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AmigaOS 4.0 Developer Pre-release

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the powered-by-real-amigas dept.

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."

3 of 331 comments (clear)

  1. Who uses Amigas? by shrykk · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Serious question from someone for whom Amigas were games machines as a kid.

    Who uses amigas nowadays? People nostalgically playing old games? Is it kick-ass for music or something?

    Is AmigaOS designed for modern hardware, and can you do everything with it that you can with other systems?

    I see there are a few similar questioning posts. Everyone seems to be like, "Oh, cool, but why..?"

    --
    #define struct union /* Reduce memory usage */
    1. Re:Who uses Amigas? by lvdrproject · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes, i second (or third or fourth or fifth) this question. I really don't see the point in releasing this at all. Maybe if it was on x86 or Mac, there'd be at least some use in it for playing around or something (similar to BeOS for some people), but i can't really fathom why somebody would go out and buy an entirely new computer just to play around on what seems like a rather out-of-date operating system. :/

  2. Re:Now by NoMoreNicksLeft · · Score: 4, Insightful

    There is a need for hardware, even if they can't fill that need, or go bankrupt trying to.

    Without hardware, they're just a trademark (and marginal OS software) company, of which there have been multitudes, all now dead, or at least out of those businesses.

    The real trouble is, that for a 3rd platform to be at all viable, it would have had to have mostly continuously been available and evolving. With a what, decade long gap there, what's the point?

    The OS has little in common with its namesake, the hardware even less. Hell, if they had even just included an amiga-compatible floppy controller on these mainboards, able to read the old media (if for no other reason than shits and giggles), they could have at least claimed some kind of heritage with real amigas, albeit a token one. But they didn't. And there sure as hell isn't a ZorroII slot on the thing.

    Now, before all you zealots start ragging me about wanting obselete hardware, I don't. A new amiga shouldn't be using recovered 680x0's. There should be PCI slots, and hdb15 video ports, not abominable db23s. No quadrature mouses, give me standard USB. (But also sell a USB keyboard with Amiga "A" keys, and not make me use one with windows keycaps) But c'mon, a single ZorroII slot inline with the PCI? The bridge logic would fit in a single, cheap FPGA. Hell, just for one generation, so there could be some kind of continuity. Or like I said earlier, even just a floppy controller.

    The new "AmigaOne" is no different than any PPC sbc, nor any cheaper. Some Amiga fanatics would buy Amiga-branded toilets, if McEwen sold them, and would tell everyone theyre the best computer in the world. Just slapping their legal trademark on the damn things doesn't make it an amiga in any true sense of what the computers used to be.