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AmigaOS 4.0 Developer Pre-release
David Doyle writes "Hyperion Entertainment and
the Amiga OS 4.0 development team announced on Amigaworld.net that after nearly 30 months of painstaking development the Amiga OS 4.0 Developer Pre-release has gone gold and will be sent to the duplication plant on Monday, April 19, 2004. The Amiga OS 4.0 Developer Pre-release consists of a current snapshot of AmigaOS 4.0 for the AmigaOne platform with a straightforward HTML installation guide in English, German, French and Italian as well as the Amiga OS 4.0 SDK. The Amiga OS 4.0 SDK will allow near effortless migration of existing Amiga OS 3.x source-code to OS 4.0 as well as the creation of altogether new content. Full
announcement and Amiga OS4 SDK feature list."
Here's more info in AmigaOS4, features, screenshots, etc. Looking forward to this!
Fascinating project, if I may say so myself.
It is a standalone OS, and runs on the powerpc platform. As it is today, it will only run on the new AmigaONE or a classic amiga with a powerpc accelrator.
If you did some research, then you would discover that os4 includes emulation layer, which will let you run old 68k apps without any problems.. Old games that hit the old amiga custom chipset, will not run without an emulator though..
The AmigaOne has been selling for over a year now IIRC.
Here are the answers to most of your questions.
This is a PowerPC native port of AmigaOS.
:)
:)
:D
It's a standalone OS, which runs on the new AmigaOne motherboards and is currently being worked on, to work with the older dual CPU (68k&PPC) add-on cards by phase5. (One of which, I have in my Amiga 1200)
The whole of AmigaOS and Exec (kernel) have basically been overhauled and modernised and given memory protection (which will work with new OS4 native programs that make use of it) and can be turned off for OS3.x compatibility. Not to mention a new file system, virtual memory and everything else a modern OS should have. (without needing a shutdown procedure)
68k programs are emulated via a JIT emulation system, to be fully integrated into the OS itself, so "classic" retargettable programs such as Wordworth, Final Writer etc all work without problems, at super-fast speeds
As for a reason for it to exist, AmigaOS is an OS of such efficient nature, I've been using it for years on this "old" hardware of mine. If it's fast on a 25mhz 68040, what do you think it's like on an 800mhz G4? That's just one reason...it does what you want it to do, and it runs circles around anything else I've used.
http://os.amiga.com for more info and features. And the url provided in the topic too, of course
AmigaOS4 is going to rock
Nope. Amiga, Inc. sells trademark licences. Well, they were trying at least, until it was announced during a lawsuit that they had transferrred the AmigaOS + "Amiga"(TM) rights to something they call "KMOS, Inc."
Since there won't be any more Amigas, AmigaOS will run on old Amigas (with old PPC expansion boards) and third party hardware. The first hardware to be supported are the Teron CX (discontinued), Teron PX and Teron Mini motherboards designed by Mai Logic.
Amiga, Inc. got "consultation" from the UK computer shop Eyetech to decide that we should still have to pretend that there is "Amiga hardware". I.e. in order for AmigaOS to run on (be ported to) a piece of hardware, that hardware must be sold on a separated "Amiga market" by a distributor with a licence from Amiga, Inc. AmigaOS will not be available for sale, except as in a bundle with licensed hardware (and later on for those ancient PPC-equipped Amigas).
Only Eyetech have been granted such a license, and are now (well, since two(?) years) selling the Teron boards mentioned above with an extra 60% on the price as "AmigaOne SE", "AmigaOne PX", and "Micro AmigaOne", respectively.
Thereby suitable Macs (otherwise a pretty damn obvious target for a PPC "consumer" OS), Terons sold by anybody else regardless of trademarks, Pegasoses, and whatever you could possibly think of in the future, are all out of the question by default. No licence/licencee, no new hardware base for AmigaOS.
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
AFACT, this is the first bit of non-vaporware out of the Amiga world in about 10 years.
As long as you ignore the OSs AmigaOS 3.5, AmigaOS 3.9 and MorphOS; the OS/emulator Amithlon; the PPC motherboards Pegasos and Pegasos II, yep there's been none at all.
How many failed Amiga Resurrection Projects have there been? 6 or so?
Who cares how many failed ones there have been - it's the non-vaporware ones that are important. There were plenty of delays (Copeland? Rhapsody?) before Apple finally moved to OS X. Anyone can make a vapor announcement, I don't see why the fact that various PC companies were hopeless with doing anything with the Amiga should detract from what other people manage to do.
Amiga users never died - there are still thousands of them. It wouldn't surpriseme if they equal BSD users.
Firstly, Amiga have been continuing development for a long time. They realsed OS 3.9 a few years ago, this time it was actually them (OS 3.5 was written by somebody else). They've also been developing an embedded technology called Amiga DE which is already in use in several mobile phone units (cellphones for those Americans).
Amiga OS 4.0 is designed to run on a new computer, called the AmigaOne. This is a new motherboard designed by the UK company Eyetech, to which you can attach your A1200 motherboard for running older programs natviely, should you want to. Yes, that's right - the A1200 motherboard becomes the AmigaOne's daughterboard.
The computer is based on the PPC architecture, I believe with G3 or G4 processors. There have been add-ons for the A1200 motherboard which add G3 processors for a while now, but these were expensive and pointless.
As for software and games, there are several developers still producing software and many excellent games too (a recent one which springs to mind is Nightlong, a very graphics heavy point-and-click adventure, like Broken Sword 3).
Many of these use the PPC CPUs available for the Amiga, and also many ofthe graphics cards too.
The Amiga still lives, and it's not gonna die without a fight.
Anyone thinking of moderating the parent troll up please be aware that Hyperion have a good relationship with the FSF, have done plenty of work with GPLd software before and have always complied with it 100%.
In addition, their modifications to GCC are already submitted to the main branch and will be included in the next release candidate.
Hardly "GPL Infringement", more like making full use of a resource in a legal and honourable manner, much in the same way that Apple use GCC as well.
Yes, WinUAE and Fellow are Amiga emulators for the PC (and Linux).
Or you can get everything legally from Cloanto Software for $60 or so, in the new Amiga Forever 6.0 software package that includes lots of software, the latest 68k OS version (3.9), and so on.
- Is this a standalone OS, or a modified Linux / BSD system?
;)
Standalone. It's a direct update to AmigaOS 3.x.
- Does it run on Amiga hardware, PowerPC, x86, or something else?
It's for PowerPC. It's initial target are the current Teron series by Mai Logic (a.k.a. "AmigaOnes" when sold with a new trademark licence by the only distributor that AmigaOS4 users are allowed to buy their hardware from).
See this post and this introduction for more info (and opinion).
It will also be available for old Amiga 3000/4000 computers if they've got Cyberstorm PPC accelerator boards.
- It is compatible with the old Amiga software, API's, etc?
Yes. It will have a JIT 68k-emulator integrated too (think of when the Macs and MacOS went 68k to PPC). Most system friendly software is said to run fine. If your old software bangs the metal (depends on Amiga hardware) it's not likely to run, however.
- What is the compelling reason for this to exist? What does it do better than all the other options available?
What's the compelling reason for any OS besides Windows to exist?
Sadly Amiga Inc/Eyetech have killed any chances for AmigaOS4 by throwing a definitive and unnecessary stumbling block as their "Amiga hardware market" invention on the race track, but that's just a business decision that's easily revoked with a stroke of a pen. It has to be.
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
1314 people joined the "Amiga club" which costs $50, which suggests that the idea that barely anyone is interested in the OS belongs in fantasyland.
If they were worried about no one buying it, don't you think that the duplication cost is going to be rather insignificant compared to years of development costs?
OK, how about:
http://www.superspeed.com/ramdisk.html
IMO, AOS 4.0 is dead if the only way to run it is to deal with that company. Perhaps others have had better experiences, but for obvious reasons, I'm unable to recommend them at all.
MorphOS, Pegasos and PegasosII are NOT Amiga Inc. Products, they are the competitor of AmigaOne and OS4.
Not at the moment that I know of, but MoL is apparently being ported to Mac OS X. (This comes up on the mailing list from time to time.)
Chu vi parolas Vikipedion?
I do. I use it for all my email. It's something to tinker with and create things for and do some programming. I do image editing with it. I haven't fired up a game on it for quite a long time now. What does your Linux box do that makes it so special compared to Windows, and why don't you just use Windows instead because more people do that than use Linux?? You may think Linux is so cool and stuff, but why bother?? It's basically the same question as you and other Slashdot people always ask from Amiga users.
Modern hardware? I'm involved with the company writing drivers for Radeon cards... It is a PowerPC OS so won't run on the latest Athlon or P4 machines though.
I know you don't like the "exclusive hardware" concept and that is fair enough, but you've told a few lies in this post that counts as going so far as trolling.
1. Only Eyetech have been granted such a license
Eyetech is the only one who applied for a license. It's a support and anti-piracy measure; if you don't like that, then fine. Hyperion/Amiga, Inc. have stated repeatedly that there is no reason why a 3rd party PPC mfg. cannot apply for an OEM AmigaOS4 license. Some have said that piracy killed the Amiga (I at least think it contributed significantly), do you not think a small developer like Hyperion can justly ask for some restrictions on the use of their software which they can only hope in their wildest dreams to at least break even on non-labour costs?
2. and are now (well, since two(?) years) selling the Teron boards mentioned above with an extra 60% on the price as "AmigaOne SE",
The AmigaOne SE is no longer available from eyetech.
3. "AmigaOne PX"
There is no such thing, perhaps you mean the AmigaOne XE, a G4 PPC based motherboard that sells for $829 USD at the American store I just linked?
This is a lot cheaper than the $3,900 quoted on mai's Teron CX page, isn't it? How do you get "60% more" out of that! An AmigaOne is 80% cheaper than a Teron CX evaluation board!!!
4. "Micro AmigaOne", respectively.
Show me where these are available to the public... these are targeted at embedded markets? and are not available to the public
5. Thereby suitable Macs (otherwise a pretty damn obvious target for a PPC "consumer" OS), Terons sold by anybody else regardless of trademarks, Pegasoses, and whatever you could possibly think of in the future, are all out of the question by default. No licence/licencee, no new hardware base for AmigaOS.
Yeah, right. You know very well the complicated politics behind the Pegasos support. You know very well that Bill Buck (Genesi/Thendic "relations") is not the easiest person in the world to do business with, especially when he doesn't like the idea of going to effort to license an OS on his own platform that competes with his own baby?
And about the macs, that IS debatable, but I think you have over-simplified the situation there too.
Here is one I use.
I use it with my HTPC to cache a few files that my LCD driver wants to read 30 times a second, so instead of hitting the physical disk, I just set up a 32MB drive 'L', and have a perl script dump data to that.
It works great!
Don't steal. The government hates competition.