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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."
I believe it can run MaconLinux which in it's turn can run Mac OS X.
Nicolas Mendoza
Prepare for MSIE 7
I'm only interested if they rename the PPC chip "Even Fatter Agnus".
not to insult anyone or disrespect the work of the OS authors, but the interface is BUTT UGLY. My neighboors donkey poops better gooey than this stuff.
On a G4 there surely has to be another OS with better interface. I vaguely recall something... Can't remember. I'll ask the donkey.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
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.
FYI: This is the official PPC Amiga (AmigaOne) backed up by Amiga Inc. I'm looking forward to OS4 is finished, the presentation at the WOASE show last weekend was promising.
And even if the box could run Mac OS X, Apple doesn't allow it as stated in their EULA.
(There are other PPC based computers claiming to be Amiga-compatible (Pegasos))
Nicolas Mendoza
Prepare for MSIE 7
Cool news!
:(
If only now they'd release Lotus Turbo Esprit Challenge 2 with TCP/IP multiplayer for it!
Definately one of the cooler games for the amiga way back when...
Cant see it happening though
-- If at first you don't succeed, lie!
No, you run Linux PPC on it. Then it is exactly the same as your PC, except faster for certain math operations.
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.
Is the 100Mhz speed boost really worth it when you consider that for the Apple price you'll receive the 15" LCD screen? Bear in mind that you'll also have the benefit of dedicated Apple support for OS X, and genuine Mac Hardware. I believe that you can run versions of PPC Linux on the iMac, so unless you really want to run AmigaOS, I don't see any real benefits over the long term.
Tim
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
The prospect of being able to buy an inexpensive PPC system from another vendor (besides apple, et al), is great news in purely technical terms - it's another option for replacing legacy x86 hardware, for example - but what are the broader implications?
...
Will there be enough interest in PPC-based platforms for a consumer PPC market to take off? In what areas does PPC in general (as opposed to MacOS, AmigaOS or LinuxPPC in particular) offer signifigant benefits? Apple has certainly found their own way of using this architecture, but I'm sure we all remember Power Computing
I wonder when they're coming out with the new Vic-20?
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Apparently you can do this using Mac-on-linux but it is against Apple's EULA. Anyone know how Apple feels about this? Is there an "official" position from the Maconlinux people? I imagine as long as no company starts selling Amigas with OS X pre-installed that Apple would "look the other way" at a bunch of geeks putting OSX on Amigas. It gives Apple more underground geek appeal and promotes OS X more widely. It's not like they would support X on Amiga but I wonder if they would really get upset if a visible group of Amiga-OSX users appeared, along with a few HOWTOs, if there are any secret incantations required to get mol running properly on AmigaPPC. Then again, Apple lawyers have gone apeshit over much less....
I bet half the folks think of a CGA display 40x25 text mode when they hear the name "Amiga".
why? because thats all the PC had when the amiga of the time was showing 4096 colours (HAM) at 640x512?
it lways seemed unfair that the amiga, which had damn advanced for the time graphics and sound, was written off as a mere "games machine" yet what drives new pc hardware now?
dave
Somewhat off topic, but I've been getting a charmingly interesting user agent string in my apache logs lately, (which has the magical ability to segfault my stats engine, webalizer).
that string would be:
tSi Mozilla/5_EXPERIMENTAL (AOS4.1 ALPHA; PPC)
Amiga OS 4.1 Alpha? hrm. Is this string fake? 4.1 when 4.0 isn't out yet?
Is it just me, or does anyone else thing we really need this? The original Amiga was a strange beast, originally developed as a pure games machine, then retooled as a "business computer" it had the genlock device (video could be pumped through and mixed with the machines graphics). It was always an "odd" machine. And I guess that's why these people love it, how can you categorise it? Good at games, useful for video and able to do things like DTP, it was very exciting as a machine.
Now I don't know about everyone else, but I for one get a bit bored these days - machines are dull - really dull. Sure they have whizzbang new CPUs and there are some amazing graphics cards, but they don't quite capture the excitement of those earlier machines.
I for one am glad to see the Amiga haul itself out of the past, maybe it's nostalgia, but whatever if these things can help capture any of the excitement of the Amiga1000 or the Amiga2000 (you could put a PC card in one of those - so you really could "have your cake and eat it") then this will be worthwhile.
Sure I don't think the PC is going to become an endangered species or that this thing will even make much impression over the Mac, but does it have to? If they can make a profit out of these and a few nostalgic geeks can have some fun, it all sounds good to me.
I for one need some excitement!
SIGH, more Amiga-clueless people pretending to know what an Amiga is.
There IS no textmode on an Amiga!
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.
Hell must be a cold, cold, cold place by now. At this rate, I expect my quantum computer to arrive by Christmas.
This
These days much talk of GUI look and feel is bandied about. I don't know how the new Amiga GUI feels, but it looks awful. Maybe that's the last stage in their design and the whole thing is (hopefully) themeable - we can but hope.
Otherwise I'm afriad this just isn't going to sell. In the past the feel was the only part that counted because all GUIs were, let's face it, pretty damn ugly. These days however the look of a GUI (given the high powered graphics hardware sported by commodity machines) is actually rather important. Look how much attention OS X garnered solely on it's looks.
These days you can't afford to have an ugly GUI anymore - sure it can be an option for those people with no aesthetics - you need something that is attractive. I've never understood the people who deride attractive interfaces TBH - I spend 10+ hours a day staring at a computer screen, tell me again why I want it to be merely functional?!
Sure, if you're taking a serious performance hit for the graphics, then by all means turn them off (as linux kindly allows with it's myriad of window manager and desktop solutions), but these days you should b able to get quite a nice GUI for very little cost.
here's some snapshots of what my desktop sometimes looks like: screenshots
Jedidiah
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
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. :)
Six sick
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.
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
Did you see the pictures, the PPC runs without a fan at 600MHz. Quiet, good history, great name, can it get any better?!
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
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.
Do NOT try to tell me that the 800 MHz PPC outperforms a 2GHz PIV
Why not? I mean for integer stuff at least, a P4 spends a lot of its time copying data between the sparse set of registers, and there's a limitation on the instructions that can actually be paired to get maximum throughput. The extremely deep pipeline also means there's a high penalty for incorrect branch prediction. The legacy 386 stuff makes the CPU extremely inefficient.
The facts about floating point are a little harder to come by. Nevertheless, a different processor architecture will allow much better internal parallelism. The x86 series of chips still has latency issues, reducing performance here. A G3 is about twice as fast as a Pentium 2.
Incidentally, do you realise that a Pentium would run at about 3 times the speed of a 386 clocked at the same rate?
It may well be that an 800MHz G3 is not as fast as a 2GHz Pentium 4, but don't make the mistake of making any estimates based on clock speed.
Finally, I should point out this is not designed to be the ultimate in speed. It's only trying to be competitive, not a world beater. Just has to be as fast as a typical pentium CPU.
The 450/500 GBP prices (roughly 704/780 USD) are just for the mobo with CPU, not a complete system. Assume another $20 for shipping (which would be cheap!), and you're looking at $800USD just for the mobo. You still need to add memory, a case, video card, HDD, CD[-RW]/DVD[-+RW], keyboard, mouse, and monitor.
Lets assume for sake of argument you're going cheap, cheap, cheap, so:
You're now running $320 in basic components, bringing the price up to $1045-1120 (700/800MHz variants.) Or you can get an eMac for $1100 (700MHz) that upgrades you to a CD-RW with a better video card, modem, and FireWire port that is pre-installed with a currently shipping copy of OSX. Alternatively, $1300 gets you an iBook with a 12.1" screen (slightly smaller 30GB HDD.)
Having decided to buy the AmigaOne mobo anyhow, you now have the option of running PPC Linux or waiting for the new OS. Either way, you miss out on the commercial product support for Linux (DB/2, Oracle, Sybase, et. al. are x86 binaries, not PPC.) Assuming pure open source is just fine by you, you've still got a box that is woefully underpowered to a similarly priced/configured AMD system (and maybe even Intel P4.)
Much as I loved my Amiga 1000, I just can't see any reason I'd want one of these new "Amiga" systems. Most of the reasons I loved my A1000 just aren't valid anymore -- everyone has hardware accelerated video and audio now, video capture and processing cards are common, and I'd rather be coding *nix than a system with no mind/market share.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Under the lid of my A1000 were the signatures of all the developers, molded into the plastic. _That_ was class.
These people had style. Pity the business model didn't work out.
Yay me!
...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.
I keep hearing this about AmigaOS, and I still can't figure out what definition of "realtime" you're using. I learned that a realtime operating system is one that can guarantee a response to an external event within a given time.
AmigaOS patently does not satisfy this condition, because any running task on the system can disable interrupts, and therefore multitasking. Any program that need to walk the Exec list does so, which means that multitasking is disabled for varying amounts of time depending on the contents of the Exec list.
(My memory is hazy. Can't programs also install their own interrupt handlers? That, too, is going to lead to varying, unknown latencies.)
On another note, I remember ALL games on my amiga, no matter wether they were running at 10 or 50fps, had perfect synchronization of input, video display and audio. I know this was made possible because of input, copper and lisa interrupts, (for sound there was also the fact that you could update the sound-playing pointer in two cycles, i.e. there was no mixing buffer that would add latency.) but.. why doesn't it work with Linux? It seems very weird.
Interrupts also work on the user level - I am not sure how linux works, but a user level program could request to be added to a list of interruptable processes for a specific event. I am not sure how large the latency of an interrupt is, but I think most OSes can manage something below 10ms.
As for the sound, I find it extremely strange that people use mixing buffers the way they do in current linux games. If you know what is the sample-rate of the audio card and what position of the buffer it is currently reading from you can have SFX with latency that is NOT dependent upon the length of the mix buffer. Simply predict in which memory address you should write to, so that you are just ahead of the audio DMA. (I wouldnt think there are any cards that dont support DMA right now..).
I miss my rubber keyboard.(Homepage)
How's that? As far as instilling that tingly sensation being on the rare, bleeding edge and having a great deal of of hope for new apps generated by the dearth of existing apps? I get that feeling running OS X (on my dual G4 800 and iBook 700), well, at least the bleeding edge part, because the apps are here for OS X.
Don't get me wrong. I purchased the first Amiga sold in the state of Virginia back in 1985, an A1000 from the fist store that was taking stock back then. I've left and come back a few times over the years, having owned that A1000, and A2000, an A1200, a used A500, and most recently another A1200 (towered, '060 -- but sold for the iBook) and A2000 (that I found new-in-box two years ago amazingly). I use the Amiga about every other day to relive the great days. But come on.
The new Amiga is an AmigaOS-compatible machine. It's not an Amiga compatible machine. It will run apps that are OS friendly, but no oldschool apps/games that hit the hardware. And what was the Amiga with its wonderful Hardware Reference manuals for but to invite hitting the hardware?? You may ask why anyone would be interested in running those old apps/games--why not look forward to current and new future apps running on AmigaOS 4.0. Well...if that's the point, then why not just run Linux or some other *NIX (OS X for example)?
As far as I can see, the "heart" of what was Amiga is nowhere to be found in these new machines. Even though I still use my Amiga 2000 happily (I have a 68030 accelerator coming in the mail for it as I write this), I simply cannot see what sort of user benefit comes from these new, seemingly alien machines.
Anyway, I'm all about that feeling. I remember it when I was using that A1000 back in '85. I also remember waves of it using that first A2000 back in '88-'89. Sacrasm aside, it's a fullfilling feeling, well the positive sides of it are. I am reliving the positives of that feeling using OS X and it's fun, fresh. I can't imagine getting that feel from these new machines. What am I missing?
Here's a list of the Amigas I've gone thru, for what it's worth.
blakespot
-- Heisenberg may have slept here.
iPod Hacks.com
But you know what... If I had the extra bucks right now I would probably buy one [I am a computer junkie.... ouch my wallet.].
I believe one of the AmigaOSs was the first true multitasking OS on a PC level system in existence... it would be really interesting to see how far they have come now. Linux PPC can't be all that bad either... perhaps even Darwin runs on these things [or could be made to anyway]
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:
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.
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
Mod this up! I'm tired of people comparing the price of random stripped down equipment with the price of a fully loaded Apple box. Usually it's people comparing the price of a headless white-box PC vs an Apple system that includes an LCD display, sometimes even the Cinema display. This time it's someone comparing a bare CPU board (not even a case and power supply!) with a fully loaded high-end Mac.
Don't forget to count what your time is worth to tinker with all this crap and get it working... call it at least $10/hr. And that's time to go shopping for all this crap and to open the boxes too. So what if you happen to like putting computer parts together... that's less time you could be spending playing Counterstrike. Er, except Counterstrike won't run on this thing when you're done. All you've got is a pretty toy with all the (in)compatibility of Mas OS X and none of the apps.
Someone else has already posted that once you go through your shopping list (case, power supply, video card, RAM, hard drive, keyboard, mouse, display), you've already spent enough to go ahead and get a 15" iMac. Not only does the iMac look better, but it's got a properly supported OS that's had two years to get stable, not some beta that'll be released Real Soon Now.
If you're going to compare prices, why not compare the price of an Amiga board ($600-$800) with your typical ATX mobo and AMD/Intel CPU, which runs more like $200-$300, or even less if you don't mind something "old" like a 1GHz Celeron or Duron.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Here are some of the features from the original AmigaOS (now nearly 20 years old) that I still miss in operating systems today:
The device system. Need to pipe something over TCP/IP? Just use TCP:. Need to open a console for whatever reason. Just use CON:. Etc. etc.
Full localization of all programs through a library (it still amazes me that programs for Windows are released in different language versions).
Dynamic size RAM disk, always present. Just copy something to RAM:, and there it is. No more temp files all over the place.
Revocerable ram disk (RAD). A ram disk that survives booting, and can even be booted from.
Datatypes. A kind of codec architecture for every kind of file. Programs didn't need to know what a gif file, a jpeg file or a text file was or how to show them on screen. The os could handle that.
Long filenames from the start. A jpeg picture was always picture.jpeg.
Fully user patchable. Any os function could be patched with SetPatch. The only reason people have been able to use it up until now (and also a virus writers dream in the old days).
System wide scripting/IPC with Rexx (ARexx really). All serious programs were fully scriptable with ARexx. Extremely powerful concept.
Screens. Think of them like virtual desktops. But every program could have one if you wanted. Flipping screens were instantenous and if you dragged them, you could even have split-screen resolutions (although this was more thanks to the hardware).
A powerfull shell, aswell as a nice intuitive (but not overly, like the Mac) graphic environment. Linux got this. Windows still doesn't.
These were just some of the features that made AmigaOS a tinkerers dream. Sheer elegance all the way. It saddens me that Linux, with it's monolithic and archaic approach, is the best viable os alternative at the moment. People growing up with computers nowaday have really missed out on something special.
A friend of mine who's still using his Amiga of old has an amusing anecdote similar to this: At one time he had the "fastest Mac in the world" -- an Amiga running it under an emulator. He said the Apple guys were really pissed. :) (Hi, Knute!)
I still miss my old Amiga. We had some good times. --snif-- I doubt I'll get this one, though, as it's probably more fun to sit around and be nostalgic in a diffuse kind of way.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
Amiga.. the only way a /.'er can get a chick.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Say what you will about the limited hard drive space, but the Amiga could do more with 170MB back then than most computers can do with 170GB today. It was very efficient with regards to disk space.
I used to know a guy who set up kiosks and displays for movie theaters using Amiga hardware. He had systems that allowed people to interactively search and view movie times, view movie trailers (from a laser disc), and do all kinds of fancy overlays and screen wipes. All this for an entire theater, including the OS, software, graphics, and data, would only fill about 10MB of disk space. How much do you think it would take these days to do the same thing?
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
Actually, correction:
The A3000+ had 100 units produced, and were standard AGA amigas, running Alice, Lisa and Paula.
The AGA's replacement was AAA, found in the 3 Nyx motherboards. They replaced the 3 custom-chips with 4:
Andrea -- replaced Agnus. Added a RISC-like semi-processor to the copper, to speed up operations. Also added new modes to the blitter, like pattern fill.
Denise was replaced by 2 chips:
Linda -- A line display buffer, could decode video-stream instructions on a line-per-line basis.
Monica -- The actual display chip, contains the color-palettes/color decode tables, the HAM display system, playfield decoder, sprite display system, etc. Also had the added ability to do video-input.
Mary -- Paula's replacement. This chip actually surpasses even chips availible in PC's now. Contained raw, CGR, MFM, RLL and bitplane mark encoding. The "Floppy Controller" was so advanced it could push a CD-ROM or low-speed hard drive. 64kHz sampling rate, 8 channels, 12-bits of audio volume, could sample in 8 or 16 bits, supported digital out directly, and of course the ability to use channels to modulate another channel.
AAA was on revision 2 when Commodore went under. By all practicality, it was 14-18 months from completion. The design was altered to become the last Amiga chipset commodore worked on: Hombre. Hombre dumped sprtes and planar video, replaced the copper with a PA-RISC CPU with the copper commands added, and PCI support for inclusion on an expantion card. An evolved Hombre could compete even today, but the money needed and time demand makes that a pipe dream as well.
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Amiga came out with a machine with "virtually" 4096 colors display due to its custom on-board graphics chips, a servicable but inelegant GUI, and built in digital stereo audio. This enabled it to be the PlayStation2 of its day. It was easy to program and developers jumped on board from the beginning.
It's popularity among gam3rz led to it's software being the most pirated around, and while the gam3rz were trading their Psygnosis games, they also copied all of the office/productivity/graphics software around, to the point where it was easier to get a pirated copy of a $100 word processor or $300 MIDI sequencer from the clerk at the mall software store than to find a store that carried the package for sale, even if you had the money to spend (True story.)
Amiga was loved to death by W4r3ZaX0rz and dead it will stay, because its real advantage as "ultimate gaming hardware" will never be regained.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
And I guess I'll throw another group into this category: there may be people who have actually been following whatever Fleecy's software team has been doing and think that it's a good idea. (I am very ignorant about this.)
Why this software goal requires a different hardware platform, is difficult to explain, and is controversial. Maybe the Mac guys can explain it to you. ;-)
(Some of your Penguinheads might fall into this category, although I think prolonged exposure to the overall Unix environment, can kill this type of thinking. When you start thinking that X11 is a good idea, it's probably too late.)
Looking at the prices, I don't think the revolution is here yet. But if it's ever going to start, it has to start somewhere. These projects can possibly create at least some installed base, which may lead to there being a real "cheap PPC" market down the road.
(Some of you Penguinheads might be in this category as well.)
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I moved to the Amiga in 1988, after learning all about BASIC on a C-64. I was only 10 at the time and had a budget of $0 so I relied on my parents for games, demos etc. but there was a users group - two actually, the Latham Amiga Users Group (LAUG) and the Capital District Amiga Users Group (CDAUG).
I'd tag along with my dad to meetings and we'd get floppy disks from Fred Fish. We had Digi-Paint, which used a b&w camera that could take color images using red, green and blue cellophane - pretty ingenious at the time. Then there was Deluxe Paint III, with animation and animated brushes and tutorials on VHS (I remember creating the bouncing ball demo). I also learned how to use MED (a music editor) and Deluxe Music for writing out scores. These were some real tools that taught you how to be clever. And every application could run off a floppy - with only 20MB of hard disk space you had better be able to run things off floppies.
Speech synthesis was another wonderful thing - the program I used even made a simple mouth that would animate when it spoke!
I think the Amiga's crash was the best I've ever seen too - Guru meditations! Somebody at Commodore realized that if they could make you laugh at a crash, the problem wouldn't seem so bad.
When my dad decided we should take the plunge into PC's, I was disappointed at how far behind they were. Sound cards?? Amigas had built-in sound! Mouse drivers? The Amiga's mouse worked right off the bat! And don't get me started on those damn 8.3 filenames. Windows 3.1 was a beast, and where's the icon for the hard disk? But it had a CD-ROM drive, eight megs of ram (when most new computers had four- we splurged), and hundreds of megabytes of hard disk space. And I knew other people who had PC's - that was important. Now that I'm a Linux user I don't know if I have any needs that an Amiga would fill. I hope I'm wrong.
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