacular either. Other OS'es have learned about multitasking, and the brilliant original concepts got diluded by outside influences (I'm not saying those are wrong, but simply inappropriate for AmigaOS).
And then of course there was the other people you knew who had an Amiga. They made it fun: showing off cool hacks, borrowing each others' software (yeah, I know, that's what helped kill it in the first place...), seeing amazing demo's. The new platform will have to start from scratch in this regard.
In short, although I am happy people are still working on Amiga, I do not really see the point. Amiga should stand for massively powerful hardware, an elegant OS, and amazing innovation. What I see is a standard (not all that powerful) PC, using the same old OS except that it now has UNIX-style libraries.
I still have my A4K, which I used regularly up until about two years ago. I turn it on about once every three months, but the spark is gone.
To me, the Amiga was special. It wasn't just a chipset, or an operating system. Indeed, there were the games and the demoscene that banged away at the hardware and made it really perform. There were the digital artists and animators who used the fantastic software of the time to take advantage of the machine's capabilities to create great works. There were electronic music composers galore putting out more MODs than anybody can count. There were the users who adored the multitasking operating system which boosted their productivity and enjoyment. There were the programmers who filled up Aminet with software. There was the desktop video production revolution begun with the Video Toaster. And there was the team of dedicated people designing and building the machine itself. "The Amiga" was a gestalt of all these things; hardware, operating system, and a wonderfully creative, vibrant user community.
That's dead. I left the Amiga scene four years after Commodore went toes up. It was finally time to go when most of the talented, dynamic people had fled the platform for greener pastures: BeOS, Linux, even Windows. All that was left were the "somebody should" people. Y'know, the people who say "somebody should do X," but do nothing themselves. Well, except for the well-meaning, insane people who would try to run Amiga development companies on a wing and a prayer before collapsing into financial ruin. That reminded me very much of the "ghost dancing" of the plains Indians as they tried to fight a force that was extinguishing their whole way of life.
All that's left now are some real die-hards who are happy to just now get Quake II, a company that has salvaged the Amiga name from the post-Commodore disaster, and an outdated operating system. This new hardware is a fine thing for those die-hards. It'll give them new hardware, faster machines, and new OS features. It's not enough, though, to even reverse the Amiga Diaspora and bring back all the talent and drive that made for such a rich user community. It's certainly not enough to bring in significant new blood.
I wish Eyetech luck. I hope they can make a profit on the AmigaOne, that there are enough die-hards to keep it going. I just won't be back, because it's not "the Amiga" anymore.