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The Amiga, Circa 2010 — Dead and Loving It
Orion Blastar writes "While many Amiga users have moved on to Linux, Mac OS X, and even, gasp shock, Microsoft Windows, some of us don't want to give up so easily. There are two open source projects that are keeping the Amiga legacy alive even if Amiga Inc. seems to be deader than a doornail and not really doing much but selling old Classic Amiga games for new platforms. Like WINE, there was a project to run AmigaOS 3.1 software for Linux and other platforms, but it evolved instead into an open source operating system named Amiga Research OS, or AROS. AROS is best run inside an emulator, and while it is not a modern OS like Linux, it can be downloaded and run inside of Linux (and the downloads section has more). While it is not ready for prime time yet, it is a promising OS that is being ported to many platforms and uses the user friendly Amiga GUI we Amiga users grew up with." Read on for more.
"OK — maybe AROS is not modern enough for you, and you like Linux instead. Then you might like Anubis OS, as it is a hybrid of AROS and Linux. Much like when Apple took NextStep (based on *BSD Unix and the MACH kernel) and the classic Mac OS to make Mac OS X, this project wants to take Linux and AROS and do the same thing.
For those who want the classic Amiga, there is UAE, the Universal Amiga Emulator, which needs kickstart ROMs and boot disk images to work. You can buy them from Amiga Forever; the emulator comes with all the files you need plus other goodies.
For the classic Amiga 68K series, it is recreated via the Minimig, which uses SD cards instead of floppy disks; a must for retro computer hobbyists. AmigaOS 4.1 exists for PowerPC based SAM 440EP systems like the SAM 440Ep systems and parts sold here. (I am not associated with Amiga Kit or Amiga Inc. or any Amiga company. I am just an Amiga user since 1985 and very much into retro computing.)"
For those who want the classic Amiga, there is UAE, the Universal Amiga Emulator, which needs kickstart ROMs and boot disk images to work. You can buy them from Amiga Forever; the emulator comes with all the files you need plus other goodies.
For the classic Amiga 68K series, it is recreated via the Minimig, which uses SD cards instead of floppy disks; a must for retro computer hobbyists. AmigaOS 4.1 exists for PowerPC based SAM 440EP systems like the SAM 440Ep systems and parts sold here. (I am not associated with Amiga Kit or Amiga Inc. or any Amiga company. I am just an Amiga user since 1985 and very much into retro computing.)"
To shutdown the Amiga, you turned it off. There was no delay, no Start->Shutdown...wait possibly forever...
Sorry, you can keep this feature. I, for one, like having things like disk caching that works.
Sliding screens. Why not give each application its own full screen and allow the user to pull down the top menu to slide between these screens.
Fullscreen windows. Why slide them up and down when you can switch with Alt+Tab or Cmd+Tab. Also check out Virtual desktops, you might like them.
Simple speech device. What could be easier than "LIST > speak:" to say a directory listing?
On the Mac at least you can do this:
ls | say
Bidirectional linked list filesystem. If you lose a sector or sector link, most of the file could be rebuilt by following links from both ends towards the bad sector. (Disk doctor)
Filesystems have come a long way, check out something like btrfs
The keyboard garage. The 1985 Amiga 1000 keyboard tucked neatly under the computer where it didn't take up desk space, was hidden from children's fingers and was spill-proof.
How about tucking the slim and very flat keyboard on top of the foot of an iMac. Or, use a wireless keyboard where you can move it out of the way anywhere you like.
Tight integration of hardware with O.S. O.k. this works against everything we've been taught about abstracting everything but since the PC world has boiled down to little more than an O.S. monopoly, a hardware monopoly and a graphics card monopoly, why not eliminate some of the levels of abstraction that will never be used and make my 2Ghz PC perform every day tasks at least as well as my 7Mhz Amiga did?
I like to have modern abstractions, like a HAL, so my OS doesn't need to be written in hand-tuned assembly specifically for the hardware I'm running it on. Even in the relatively closed ecosystem that runs Mac OS X there's far more variety in hardware that the one OS image will run on than there was in Amiga land. What kinds of tasks could a 7MHz Amiga do that would cause your 2GHz PC to struggle? I can't think of anything off the top of my head. Even back in the mid 90's when Amiga fans were extolling the virtues of the custom hardware in the Amiga, on the PC side of things we were able to achieve much of the same by brute force. Copper Bars - done by palette switching very quickly in the horizontal retrace interval. Sprites - once again, done using brute force on the CPU, or with graphics card hardware. Even compiling the sprite to assembly to speed up it's operations. Using the blitter to move/copy memory quickly. Done using, once again, brute force or DMA access and done as quickly.
I'm all for nostalgia, but don't let it cloud your vision with just how far computers have done today.
Specialist Mac support for creative pros, Melbourne
The 1960's: "I was at Woodstock!"
The 1980's: "I had an Amiga!"
I heard it as marketing sushi as "cold, dead fish."
Cheers from the (long-defunct) Amiga-centric Ack! Phffft! BBS! (circa 1992)
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
The Pentium was released in 1993, barely a year before Commodore went bust. The Video Toaster was released in 1990. So you're saying that Windows is so great, it can do what the Amiga was doing three years earlier.
Ever notice how the quality of CG in Babylon 5 dramatically increased after the first season? That's because they dumped their Amigas and Vidoe Toasters in favour of more powerful Pentium PCs.
Wait - *gasp* - you're telling me that as time passes, computer technology gets better? Wow, amazing! If they'd used faster Amigas, it would've got better too. The only reason they couldn't is because Commodore were then bust - so you're saying, Windows is so great, it can compete against platforms that are no longer produced? Amazing!
We had that on PC too, along with the 3D Studio, which is the product line that went on to be used for making films like Iron Man and Avatar.
Only years later. And last time I looked, those films were released recently - so you're saying Windows is so great, it can do better than a platform from 20 years ago? Brilliant!
The thing I love is DOS fanboys trying to use the success of the PC today to justify their purchase of a slow DOS based expensive 286 PC back in the 80s or early 90s. It's hiliarious. The irony is that the ways in which PCs are better today is only because they've added what we took for granted back then on the Amiga (e.g., GUIs, multitasking, coprocessors for graphics).
On top of that, the PCs and Windows of today have nothing in common with the machines of the 80s and early 90s (other than legacy crap that's an embarrassment to keep around). Just as "Macs" today have nothing in common with original Macs. And if Commodore were still around, you can bet that any "Amigas" would be running a different OS on different hardware too. So it's particularly nonsensical to try to use later hardware to justify a purchase 20 years ago, just based on a shared trademark.
Today, I use Windows because I consider it the best today. In the 1990s, I used the Amiga. Use the best tool for the job at the time - if you can only justify your purchasing decision based on what happens to the trademark 20 years down the line, you have a problem.