Slashdot Mirror
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)."
I think the next time someone links a pictures page, a paypal donate link should go right beside it, in order to pay for their melted server.
:)
Those poor hardware sites just get pounded
I really don't understand why these amiga stories keep coming up from time to time. No matter how good the original was the platform is hopelessly antiquated, and any new product will surely be a nearly complete redesign. It makes no sense to attach all that work to a quaint rebrand.
I was thinking roughly the same thing, but then I thought of a few positive points:
1) The PowerPC has a much cleaner architecture than any of the Intel Pentium chips and AltiVec blows the doors off MMX (in hindsight, IBM should have gone with the Motorola 68000 instead of the Intel 8086 for the original IBM PC).
2) According to the article, the first production run will run PowerPC 750CXe and maybe the G4, but think about it. If they're successful, there's no reason they shouldn't come out with a G5 version in a year or two, perhaps even a dual-G5 version (mmm, yummy).
3) For you Linux fanatics, here's a platform without an entrenched operating system to go with it. Guess what most people will chose to run on it.
All in all, I think these are all good reasons for all you good little geeks and nerds to buy one of these boards, slap it into a cheap case and help port your favorite apps to it.
Honestly, I think it's because the manufacturers realize there's a lot of profit to be milked from thin client sales. They're not really interested in getting in big price wars with them - because despite the advertising talk about how inexpensive they're supposed to be, they know they've got a niche market that will keep paying the higher prices. Discounting the thin clients isn't likely to increase that market very much.
I worked with the Netier thin clients for a while (now bought out by Wyse Corp.), and they provide centralized management software for them that helps get users "locked in" to buying more and more of their thin clients. Why? Well, you have to go to considerable effort to build update packages that their software can push out to the clients, so software in their flash memory can be modified. If you spent a whole day building a package to, say, update the Citrix ICA client on your thin clients, you're not going to be too happy if it only gets used to update 15 or 20 systems. You'd rather have it do all 200, 300, or even 1000 systems in your company, right? So right there, Wyse knows you'll be back for more thin clients - whether they cost $600 each, or $150 each.
The majority of people I've seen using a freeware solution like LTSP are on tight budgets to begin with, so they're generally using it as a way to recycle old, existing computers - as opposed to shopping for bargains on new thin clients.
Just like you can sell a G5 based machine running OSX and call it a Mac, or a Pentium 4 / AMD XP based system running Windows XP and call it a PC.
The Amiga just skipped the inbetween stages.
Sure it doesn't have chips named Agnus, Paula and Denise and it doesn't come with a Zorro slot. But then again, how many Mac's come with a Nubus slot and are powered by a 68000? and how many PC's still have ISA and a socket for a 8087?
Who's to say that if the Amiga's development hadn't followed a more 'normal' path, that what we would have seen today with is anything different from the Amiga One?
I'm only 21, but I grew up on AMIGA's. I lived in Holland till I was 10, so it was only natural. I didn't have a PC clone untill I was 12.
*deep nostalgic sigh*
As far as I can tell, the AMIGA really was just about the perfect computer. I can't even imagine what computing would be like today if Commodore still ruled the ring... (Remember - they really did in the late 80's in every place but the US)
Sig.i>
And Arexx. The language is a nightmare, but having almost every app scriptable with a common scripting language, letting you "remote control" one app from any other was heaven.
And Screens. Even thought splitting the screen with multiple resolutions isn't really doable on modern hardware, it would still be nice (though I think some version of Enlightenment supported it for X).
And placing the application menubar at the top of the screen - frees up so much screen real estate.
Deluxe Paint, or a similar quality SIMPLE paint program (sorry, Gimp just doesn't cut it - not even remotely - Photogenics sort of works on X, but it's bug ridden)
Datatypes!
Assigns, though that is FINALLY making an appearance of sorts in X based desktops with multi rooted virtual filesystem support.
A quick, responsive GUI - my 2GHz x86 based PC with a GeForce, and 512MB RAM is still less responsive most of the time than my Amiga 500 was...
AsmOne, now that actually made assembly programming pleasurable (of course 68k assembly was a dream compared to the horrible hack that is x86)
And DiskMaster II or DOpus...
And Workbench. It's embarrassing that file managers under X either are slower, or is a nightmare to work with compared to a basic file management interface that's didn't change fundamentally after '86.
Damn, I want my Amigas again now... Maybe it's time to give Aros a spin :)
The world as it used to be:
Musician: "Atari rocks!"
Gamer: "Amiga rocks!"
Designer: "Apple rocks!"
Accountant: "PCs are the future!"
All others together: ROFL
*Sigh*
Back in 1992 I had a megaST with a 40MByte Harddrive and two screens, color and b/w. That machine looked really cool, even better than the apples from back then.
While were at it: What really rocked my world was the Atari Portfolio. I could never afford one so I got one on ebay a few months ago. Its serves as a really neat terminal for configuring firewalls and stuff via a serial conn.