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)."
Who actually still uses Amigas? Where are they popular?
That's totally small...I was looking at this picture, but it doesn't have anything else to compare it to. Anyone have a picture next to a penny or something to compare?
The anti-salmon
Including one of those four propeller helicopter things sitting on his desk as a toy but never uses, an equally usless gift that costs far too much and has been used a total of once, the mini-ITX Amiga board!
now if you could just rig it so OS X would run on one of these babies...
moox. for a new generation.
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
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.
Lemmings, the way it was meant to be played!
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
First I'm told my C64 can be be modded for broadband.
/me dusts off his Apple ][
Then an Amiga runs at 900Mhz.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Denise and Agnus are spinning in their silicon landfills.
No, GEM was on the Atari ST ;-)
-psy
Sounds delicious! Whats to stop me from just slapping a G4 on this baby and having a nice 1.4ghz G4 Linux box with Radeon video in a cubid? Why the hell would I want to run AmigaOS on something that is obviously a god sent Linux desktop?
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
In addition, during this file transfer, AMosaic will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Cygnus Edit is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Amigas, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen an Amiga that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the Amiga's faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 7.1 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the Amiga is a superior machine.
Amiga addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use an Amiga over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
[I've been waiting to post this for ages. Just kidding btw, I really, really, miss my A500+, with 6Mb of RAM and a 45Mb SCSI HD. :-(]
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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.
Some choice quotes:
During the deposition of Mr. McEwen, he admitted Amiga was insolvent. It currently has outstanding debt of 2.2 million dollars
McEwen has testified that Amiga's bank account balance is currently "about a hundred dollars"
There's a lot more detail in the file, but given the history of the company in general, and what seems to be a fairly consistant lack of producing an actual product, I'd be wary about actually spending any money with them (note, I'm referring to the OS, not the hardware linked in this article).
Incidentally, this is not a troll. There was a time when I was as fanatical an Amiga user as the next person. Personally, I got sick of all the "we'll have something next year, no really" promises about 6 years ago. Glad I didn't wait, frankly.
Of course, if you're a true die-hard fanatic, there are other products that might be of more interest.
Seemed a bit like overkill for playing Frogger, though I suppose if you want a networked MMORPG version of it where you're trying to frag everybody else's frogs before they cross the road, I guess it'll help...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
It isn't dead until it runs BSD.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Yes, through Mac-on-Linux
Yawn. You can sell a new product, you can call it Amiga, but if there's no continuity, it seems like a misnomer. Yeah, I can release a new computer and name it after an old discontinued line, but why? Anyone got dibs on the Apple IVne (Nostalgia Exploiter)?
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.
They still are, most notably to run the "community bulletein board" software on the public access channels in between highschool football games and Trekkies griping about the state of the Sci-Fi channel in someone's basement. Every now and again, the hard drive will crash, and the Amiga screen will pop up on the TV and demand that you mount a volume or stick a floppy into Drive A. I think the "previews" channel runs the same program, as I've seen the ugly-as-sin Amiga UI whining that it needs a drive on those channels, too.
They knew how to make computers that last in the '80s...
SoupIsGood Food
when DRM crap gets implemented at the hardware level on intel/AMD boards. Frankly I'm glad to have alternatives.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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.
The NEW "Amiga" is an interesting beast, and shares little (save running old apps via UAE proably) with the old but the name.
And that will be mostly true untill AmigaOS 4.0 comes out. The new kernel, ExecSG, is not based on *nix/BSD. It is a re-implementation of Exec on the new PPC architecture.
Disclaimer: This is posted with my AmigaONE board, running KDE on Debian.
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
http://www.genesi.lu/t tp://www.morphos.de/
http://www.phinixi.com/
h
http://www.pegasosppc.com/
save your money 'til mid october, then go get yourself a brand new Pegasos2 with a PPC74xx/G4 and live happy ever after =)
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!"
I remember it that way too, but some googling makes me believe that the 68000 was actually out early enough that it could have plausibly been used for the PC. However, the 68000 was always a single-source thing. Intel has been fairly open towards cloning, all things considered.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
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!"
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.