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Ars Technica Reviews AmigaOS 4.0
Amiga Lover writes "While tales of the troubles behind the Amiga's ownership abound over the last 10 years, work has been going on in the background for newer releases of the operating system that powered some of the most desirable computers from the 1980s. You can now buy brand new Amiga motherboards, and the operating system is very close to a final release. Jeremy Reimer from arstechnica reviews the current developer preview of AmigaOS 4.0, going over this new small and fast OS in thorough arstechnica style."
http://www.eyetech.co.uk/search.php?SearchStr=&Sea rchCat=AMA1
~/.sig: No such file or directory
Does it have true multitasking and memory protection? It surely looks like a great modern OS, but is it more than just a toy?
I always hate seeing Amiga come up on Slashdot. To all you guys, no, it's not dead. It's small and not popular. AmigaOS is to Linux what Linux is to Windows. Remember how many Windows users out there think you're crazy for using Linux and truely believe there is nothing to use Linux for except for server stuff before you post your "Amiga is dead" stuff, as you will be exactly correct as all those ignorant Windows users are in their comments about Linux and Linux users.
Thank you for your respect. And to the article poster, we're not welcome here, please don't bother Slashdot again...
While I loved my Amiga in the day, I can't justify spending $1375 for a G3-800 system basd on the new Micro systems.
This is from softhut, but I don't want to direct link since it is slow anyway:
AMIGA ONE PRECONFIGURED SYSTEMS
Micro A1 System:
First True Luggable / LAN Boy Amiga System !!
See Case Images
Micro A1-C Motherboard with OS4
750fx G3 Processor @ 800MHz
Built-In Sound
80GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
DVD/CDRW Combo Drive
2 USB Ports, 10/100 Ethernet
Keyboard and Mouse
------ $ 1375.00
All completely installed, tested and ready to run
Interesting now I wonder if Steve Jobs is going to remember this statement, I want to try one of these, I think it should be good fun!\ Let hope its put together well :)
the operating system is very close to a final release.
While a new Amiga OS is just as intriguing to me as the next guy, this operating system has been vaporware for quite some time now, and I question when it will actually arrive.
This Amiga OS began winning Wired's Vaporware award back in 1999.
Am I reading this correctly? 500 euros for a motherboard?
But its probably a really really good motherboard?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Ive heard random stories here and there, BeoS reborn in the ZOS amiga model. SkyOS, and the like. How valid this is would be contigent upon the development. I know for a fact for instance, that EROS , another amiga clone doesnt even have a full tcp/ip stack written yet. Have to wait and see.
"God of Rock, thank you for this chance to kick ass. "
It will be interesting to see if the combination of Amiga, various Unix/Linux distro's and possibly a hacked OSX could actually bring down the cost of the motherboards into something accessible for more mainstream hobbyists / uses. The cost of such small runs is probably a big deal when it comes to What Is Holding Back Amiga Now.
I know i would love to play with a Yellowdog Linux media server running on some ultra quiet G4 rig, but the cost of kits are too prohibitive when I know that the same can be done Intel/AMD for a pittance.
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
i used to own an a1200. it still feels more responsive than any computer that i've had since. you can get groovy snapshots and news at http://amigaworld.net/
Running the OS and all its apps completely in memory provides a very different user experience than one is used to from modern operating systems. Switching applications is instantaneous, as is switching screens (providing you are running separate screens at the same monitor resolution, otherwise you have to wait for your monitor to resync).
Scrolling is about as fast as on my 2.4GHz P4 PC. While the PC clearly blows away the AmigaOne on pure CPU performance (for example, unarchiving files, or ripping to MP3), for general use they "feel" about the same. The A1 feels much faster than my 733MHz Pentium 3 running XP, and makes my poor 500MHz G3 iBook running OS X feel like a pig stuck in molasses.
The author obviously never tried RiscOS : on my 33MHz RiscPC (bought in Dec94), there's still nothing that can match its responsiveness... except a 202MHz Strong-ARM RiscPC.
You just don't have time to even think about taking an espresso when you double-click a directory folder.
But yes, that's right : RiSCOS is cooperatively multitasking, hence the quick interaction.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
But this isn't what the Amiga was.
The Amiga was a great games machine, with cool custom chips taking the load off the generally-not-too-great CPU, a highly consistent architecture, and an adequate, quirky OS which was good where it mattered for the applications it was used for.
Custom hardware was not something that was seen in commodity PCs at the time. Neither were good quality graphics and sound. It wasn't a better machine. In many ways it was inferior. It was a very different machine, and that's why it suceeded where it did.
AmigaOS 4.0 is simply another OS. Perhaps it's a very nice OS. BeOS was as well. But a nice OS doesn't make it better.
can it run the Juggler demo?? or how about Shadow of the Beast?? Man I loved the Amiga ever since I had an Amiga 500!
Amiga users are my mortal enemy! Long live the AtariST
ahh warm and fuzzy.
That's AROS. TCP/IP stack should be submitted (Oh I hate going out on a limb, but hopefully the Developer will be on time) to the AROS CVS by Jan 21st.
Dammy
http://www.thenostromo.com/teamaros/
The article states that the mobo's will be $700 with software included (read: 2 discs, no case, monitor, mouse, hard drive, etc.) and that this is the price for being an "early adopter."
Um, something tells me that 'only adopter' would be a tad more appropriate and that these economies of scale will never kick in no matter how many generic components they use or corners they cut. Look at Apple, $499 is a "Oh hell, i'll give it a try" price. With what the Amiga case doesnt come with you will easily spend a grand on what is basically a _G3_.
---- The real Slashdot is still here. You just have to browse at -1 to read the comments.
is this a new Amiga in name only? Or is it somehow compatible with all the old software from the 80's? Or.. what's the connection with this new Amiga and the classic Amigas?
from TFA... ...Many people have asked whether or not they can install OS4 on their Macintosh, since both use PowerPC hardware. The answer is no, as OS4 requires a custom ROM embedded on all AmigaOne motherboards in order to boot. This was done under agreement between Eyetech and Hyperion, in order to cut down on piracy and to reduce the number of hardware combinations that Hyperion needed to test and support...
I was pretty interested until I got to that "custom boot rom". Hell, guys, even Apple tossed that requirement when they went to NewWorld.
Severely limits the usefulness of the hardware and software in my eyes. Guess I'm not the target audience then.
Hmm, Just hearing the name C= Commodore.. brings back memories and tears to my eyes. But, IMHO I think its a little late to start pushing hardware and software. I would need a real good reason to spend 500 Euros on a Motherboard. Time will tell.
-- I Dont Deserve A Sig I Have Bad Karma
dude, did anyone else spend hours using ray-tracing programs? well, actually, you used the program for about 5 minutes, and then waited about 40, and then used it for another 5, and then waited 40...
ah, the 1980s!
m.
I loved working on Amigas. This was the first system on which I learned C. I have a stack of disks with old code and would love to access this stuff. Is anyone aware of utilities to read old Amiga disks (I know I am off-topic, find it in your heart to forgive me).
It always amazes me to think that
1) The Amiga, though marketed as a gaming machine or play-with-graphics machine, had an operating system so capable and Unix-like
and
2) That business never realized the huge potential of a multitasking, windowing, command-line integrated OS to run spreadsheets and wordprocessors on instead of the clunky program launcher that was MS-DOS.
Can you hear me, Major Tom? I'm not the man they think I am at home...
... do the Amiga folks even bother developing their own hardware? Wouldn't it be much simpler to use an existing platform, say (if you want a PowerPC), the Mac?
But that price is a killer.
I still toy with my amiga stuff from time to time, and use winUAE all the time, it was a great machine in it's day, too bad it was mis-managed, otherwise we might be still sing them today
Ubuntu- Linux for human beings.
I work with an AROS fanatic , so I only go by what he tells me. Still I have a copy of it, without the tcp stack. That bounty was 600 dollars I believe, yes?
"God of Rock, thank you for this chance to kick ass. "
...Ford announces you will now be able to order a Model-T in colors other than black.
What for? Workbench 1.3 works just fine. I went hours yesterday before I got hit with a "guru meditation" error.
What does this button do...
This looks better than most Linux desktops.
"Instead of cd .. to go up one directory, the command is cd /."
From the article:
You initiate the warm boot by holding down Ctrl and tapping the left and right Windows keys.
Aagh! What did they copy the Dock for?!
Smokey, this is not 'Nam, this is bowling. There are rules.
Correct, that $600 TCP/IP stack Bounty is do on Jan 21st and the developer is in "Tidy up mode" prior to him submitting it to the CVS. I was hope for it to be submitted last weekend, but such is life.
Did he show you a AROS nightly snap shot or a AROS-Max distro?
Dammy
Running the OS and all its apps completely in memory provides a very different user experience than one is used to from modern operating systems. Switching applications is instantaneous, as is switching screens (providing you are running separate screens at the same monitor resolution, otherwise you have to wait for your monitor to resync).
Sorry, but how not being able to use virtual memory is a feature? I can stop using swap partition in Linux altogether, or mount it in RAM (and yes, I've done both, and yes, it's lightning fast with no trashing, if you have enough RAM), but I can also use swap partition when I need more memory than I have RAM installed, if I choose to do so. Please explain it to me, how on earth not having this choice is a main feature of Amiga? Should we release Linux with no swap support and market it as better? Or am I missing something?
I stayed with the Amiga until 2001 (!), hoping that they (whoever actually owened it at the time) would get 4.0 out of the door. I ended up with a towered A1200 with a PPC co-processor card, Blizzardvision gfx card etc (must of cost £1000+). I loved lots of the design principles of the OS. It was enormous fun- DOpus 5; ARexx...
But for me though it's too late. I no longer want to be tied to the hobby/tweaker mindset (though it was fun at the time), now I just want something that is elegant and works.
In a lot of ways, a Mac Mini with panther/tiger looks like the successor to the A1200 I loved to tweak and play around with. I hope the Mac Mini spurs a resurgance in bedroom coding/music/demo stuff.
BTW: Any idea how good the UAE port for OSX is these days?
the copy I have is Max I believe. Id have to look through my cd stack to verify. what I saw was pleasant, my nuke box ( the box I constantly install and reinstall with whatever fancy I have motivated to do so ) had it on there for about a week.
"God of Rock, thank you for this chance to kick ass. "
Well, yes, eyetech sells PowerPC boards, sure.
But when taking a closer look on the prices (500 GBP for just the motherboard), you'll get a Mini Mac (also Power PC, but at more GHz) for half the price, including more periphery and software. Something tells me that this is a dead start for the AmigaOS.
Bavck to the days when there were 30 different OS's and 30 different hardware architectures all of them competing in a grim Darwinian wrestling match unto Death. Well Amiga and others perished in Circus Maximus; they got the thumbs down and a dagger in spine. Face down in the blood and dust and it never did, does or will matter how great they were.
We toast the fallen, All Hail Amiga!
in 1985 the 68000 was an excellent CPU, certainly compared to the 8086.
The Amiga Workbench always listed available memory in the screen's title bar like that. I was happy to see it remained in OS4. :) It's interesting that the two numbers are the same, on "classic" Amiga hardware that was never the case since the two memory types were physically different on the motherboard, and used for different purposes by the system. I sure hope your assumption that they will be removed is wrong, although displaying in mega- or kilobytes might make them a bit more readable.
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
This would have kept the Amiga minimally relevant in 1994, but not in 2005. There were really two real markets for the Amiga in 1994, the time of Commodore's demise: Creative professionals and hackers/nerds/hobbyists.
The Amiga's greatest challenge in 1994 was really CPU power and system architecture. It was tied to the 68K series processor and the custom chips which made it powerful in 1985. If these PowerPC based systems and OS came out ten years ago, it would have saved the machine, at least to be a niche player.
The Amiga's primary advantage over other machines for creative users like videographers, artists and the like was the fact it was NTSC synchronized for adding titles, and for driving devices like the VideoToaster. That assumed a world view where the computer stayed as outside of the signal path, modifying analog video somewhere between source and recorder VTRs.
The world changed very quickly--and the desktop video world instantly picked up on nonlinear editing. Suddenly everything, given enough power and bandwidth, was INSIDE the machine. Certainly NewTek responded with the ToasterFlyer, but this was still a rehash of using the Amiga between playback and record devices. By 1997, even the cheapest desktop PCI NLE board was processing effects in the digital domain: The Amiga couldn't keep up, tied to the 68K series alone and was doomed in the video market.
The OS was very much suited to media applications: It was lightweight, quick and supported multiple resolutions plus had a lot of built in file formats like ANIM, 8SVX, IFF ILBM etc. But with enough CPU power and memory, this becomes a non issue: Through the brute force of a Pentium with a PCI video bus, and I don't care how bad the OS is, it's still going to be more powerful than an overheating 040 with bandwidth limited Amiga custom chips or a late model VL bus VGA chip slaved off on the Zorro II bus.
The hobbyist market was also lost when Commodore died. A lot of people, myself included, had piles of fun learning about how the Amiga worked. But when CBM went bankrupt and it's later owners died as well, most of us turned elsewhere or plain well gave up on "playing" with computers. Many turned to Linux, BSD, BeOS and the like.
There is no real market for this device, at least not a serious one.
In the end, this will be a curiosity, primarily like the cool Jeri Ellsworth C-One board. Most people buying it will be the truly hardcore. Few hobbyists will be interested, as the casual computer enthusiast will be turned off by it's high price and low feature count.
As a Canadian with some aerospace knowledge, and a one time Amiga 2000 and Amiga 500 owner, I can't help but feel that Amiga had parallels with the cancelled Avro Arrow fighter project up here.
I sure hope your assumption that they will be removed is wrong, although displaying in mega- or kilobytes might make them a bit more readable.
But these numbers were useful for spotting memory leaks. If OS4.0 has the same memory management as previous versions (i.e. virtually none), then this is essential.
Well, it's very interesting about how the Amiga has managed to continue on in the back waters of computing for the last few years. However, it's not the only one!
Thos of you who remember the Sinclair QL (ie. people such as Linus Torvalds and some of the early AmigaDOS authors who worked at Metacomco) might like to know that some people are continuing the development of both the hardware and the operating system..
eg. Q40 and their latest Q60 motherboard designed to fit in a PC case.
What's old is new again!
Agrajag: "Oh no, not again!"
they can use any old amiga hardware to wedge the office doors open ;)
"So there he is, risen from the dead. Like that fella, E. T." - Father Ted Crilly
I and others have posted about the problems before... There's nothing new here.
OS4's now years behind schedule.
You've been able to buy motherboards for awhile. In fact those that purchased early were promised the OS and a T-Shirt if I recall. As of now, nothing's shipped other than a beta release of the OS for these early adopters. In fact, just the OS4 motherboard and a G3 CPU is more expensive than an entire Mac Mini system, and is inferior in about every way.
Any hype they've managed to build for the new Amiga has long since faded away, as have their missed dealines. Anyone remember the "Amiga Anywhere" promo blitz? Partnerships with Microsoft... Going to put an amiga on every machine, etc. Never happened.
I am a former Amiga user, and was really interested in the new Amiga when it was first announced (3 years ago? Memory's kinda faded, as has the Amigas allure). I've long since wrote them off though...
As I pointed out the other day, the Mac Mini would make an excellent Amiga OS4 box, but Amiga won't license the OS to run on non-Amiga hardware, so you're either stuck paying way too much for an underpowered machine, or you move on to a "real OS", and write off the Amiga as a dead-end, as most of the computing world has already done. Why Amiga, who need as many users as they can get these days, refuse to license their OS for other PPC hardware is beyond me.
Their excuse is to prevent piracy, which was a problem for Amiga in its heyday, but come on... Paranoia is no excuse for a bad business plan. And really, what is there to pirate? I don't see a ton of companies getting ready to shove Amiga warez down our throat. There's probably what? 2 dozen titles at the most currently shipping for Amiga?? That's probably about one title per user when you get right down to it.
In short, I think we'll see a BeOS come-back long before an Amiga come-back.
Interesting. Is that because there are no useful programs to be loaded at boot time, the test OS didn't happen to load anything at boot time, or because the OS continues to load stuff even though there is a "usable desktop" after 30 seconds?
If you look at Microsoft's Bootviz documentation, they claim that the proper benchmark is "usable desktop" and are guaranteeing the same 30 sec cold boot time after tuning with Bootviz on any XP machine (that meets XP's min requirements, of course)
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
I used to be highly jealous of a friends Amiga, sure almost all the games it had were out on the PC but they all seemed so much more polished ont he Amiga, its built in sound chip sounded a lot better than my shiny new SoundBlaster (replacing my old adlib card), the graphics were better and the thing flew along compared to my 386sx. I can't even remember them declining, it seemed one day you could still buy the Quaver themed computer packs based on a crisps (potato chips to you Americans)character, I kid you know and the next they were no where to be seen.
1) Virus proof - at least in the modern sense - x86 xploits will not work..
2) Huge library of legacy free/cheap small-memory demand programs, at least by modern standards. Same could be said for CBM64, but AmigaOS apps are actually useful..
3) Lots of code written for the RISC chip of its day, the 68K, the chip that should by rights be in every PC today..
4) Great graphics 4 time=good apps
5) Guaranteed gooey nostalgic warm feeling when you use it, as opposed to fear/lothing/desparation when using Gates-evil-empire-designed software..
6) I want the Amiga to be popular again so I can sell my old Amiga tat^H^H^H collectables on ebay.
6) ???
7) Profit..
8) Thats no moon, its lunar lander..
9) Processing power enhanced if you imagine a Beowulf stylee cluster..
10) Able to run Linux..
11) You could attatch a Friggin laser to the Fish PD collection..
11) Hence, we welcome our new retro-AmigaOS4 overlords.
er sorry, force of habit. Rewind to point 5, care to add any more?
"You lied to me! There is a Swansea!"
"... custom BIOS to prevent piracy"
what, no zealots here? Let us replace Hyperion with Pheonix and Amiga with Microsoft. Then try to boot your pirate copy of XP or better yet, Linux From Scratch. Oh the hypocracy.
Amiga might have been a great desktop in its day, but from the review it sounds like it is dying (no pun intended) to be an embedded system. It uses low-power processors and has a small light-weight footprint. If they can nail down the stability, they might have a good platform for embedded applications like ATMs, Kiosks, household appliances , etc.
Again it seems like its time to mention AROS. Its Amiga like, it has less features, less applications, it looks bloody similar, but, its open source. I feel if the future of Amiga lovers lies anywhere, it'll be here. It wont happen over night, but it will happen (if there is an amiga future).
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
Its now 20 years on. Theres little point trying to relive the past because its never as good as you remember and thats all this company is trying to do. AmigaOS is vapourware more or less and besides, the good thing about the Amiga was its hardware, the OS was pretty much an irrelevance other than as a boot loader for the apps. Hardware these days is so far beyond the hardware of 1985 its not even funny. Whats the point?
>BTW: Any idea how good the UAE port for OSX is these days?
Not as fast as the Windows version but it's under active development so it's getting there.
http://www.rcdrummond.net/uae/
The following line from the article caught my eye:
"Wireless PCI cards using the Prism chipset are supported thanks to an OS4 driver ported over from Linux."
If they did a direct port of the code, surely that would be a GPL violation? The Linux driver would be under the GPL and therefore they would be forced to either take it out again or license OS4 as GPL.
Of course if they just used the Linux driver to reverse-engineer the workings of a Prism card, that would be acceptable - but the article sounds like that wasn't the case.
I'm assuming there must be some point I've missed, so would anybody more knowledgeable about Amigas be able to set the record straight?
AmigaOS is to Linux what Linux is to Windows. Remember how many Windows users out there think you're crazy for using Linux and truely believe there is nothing to use Linux for except for server stuff before you post your "Amiga is dead" stuff, as you will be exactly correct as all those ignorant Windows users are in their comments about Linux and Linux users.
When someone tells me that Linux is less popular than Windows (on the desktop, that is) I tell them about many of its advantages. I don't tell them that there are many cases when something is unpopular, therefore everything must be great. I know that they laughed at Copernicus, they laughed at Einstein, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. Will you tell us WHAT are the advantages of Amiga? Please, I am really curious. Is there anything more than just nostalgia? I asked about multitasking and memory protection. The answers were: yes, Amiga had both in 1985, no, in fact only the preemptive multitasking since day 1 in 1980, but not really, it was actually co-operative multitasking... *sigh* Does it have ANYTHING that any modern OS should have? Multitasking? Memory protection? Virtual memory? Security? Filesystem access control? Capabilities? If not, then WHAT does it have that makes it so special? Please answer with something more than that Linux is less popular than Windows, because I could go on and on telling you about advantages of Linux. Please tell me WHAT Amiga does better than Linux instead of "AmigaOS is to Linux what Linux is to Windows" because saying that you imply that Amiga is much better than Linux but we are too stupid to understand it, not saying about any actual advantages.
Thank you for your respect. And to the article poster, we're not welcome here, please don't bother Slashdot again...
Right... You're not wanted and that's why you get Score:5, Insightful... Will you write anything meaningful or are you here just for Karma?
Its resting....
I'm very very sorry - but i just couldn't help myself...
If religous zealots don't believe in Evolution, then why are they so worried about bird flu?
Oh, joy. Well, it's not like games were ever a strongpoint on the Amiga, is it?
The only reason the Amiga, with it's sub-Mac standard GUI and inferior hardware, ever developed the following it did was because of games. For a few years in the late 1980s, thanks to superior sound and color than that on competing platforms, the Amiga was the machine to own to play (and program) games on.
Now they're promising an Amiga that will run an almost-modern, not-even-remotely-as-polished-as-OS-X OS on hardware that's two Mac-generations behind (the G3, with G4 "coming soon"), and it won't run any of the classic games? And any but the hardest of hardcore Amgia fans would buy it why?
As an insanely challenging uber-geek project, this is fine, but it's not anything anyone is ever going to make a viable business out of.
- Crow T. Trollbot
It was a sad day when my father and I retired the A1200 w/030 cpu for a PII 400. I had gone through my freshmen year at university with our A1000. I can still hear the floppies grinding away.
Unfortunately with 10 years past, I can't see any future for the old buggers except for low budget TV stations. Mac OS X is everything the Amiga could have been in my opinion.
I'm not dead!
I'm getting better!
I feel fine!
I think I'll go for a walk.
Make AmigaOS run on something like Mac Mini and maybe it'll have a chance to become something more than a just an zealot-only OS... No memory protection? Even Win NT 3.51 has memory protection.
In 1985 the A1000 blew everything out of the water. I still have my A1000 in a box somewhere. One of the coolest PCs ever built the entire team signed the inside cover (including Jays dog).
Processor:
An 286 was state of the art and the 68000 compared more than favorably.
Graphics:
Heck EGA was just recently introduced, Macs were monocrhome. Amiga had extraordinary high colour capability (up to 4096 colours IIRC) and custom co-processor to accellerate 2d operations
Sound:
A basic PC beeped. The first soundblaster was still 2 years away. The amiga had multichannel digiatal waveform sound with co-processor support.
OS:
PC had Dos or Windows 1.0 (steaming pile of dung).
The amiga had a small efficient GUI OS with true pre-emptive multitasking...
The Amiga was a revolution of HW and software. What killed it was stagnation. It remained relatively unchanged for years allowing competition to catch and surpass some of its basic specs.
Personally I moved on when Win95/OS2 VGA/ 486/ Soundblaster finally made PCs tolerable.
Out of interest, does OS4 bear any relation to TRIPOS? I'm sure (or am I going crazy?) that the earliest releases had a TRIPOS kernel written in BCPL. Anyone want to enlighten me?
... and in the DRM, bind them.
When Amiga began to reach a combustion point, that is, to have a powerful effect on the world of personal computing, Ex-CIA and Government spooks became board members and ran Commodore into the ground, forcing the doors closed in about two or three years of stupid business decisions.
That part isn't the conspiracy theory. That stuff is real.
Here's the theory:
They did it on purpose.
--Why? Well, because the machine didn't suck for one thing. It had a very 'Open-Source Community' feel to it, (even though it wasn't actually Open Source). It was the kind of machine which made the user feel in control and powerful. And it didn't take itself too seriously or inspire fear. It was fun. --And it wasn't like Apple; it wasn't made for people who didn't want to know. It wasn't made for people who didn't like to tinker under the hood, but it could still be used by such people. It managed both! Amiga was a positive force. Man, you could feel that! Not like PC's (confusion boxes) and Macs (glossy computers encouraging the dream of mindlessness.) "We became your masters the day we started thinking for you." --Man, if any computer ever rose to speak in a soothing voice and not open the pod-bay door, it'd have an apple logo on it's hood)!
I still don't entirely like my dipshit PC, and all the people who are working to change that and give it a more 'Open-Source Community' feel are fighting an uphill battle against big industry, aka. the MIC. (Military Industrial Complex)
Like Gaimen and Pratchet described in their one collaborative book, "Good Omens", the collective power of an entire population all experiencing a moderate bit of annoyance is a far more powerful tactic than a lone demon corrupting a single priest.
Can you imagine an Amiga becoming a zombie machine? Not bloody likely.
-FL
Awesome game.
Never managed to finish it though. Very hard game. I still have my A1000 and Shadow of the Beast if the floppy isn't corrupt(big if).
... long live the Apple ][gs!
For those who weren't around at the time and want a hint of what the machines could do, Wired ran this story a while ago about people who continue to use old computers, including Amigas.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Classic netscape never ran on an Amiga. A port was started, but they aborted it.
Slashdot sucks for Amiga info. Every time there's an Amiga story, I see all kinds of crap information being posted.
The price for the motherboard varies depending on the dealer you are purchasing from (yes, there still Amiga dealers in existence!) but is around US$700. ... Basically, these are "early adopter" prices.
Am I the only one that finds the quoted phrase ironic?
Schrodinger's cat is either dead or really pissed off...
It's just pining for the fjords! ;P
If you want a dead OS go install BSD. I don't see what all the fuss is about dead OSes anyway... I happen to like my OSes like I like my women: dressed in black and cold as ice. Yeah, I have a thing for "goth girls".
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Netscape and IE 4 have never been on Amiga. They have been on MacOS and that could be run using ShapeShifter or Fusion (Mac emulator).
Damn, it's BeOS all over again.
A decent, sexy OS that will be killed by corporate infighting, shitty marketing, suicidal management, and expensive and impractical hardware requirements.
Christ, when will people learn?
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
My guess is that you are either a troll or too stupid to read the whole post. I said CLASSIC NETSCAPE, Not Modern Netscape. I also said OS 3.9, NOT OS 4.0.
m igaOS4GUI.jpg
http://simoami.freeservers.com/cgi-bin/i/images/A
Go back to Slashdot Troll Hell.
... and in the DRM, bind them.
i was maybe 7 years old, and the guitar theme when you died in Shadow Of The Beast still haunts me. I could never get past like the 3rd level, but who cares? I want to see it again, but i'm afraid it wouldn't live up - like seeing airwolf after 15 years!
uh huh uh huh, da good stuff~
I am happy to say that they are totally customizable today, you can both remove them or change their style.
I just realized that I have always gravitated towards the platform with the best user experience. In the 80s, I was using an Amiga. I had 4 of them, the last one an A3000UX. It was a great machine.
However, I saw the platform coming to an end and bought into the 486. I tried Os/2 Warp, Windows and Linux. Linux was fun to tinker with, OS/2 was nice but clunky and windows... well, between crashes, it worked ok.
I grew tired of the windows crap and moved to Mac OS X, as I really didn't like the Mac OS 5-9 user experience.
I would love to try AmigaOS 4. But mainly to tinker with it. If it ran on my g5, it would certainly be something to consider. Yet, they are making it a closed platform, which means that you can't even get a taste of it without shelling out a few hundred bucks.
Seems kinda like the quandry BeOS was in, doesn't it? That's why they ported it to the Mac architecture then to x86.
Unless they open it up to other hardware, it is just a moot point. People will refuse to buy into expensive hardware for even less support, less software than the Mac. People complain about Apple hardware costs. Try Amiga? Naah, won't happen.
Screen Shot
... and in the DRM, bind them.
Interesting point. The "other new Amiga" PowerPC motherboard is currently headlines on gentoo.org.
w .jsp?nodeId=018rH3bTdGZj9N58582822)
Political issues created a rift between Amiga Inc. the company and the people of MorphOS the "other Amiga OS platform" a few years ago. There were two PowerPC motherboards in development at the time that would have both run AmigaOS4. One was the AmigaOne currently sold by Eyetech, the other was the Pegasos being made by DCE, a company which somehow evolved from Phase5 who was the leading maker of Amiga CPU upgrade cards.
The software guys from Phase5 started their own OS, now called MorphOS, which was Amigalike and ran Amiga applications/games, etc. Their friends at DCE gave them Pegasos boards, and the two items were sold by Genesi to Amiga users on their side of the rift, while Amiga Inc., Hyperion, and Eyetech sell AmigaOne boards with AmigaOS 4.
Well, some MorphOS developers got mad that they had not been paid as promised by Genesi, and a rift formed there as well, and Genesi now seems to be turning their back on MorphOS. But they've embraced Linux, and are a partner with Gentoo now, as seen today at www.gentoo.org (Hopefully Gentoo won't see the payment situation some of the MorphOS coders claim to have never received, see www.morphos.net)
So, the "dead" Amiga market has directly, through some soap-opera routing, lead to a GentooPPC motherboard.
Is GentooPPC a BAD IDEA? No. Is running it on a PPC motherboard a BAD IDEA? No. Is the original reason this board exists, to run AmigaOS, a BAD IDEA? Apparently you guys think so... But without the Amiga, the Pegasos2 (aka "Open Desktop Workstation") motherboard would not be available to be advertized by and partnered with Gentoo Linux...
It's also supposedly now an official evaluation board at Freescale... (http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/overvie
So please tell me, is the Amiga platform which has lead to something like this still a totally wacked and stupid bad idea to allow it to exist? Good things can still come of it.
I myself have some ideas that I think could be neat for the computer industry as a whole, resulting from my desire for a PowerPC Amiga Laptop with open docs so anyone can write whatever OS, drivers, etc. they want for it. I'm seriously interested in such a thing, to the extent I'm looking to find CAD softrware and soon plan to ask around at manufacturers to see what can be done. (Business politics/contracts apparently prevent AmigaOS 4 port to iBook/Powerbook...)
If Getting a license to run AmigaOS on such an open-platform PowerPC laptop is not possible, then I see no reason to make the laptop hardware I desire. Is this a good or bad situation? Do you demand that I stop researchng the business of making an open-platform PowerPC laptop, for no more reason than because I personally would want to run AmigaOS on it?
(I have not yet made a proposal to the OS guys to see what the licensing would be, I want to find out if making a laptop without ordering hundreds of thousands of units per month is even possible first...)
Someone should pick up where Be Inc left off, and resurrect BeOS, and add a good security model to it. Just yesterday I downloaded some screenshots of BeOS 5, and five years later, they still look as fresh as they did back in the day. If this is not a testament to their UI design, then I don't know what is.
As an added bonus, this thing ran on X86 hardware and it was FAST, even back then. It'll probably boot in under five seconds on contemporary hardware.
They should convert AmigaOS into a UI mode of Linux, with underlying data/logic libraries, like Palm is doing with PalmOS. So it can be HW independent, backwards compatible, and live "forever", joining other "OS'es" in competition with Windows. And maybe run on my smartphone.
--
make install -not war
Since this is nothing more than a "standard" P4 with a BIOS locked motherboard, doesn't this call into question the entire Amiga strategy?
What I mean is, charge $100 for the OS, and then sell a MB that works or just let people pick their own hardware.
This strikes me as the same failed BeOS strategy that failed with the BeBox.
It's like the fucking nightmare that won't die. I loved the Amiga but that was 20 years ago. Pat the dirt down, it's time to move on people.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Maybe you need to stop being so fucking retarded, and stop posting a MOCK-UP "screenshot."
Netscape (and Mozilla) have never ever run on any version of AmigaOS, ever.
I repeat, the "screenshot" you keep linking to is just what some amiga zealot would LIKE it to look like.
I was thinking G4, but it came out P4.
Point is the same.
I could respect what the AmigaOS folks were doing if the OS had something to offer me. As it is, the OS is proprietary and it doesn't come with programs to do some of the tasks I've come to expect from a modern OS (such as a modern GNU/Linux distribution): word processing, spreadsheet calculations, web browsing, and text editing all with best-of-breed programs from the free software world. So, it misses on both a software freedom scale and a functional scale.
The hardware is simply lacking. I can get a comparable used G3-based machine for less money (like a used Apple iBook for about US$300 on eBay) that will run a modern free software OS.
I don't care about AmigaOS being unpopular. I reject it because it is useless to me on grounds that I care about.
Digital Citizen
Why does everyone think that the Intel PC will last forever? Why is it ridiculous for new hardware with a new OS to be feasible?
That said, if I was able to run AmigaOS on a PC or Mac, even in a slow emulation mode, or on a cheaper native machine, I'd consider porting my software. Especially if there's a POSIX layer to work with.
There is something to be said for starting over from scratch with a nice simple system. Anyone remember something called "V2OS", a new OS built from scratch for Intel x86? I was ready to start playing with it and writing programs, but I don't think they ever got a C compiler finished for it...
As a kid I remember heading out to airport in Toronto for the annual WoC, where we could see all the latest Amiga and C64 stuff. It was a huge event, and seemed more like a place for people who actually 'enjoyed' this stuff rather than just for people who are in the business.
I remember picking up my Amiga 500 HD and extra ram there, the thing was really ahead of it's time, I remember reluctantly purchasing my first Wintel box (386) and it was definitely a downgrade!
*sniff*
It was touched upon in the article, but I think they are really missing the boat on resurecting the Amiga (and have been for years). It would be nearly impossible for Amiga PC's to compete today. They need to go where the AmigaOS, in today's hardware market, could shine: PDA's. With modern Coldfire processors (very fast 68k compatible, low power, embeded cpus) you could easily build a PDA that would run AmigaOS screamingly fast.
Even better, if they could make a custom graphics chip that could emulate AGA and maybe add some new features, this PDA could double as a great game machine (and you have all the old amiga games to run on it). There's two markets right there.
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
Hmmm, thats odd. I'm running Netscape 2.0 on my Amiga 500 right now.
... and in the DRM, bind them.
If they brought GNUStep to AmigaOS it might help get ports of Cocoa software.
I loved the Amiga back in the day. I even did most of the work for my CS degree on an A1500.
But now I have a Linux PC that can do much more than my Amiga could, and can run any of several good Amiga emulators out there for when I get all nostalgic.
So unfortunately I can't think of a single reason why I (or any other PC owner) would want to buy new Amiga hardware today, especially as it would mean buying new software all over again.
What (if any) features does this new hardware have that a PC doesn't, and what market are they aiming at?
>> if I was able to run AmigaOS on a PC or Mac, even in a slow emulation mode, or on a cheaper native machine, I'd consider porting my software. Especially if there's a POSIX layer to work with.
You can, there's several good amiga emulators out there. A slow PC running an Amiga emulator still gives you a MUCH faster Amiga than the original ( 10+ yrs old) hardware.
I don't want to hear any more complaints about how late Longhorn is.
Will you please answer my question: what are the advantages of Amiga? Please, I am really curious. Is there anything more than just nostalgia? Will you please answer or was your "Score:5, Insightful" post just trolling? Thanks.
"I know i would love to play with a Yellowdog Linux media server running on some ultra quiet G4 rig, but the cost of kits are too prohibitive when I know that the same can be done Intel/AMD for a pittance."
Don't complain. Try finding an inexpensive Sparc solution. At least MIPS is competitive.
There are no programs for it, they have no market share. Just buy a Mac!
;-)
God, I always wanted to say that
I think, therefore I am...I think.
GET A LIFE!! Move out of your parents basement! You! Have you ever kissed a girl? (now me) For the Love of Christ people! I had an Amiga 500, 1000 and 2000. I played games, I had fun, I even took one apart and spliced an op amp into the sound board so I could run negative voltages through it (try that with a pc) to run my laser graphics cards. BUT IT'S OVER! DONE WITH. Get a grip and let it fucking DIE already! I'm sure the architecture and OS were ahead of their time, but unless they were more than 18 years ahead of their time, then their still over the hill. Go outside and work on your car! or Go inside and work on your girlfriend! I don't care that one of the hotkeys looks like Bob Dobb's. Throw the fucking thing away, upgrade your PC or Mac and GET A LIFE! Amiga...it's over.
The single question that comes to my mind is "Why?".
I loved the Amiga. It was amazingly fast, had a very interesting architecture, with the custom chips doing a wonderful job offloading the CPU. But its responsiveness derived from having no virtual memory - if you loaded a big enough dataset for whatever program you wanted, it would fill all memory available and either crash itself or the whole computer.
I understand nostalgia. I have a bunch of old computers that still work - and I will keep then working as long as I can - from a couple Apple II clones, Macintosh LC, Color Classic, early PowerMacs and a Monorail PC... A couple weeks ago I almost bought a MSX. They are cool, sure, but they are toys by today's standards.
There is space for inovation and inventive hardware, tough. But let's make new stuff not regurgitate old classics - I would buy without any hesitation, a contemporary 68K based Amiga computer (or an Acorn Archimedes equivalent, BTW), as long as it was cheap. But I would not pretend to be buying a useful computer - it is a toy. I would use them to relive good experiences of my youth. It's not early adopter stuff - it's only adopter. Extending their useful lives is like overextending good jokes - they cease to be funny.
I would love to have a MIPS, ARM or PPC ATX motherboard to play with. Kudos for the guys who made the board. I would love to play with Linux or BSD on them or any other brand-new exotic advanced OS, but let's face it: Amiga is all about nostalgia, not advanced features. At least, not these days.
http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
Dead OS? BSD is dead? Oh FU*K, no way when did that happen?
Jay would ask the dog whether to include a gate or not, and if the dog barked, the gate would go in -- otherwise not.
Wow, now that's impressive. The best I've been able to get from my dog is for him to ring a bell when he has to go outside to take a crap.
I really think we need another Gnomintosh, with library incompatibilies!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Looking at the motherboard spec, it looks like stuff from my older PC (VIA bridge, Radeon, PC133 SDRAM, ...) and stuff from an older MAC (G3).
Why not have a decent (and recent) PC or MAC emulate the whole thing? (For almost the same price...)
Maybe just have the G3 PPC on a PCI add-on card inside a PC if CPU emulation performance is an issue...
I hate it when people try to reinvent the wheel twice...
Yet again Amiga Inc. shows just how dumb they
are.
I mean, a ROM protection ?!? in 2005 ? Come on!
You should be praying that people get to pirate
a copy and TRY IT on their Macs or whatever !!!
THEN you sell upgrades for current hardware
not supported before via the Net etc...
Build the market first then get the cash.
Do we have to tell you everything ?!?
At one point I recall that Amiga was going to use Linux as a base for its operating system similar to how Apple uses FreeBSD as a base for its operating system. It doesnt sound like this still holds true today since I hear no mention of Linux in regards to Amiga's OS. It probably would have been a good choice for them to go with some established OS like FreeBSD or Linux rather than try to build something from the ground up, then they could have also benefited from sharing an application pool with other Unix-type OSs. It would have also allowed them to get a product out the door quicker with their limited development resources. If each minority OS has its own proprietary API and requires its own applications and cannot share applications with other OSs, there is not as a good of a chance they can compete agianst the huge Windows monopoly, but if all of these small OSs follow POSIX and other Unix standards and share the same application community, they will have a much better chance of being able to compete.
Part of the *nix philosophy I believe is interoperability and choice provided by source compatability, the ability to compile software on any OS that complies with POSIX and other unix standards. This preserves peoples choice since they can choose what OS and computer plaftorm to use while being able to access the same community of software programs. It is also essential to small OSs with small userbases. Not being able to use certian programs on certian OSs because of non-standard system APIs is a major cause of OS lock in and limited freedom in OS choice, hence Windows. I believe if independant OSs really want to be viable and to compete against MS, they need to support POSIX, X11 and other Unix source compatability standards, these standard furthermore allow an OS designer to use their own internal architecture, since the standards mostly affect APIs visible to the programmer and command line suite rather than the interal OS design. This is why we see so many different filesystems avialable on Linux for instance while applications can use them without having to know the particulars of each one, and how changes to the underlying system can be made without requiring rewriting of the apps.
Raytracing is still the same today. :-D
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
how cool! exiting article, long live amiga
I don't understand why the "new" Amigas are being built around a new hardware platform. What makes "Amiga" so attractive today is the software and OS. Why not just build OS4 to run on existing hardware platforms? You could build a standard Intel/AMD box and load Amiga OS4 for less money and end with more powerful hardware...
Basing Mac OS X on UNIX worked because there wasn't anything to the old Mac OS that was worth saving, except the applications, and they were able to transit the applications to a new OS reasonably cleanly over years WHILE maintaining sales wit hthe old OS.
This is a completely different situation. The old Amiga OS was the closest thing to a real-time microkernel desktop environment that's ever been released to the general public: QNX dropped out of a retail version of Photon, and the only other candidate, OS/9 (no relation or Mac OS 9) on the Radio Shack color computer long predated anything like a desktop OS. If Amiga went that way, well, they would just be another Linux distro... and one that didn't run a lot of important Linux software because it's not an 80x86 and so it won't run binary-only packages.
I'm amazed that this seems to have maintained almost everything that was good about AmigaDOS, including the wonderful infinitely configurable message-passing OS architecture. Until this moment I had written off AmigaOS as another doomed Linux clone. It may be doomed, but if so it's doomed with style.
Part of the *nix philosophy I believe is interoperability and choice provided by source compatability, the ability to compile software on any OS that complies with POSIX and other unix standards.
I ran the Amiga sources newsgroup for some years, and did several ports of UNIX applications to the platform. Even back in 1986 it was already a very UNIX-friendly and UNIX-compatible environment. I can't imagine that it's moved away from that since.
they need to support POSIX, X11 and other Unix source compatability standards
The first web browser I ever used was UNIX Mosaic, running on my Amiga using a local X11 server from a UNIX box running at my ISP. The text editor I used was "elvis", one of the classic "vi" clones, and porting it to AmigaDOS was almost trivial compared to what I'd had to do in other ports.
This is why we see so many different filesystems avialable on Linux for instance
The Amiga had user-written user-mode file systems, including some amazing ones like a RAM based file system that survived reboots, long before Linux existed. The Amiga API is VERY well designed for this kind of thing... and needless to say no applications had to be rewritten to make it work!
This is nothing but good news. Please do some research before dismissing this amazing OS because it's not based on Linux.
New hardware, new OS, not backward compatible with existing software, but you can run a port of the Windows Amiga Emulator for the ultimate in efficiency. Oh yeah, the hardware features such technology as USB 1.1, and PC-133 RAM.
Good God, I loved my Amiga, but that's because it was the state of the art, not the state of decay that it's become.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
"Business Amiga was crippled by a complete lack of human interface guidelines, leading to every application having a uniquely bizarre user interface."
I can't imagine why. I have the HIG's for the Amiga right here.*
*I collect interfaces.
I don't think it's the same guys running it. Jay Miner, for example, died over a decade ago.
What rom? I believe that the functionality that was in the 68k Rom has been removed from a rom and is part of the install now ie sits on a directory on DH0:
the whole idea is that the OS is more portable, a Developer at hyperion states that he could port the complete Os in weeks to another PPC motherboard, I believe that he was talking about a Peg and a Mac when he was discussing this,
All he needs is some hardware docs and for them to buy a licence from amiga.
From the article:
Interestingly, unlike OS X, there is an option for both Canadian -- French and Canadian -- English! I'm intrigued by this French English!
(I know he meant Canadian French and English, but how did he mess it up that badly?)
I don't want to start up the old Atari ST/Amiga flamewar. Just want to mention that there is a project call "ARAnyM" (Atari Running on Any Machine) designed to setup an atari environment on modern operating systems. Not exactly an atari st emulator, but similar. (There are plenty of emulators if you want one of those.)
. htm
Article about it:
http://www.myatari.net/issues/dec2002/aranym
ARAnyM Homepage:
http://aranym.sourceforge.net/
(That's right, it's opensource.)
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Hi, I was at an Nvidia seminar a while ago and remembered a comment about Nvidia not responding... so I put it to one of the Nvidia developers. He apologised, gave me his card and said that any such request sent to him would get positive results. If you want to follow up I still have his card here somewhere. :-)
The Amiga One motherboards has serious flaws. You can't use IDE DMA and Ethernet at the same time, the on board sound does not work, and the northbridge has this special "feature" (hrrmm) that prevent cache coherency which corrupts data if you don't specially adapt the OS to handle this. It is also very poor at other kinds of DMA transfers and the memory performance really sucks, as does the AGP speed (announced to be 2x but it's less than 1x in some occasions). The manufacturer, Eyetech, knows about these problems but wants to silence them down and deny most of them and has not shown any interest to help their customers with repairing the goods or replace the motherboards with working ones. The name tag "Amiga" may confuse the ignorant because the motherboard has nothing "Amiga" on it. If you expect to get to use any of the features that made the Amiga what it was, you will be disappointed. The Amiga One is a standard mediocre PC with PPC instead of X86, and the only way of using it as an Amiga is to run an Amiga emulator (i.e. UAE which also runs much better on any x86 hardware). Oh, and the price of these 1999 level of hardware (motherboard+CPU) is between 700EUR-900EUR depending on what model you are looking for and where.
This hardware is the base of Hyperion's (a game manufacturer) OS4, which is an effort to write an AmigaOS in PPC native code. They haven't got very far yet but it's getting more and more usable. Some of the problems it has is difficult to know if they are from software or the poor hardware. Hyperion also made some design decisions that many old Amigans feel uncomfortable with (to say the least) but fortunately there are other alternatives, both for PPC and x86.
What, +1 interesting? It should be +12 FATALITY!