Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Updated AmigaOS4 SDK Available

Posted by timothy on from the you're-so-1988 dept.

Mike Bouma writes "Closely following the update for the AmigaOS4 Pre-release, the updated Software Development Kit (SDK) is now also available. Meanwhile some first people have been able to buy Mini-ITX MicroA1-C boards and last weekend at a British Amiga Party one was even raffled amongst its visitors. Also some first photographs of the Micro AmigaOne Industrial motherboard (aka u-A1-I) have been revealed at the party. For an impression with regard to AmigaOS4's current state of development, within this recent show report there are links to some earlier demonstration videos."

34 comments

  1. A hush! by Atzanteol · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    And a hush comes over the crowd.

    Oh, wait. That's just because nobody cares...

    --
    "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"

    - Charles Darwin
    1. Re:A hush! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was going to say the exact same thing. Duke Nukem Forever!!!!!

  2. OS4Depot - center of OS4 files by Mike+Bouma · · Score: 4, Informative

    Since the release of the developer Pre-release earlier this year there's already a steady growing list of native AmigaOS4 software.

    The central AmigaOS4 download portal can be found at:
    http://www.os4depot.net/

    A majority of freely distributable OS4 files can be found at OS4Depot.

  3. Getting nostalgic? by GQuon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Getting nostalgic for your old Amiga?
    The "Back to the Roots" software archive offers free legal downloads of many games, demos, pictures, etc.
    Amiga Forever is a polished emulator solution with licensed operating system for sale by Cloanto Software, in a download version or a CD version that even can be booted from Knoppix-style.

    There is a reason why this is in the developers section: It's ready for people to develop on, but not for general consumer release. But think about how quick the Amiga OS and GUI was running on 7,14 and 50 MHz Motorola 680x0 processors, and extrapolate that to a 800MHz G4. Of course there's more colours and new stuff, but they've kept the efficiency.

    Speaking of which, I should get the newest upgrade to OS 4.0 this week. Been busy. PPC native graphics!

    --
    Irene KHAAAAAAN!
  4. Multitasking OS by BrookHarty · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My favorite aspect of the Amiga was how well it was laid out, the easy of use, both cli and gui, and it multitasked perfectly. But it had slow disk access, and network access was tacked on, and the colors of the basic workbench needed to be upgraded with a 3rd party addon (magicwb).. Not everything was perfect, but shareware was much better quality than PC of the day.

    But, the new OS4 on PPC is sweet, back to smooth multitasking, easy upgrade path, tons of modern hardware support with special IO ports (via headers). Not sure about the 1 PCI port...

    I remember when I got WinNT and a dual CPU box, Finally real multitasking, the system was smoothed by its crippled x86 setup. Even floppy access could pause the system (And still does have interrupt locks on Linux/BSD) Cdrom spinup still ticks me off when its 2004 and a cdrom insert can pause explorer, sheesh.... (no its not autorun, give me some credit)

    I picked up an OSX box to play around with, put on darwinports, a fully unix box. And since all my favorite applications are opensource, it doesn't matter what machine I'm on, I have my normal applications. (Ok, I miss putty and Counterstrike, but WC3 works..)

    Anyone remember BeOS? That system was a multimedia multitasking monster for its day, but lack of applications and slow gcc port really crippled its acceptance. (Also wasnt this around the time we switched from gcc2.9x?) Humm, it also wasn't free...

    I'm rather looking forward to the new Amiga with OS4, see what technology for the interface and inside the system. I just wish we could of gotten here years ago before Commodore sunk the company, and the many years of torture of news tidbits.

    Also, Amiga got me interested in Linux, after setting it up for networking back in the day, I learned about compiling slirp, and tcp stacks, .conf files, hell, started my hacker track..

    I didnt just say "Back in the day" did I? Damn....

    1. Re:Multitasking OS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      I'm rather looking forward to the new Amiga [...]

      There is no "new Amiga". That's one of the points with AmigaOS4 and beyond. The "Micro Amigaone" mentioned in the article is another name for the Teron Mini from MAI.

      It's just that we're forced to pretend that there will be "Amiga hardware". Of course this will kill AmigaOS and makes the whole project a waste of time, but at least the proud tradition of utter incompetence and mismanagement throughout Amiga history has survived.

    2. Re:Multitasking OS by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      But OS4 is pricey and ultimately doomed to failure.. Not only do you need to pay for the OS, but you also need to pay for the hardware to run it on, you can`t run it on just any PPC machine. People won't be willing to splash out just to try OS4. Linux is slowly gaining acceptance because it costs nothing to try it and you can use your existing hardware, OS4 doesn't have that advantage, and also with a slow uptake then apps will be developed very slowly. The original Amiga was successfull as a games platform primarily because of the ease of game copying, and from there some people became interested in the other features the platform had to offer... OS4 offers nothing to tempt people in like the original amiga did.
      As for slow disk access on the original amiga, that really depended on your disk... The onboard scsi/ide controllers in the amigas were pretty slow, if you used an addin card some were very quick, also a disk caching tool (all modern os`s cache disk access by default) helped a lot..
      True that network support was tacked on, just like it is with windows and macos 9 and below.
      What i wonder tho, is why did they have to make their own hardware and OS.. This new amiga hardware is still out of date, theyre shipping 800mhz G4's while apple is pushing out 2.5ghz dual G5s.. Does OS4 even support multiple processors? And 32bit 33mhz PCI... While the rest of the world is moving on amiga users are once again left behind... I have machines as old as 1996 with 64bit pci slots.
      OS4 may well be a great OS, but i will never know... I dont want to splash out so much money on hardware and software especially if it's likely to flop and leave me with an expensive, slow and pointless machine.
      If they really want to make an OS for PPC, why not make it run on Mac hardware? You can pick up a 2nd hand mac quite cheaply on ebay. I did so recently to try out OSX, i bought a cheap 2nd hand G4 and downloaded a copy of OSX (Yeah, i'm bad i know bla bla bla.. but i would never have tried it otherwise) and now having been impressed, am likely to buy new macs in the future.
      Hell, They could offer trial versions of OS4 that ran on macs, even microsoft offer 180 day trial versions of windows, not even microsoft have the nerve to demand money upfront for a product you've never seen before.

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    3. Re:Multitasking OS by Seehund · · Score: 1

      But OS4 is pricey and ultimately doomed to failure..

      The OS is priced similarly to other OSes. US$75-100.

      But me listing this price separately is rather pointless, unfortunately.

      As you say, Amiga Inc in their infinite wisdom (or rather: incompetence, and disinterest in AmigaOS in favour of their PocketPC "strategy") decided that despite there not being any plans for new Amigas, you should have to buy a "new Amiga" anyway. I.e., AmigaOS will only ever be released for PPC hardware that the manufacturer or a dealer has acquired an AInc licence for to sell it bundled with AmigaOS! The only existing licensee is Eyetech, i.e. the same company that provided "consultation" when the scheme was invented, and so far they've only sold dysfunctional and outdated $500 Mai Logic Teron motherboards as $800 "Eyetech AmigaOnes".

      Yup, Macs would be the friggin' obvious target hardware for a PPC consumer OS, when the OS compan(y|ies) don't have any hardware of their own nor influence over hardware. But it's not allowed to happen, unless someone buys a licence to sell Macs bundled with AmigaOS plus something deceitfully and incorrectly referred to as "anti-piracy" measures, i.e. a dongle or similar that tells AmigaOS that you're running it on a Mac that you've bought on this artificially monopolised and miniscule pseudo-market.

      Same thing for the Pegasos 2, or whatever other current or future PPC hardware you could think of.

      Totally insane, and guaranteed fatal for AmigaOS, but that's the way it is right now.

      See my signature and homepage for more info and if you too would like to see things be reconsidered.

      --
      Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
    4. Re:Multitasking OS by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      It was ultimately price that drove me away from the Amiga... Mostly the price of basic internet software which is free or bundled on all other platforms, but also the high prices of hardware which is by no means cutting edge enough to demand such high price points. Most amiga hardware that's been available for the past 8 or so years has been equivalent to previous generation(s) x86 hardware but at a higher price point than mac hardware (which is usually of a far higher quality) infact some amiga hardware is price-competitive with high end risc hardware, while offering nowhere near the build quality or performance.
      As for software, I used to come online from the amiga, however i found that the internet software for the amiga was of a much lower quality than the free offerings on other platforms. Also many of these tools had backdoors in them which were used by the developers in the name of "anti piracy" but were often abused by fascist friends of developers to harass other users off the platform. Infact i know many more people who abandoned the amiga platform because of the attitude of people like this.

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    5. Re:Multitasking OS by Lord+Kano · · Score: 1

      Ok, I miss putty

      Well then download that bitch, compile it and miss no more.

      LK

      --
      "Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
  5. Just in time! by abelikoff · · Score: 0, Troll

    Let me see - yet another non-standard hardware platform and another OS with incompatible API (and screenshots that make OS/2 look pretty). Whoa - those guys are really smart! I predict them smashing success amongst those 17 aging geeks who cannot get over the fact that AmigaOS was better than Windows 2.0/286.

    1. Re:Just in time! by NiceGeek · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Did you have a point or are you just bitching? I just love you guys who come on here and act like anything that isn't a mainstream OS is a mortal insult to you.

    2. Re:Just in time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A better question is if Amiga Inc has a point (aka a real business/marketing strategy) or do they only exist to profit off people's nostaliga?

      Face it, AmigaOS ceased being high-tech years ago. Is there any use in this thing for a non-Amiga Zealot?

    3. Re:Just in time! by anarchic_teapot · · Score: 1

      Dear Anonymous Coward,

      Yes

      Yours faithfully,

      An AmigaOne dealer, who actually knows what the mobo and OS look like

    4. Re:Just in time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      @ abelikoff

      > - yet another non-standard hardware platform and another OS with incompatible API

      standard ? compatible ?
      compatible to what ? An OS that fills up your hard disk ? an OS that fools you when it loads (it starts the GUI before all the rest) ? an OS that can slow down as hell even on a P4 tons GHz machine ?

      The answer is simple: No Thanks.

      Elwood

    5. Re:Just in time! by abelikoff · · Score: 1
      Instead of repeating the same propaganda-style cliches, consider an average software vendor. Given the opportunity to invest in porting their software to an obscure OS running on incompatible hardware with an incompatible (to UNIX9x, Win32, Java 2, .NET) API set, how big is the chance they would go for it?

      As for the OS "that fills your hard disk" - unless AmigaOS is capable of running from a 128Mb USB dongle, I really don't care whether it takes 250Mb or 10Gb on my hard drive. I use my PC to actually run software that helps me do my work, not to meditate on df output.

      Finally, always remember the Law of Duality. This explains very nicely why neither AmigaOS, nor BeOS would ever enjoy significant popularity on the market.

      Oh, and BTW, I really don't care about the stage GUI gets loaded at. On workstations I use the GUI so it doesn't matters and on the servers, GUI gets swapped out pretty quickly.

    6. Re:Just in time! by mdwh2 · · Score: 1

      Finally, always remember the Law of Duality. This explains very nicely why neither AmigaOS, nor BeOS would ever enjoy significant popularity on the market.

      That article says that the Law of Duality doesn't apply to the software industry. So by this logic, nothing other than Windows will ever enjoy "significant popularity of the market".

      Of course, it depends on what is "significant". No one is claiming that AmigaOS is going to be a market leader, but that doesn't mean it can't exist at all. In all of the examples of markets with two primary players that the article gives, there are still plenty of other smaller companies in those markets, happily selling products and making money.

      AmigaOS 3.9 used a tiny fraction of 128MB, though I've no idea what OS 4 is like.

    7. Re:Just in time! by abelikoff · · Score: 1
      The article actually tries to consider whether the law applies to software. In my opinion, this is exactly the case where it applies nicely.

      You are absolutely right about small fish which would continue to exist along with the two biggest players. Remember however, that unlike hamburgers or vacuum cleaners, an operating system is a platform for other software, so considering it in isolation would be a mistake. Just imagine if my company came out with a tape recorder that would use a completely different cassette type. Can it exist in theory along the standard formats - absolutely! Would it be able to exist (esp. as a commercial entity) - probably not.

      Same thing with an O/S. Unless the company itself would build a compelling application stack for an O/S, it would have to rely on ISVs to do so. Would the ISVs port their software to Amiga? You may hold me to my words: they would not. At best, they would use the compatibility layer (like POSIX API if possible). However that would make Amiga no more than an expensive Linux (or Windows) emulator. I still maintain that Amiga will have the same fate as OS/2 in that respect: a small number of commercial vendors offering aging versions of simple programs reminding of Windows 3.0 and a bunch of BBS like repositories for software maintained by a couple of enthusiasts. This will not make Amiga viable. It takes an awful lot of money to feed the company staff and to pay the rent, so a couple hundred folks that feel nostalgic about the brand name are not gonna make it. It may have some future though if Amiga secures some niche, like OS/2 did with ATMs, but I doubt it - both Windows CE and Linux are pretty aggressive in this market, already eating the lunch of a number of embedded systems.

      Last but not the least is the fact that Amiga is cheerfully digging its own grave by making the OS run on expensive and proprietary hardware. I find it ironic - Sun is charging ahead making Intel (AMD actually) their 2nd platform of choice and Amiga is choosing the proprietary path...

    8. Re:Just in time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not only could you fit it on a 128MB dongle. You'd have approximately 100MB left for applications and could easily fit a web browser, mail client, instant messaging, word processor, spreadsheet and whatever else you might need. Oh, and media playback is included in the ~30 MB.

      AmigaOS is also more suited for flash media than e.g. Linux/BSD, since less writes are performed and the media will live longer because of this.

    9. Re:Just in time! by mdwh2 · · Score: 1

      Just imagine if my company came out with a tape recorder that would use a completely different cassette type. Can it exist in theory along the standard formats - absolutely! Would it be able to exist (esp. as a commercial entity) - probably not.

      There are various different incompatible formats for music storage out there, including proprietary ones (eg, Sony's Minidisc).

      Certainly this is the a reason why we have a monopoly in the market of operating systems, but it clearly isn't true that there is one and only one company making a profit with a platform.

      I still maintain that Amiga will have the same fate as OS/2 in that respect: a small number of commercial vendors offering aging versions of simple programs reminding of Windows 3.0 and a bunch of BBS like repositories for software maintained by a couple of enthusiasts.

      Oh please. Whilst I'll happily admit that AmigaOS lacks some essential modern software (most notably an up to date browser), it's nowhere near that bad. Even relying of software which already exists, and assuming no new software is written or ported, things are far beyond crappy Windows 3.0 software. Hell, things were better than that on the Amiga at the time Windows 3.0 was out, IMO :/

      Last but not the least is the fact that Amiga is cheerfully digging its own grave by making the OS run on expensive and proprietary hardware. I find it ironic - Sun is charging ahead making Intel (AMD actually) their 2nd platform of choice and Amiga is choosing the proprietary path...

      I wish that AmigaOS was coming to the PC platform - I'd gladly buy a copy, where as I'm not likely to buy a whole new machine. But there are reasons in favour of going to a proprietary route, if you want revenue at the expense of market share, in that it is possible to make money on the hardware as well as the software. Ie, a similar situation to Apple.

  6. Props. by terrox · · Score: 1

    Awesome. Dunno what to do with it, but awesome none-the-less.

    Maybe run cygwin on windows on top of Pc emulator running on OS4. ?

    maybe have a game of Megaball

  7. USD 500+ ??? by DAldredge · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The damn board is over 500 USD after you add in the mandatory OS license. Why are they selling it for so much? This isn't an SBC or anything like that, if they want to grow the market they are going to have to lower the price.

    1. Re:USD 500+ ??? by Mike+Bouma · · Score: 2, Informative

      You should be able to buy these boards just with Linux in the future as well, which would then save you the cost having to buy AmigaOS4, but obviously those boards would be branded Amiga.

      The reason for the relatively high cost is that the companies are initially dealing with a low volume market. That's why Alan Redhouse has been demonstrating the AmigaOne and AmigaOS4 to Chinese officials and important business representatives.

      For the long run higher volume hardware sales would be very important for the survival of the AmigaOne platform. More sales also means that development / testing costs could be better spread amongst a larger pool of customers and would also allow larger volume component deals to be made (thus being cheaper for the developer)! Also I believe that success of the Linux platform with for instance the MicroA1 / Mini Teron may pave the way or just allow for interesting oppertunities with regard to AmigaOS4 as well.

    2. Re:USD 500+ ??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Over $500"? Well, the price is $700 to $800 after you add in the mandatory OS licence. And this is before VAT/taxes.

      Buying a single Teron Mini (which is what we're talking about here) directly from the Atum Group companies will cost you $500. Volume pricing would be somewhere in the $300 vincinity. The $3000+ price you see listed at their website is for a complete hardware developer system, including developer support.

      Amiga Inc had no interest in AmigaOS when the "you can only buy hardware if someone's licenced an 'Amiga' sticker for it" scheme was constructed (primarily by Eyetech, by the way), and obviously this is not constructed with market growth in mind, It's constructed with "shit, we need some quick money to pay the office rent, who gives a fuck about the long term and survival of AmigaOS" in mind, and as far as Eyetech is concerned it's constructed with "yay, we got a monopoly on reselling broken old hardware with a 60% markup to a thousand trademark fanatics" in mind.

  8. British Amiga Party by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    British Amiga Party? Wow! This party was called "Big Bash 2" and there were only 16 visitors!

    http://www.intuitionbase.com/reports/BB2/

    The biggest Amiga fair in years.

    1. Re:British Amiga Party by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > ... there were only 16 visitors!

      Nah, even worse, 16 tickets were sold.
      Some people bought several tickets, like the guy who won a Teron Mini motherboard on one of his three tickets.

      These fanatics (almost all of the people at the Big Bash are hardcore Useful Idiots at the extremely censored Amiga Inc corporate fan, propaganda & apologist website amigaworld.net) together with the idea of special "Amiga hardware" in 2004 ultimately destroyed any chances for AmigaOS, just as it destroyed the community.

    2. Re:British Amiga Party by Mike+Bouma · · Score: 2, Informative

      Such parties should IMO not be compared to Amiga fairs. These are just some nice gettogethers events where Amiga supporters can talk about their favourite platform. Have a friendly chat at the bar or having a barbecue are somethings some Amiga users like to do.

      Have a look at this video of a Swedish Amiga party earlier this year, to get the idea:
      http://www.mhd.mh.se/shoe/os4-party/

      As you see it's just people getting together, eating barbecue food, eating AmigaOS4 cakes and truly enjoying themselves. However there are also bigger Amiga parties too like the Alchimie in France or News fYaNICA parties in Hungary. The Alchimie parties have almost as many visitors as real fairs with hundreds of visitors, however the main focuss of these parties is mainly on food and fun and less on selling computer equipment like fairs.

      For instance that Swedish party isn't anything like the Swedish AmiGBG fair which was held earlier this year, which also includes after-parties and gettogethers next to the main event:
      http://amigaworld.net/modules/features/ind ex.php?o p=r&cat_id=1&rev_id=51&sort_by

    3. Re:British Amiga Party by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Point of order here, there were a lot more than 16 tickets sold, the quote on the website relates to the number of raffle tickets bought by the webmaster of that website, hoping to win a MicroA1 motherboard.

      That did not work though, as he still did not win.

      Video evidence of this can be found at:

      http://uploads.amigaproductions.co.uk/media/bigb as h/BB2/Raffle.mpg

    4. Re:British Amiga Party by nicomen · · Score: 1

      AmigaExpo held in Norway's third largest city with a ten days announcement had 100 visitors.

      --
      Nicolas Mendoza
      Prepare for MSIE 7
  9. Buy OSX by GQuon · · Score: 1

    OK, you've tried OSX. Now go buy it. Or should Apple be content with that you're "likely to buy new macs in the future"?

    --
    Irene KHAAAAAAN!
  10. PegasosPPC + MorphOS owns by Rares+Marian · · Score: 1

    AOS is produced by halfwits at Hyperion who still use 68k code for the PowerPC OS.

    --
    The message on the other side of this sig is false.
  11. The Amiga was what the PC should have been. by master_p · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately, the best did not win for one more time. Artifacts of the crappy x86 architecture still exists; for example, when the floppy/cd is accessed, the PC pauses.

    Commodore had a diamond in their hands. Unfortunately for us, they did not know how to handle it.