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AmigaOS 4.0 released
tmk writes "After five years Hyperion announces the availability of AmigaOS 4.0: 'Amiga OS 4.0 is the most stable, modern and feature-rich incarnation to date of the multi-media centric operating system launched by Commodore Business Machines (CBM) in 1985 with which it still retains a high degree of compatibility.' But there is a snag: the new OS supports only the AmigaOne, which is not available anymore. According to Hyperion, the new hardware platform will be announced by third parties early 2007."
A broken POS os for Broken POS hardware that you can't get anymore. PERFECT!
A new release of AmigaOS! A new release of OS/2 can't be far behind!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I loved AmigaOS. I used it for probably a decade after it had completely stagnated at the top levels, while its huge crowd of shareware developers kept shovelling great software out to Aminet. But come on, folks: Amiga is dead. Not dying; dead. All of the technical elegance I appreciated for so long has now moved into other systems (KDE and its KIOslaves are far cooler than Amiga's "datatypes" ever hoped to be), and other than keeping an emulator available for the occasional retro-gaming jones, I just can't see a single reason for its continued existence.
I'm the last one to criticize people for spending their days working on projects that look insane to everyone else, but this brings me pretty close. Rest in peace, Amiga. You were beautiful at a time when no other computer was, but your era has long passed. Leave us with our wonderful memories, and sleep well.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Which, the folks at Amiga.org are guessing, means a system based on the SAM board. Prototypes of this have been shown. But, knowing everything Amiga, I'll believe that when I see it. It would be nice, as it's a small simple motherboard that runs without the need for active cooling. It would make a unique and interesting web / internet / Amiga applications machine with a snappy OS.
I, myself have a nice PPC Amiga 1200, which I use occasionally for fun. It's a horrible over extended, upgraded collection of cables and add on cards though. We never got substantive replacement hardware, and we just kept expanding the old stuff. It will probably never see OS4 and I'll have to spend $1200 on a new system with the Eyetech board, or this SAM thing... maybe..
And lastly, yes we know it's basically orphaned and practically useless and modern replacements do things much much better and more cheaply, so I'll kindly ask all of you to save your breath, I don't care. It's just interesting how it won't die isn't it?The next release of MorphOS is planned to support hardware that's actually shipping. :)
If people like working on this, great, let them. But even if it was great in its day, is *anyone* seriously fooling themselves AmigaOS is going to make a comeback of any sort ever again?
Basilisk Digital
So, it takes them how long to finally "finish" AmigaOS 4.0? And now that it's finished, the hardware it runs on is unavailable?
Just when you think the Amiga saga can't get any more absurd...
I fully expect them to announce that they're starting an x86 port, and it'll be ready in January of 2008. Or January of 2018, whichever comes later.
I had an Amiga back in the day. Loved it. Have no desire to use on ever again, though.
I hear RT-11 is about to make a comeback! Damn you, it was one of the most powerful operating systems ever created, and STILL does things that no modern machine can do! It can, it can, IT CAN! Damn ALL YOU HEATHENS TO HELL!!!
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Let's see ... what other company has recently released an operating system for a hardware platform that doesn't quite exist yet?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
If you're going to create an OS that nobody will use, does it matter whether there's any hardware to run it on?
Amiga users are certainly taking the concept of fanboyism to a whole new level.
Hell, I even had an Amiga and bashed Windows and MS-DOS back in the days, but seriously, Windows and the hardware available has evolved a lot since then and Amiga is still on square one. ScalaMM and Deluxe Paint were nice and all, but isn't it time to move on? Now you got an OS which is several years delayed without a computer to run it on. Why oh why?
The playstation 3.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
I'm not certain that it was the Operating System that made Amiga fun, but it's hardware and community.
I participated in "the scene" where you got to advertise your warez group by posting a miniature presentation before the game loaded.
These were called "intros" - some of these were a very impressive collection of code, graphics, and sound.
I used to write the code behind many intros in my early teens for programming exercise and to support my group.
The scene also released and supported an open source (free source?) soundtracker player that became the de-facto music player format for Amiga. Soundtracker (and forks of) were widely available with a huge library of samples and mods (mods being the completed song). Any non-musician could load some sound samples and start banging qwerty to hear tunes.
The Amiga's architecture was a very good for the first-time-asm-coder. 680x0 is quite an easy assembler language and Amiga's hardware, particularly the graphics (and copper), was easy to write for. So, the rewards after the first hour of programming were there and learning curve low. It made you want to poke around and look for more effects - with a few Guru Meditations along the way.
I mean, 1985 and it had 3d graphic capabilities built into the hardware - standard.
Put together, Amiga produced some of the best eye-candy I've ever seen.
I really miss the Amiga scene. I believe it's gone for good. The majority of use have grown up - moved on.
I don't believe a new Operating System is going to revive the community - the community that "made" Amiga what I remember it as.
Talk about beating a dead horse. I know there are still devoted fans out there but it would take a herculean effort to get the OS semi modern and even then it's pointless. What made it unique was the combination of OS and chipset. If they want to resurrect the spirit of Amiga they need to develope chips that had a similar approach to graphics intergration. Anything else is feeding off nostalga and is completely pointless. You might as well get excited because some one was bringing back DOS. There actually would be a reason for that. Not to the average user but it was far easier to program devices on DOS. There are motion control machines still running DOS. Although they have largely gone the way of the dinosaur there would be need for an updated DOS but without the hardware to go with Amiga is pointless. If they are simply adapting it to an AMD or P4 chip it'd make as much sense as putting a modern engine in a model T. One day you just have to accept it's dead and move on. I just wish one of the chip makers would team up with some one like a Linux developer and come up with a system that used the same approach. Could you imagine an OS with targeted graphios all on seperate cores? Even parts of the OS embeded into the chip architecture for processing graphics within the chip itself. There's no way a traditional approach to computer design could come close. The laws of physics would prevent it. Transferring data will always cost you speed so localizing functions will always be faster. Quantum computers may change that but I probably won't live to see that.
Its worth it just to see all these guys whine about letting it die, or about how its already dead.
Long live the Amiga!
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Rotary Phone 2.0 baby!
..is that it was only available on limited hardware and wasn't being maintained. (Having software that is ten times faster than the competition isn't a real advantage if the hardware is twenty times slower.)
And the reason that happened, was because it wasn't Free.
AmigaOS 4 is truly following in the steps of its forefather. If the people in that project want to know how much marketshare AmigaOS 4 will have, they just have to look at the marketshare of AmigaOS 3.x.
As for me, I run software that I know will be maintained and updated. I don't have to take anyone's word for it; it requires no faith at all. And that's good, because I don't have any faith anymore: my Amiga experience killed it.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Releasing a new OS before the hardware is available is one of the most ass-backwards things in the entire ass-backwards history of the Amiga. And I think it's pretty shocking that they don't support the add-on PowerPC cards for classic Amiga hardware, since IIRC that's what they were developing on. I guess they want their new hardware to sell (if and when...), but you'd think an OS with so little to commend it in this day and age would want to pick up every possible scrap of userbase, no?
Oh no... it's the future.
My refrain from 15 years ago:
:-)
"Sell your Agima! Move out of your parent's house!"
seems even more apropos now.
Ahem. Of course, the 25+ year old vintage microcomputers that I'm currently mucking around with (restoring digital tape drives, making MP3s of old audio cassettes, cleaning the muck off 1Kx1 RAM chips...) are not a waste of time, because . . . well, because.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is insufficiently documented.
Only on Slashdot could an OS be listed as both Vintage and New Release - in the same day.
8 31250
d =17366606
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/26/0
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=213634&ci
First they had hardware but no software; now they have software but no hardware. LOL.
Does this mean Duke Nuke-em is going to come out? Holy crap - someone borrow some ice from hell.
The main obstacle to getting AmigaOS ported to anything other than the AmigaOne is Amiga, Inc's licensing program. They license out the right for a board to carry the Amiga name and run AmigaOS, by virtue of a ROM "dongle" that gets integrated into the motherboard. This means that anything running AmigaOS has to be specifically designed to run AmigaOS. According to messages on the AmigaWorld.net and Amiga.org forums, the company hasn't been very good at getting back to the few people who have emailed them asking about licenses. I can't see value they see in holding such tight reigns on something with such a small market.
Then, there's the matter of developer documentation. The folks at Hyperion who are coding the OS want solid documentation for the hardware they're targeting. They don't want to just look at the Linux Mac code and just trust it works the way it should.
But that second point is largely irrelevant, as they'll never get the chance to do it given the current situation with Amiga, Inc.
Hardware vaporware. That's a new concept for an Operating System.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I miss getting video toasted! Waaah!
Im an OS junkie. Im the guy that installs AthenaOS on his computer for no good reason. I even had NeXT Step v3 running for a while. And I've done the rhapsody and most subsequent builds. I must have installed about 5 diffrent linux distros on my 266mhzPowerbook G3 - wiping the HD each time to set up the sugested swap/usr/root partitions. I even did A/UX and OS/2.
I was excited 5 years ago about the MorphOS/AmigaOS (henceforth called AO/S) when the CHRP (Common Hardware Reference Platform) was promising cheap PPC boards with Cheap PC connectivity compared to the macs available at the time.
It has to be said, when you compare A/OS to vista or any incarnation of OSX it comes up lacking. I've used workbench under UAE for some time for random OS Porn, and the new version actually looks worse than 1994 A/OS.
Unless they can find a reason why A/OS is better - and it was for multitasking/threading a while back - its not really worth perusing the project further, unless for past nostalgia, which is a perfectly valid reason from a hobbyists' perspective.
BeOS had the multimedia aspect as its selling point, and then it upped and went to the embedded side, which put the final nail in the coffin. Amiga OS doesn't see to have any funky buzzwords associated with it. Its all about buzzwords in this marketing ; consumer based society.
A lot of /.-ers complaining that Amiga is vaporware. Not yet. Amiga is still used in existing installations especially in the music/theater world for DMX/MIDI and other computer-controlled light- and music sets as well as real-time effects on lights, video and music. The fact that most controllers are hardware based and don't need any processing by the CPU is a great thing as compared to the latency even top-end video- and soundcards on PCI produce. It has a great open-source fan base and it is (still) stable as hell in all the applications I've seen and especially in real-time performances not really a task for (Windows) PC computers.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
If an operating system is released, and there's no hardware around to run it, does it make a sound?
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Guru Meditation. Amiga not found.
Amiga == feminine
Amigo == masculine
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
One of the features I most missed when I migrated (perhaps downsized) from my beloved Amiga to PCs / Microsoft Windows was the RAM disk. http://www.amigaos4.com/index.php%3Foption=content &task=view&id=9&Itemid=0&limit=1&limitstart=2.html
How come Microsoft didnt copy this feature I wonder? The ability to temporarily store files to ram (rather than having some temporary disk space that you had to remember to delete) was a great feature for me that I really missed in the early days of my PC use. For example, to copy files from one floppy disk to another in the Amiga OS you would use the ram disk, but on DOS / Windows you had to create a temp folder on hard disc, copy stuff back and forth then delete it all.
Just going from memory I think Sid was a C64 chip and Paula actually handled the sound on the Amiga. Recovering Amiga addict with an A1200/060 in the closet to prove it. Anyone know where I can find a clean 3000 to put my Phase V Cybervision64 card into?
Not to restart the Amiga/Atari ST wars, but....
It's not as nice as the Amiga stuff, but the Atari Running On Any Machine (aranym) project is continuing work here: aranym.org
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Reading this thread, it seems to me that few people are waiting for this new Amiga OS or the new Amiga hardware, but the old OS and hardware were lots of fun to hack around with, and reasonably easy to get started with. I wonder how well a revival of the old platform would fare. Perhaps an open source re-implementation of the old Amiga-OS? It seems we know how the hardware works, and lots of people have hacked it. I'm not one of them, though, so all this is just my uninformed observations.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
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Pure 6502 goodness, and raw 68000 power! Yeah!
heh. And I'm still looking forward to the new version of TOS.
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
and it's sitting under a desk, downstairs. Gonna put it, the 1802 monitor, and the 1501 hard drive back together at some point.
I've still got my Amiga 500+ (Modded) and you're never gonna take it from me, EVER!!
I don't remember Gary being in the Amiga either; of course, it's been a good few years (more than I care to remember, to be honest) since my Amiga500 was put out to pasture, so I could be wrong.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Can I ask the Slashdotters to stop with the superficial bitter remarks of how Amiga is dead and so they better not try: give them a friggin' chance.
;)
As people who are more involved in the matter at hand, they probably know better ways to capitalize their efforts than try to cater to Slashdot readers that had Amigas who put their efforts down before they've even seen the thing.
Competition is nice: there's place for Amiga. Why? Well there's place for a hundred Linux distros some of which are majorly incompatible with each other, for bsd, unix, windows, why not another one?
If it has practical applications it'll be used, never mind what you geniuses have to say about it.
There's only one thing that left bad taste in my mouth... They entire AmigaOS site is splattered with the infamous 3D demo ball... Understandable, but still, let's hope they don't rely on that ball saving the day
I RTFA and it said this was the final update to Amiga 4.0, originally release in May 2004.
The Original Amiga OS managed without a swopfile with 512k of ram shared with the graphics hardware and a rom of 512k
My A1200 had 2 meg chip and 8 meg fast ram and my original harddrive loaded with applications was 52 Meg and I got on the internet with that.
just compare those specifications with what you are using right now.
I have to wonder how much overhead is in version 4. Has it grown as bloated as windows, linux or osx.how would it be if it was ported to x86 hardware (and having the complete source code its not impossible). Probably it's ideally suited for embedded systems such as satellite and cable boxes.
When you look at what vista does encrypting and decrypting data as it moves it between the subsystems,
Amiga OS would be giving a much bigger bang for the buck.
What actually is an OS for and how much of your processor time should be spent running the Os shouldnt it be running your programs?
Isn't it embarrassing that we need so much more power today to do, what exactly? I read my email went to websites chatted with friends all in 10meg of ram doesnt seem possible does it?
It makes me wonder if the One laptop per child project shouldnt be using something as compact as Amiga OS the point of the project being to bring information to the children and on the original amiga web pages worked RTF documents worked. even spread sheets were useable in amigaos.
The Amiga was fantastic for its time the custom chips which made it all work ultimately limited its progression
I don't quite understand why people feel so smug when current hardware and operating systems are so inefficient,
but then again I liked beos too.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Gary is a GAte aRraY in the ECS chipset, used for I/O & glue logic.
Of course they can't release the hardware now. They can't release it until AmigaOS 5 has been announced, you see.
That's why I modified my bread toaster with an extra-wide slot. Unfortunately, it's not compatible with my genlock.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Gary was in the early A1000 / 500s, he was a glue chip and floppy controller.
I dont understand! Are they passionate about Amiga only in West Germany? What about the Ossies? Are they crazy about Amiga too?
As goofy at this news is, I'm actually kind of excited. I was born in 1985, and my family's first computer was introduced to our home about the same time I was- an Amiga, the first color computer on our block! My uncle John videotaped my first birthday. Unfortunately there's probably more footage of the Amiga on it than there is of me. After hearing this news, perhaps there's hope that I'll finally be able to once again play Mindwalker, the trippiest game ever.
Is it possible without too much effort to get a working VM of the hardware spec going? It would be momentous to release an OS that is targeted at a virtual machine only.... running on the latest commodity hardware around for hobbyists and only on dedicated hardware for those with a real business interest in using it commercially.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
Get a GP2X, or LaMothe's console. If you're not too fussy about documentation or support there's a number of consoles you can hack on (GBA, DS, PS1, PS2, PSP, Saturn, GC etc.)
1. Does this mean that we'll have more kickass demos again soon? 2. Most people who still own an Amiga know where it is, but they don't know how much they'll have to spend to get it working again. 3. Hey, if this means I can get that box of FFS-formatted 3.5" floppies with all my MODs on them to work...I'm all for it.
bah that is so 1980
sounds like you need the latest and greatest SAM Coupe
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_coupe
the super spectrum, with 16 whole colours and lightpen and surround sound (sort of)
and a cool looking robot logo to boot
yes I actually have one of these in the attic, sat along side my amiga and spectrum with the duff keyboard and stack of Format / Crash / Sinclair User magazines
(never try to solder to a spectrum's keyboard membrane, the contacts are as thin as paper)
when you were drawn to a game not based on the screenshot, but by how good an artist they'd hired to do the front cover on the box
they often chat to one another about the good old days, when men were men
forget CD's or your fancy smancy cheat codes you'd type a 1000 line listing over 3 pages in a magazine (in a tiny font) just for infinite lives in jet set willy
Sure, the Amiga was a machine I fondly remember drooling over, when my kids were in diapers...it had some amazing features that made the PC/XT/AT seem pretty two-dimensional by contrast.
But why would someone invest the time writing an OS for hardware that can mostly be found by accident? Hey, I love the Amiga like pancakes, but this is kinda crazy, isn't it?
I used to have friends that played Napolionics; thousands of little lead minatures. And they could tell by scarfs and coats whether a figure was from the 23rd dragoons, or the 171st bandoliers or whatever. Line and column formation-fighting ended before the civil war!
It always struck me that this kind of research, and knowledge of the former art of war would never again be used, in any way but this game. It bothers me that so much antique-polishing is going on...there's a bigger, more important search to take, and it means so much more; that'd be the search for God.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
So if I put a browser on it, and it can figure out how to save onto a USB drive, then I can surf the net without viruses? Wheee! Nothing like an UnDead OS to freak out OS targetting malware! Oh wait - are my .mod songs native now??
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Which "3d graphic capabilities" were those, exactly...?
No sig today...
I don't know, but Thank the GODS there is slashdot, so people who don't care about a subject can run down a few people who do. what would we do without them!
Wow, how depressing, there are almost no positive comments here about Workbench 4.0. Now I myself prefer Workbench 3.1 and classic 68k Amiga hardware but it is great that a new OS is comming for the Amiga. OS4 is a lightweight fast and flexible OS. If it is half of what WB 3.1 was then it will be so much less complex than Linux will ever be even though that bloated Linux install is running a fat KDE desktop manager.
My homepage: www.erkan.se
Hmmm... might want to read up a bit more - it doesn't run on Classic Amigas. If you buy an old Amiga from eBay, don't expect to run AmigaOS4 on it! (it'd be somewhat similar to expecting to run OSX on a 68k Mac)
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
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Browser: Check (although not a very good one by most people's standards until the Firefox port is finished) .mod files native: Well, as native as they were on any platform. They weren't a "native" format for Amiga, just very popular!
USB key: Check
Safety from malware: As long as it remains a niche OS with hardly any users, I'd say yep - safe as houses.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
Ummmm... huh? Booting with WB loaded to a basic intuition screen with a CLI in it was SNAPPY on every model of Amiga ever. Sluggish is hardly a word I'd ever use to describe any aspects of AmigaOS except on severely underpowered systems with every fancy add-on under the sun (which you can hardly blame the OS itself for)
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
Yep - judging MacOS, Unix and Windows from 1985 specs, I'm glad I don't use any of those platforms either!
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
Erm... no, you can't. All the PPC upgrades were 601 upgrades, and were sold for a specific subset of models. Apple stopped supporting those with MacOS 8.5; OS X has always only run on G3+ hardware. There are some hacks to do this, but it would fall back into the "hobbyist" category.
The screenshots on their website actually look pretty cool - it has an Amiga-ish feel but looks uncluttered and easy. A few of the features sound like a good idea too, like the instant-on and instant-off, multiple screens, RAM disk etc... I'd definitely play with it given the chance...
sustainable living
They license out the right for a board to carry the Amiga name and run AmigaOS, by virtue of a ROM "dongle" that gets integrated into the motherboard. This means that anything running AmigaOS has to be specifically designed to run AmigaOS.
Gah. They should port it to the PS3 and do a USB dongle if they have to. Sell it for $129 or so.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
For snoopdos-like functionality on Linux, strace is a quite similar nice application. Like snoopdos, it's pretty useful on debugging why application fails to start/does something insensible without using a real heavy-duty debugger. I'd assume that something similar would have been done for Windows.
The biggest hurdle that eventually led to downfall of Amiga was IMO the damn management that didn't quite appear to be able to make any decisions, or if they managed to decide something, it was apparently a result of consuming significant amounts of drugs (A600, the cheaper replacement for A500 that ended up being more expensive... A4000, a more limited machine than A3000+ that could probably have been out earlier as well... and so on).
Everyone who makes generalizations should be shot.
While I was using the A500, I mostly just played with it. However, with the later Amigas (which didn't have as much glamor as A1000/A500, due to the other machines starting to catch up, but they had *much* improved OS) I was enjoying the functionality provided by the OS quite a bit, or perhaps I had just starting to want more than gaming and nice demos. Datatypes, AREXX control ports provided by many applications for remote control and friends were truly nice things to have, as was the better-than-most multitasking. In many ways the OS continued to be a significant advantage longer than the custom chips.
Everyone who makes generalizations should be shot.
By Duke Nuke'em forever!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Poor Amiga.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating