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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."
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...
Amiga OS had both those in 1985, IIRC.
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
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.
AmigaOS has had preemptive multitasking since day 1 back in the 1980's.
Memory protection is another matter, it's not there as Linux users would expect it to be, no. It's a highly desired feature of course, but implementing it properly is an issue as it conflicts with some fundamental aspects of AmigaOS arcitecture. We want it, and it will likely happen someday, but current priorities fundamentally revolve around getting the OS ported to PowerPC native and getting it to run on new PowerPC motherboards, porting the 680x0 assembly to C, involving a great deal of "classic Amiga hardware" dependencies, as none of that hardware is present on new motherboards.
Once the fundamental porting is done then it will be time to look at rearchitecting things to allow memory protection, multiple users (it's currently a single-user OS so no user or group file or directory protection concepts). I don't know what all the project managment has in mind for adding such features, but users and developers do want them.
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.
[removed question about true multitasking and memory protection]
;)
Amiga OS had both those in 1985, IIRC.
No, you don't remember it correctly. Amiga OS had true, preemptive multitasking in 1985, but it doesn't have memory protection to this day. Nor does it have virtual memory, or makes any other use of MMU present in every modern processor.
Yes, you could install Enforcer notifying you about writes to system memory, or VMM permitting swapping to disk in case the real memory is exhausted. But both these programs weren't part of system and lost of programs crashed when they were present and running. I remember having exceptions list in VMM longer than... certain body parts of pr0n stars
Other than that, Amiga OS was quite remarkable piece of software at that time with certain solutions still not duplicated in today's operating systems.
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
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.
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.
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.
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.
One of my favourite demos with my old Amiga 2000 back in 1989 or so was to have a C program compiling on the Bridgeboard, a Pascal program compiling in a shell window, and then drag down the Workbench screen about halfway to reveal F/A-18 Interceptor running behind. I'd then play the game (with no slowdown) while the compilers kept churning away.
:)
For its time, it was an amazing bit of hardware.
I always liked AmigaDOS because it combined the best features of UNIX (in the shell, and with AREXX scripting) and MacOS's GUI features.
Nowadays, the GUI on Linux has gotten to the point where it is far superior than anything the Amiga ever had. A modern RedHat/Fedora box really is the spiritual successor to the Amiga.
The only thing I miss (two things actually):
1) Every Amiga application worth its salt has an AREXX port, because it was trivial to implement. That meant you could script EVERYTHING, including moving data back and forth between applications. It was awesome; you could batch-process every single application on the box.
2) The speech synth chip. This was awsome in Netrek, because you could play the team chat window through it and turn it into a radio - get all the team communications without having to take your eyes off the galaxy map.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
> All that said, it's kinda sad to see you sitting here begging for whatever name-branded Amiga scraps you can get.
/ webapp/sps/site/overview. jsp?nodeId=018rH3bTdGZj9N58582822
Huh? I'm not begging for anything. I have a good job designing chips for a living and can easily pay for whatever I desire.
Also, when other Amiga users were drooling over the shiny new Voodoo3 drivers, I was scratching my head not understanding the obsession when Radeons and GeForces were on their second generations. Instead of begging, I made a proposal to Nvidia for an NDA, I'd do all the work, support,e tc. all they'd have to do was put hardware on the shelves at the local PC emporium, which they already did. They didn't even respond with a polite "no thank you", they completely ignored us. ATI responded to my proposal with an NDA contract and some documentation. We do all the work, support, etc. and all they have to do is put Radeons on the shelves at te local PC emporium, which they already do.
I didn't beg for anything. I made a business proposal acceptable to ATI, and AmigaOS4 now runs nicely on Radeon cards.
I discussed the convenience of AmigaOS on a laptop, and thus iBook hardware with other developers, but there doesn't seem to be a business agreeable to all involved there. I'm now investigating the feasability of developing a PowerPC laptop of my own, which if it is a viable product will make an open-platform system as much as I could, and allow anyone write their own OS, drivers, etc. which is an obstacle to some extent when looking at Macs. Is this a feasable idea? It may not be, but this hasn't been proven to me yet.
Hey, Gentoo and Freescale seem pretty happy with the "other Amiga motherboard", the Pegasos2 AKA "Open Desktop Workstation" PowerPC motherboard. Wouldn't they be happy with a more easily portable PowerPC board as well?
http://www.gentoo.org
http://www.freescale.com