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Mini-ITX AmigaONE Board
bhtooefr writes "When I was checking Mini-ITX.com, I found this little gem, info on the AmigaONE Lite board that will be coming out. It's a Mini-ITX compliant motherboard, so you'll be able to throw an Amiga in a Cubid case. Pictures are here (first two - first is without CPU, second is with)."
AmigaOne News:Alan Redhouse Comments on AmigaWorld about the A1-SE Lite
:
Posted by Mikey_C on 20-Sep-2003 18:14:27 (2452 reads)
Read Alan's full post
TA magazine issue 15. To quote myself (because its easier than typing)
Quote:
AmigaOne Lite - some more details.
In the last edition of Total Amiga I gave a brief overview of the AmigaOne Lite - an entry level AmigaOne designed to both as a CD32/A1200 successor and for use in embedded systems such as kiosks, STB's etc. However the more observant of you will have realised that in the last issue I actually described the AmigaOne-SE Lite - so why the change of name?
In the interim period we have re-examined the costs and decided that it is economically feasible to significantly increase the A1-Lite's specification and flexibility within the same overall target pricing. As one of these changes is to use the standard A1XE CPU modules (plus a new entry-level 750CXe module) we dropped the 'SE' from its name.
The full specifications for the AmigaOne Lite are as follows:
Micro ITX form factor (170mmx170mm)
Gigabit and 10/100 ethernet on board
133MHz UDMA RAID IDE controller
USB 2.0 on board
IEEE 1394 ('FireWire') on board
2x AGP graphics on board with PAL/NTSC TV out
AC97 sound on board
1 x PCI33MHz slot (horizontal, via supplied riser card)
Cardbus slot for flash card support (diskless booting, applications, games slot etc)
Usual legacy PS/2, serial, parallel ports
Being a standard form factor it will fit in a standard micro ITX case, such as the one shown in the enclosed photograph. Please visit the web link at http://www.morex.com.tw/minicase.htm and www.mini-itx.com to see other suitable case designs.
We are aiming to bring the AmigaOne Lite to market early next year.
Not mentioned in the above spec is that the board is now designed to take the standard A1XE megarray cpu module so that it can be supplied with/upgraded to anything from an entry level (=cheap) 750CXe@433 to (possibly) a 1.3GHz G4.
The pictures published on the Soft3 website are of the first pre-prototype version - there will be 2 or 3 revisions before the actual production version is ready. The first step - this board - is basically to shrink the A1XE board to a mini-ITX formfactor and make sure it works properly. Then the other chipsets and connectors will be added and that series of boards use for developers to port OS & applications. It will also be used to demonstrate capability - and hopefully gain some significant orders - in the industrial markets that we and other dealers are targetting (display controllers, kiosks, etc).
Finally we hope the final version (which will be as near as possible to the above spec) will be available for sale in the specialist shops (and ultimately in the high street electronic entertainment chains) - with OS4 and some Amiga applications - in 1Q04.
The pre-production pictures were intended to be shown - at this stage - only to the A1 developers and to the A1-users list on AmigaWorld to try to get some useful feedback. Thats why there was really no explanation available to the world at largel when Soft3 (due to a misunderstanding) put them up on their own website.
However, from what I can see the, open publication of these pictures, together with the screen shots of a beta of OS4 running on the A1 - has had a very positive reception. But, please, no private emails for more details on availability dates and prices - we're swamped with emails as it is. This stuff will be posted 'when its ready' (c).
Hope this helps
Alan
17cm by 17cm
The board is a beta design, not the final one. It'll be a few more months yet as they get all the functionality they want onto the board sensibly.
AmigaOS4 is now booting on native PPC platforms now (well, the AmigaOne).
When I was setting up my LTSP-style arrangement at home, I shopped around a bit for clients. I already had an old Javastation Krups, but found it much to slow for heavy use.
These thin clients are $599 to about $629, similar to the prices I found but I can't understand why companies make them so expensive. I decided to build my own using VIA mini-ITX boards for less than $300.
It amazes me when companies fail to analyze why previous thin client computing initiatives haven't caught on, and put out thin clients that cost the same as a full desktop PC. My local bank (Barclay's) have replaced old X Terminals with Dell desktop PCs (P4s!) running Exceed, and I assume they chose this based on price.
Well I don't have any pictures of this particular board for comparison... but all Mini-ITX boards are the exact same size (170mmx170mm) so here are some pics I found real quick of other Mini-ITX boards:
8 60T0001 .jpg
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i mages/humi dor0001.jpg
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o ject0020c.j pg
/ images /ps2pc0000.jpg
Here's one with a CD next to it...
http://mini-itx.com/reviews/b860t/images/B
Here's one with a coke can next to it (REALLY puts it into perspective):
http://mini-itx.com/news/images/st
Here's one inside a humidor:
http://mini-itx.com/projects/humidor64/
And inside an NES:
http://mini-itx.com/projects/nespc/images/n
And inside a breadbox:
http://mini-itx.com/projects/images/pr
And inside a PS2:
http://mini-itx.com/projects/playstation2pc
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
There is; it runs MacOS 9/X without the need for an actual Mac ROM. The site can be found here.
Bít, zabít, jen proto, ze su liska!
Cable companies were still using them a couple of years ago, don't know if they still are. Amiga OS 4 is being developed, There is suppose to be a new amiga coming out someday.
Yes, I noticed while under AT&T cable I did see a "Guru Meditation error", so I can verify one was in use roughly 3 years ago in washington. I think Perhaps it was an amiga 2000. Though the layout of that particular information station did change shortly afterwards, I would "guess" they may have switched platforms. Dispite the fact that I have a softspot for the Amiga I can see that it would be a pain in the tookus to support in the 21st century, esp a one with zorro based slots.
The reason I abonded my amiga was just a simple matter of moolah. To do web even in 8bit color I needed new roms, either 3.x roms or 1.x roms where I could softload the 3.x roms. The 68030 was somewhat adquate, I would have prefered a 68040 or better, and upgrading the 2000 was just too much money for the speed increase. Further that whole zorro II vs zorro III thing, the fact that my selection of graphics boards were pretty limited in the zorro II department, and there was a super major slowdown with AGA emulation. Basicly the upgrades I wanted to peform would set me back a close to a grand, and franky I could get a PC or a Mac for that.
On the cool beans level, the scsi support was superb. I could copy CDs to the hard disk with ease due to the fact that I had a nice toshiba without digital copybit proection with a simple copy command.
Is this still a viable platform? To be honest, I've not seen their lastest OS [3.9 I think was their most recent]. I must admit I was curious, but I could never find a copy online and I wasn't about to shell out cash just to look at it. Still if there is decent linux support I imagine this could be a viable alternative to the intel based machines, though a touch spendy IMHO.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Yes, through Mac-on-Linux
The last couple of months AmigaOS4 has been demonstrated at special 'AmigaOS4 Tour events' around the world on classic systems equiped with PPC boards. At various events in Slovenia, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, Austria, US Westcoast (Sacramento), US Eastcoast (New York), Sweden, Italy, France, Denmark, etc. The Tour will also go DonwUnder.
:-)
Personally I have been to Switzerland to report on one of these events. You can read it here:
Swiss 'AmigaOS4 on Tour' presentation in Basel (29-Jul-2003)
At the Italian Pianeta 2003 fair AmigaOS4 was demonstrated on AmigaOne hardware for the first time! More screenshots of AmigaOS4 can be found here at the AmigaWorld.net community portal.
Hyperion will also be present at the upcoming Benelux Amiga Show which is planned for the 4th and 4th of October in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. I plan to be there as well.
Right now Amiga is a dead horse. It just does not stand a chance, even against a lowly 486/66. But you should compare computers with similar price at the time that were available. In 1991, I could play 2D games with 768 colors and 40 levels of parallax scrolling at 60 frames per second on my Amiga, with 4 channels of 22KHz hardware-driven sound. I couldn't do the same with a 1991 PC 286.
The PC got the edge over the Amiga because of the Amiga's graphics architecture, which was heavily geared towards 2d blitting: it used bit planes, where the PC had packed format. The use of packed pixels made 3d much easier, and the lack of 3d killed the Amiga.
The Amiga had many advantages:
-a nice Unix like O/S where everything could be done from the command line
-each executable had its own 'registry': a text file with '.info' extension; applications could be copied by dragging their directory around
-nice multitasking; very light
-Arrex, an advanced scripting language that could do gui as well as command line apps
-a nice library system; and O/S file organization
-an Ultra light gui, that could be easily customizable
-each app could be in its own screen, with its own video mode. Drag and drop from one screen to another worked
-many custom chips, especially for blitting. The Amiga 1200 could do many graphical tricks, and its blit speed was close to a Pentium's.
Commodore did many mistakes and really killed the Amiga. Back in 1991, Amiga needed hard disk support, cd rom, and a custom chip that could do 3D.
I really miss the Amiga, as well as those halcyon days of back-bedroom coding. It just don't feel the same with a PC: although the PC is vastly more powerful, it's nowhere near as beautiful(as a concept, as a design, as a promise!!!).
I do! I can have this A2000/060 crash, and retain my dialup-ISP connection. MS Worms pain my ISP but not me directly.
Big business customers in Queensland include Queensland Rail (Visual Arrivals Info at inner-city Brisbane stations) and Queensland Transport (Visual Information).
Second-hand (10 year old) Amigas are MORE valuable than 10 year old x86 systems.
The AmigaOne Lite is certain to be popular in imbedded and kiosk applications.
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
You can attach your old amiga motherboard to supply this level of compatability if desired, while not sacrificing the PPC speed of running OS4.
-josh
Computer Industry legend says that the IBM PC design team wanted to use the 68000 but that there was a pre-existing industry deal struck with Intel that allowed them to use the 8080 for super-cheap.
I believe it, but haven't bothered to verify.
-josh
Drive A?
e qS cn.jpg
You lost YOUR credibility there!
http://home.iprimus.com.au/vortexau/images2/M-R
DF2: (left of yellow window) represents the THIRD floppy drive, or the FIRST external on an A2000!
.
(David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
A500 computers did have AmigaOS 1.3 or i.2 and that looks ugly when look it today. It was not possible to configure those much.
Yes, what people have to keep in mind the fact that their mental image of workbench 1.3 is very much vintage. The only fair contrast would be windows 3.0, Atari ST os, and mac pre system 7 (lovely monochrome). While you can argue that a 3 (or was it 4) color workbench does *suck* keep also in mind that on the same workbench you could have running boink and a, a newteck demo (welcome to newtech... anew new new new newtech) and a 4096 digipaint image. This does not suck by modern standard... if i'm not mistaken win2k / winxp can't really do diffrent windows with independent bitdepth, nor that lovely pull down graphic screen which I will say would be damn useful when playing quake if I could just with a mouse swipe pull down and peek at my desktop.
While you "could" possibly upgrade an 500 with either 3.x roms or soft boot to the 3.x roms, you are pretty limited on the desktop front to the stock amiga graphics unless you were to invest in a graphics board, which is a pain in the tookus unless you have a card cadge for the 500. These things are a touch rare, and doing it your self is a whole bunch of no fun as each zorro card is 100 pins if you can even find a 100pin edgecard connector. I have a few, I was going to do this, but said fuck it and bought a 2000.
If you think Amiga workbench is ugly, just look at STos (gem or whatever it was).
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Started a digital photography business using an Amiga 3000. With a 68060 at 50MHz and 128MB of RAM, it blew away Windows computers. Wasn't until my Windows computer was up to 450MHz that Windows started to feel faster. Yes, it was faster in raw CPU, 3D rendered faster but I couldn't do anything in Windows 95 or 98 while it was rendering. I'm sure many will write this off as blowing smoke, but on my Amiga I could: Load a 2400x3000 pixel image in ImageFX and start it printing to a Fargo Primera Pro (very CPU intensive, cannot pause or it ruins the print). Then -start- Real3D and set 3 separate scenes to rendering at high res. Then -start- my internet software, browser and email, read and send email and roam around the internet with 3 browser windows open. The mouse pointer never stuck, not once, and the print did not pause and came out perfect. Only affect on printing was instead of 2 minutes to RIP it took 3 minutes. A friends Pentium 100, 128M ram, W95, took 20 to 40 minutes to RIP depending on the program and he literally could not so much as move the mouse or it would pause for several minutes before finally updating the mouse pointer. If that happened during the fixed 15 minute print time, a $3 print was ruined. I could also print from ImageFX (it's a Photoshop-like program that is still commercially available) to an inkjet in color, while printing to a BW laser printer from PageStream (a DTP program still commercially available including versions for Windows, Mac, Amiga, and Linux). While on the internet, reading my mail and surfing sites, usually several browser windows open. Again, the mouse pointer did not get jerky, not once.