Slashdot Mirror
Amiga Development Update
Anonymous Coward writes "Looks like Amiga are stepping up the pace for their next gen machines - This article explicitly states "new machines before the New Year", and an ex-vice president of Gateway, Jim Collas is heading the Amiga subsidiary. QNX/Neutrino is the OS core, but still no word on the CPU.
Check out
Amiga Corporate News for more information. "
AmigaOS for the x86-platform. Will it happen?
Once upon a time the Amiga 4000 was a bit of a dream computer for most people around me. I've never seen one, so I don't know about it's features or performance. I'm just a bit curious about how it compares to the standard PCs we have today. Is there anyone who'd like to enlighten me?
amigas are stupid, I'd rather have my PII running '98 any day over some stupid Amiga crap
The site is already slashdotted. As someone who has never experienced an Amiga, I'll enjoy watching what happens; I just want to know if an Intel-based Amiga system is forthcoming.
I surely hope not... When the 68000 and the 8086 were both new the former was clearly architecturally better, and no newer members of those families really changed that. I've kept x86s out of my home so far, and I don't intend to change that. AmigaOS for VAX on the other hand... ;-)
Amiga Announces New President and Fast-track Development Plans
SAN DIEGO, Calif. - February 26, 1999 - In a series of meetings in San Diego,
representatives of Amiga Inc. and Amiga International met to hammer out the details
of technical, strategic and marketing plans which will see the launch of a range of
new Amiga-based computers for the next millennium. The company has relocated its
headquarters to San Diego and Jim Collas will be serving as the new president of
Amiga.
"Amiga is an amazing opportunity that we must act on now or it will be lost forever,"
said Collas. "The AmigaÔ platform is ideal for Internet-ready, consumer-oriented
digital appliances of the future. The Amiga name is associated the world over with
user-friendly, low cost, powerful computing. We will take this philosophy into the next
generation, enabling products from hand held Internet appliances to high-end graphics
computers that help the user rather than frustrate them."
Collas, formerly a senior vice president for Amiga?s parent company, Gateway, will
be running Amiga as a wholly independent subsidiary operation and will integrate
Amiga Inc. and Amiga International under the new Amiga corporate structure. His
leadership will allow the company to step up a fast - track development program that
is currently underway.
Amiga is planning to launch next generation products worldwide before the New Year.
They will be announcing detailed product plans and introducing several of their
strategic partners over the summer. Products currently targeted for the initial launch
are a development system, an Internet appliance, and a low cost home computer in
the tradition of the Amiga A500 that dominated home computing in the late eighties
and early nineties. The developers system will be available with a software
development suite for low cost development on the new platform.
Jeff Schindler, in charge of product strategy for Amiga, is planning the new Amiga
product line. "The Amiga community has been doing incredible things on a platform
which hasn?t had an official update in eight years," said Schindler. "They deserve a
system which lets them show off their talents."
Amiga?s administrative center in San Diego will shortly be complemented by a
software development center under the leadership of Dr. Allan Havemose, vice
president of Engineering for Amiga, in San Jose, California. The Silicon Valley team
will be rapidly expanded over the coming months to develop revolutionary Amiga
multimedia layers over the real-time Neutrino OS core from QNX Software Systems
Ltd.
Petro Tyschtschenko will continue on as managing director of Amiga International
and will also play a critical role in guiding the current Amiga community through the
transition to the new Amiga architecture. "The new Amiga plans are a rebirth for
Amiga and an exciting journey into the future," said Tyschtschenko.
For further information on Amiga and Amiga products, please refer to www.amiga.com
and www.amiga.de.
i hope not
InTel SUXX
Suck? Stupid? Crap? Now that you've told us a little about yourself, please tell us your opinions about the Amiga.
Anyway, my 233MHz PPC604e + 50MHz MC68060 + 8MByte Permedia 2 + 128MByte RAM + 32x CDROM + SCSI 3 Ultra Wide HD Amiga that dual boots AmigaOS+WarpOS and LinuxPPC (APUS Flavour) could hardly be considered stupid, unless you mean stupidly powerful ( look where team amiga are in RC5 challenge...)
Well. . .my big bro got one four years ago, right before Commodore (may they rot in hell) went belly up. He hasn't updated it since then, except for the OS (3.1 or 3.2 or something). No extra RAM or nothin'. Same stock hard drive. So what's he been doing with it lately? 3D animation. That's right; 3D animated films and still images. True, the animations are only a few seconds longs, but--my dad got a Mac 6100/60av at around the same time, and even after I took the OS all the way to 8.1, maxed out the RAM, put in a meg of L2 cache and got a 4GB hard drive it's *still* not fit for decent 3D unless I were to blow $900+ on a G3 motherboard. I got a PII450 system instead. And my bro? He's gonna put in more RAM, an accellerator, get an animation recorder and then wait for AmigaDOS 3.5 to come out. That should bring him up to about equal with my system ;-).
Amiga's kick ass.
washuu7@yahoo.com
bits that made my system:
http://www.eagle-cp.com/
http://www.phase5.de/
http://www.blittersoft.com/
http://www.powerc.com/
http://www.white-knight.freeserve.co.uk/
check out the amiga sections of
http://www.cucug.org/
http://www.amiga.org/
for american dealers
How much ? Not cheap - but it's been spread out over the years...
N.B. WarpOS != OS2/Warp
It's a PPC microkernel that runs on the PPC side while the AmigaOS 3.1 runs on the MC68k side.
The "Classic" Amiga* architecture has been getting weirder and weirder in the absence of any governing body... asymmetric multiprocessing that just kindof grew...
check out
http://www.haage-partner.com/
*"Classic" Amiga == what amiga Inc. call the old amiga architecture, since their new Amiga will have about as much in common with the amiga as the PC does...( Only hopefully much better than the PC)
QNX, on their web site, offers for download their Voyager web browser. The OS and browser fits on a 3.5 floppy.
Boot it and cruise a bit with it. It's just amazing how much they've done with such little code, and the interface is attractive.
Now if the new Amiga comes on a low wattage chip, ala the Netwinder promise, I think they could have a hot seller.
Not really. The OS is in ROM. But that doesn't mean you have to use it. You can still run the Linux port.
I, too wish QNX was open source - It looks like it is where the HURD is headed. Howver, one thing to remember is that it is the kernel that is closed source - device drivers written by third parties need not be, they don't run in kernel space, and the standard dev tools for Neutrino are GNU ( not for older QNX OSes though, they use Watcom...). The OS is POSIX, so porting is pretty easy, too - except that QNX has that Photon MicroGUI windowing system, which has a somewhat different API to x-windows... That's not to say x-windows isn't available for QNX - it is, the QNX people just consider it too big for embedded applications...
http://www.qnx.com
http://www.amiga.com
What kind of architecture does it have? OS(es)? What hardware does it support? Apps? Was it popular some time ago?
I've got no clue. Can somebody please enlighten me?
Why are they going for QNX while there is the perfect multimedia OS around - BeOS ? A lot of former Amiga fans are using BeOS now... QNX is not designed for a consumer/media-oriented computer.
While the Amiga was big by 80's standards, we're not talking the numbers of computers shipped today. Of all the hobbyist systems on the market in the 80's, the Amiga survived the longest.
The corps bought PCs (since they were made bu IBM) and the rest of us bought Amigas, Ataris and the likes. The PC wasn't all that fun for hobbyists and gamers those days.
However, the Big Bucks was behind the PC, and when development really got going... we all know what happened. Even a Commodore with great management couldn't have saved the Amiga as we know it (custom chips, own OS, etc). They would have needed to sell lots more computers to fund that kind of development.
We don't need to be too sad about it. The Amiga was a good computer, but the people are what made it great. Most of us are still around, but now using Linux or FreeBSD. That's what counts.
That said, I still might get one of those new Amigas provided a) they ever actually are produced and b) they actually are as good as Amiga Inc claim they will be. Good luck to them.
probably more than $20,000.
Amiga m68k has been off the market for a long time, but components cost an extreme premium.
Well, not that much in common really. Even the current Mach "microkernel" (which appeared ten years after the first _claim_ that Mach was a microkernel) isn't modular enough for my tastes, and its performance is lousy. QNX, by contrast, is very highly modular and makes pretty effective use of the hardware it runs on.
Mach is typical academic research-project junk; QNX was created to do real-world work, by people who understood real-world needs and constraints. The difference in heritage is reflected in the results.
Because BeOS is far from perfect, and is not all that easily portable across CPUs (I know they moved from PPC to Intel - but that was basically a ground up rewrite). It is an open secret that the original OS partner was actually BeOS, but QNX was chosen instead. BeOS architecture is evolutionary ( yes, from the original AmigaOS - It has an awful lot in common with it...), rather than revolutionary...
You do get the kernel sources with QNX (atleast 4.2x) Its isnt much considering its a microkernel.
I am running the demo you can download for free at www.qnx.com, and it's pretty fucking fast. Runs off of a floppy, loaded into ram. One of the more easy OSes I have used. Obviously, this version is limited, but I am still impressed, having used macs for 10 years and PC's for 12 and a TI-99/4A for about 4 (Parsec Speech Synthesis "Press fire to begin. Great Shot! Excellent Shot!", etc. etc...
Anyway, Amiga won't be doing the wrong thing by choosing QNX to make ther kernel shit. these people know what they are doing. Although I like the BeOS as much as anyone...
Parsec was one of the coolest games ever made, and the speech synthesizer on the TI-99/4A rocked! It was so cool, refueling and shit, and Zork was pretty cool too, and MunchMan, and all that other shit.
BeOS is very portable-you just have to pick yourself up and actually do it. I think 90% is portable if I'm not mistaken. Anyway, isn't the whole point of the Amiga is that the OS is tied to the hardware?
'This article explicitly states "new machines before the New Year"'
ROTFL! They've been saying that since '95 now, and I'm still wondering which year they're talking about...
No one posting here so far has offered a detailed criticism of QNX. Please shut your traps until you have something worthwhile to say.
QNX has been around a long time - it has paying customers - that is what keeps a product going, not pimply faced twits pouring over C for Dummies with the linux kernel source in emacs in front of them.
Is there any accuracy to the reports that the next generation of Amigas would be designed to take advantage of the Motorola G3 processor? If this is so, how is it that Amiga can comfortably make such plans given BeOS's claims that Apple has prevented them from doing the same thing?
and how many architectures does QNX support? I count exactly one: Intel. which clears up the issue of what CPUs these new amiga's will have as well.
It has been made known over and over again that there will be a "bridge" version that runs on x86 to allow developers to get started on making programs, etc for the Amiga. The Amiga OS 4 will require special hardware (like the original Amigas) so a full blown version of Amiga OS 4 might not even be possible. A striped down version without all the features might be available but then why bother?
Well the orignal Amigas were as different from a PC as any other system. Sure it used 680x0 cpu's but once you add in Agnus, Denise and all the custom chips it was quite a different architecture altogether. In most respects it was quite revolutionary for it's time. You could do full blown video editing for a TV station on an Amiga before the PC world ever had a term for multimedia let alone be able to do anything close to it. It was fast and *very* efficient. I remember when I first had to upgrade from 512k to 1MB RAM so I could play SIM City but even at 512k there were tons of awesome games with graphics that blew away anything else at the time (either on PCs or game machines). When I got my A1200 with a 65MB HD I had a dozen or so games, internet software (including a web browser (Mosaic)), word processor, paint program, numerous misc utilities and tons of music files, etc all on it with room to spare. The OS itself including workbench (it's GUI) took less than 300k of RAM when it was loaded. Neither Winbloze or X can claim anything close.
I've waited and waited for a home computer that had as much panache and ability to inspire the home user as much as the Amiga did. Even when it crashed, it was cool with the Hollywood-esque Guru Meditation Error, the feel of which was like the little gremlin that was running things pulled down the screen and let you know there was a problem.
Are we at the tail end of the MS reign? Are we about to experience a rennaisance of the OS? Are things going to fragment like crazy in the next few years as BeOS, Linux, and (hopefully) AmigaOS begin to compete for our attention and capture market share?
I don't think ibrowse and amozilla would be happy if that's the case
No one has talked much about the MMC that will supposedly be running this thing. Since the dev. boxes are x86, that suggests that the new chip will at least be backwards compatible with x86, which suggests Transmeta or some other chip which will (again, pure speculaton on my part) be able to emulate older chips including possibly both x86 and 68k chips.
If the new Amiga OS is simply another x86 OS, then there is not much point in it with BeOS and Linux already on the scene. But if it is tied into a revolutionary chip (about which, obviously, we will not hear much about until they are ready to launch), and if this chip offers an upgrade path for the existing x86 architecture, then it would seem that Amiga is gambling on unseating the existing Wintel dual monopoly without forcing people to abandon their legacy software and hardware all at once.
I say, more power to them if they can do it, but I'll believe it when I see it. Anyway, what with Linux and Be and the revived Apple and this new Amiga thing the next few years could be rather interesting, and hopefully unpleasant for Microsoft and Intel.
My a500 is still useful -
plug in a null modem cable, make a floppy that boots straight into TERM, and you've got yourself a great, full featured serial terminal for when some pesky SVGALib stuff takes down your display.
The A4000 was OK... it was better than any PC available
at the time, but (as you may or may not know) that was a 486DX/33
The 68060 processor (last in the M68K series) at 50Mhz
was approx. the equivalent of a P100;
What really made the Amiga shine was the OS's small
footprint; it runs (and multitasks!) with only 2MB RAM;
no need for swap.
Comparing to the PC's of today, it's pretty low-horsepower;
I read on the QNX website that there was also support for processors like PowerPC.
This is not to say there is not more support for x86 for the port to PowerPC is only for embedded processors, dunno.
I also hear there is ports to other architectures than x86 and PowerPC and they are also embedded processors...
IBM develops PowerPC these days. PowerPC G3 was not produced by Motorola only...
Yes BeOS is far from perfect, but no it wasn't anywhere near a ground-up rewrite. It doesn't really matter since Gateway will be selling Intel based machines - they aren't going to move into an entirely new hardware arena immediately.
... I would guess they are basically ramping up to provide a development platform for small devices that really will run on other CPUs that Gateway hasn't really figured out yet.
QNX is much more "evolutionary" than Be's OS - not thats really a bad thing. The big, and most important difference, is that QNX doesn't sell a desktop OS. Gateway needed something they could extensively customize and easily add there own extensions to; if they had gone with Be they would have been throwing out all of Be's top layers and rewriting them - a total waste of effort. With QNX they get kernel and all the low level stuff and get to write the higher level stuff so they can call it the new Amiga.
I would suspect that they really _aren't_ looking to do much on the desktop level. QNX is a great realtime OS, but its simply not designed for the same things that the original Amiga was (or Be is). Its a great OS for embedded systems, set top boxes and small devices though
- N
I just don't get it. *How* could use a computer about as fast as a 386 to edit graphics??? You need LOTS of RAM and LOTS of megaflops to do that. Unless of course you actually means something like a paint program - but I could do that on my 386. How could you use 65 meg HD to store graphics and music??? They just wouldn't fit. Unless by music you actually mean mods / mids - but hey, my 386 had 100 Mb HD, enough to store lots of "music". And finally, how can you squeeze a GUI in 300k??? It just doesn't make sence. I think you are exagurating. And finally, how much did your A1200 cost? My 386sx25 with 2 Mb RAM, 100 Mb HD was $1050 (just over 1000, not sure about the exact number). Oh, and my PC had Windows 3.1 on it and (eventually) Word 6.0. Of course using Word on this system was a pain ;-) (took about 2 minutes to just load...) but it was a very good word processor. But hey - there were lots of other editors, both GUI and non-GUI. I wouldn't call them word processors though. Finally, there were *tons* of games for PCs. Of course Doom didn't run on my system :-( but I did play Wolfenstein, Civilization, Prince of Persia, Golden Axe, +lots of other awesome games. Did you have anything like it on your Amiga?
Oh, btw, was AmigaDOS 32 bit? Was it Unix-like?
> Your QNX doesn't have thousands of deveopers for it!
/dev/serial1 may be local, /dev/serial2 may be on a computer on the other side of the world.. and guess what? It doesnt matter. All taken care of for you (the programmer) by a very fast and effient kernel. All QNX machines (can) work together as one gigantic parallel processing system when connected in a network.
Last time I checked, QNX had many thousands of developers; all working on fault-tolerant real time control for embedded systems. It's a heckuva platform to code for; The philosopy of the OS is what distributed processing should be! (Networking is BELOW memory management in the layers; hence a malloc() could actually return a pointer to ram space ON ANOTHER MACHINE! Completely abstracted memory/devices/etc.
Sheer poetry!
> By the way, what the fuck are idiots like you doing
> here on a LinuX site!
Err, I use AmigaOS, BeOS, and Solaris. Since when did this site become Linux only? Twat.
AC #7133925
I just don't get it. *How* could use a computer about as fast as a 386 to edit graphics??? You need LOTS of RAM and LOTS of megaflops to do that.
:)
:-( but I did play Wolfenstein, Civilization, Prince of Persia, Golden Axe, +lots of other awesome games. Did you have anything like it on your Amiga?
Err. Obviously you originated your computing experience on a PC. The Amiga 1000 had Genlocking capabilities as it's video bus could be sybncronized DIRECTLY with NTSC or PAL video. (Graphics on top of live backgounds aka. character generation etc..). It also had Video Capture devices, could move LARGE amounts of screen data around very quickly (Full hardware Blitter.. remember this is all circa 1985!), had 4 co-processors for DMA, I/O, Sound, and Gfx; including a Split bus system design which let the co-processors work on one area of system ram, while the CPU is reading/writing to another area of system Ram. (Hah! try that on your Pentium II PC system)
Unless of course you actually means something like a paint program - but I could do that on my 386.
And directly output it to VHS tape?
How could you use 65 meg HD to store graphics and music??? They just wouldn't fit.
Err, pseudo-12 bit per pixel color (only 6 bits used!) at 640x400. Do the math. You can store more than 350 high quality images with no compression like that. Add rubn length encoding, etc.. and you can put craplocads more. I actually saw 7 minutes of "Star Wars" being played back REAL TIME from a STANDARD A2000 (68000 @ 7.14 Mhz) at 30 fps, with sound! (BTW, 4 channel stereo 8 bit quality sound was also standard on the system!)
And finally, how can you squeeze a GUI in 300k??? It just doesn't make sence. I think you are exagurating.
Err, Nope. That is not an eggsaduration. The original ROM (1.0 to 1.3) was 256k. That gave you a Full GUI, Full pre-emptive multitasking kernel, nice shell, screen, audio, SCSI, plus all the I/O subsystems. And the machine POSTed in less than 2 seconds. From HD, I could be up and running in less than 10. (heh, reminds me of BeOS).
And finally, how much did your A1200 cost? My 386sx25 with 2 Mb RAM, 100 Mb HD was $1050
About $600.
Finally, there were *tons* of games for PCs. Of course Doom didn't run on my system
Name one game from 1985 to 1990 which DIDN'T come out for Amiga FIRST, and then get ported to PC!
4 off the top of my head:
Sim City
Populous
Falcon
Test Drive
Oh, btw, was AmigaDOS 32 bit? Was it Unix-like?
Of course. Full 32 bit pointers; an orthangonal processor instruction set with a flat (non-segmented, no 640k bullshit here!) memory model. For more info on AmigaOS, try http://www.amiga.de/gb/Infos/OS.html
AC #7133925
(chrisk@distributel.ca)
Retard.
Do you lack understanding or are you just a Mac bigot? The motherboard has to be well documented for an OS to be designed to run on it. Apple does provide the documentation for their motherboards to any other party as they are scared of competition.
Amiga might use the G3 chip, and if so they'll have their own motherboard. As the G3 is actually IBM's baby it's well documented and anybody can use it to build systems without asking the losers at Apple. If they actually use PPC, then everybody will see how fast the G3 could be (Linux PPC is rumored to be sluggish as it's still in early development, and IBM does not use G3s in their RS/6000 series)
On the Amiga, the CPU was not the sole dictator chip of everything the OS did. There was a programmable graphics coprocessor and blitter, a disk I/O chip, a sound chip - In short, the design philosphy was "a chip for a particular task". The CPU didn't have to be such a powerhouse for a given level of tangible power. You don't need lots of RAM and MegaFLOPS to edit graphics, unless you're on a PC - you just need custom chips.
;get library name
;test result for success
Unfortunately ( a bit like the PPC) people assumed a higher MHz-rated CPU was more powerful - however the 680x0 series architecture was superior to the x86, despite having a lower clock speed...
The operating system really was that small. It used extensive linked lists, semaphores,taglists, and reentrant shared libraries. Amiga coders had a habit of refining their code down to the last bit(and MC68000 amiga macro assmbler was a quite pleasant programming environment compared to x86 - plenty of high level macros that made for readable code
eg.
move.l intuition_name,a1
move.l #0,d0 ; any version will do
CALLSYS OpenLibrary,SysBase
move.l d0,_IntuitionBase
beq EXIT
Etc. Etc. I haven't even gone into the STRUCT macro, which provided C structures... )
Base A1200 were around $800, I think.
There were thousands of games on the Amiga platform. For years, it was also the platform of choice for game development, and some of the most original games originated on the Amiga eg. Lemmings, Worms, Populous, and countless others.
( Yes, they came out on the PeeCee too - they originated on the Amiga.)
AmigaDOS was 32bit. In 1986. Ha. Even when running on a 68000, which had a 16-bit data bus, the AmigaOS (+AmigaDOS) was 32-bit (the 68000's internal architecture was 32 bit, 16 different registers when Intel were still faffing with 16 bit, 4 different registers)
One thing to note, is that there was a lot of separation between AmigaDOS and AmigaOS. They were different entities, and, somewhat iritatingly, had different calling conventions. (AmigaDOS was descended from Cambridge TriPos, which was written in BCPL, whereas most of the OS was written in C or M68000 macro assembler, which used C calling conventions anyway, 'cause it was cool)
Amiga OS was multimedia before people had invented the term ( one of the Amiga patents is "simultaneous audio and video from cdrom" - needless to say, they never enforced it - in fact, Amiga had shitloads of cool patents which Commodore were either too dumb to enforce, or, worse, happily licenced to MicroSoft for a quick buck (there use to be an acknowledgement of this buried deep in Windows somewhere, but since CBM went bust, they don't bother anymore)
It was also object oriented way ahead of its time, via the DoMethod() call
AmigaOS was single-user (unless you installed MuFS), with no virtual memory as standard ( although there were quite reliable hacks to tack it on later), and no memory protection. It had message passing by reference (for speed, but, of course, that played hell with any hypothetical memory protection schemes). It also had a dialect of REXX, ARexx for system-wide interprocess communication and scripting. It became much more unix like when the ixemul.library and ADE suite were released - these were a complete port of the GNU tools+an X server to the Amiga.
BeOS built upon lots of AmigaOS features, and is, in fact, much closer to the AmigaOS than anything else. They used to acknowledge this ungrudgingly, but since they've been getting more attention, have kept it quiet.
amiga of the 1980s probably had different
people than amiga of the 1990s...
is it still amiga?
is apple still even apple?
what makes a company what it is?
what has always been the same about ibm?
QNX is completely POSIX layer compatible. It'll run on linux too, but QNX is for the corporate world who don't like Linux because of the chaotic zealousness of the OS. (not helped either by twats like yourself).
Here's a mirror....
AC #7133925
Ooh, how intelligent. You must be a tall, handsome super programmer? Now, go look into mirror. No, do not pull in you belly. Ugly, aren't you?
Err. Nope. 25, 6 Ft tall. Good lookin'. Programming since I was 10, wrote a microkernel by 21. Currently write fault tolerant SONET and ATM Network control systems for the largest CLEC. Retiring by age 30. Had more women than your IQ (and you strike me as a reasonably intelligent person!)
If QNX is so good, why is it so that Linux has 10 million users, while QNX is limited to a niche market? Whatever its quality - it will never succeed, and never will be a reliable future investment. If you need your code to run now, on one particular system, fine. Want to be sure it compiles and runs 15 years from now. Use non-proprietory system.
QNX is completely POSIX layer compatible. It'll run on linux too, but QNX is for the corporate world who don't like Linux because of the chaotic zealousness of the OS. (not helped either by twats like yourself).
Here's a mirror....
AC #7133925
Whats the matter, getting scared?
The Amiga was introduced in 1985 at a grand marketing
event. The system used was the Amiga 1000 (later called
the Maserati of Computers for its cool design and
blinding speed) with Andy Warhol demoing the graphic
capabilities of a "lean mean multitasking OS".
Warhol left the computer press slackjawed by grabbing
video frames in real time from a video camera focused on
Debbie Harry (lead singer for 'BLONDIE'), editing
the images in real time with a small paint program that
grew up to be Deluxe Paint and keying the result over
live video. The A1000 ran at 7.16 Mz and had 512K of
ram.
Later generations of Amigas in combination with the
NewTek VideoToaster created and dominated the field
of DeskTop Video.
VideoToasters equipted Amigas were used to model
and animate "pencil test" proof of concepts for
many scenes of the movie "Jurassic Park" before the
final scenes were committed to the very expensive
Silicon Graphics workstations. Amigas have been used
on many movies and television shows - Robocop, Babylon 5
James Bond, StarTrek, Jay Leno's Late Night, etc. etc.
VideoToasters became and remain the workhorse of many
Community Access Television systems.
The Amiga does not require what PC or Macs need to do
broadcast quality video because the OS is incredably
efficient. It is also wonderfully stable. I set up a
system for public announcements at a local community
access television sytem 8 years ago. That system has
run on air 24 hours a day 365 day a year and is running as I write
this. It has never had a crash that required the
system software to be reinstalled.
There is an AmigaOS based Computer system that is
disguised as a dedicated Non-Linear Editing System
currently selling like hotcakes. Check out the
video magazines for adds / reviews of The CASABLANCA
by Draco. There is no mention of the Amiga there at
all but it runs any Amiga Software that does not
bang the hardware of the Custom Chips. The Draco
runs AmigaOS 3.1 but does not have the (out of
production) chip set. It runs with either a 25 Mhz
68040 or 50 Mhz 68060 with 16 Meg ram and a
removable / replaceble HD from 4 to 18 Gig.
Read about it at www.draco-casablanca.com
hey where can c=64 's be had at a fair price?
I thought real time meant that you have a guaranteed response time to a certain event. By that I mean that if something takes maximum 6 ms it always takes maximum 6 ms.
Aminet still is the single biggest archive that
serves a single machine. ie. TuCows may be bigger,
but Aminet is larger than TuCows' PC repository!
Finally, there were *tons* of games for PCs. Of course Doom didn't run on my system :-( but I did play Wolfenstein, Civilization, Prince of Persia, Golden Axe, +lots of other awesome games. Did you have anything like it on your Amiga?
:) Ooh, it rocked!!!!! :)
The very first game I bought for my Amiga back in the early 90s was Civilization.
Oh dear, it's uninformed comments like this that show how much Windows has rotted people's brains. You can have your P2 running 98 and hopefully I'll have my new Amiga doing true multi-tasking. But let's face it, you still probably don't know what that is. And, no, it's not having more than one window on screen with only one actually doing something......
Eh.. Amiga500, do you really think that the AMIGAs we are talking about
are a500's??
If you say that AMIGA suxx on the basis of your experience
with an Amiga 500, it would be the same thing that
I said PC suxx on the basis of my experience of
MS-DOS on a 286! You did turn on the a500 right??
On a totally different note: The A500 does things
better and more efficient than you could ever dream of..
I laugh my ass off when I see in a storewindow or somewhere else
a P-II running windows, and the blankerscroll says:
The powerful Intel Pentium II processor. And the scrolling jerks!!!!
HAHAHAHA. I have seen A500 doing that much better.
And have you also seen the inside buildup of instruction sets
in the INTEL processor line vs. the MOTOROLA line of processors?
If you have then we can talk about design flaws. The INTEL
processors are _VERY_ messy!!! And also on hardware design:
The Motorola range of processors from 68000 and all the way upto G4
has built in thermometres to prevent the processor from burning up.
I heard something about Pentium burning...
The crappy unstable OS is more stable and uncrappy (is that even a word?)
than you would care to know. Again you must remember that the
AMIGA is using an OS from 1992. Can you be on the net, use 3d hardware,
e-mail, run a net server, and design Hollywood quality GFX on
windows 3.11??? If you can then, and only then, will I admit that AMIGA is crap.
But before, that you sit in your hole and not come out before
the AMIGA NG is here!!!!!
Posted by leonppc (nick on IRC)
You can do that directory thing in zsh, the emacs of shells...
I won't go in to detail because the people before me answered most of those questions just fine. I would point out though that by music I did mean mods (I am talking cool 4/8 track mods made with some of the best tracker programs, like Octamed (which is now available for the PC). As for editing graphics on a little computer like the Amiga why don't you ask the special effects people of Star Trek and B5 or Seaquest? In Seaquest for example, all the underwater schots were really rendered from a bunch of Amigas working in parellel. I think the same is true for all the B5 space scenes... As for games, as has been mentioned the Amiga had all the popular games and more. I am sure it had more games than the PC during the late 80s and maybe even early 90s. The Amiga was designed as a computer for great games (which had the side result of being good for the aforementioned multimedia uses). One of the classics in the late 80s, Shadow of the Beast. The graphics and *smooth* as ice scrolling on that that game had I never saw until the equivalent of the SNES maybe. As for a word processor, well MS makes everything bloated and slow. The word processor I used (the name I can't remember) loaded in a few seconds and while it didn't have all those fancy true type fonts (but who needs them for school papers?) it had better grammer and spelling checker than Word has even today (not that that is hard), it would even tell me all the statistics and reading level of the paper. Civ, Prince of Persia and Golden Axe I all had on my Amiga before they were out on the PC. Not to mention the Lucasfilm (later LucasArts) games. The Secret of Monkey Island on the PC *sucks* compared to the Amiga version. I would load the that game just to listen to the music sometimes. I heard the midi music on the PC version and about choked... Commadore management and marketing (did they HAVE a marketing dept?) were a bunch of morons. The engineers though were brilliantly ahead of their time and worked to create an Architectural masterpiece that the PC manufacturers still don't grasp today. I'd love to see an open standards architecture using the technology we had today and have Linux run on it and make use of it. *THAT* would be one heck of a dream machine... oh well, another great technology squashed by MS and Intel who between the two of them have put the computer industry back at least 20 years from where it could and should be...
Dear Amiga Inc.,
Aside from your (Havemose's) insane plan to drop API compatibility, and your laughable expectations that users are happy to buy an Amiga-on-a-card to insert into their Amiga NG, just to run their thousands of existing Amiga programs, (inhale) I have but one question:
Why QNX intead of Linux? I'm not anti-QNX at all. I just think that since Linux is FREE, is open source, has huge numbers of clever people always improving it, and has been getting a LOT of positive PR, I have to wonder why QNX was chosen over Linux. Just curious.
I run both Neutrino and QNX at home. I'm convinced that it's one of the OS market's best kept secrets, and the only reason it hasn't had a much bigger presence is the exclusive focus QNX corp has on embedded systems.
Neutrino can be thought of as a complete redesign, next generation of QNX, I believe.
Both run on x86, and a range of PPC and MIPS chips. Neutrino is entirely threaded. Drivers, the file system, networking, and process management are all just user programs. The kernel itself can be thought of as a library that does messge passing and memory management. It's the closest thing I've ever seen to zero-overhead software, and I've never seen code run faster.
Down sides: Neutrino is in beta and there are still a number of major bugs and issues they need to work out. I'm happy that Amiga will be needing them fixed as badly as I do.
x86 - 386, i386 EX,
Am386SE/DE,
AMD ÉlanSC400/410, 486,
Cyrix MediaGX, Pentium,
Pentium Pro, Pentium II
PowerPC - 401, 403, 603e,
MPC860, MPC821, MPC823
MIPS - R4000, R5000,
NEC VR4300/4102/4111
http://www.qnx.com/products/os/neutrino.html
Upcoming Cyrix WebPAD is also running on QNX. QNX have one of the cleanest microkernel OS design, so called second generation microkernels. Small kernel and code size allows for very easy developement. OS itself is real-time design and extremelly stable. For Cyrix WebPAD see: http://www.cyrix.com/html/emerging/webpad/wp_faq.h tm
The same can easily be said of the orig. IBM PC XT, running
any variation of MS-Dos 3. An A3000, A4000 or A1200 running
Amigo Dos 3.0 or 3.1 is MUCH improved over an A500. My A3000
with 68060 runs circles over the 133 mhz Compac DeskPro that
use at work, especially in stability.
> How did you run it? Well you kickstarted the > hardware with one floppy, and then inserted the > second with Workbench.
:)
Actually, you only had to do this on the Amiga 1000 and 3000. All other models kickstarted automatically and only required you to insert the Workbench disk. Or there was this really cool thing called a "recoverable RAM disk" which allowed you to copy Workbench to RAM and reboot nearly instantaneously
QNX is better.
I've worked with QNX/Neutrino at my job for over a year now, using it with an embedded system. We started with the basic kernel and worked our way up from there. I wrote the graphics system and a GUI library (widgets and stuff for an ATM-style interface) and we ended with a product based on our own board, etc. The OS is incredible. The QNX guys are great to work with. Even if the Amiga "flops" again their OS is gonna be beautiful :^)
As for the x86/non-x86 thing, you are all speculating and wrong =P =). We were forced to develop under NT (boss' perrogative) and they dropped the beta of the Neutrino-NT cross-devel package because they were changing to MetroWerks Codewarrior. This move was specifically to support more platforms, including PowerPC. An article from the president of QNX appeared shortly thereafter in a trade mag saying as much. I think they were also saying something about supporting other archs like MIPS eventually (that's purely unsupportable in my memory, just something I vaguely remember the article saying..)
I can't tell you how many times I've cursed about it being proprietary, though, after working with Linux. Yick. It's beautiful to be able to say that we are shipping a product based on the beta version of theirs (since we were kind of dropped after we didn't pick up the Neutrino-QNX environment) but it would be nice to be able to work with source too.
Oh, and did I mention, it's licensed per unit, like any other OS...?
If the new Amigas can emulate an x86 and run my existing software (DOS, Win95, BeOS, Linux) that I run on my K5-133, and it has the programmable instruction set that Transmeta and Teragen's CPUs are supposed to have, I will definitely buy one.
:-(. But everything I have read indicates the people watching had no trouble believing that the chip was capable of that sort of speed...
This chip sounds like it will be very nice from what I have heard... 2 - 10 x faster than a PII-300 (depending on what you're doing... this amount of variation in speed suggests it might have SIMD capabilities like Motorola's AltiVec) and 400 million pixels/sec high-quality 3D (about 4.5 x faster than a Voodoo 2).
Apparently those were the specs for the prototype shown at World of Amiga last year... unfortunately I wasn't there
The important questions are: will it be quite so hot by the end of this year? Will it be able to increase in speed to keep up with the competition? (AInc have said they know of 2 or 3 other chips that might be delivering the same performance by the end of this year...)
QNX is efficient. It can fit on a single floppy disk including a GUI and web browser (take a look at the downloadable demo!). Just try and do that with Linux. This is the sort of efficiency the Amiga has and AInc want the AmigaNG to continue that tradition.
I don't know... I use BeOS and love it. I would be using it right now if I was at home, but I'm at college and they only have Windoze here. BeOS is very efficient and has a really nice GUI and API. But I have seen the downloadable demo of QNX and I think that if AInc can combine the QNX kernel and Photon GUI with Amiga-like multimedia capabilities, they could produce a *very* nice OS. It could certainly challenge BeOS on the same hardware for performance and size, but I don't know whether the interface will be quite as good. I'll certainly want to take a look at it when it comes out.
:-(.
And a bit of serious competition for BeOS would probably be a Good Thing(TM).
I definitely want to try and get to World of Amiga this year and take a look for myself if AInc is showing anything. Unfortunately WOA is right in the middle of when I usually have exams
The word processor sounds exactly like "Excellence" which I still use.
It even has a read aloud function, very robotic but but amazingly useful for verbal presentations, miss a word or just use the wrong word and it stands out, no spell checker will do this.
As far as true type font's, that's the only time I transfer the text to another word processor.
Amiga IS making a profit, from liscencing of "classic" computer systems manufacturers and merchandise.
AND
If Gateway goes under, a separate and profitable Amiga company would live on with it's focus on "Amiga".
u asshole!
.....
hahhaha bad hardware ha more stable than fucking pc shits... unstableOS hah = windokz-nt
modern hardware suplied by iNtel hahha your mom can suply better
233MHz PPC604e + 50MHz MC68060
;-)
about 1849.00 DM (http://www.phase5.de/amiga/cybppce.html)
8MByte Permedia 2
about 399.00 DM
(http://www.phase5.de/amiga/cvppce.html)
128MByte RAM + 32x CDROM
These are standard PC-stuff, memory is 72pin SIMM
32-bit and 36-bit goes as well.
CDROM is IDE.
SCSI 3 Ultra Wide HD
This is also standard hardware.
Amiga that dual boots AmigaOS+WarpOS and LinuxPPC (APUS Flavour)
(LinuxPPC is free.
Amiga 4000
about $1000-$2000 I have no accurate prices.
I don't know even anyone selling brand new amigas.
~$2000 for a single license development seat.
HOWEVER... Amiga's licensing Nto *BULK* in a very *BIG* way. Wouldn't be surprised if QNX is charging them only a few dollars per seat. Thus, nothing to worry about for end users.
QNX/Nto already supports PPC out of the box. All Amiga has to do is recompile. What's better yet is that the G4 (Altivec) is going to be a bigtime performer in the Real-Time industry, so guess who will be optimizing their microkernel OS for the G4? Guess what that means for OS5?
Go buy yourself a clue before speaking next time.
"it will never succeed, and never will be a reliable future investment."
Are you telling me the operating system used to control the credit card readers on the quick pay gas pumps is not a reliable investment? Seems funny how all of the gas stations are slowly converting. And that's just one of the many applications using QNX, perhaps you should do a little research about what you're talking about before speaking.
AOS5, as all the Amiga OS's previous to it is aimed at the nerd
:)
market.
Just like Linux.
Ahhh! So you manage to make Windows 98 look good by comapring it to
an OS from 1987.
Didn't dare take on Amiga OS 3.0 or 3.1, did you? Lets face it,
you're running the crappy unstable OS with badly designed hardware,
not me.
1) All us Amy users are here because this site is running a forum
about the Amiga. Why are you, who so obviously are not interested in
the Amiga, bothering to read a series of messages so obviously
intended for Amiga users?
Other people may be reading these because they want to learn. You are
clearly incapable of learning. It is, after all, YOU who is the
idiot, though I doubt you ever get the opportunity to f***.
And, of course, you'd WANT to be an Anonymous Coward with an attitude
like yours.
BTW I'm using Anonymous Coward because I'm waiting for my password to
be e-mailed to me. My name is Ian Warnest.
The vast majority of linux users I've encountered have been relatively
intelligent people, and3 tend to only be aggressive toward Microsoft
(which is as it should be). YOU should get a life.
I don't care what those brainwashed Wintel zombies think about Amiga. Amiga (along with Apple) is the best computer outthere. The first computer I ever touched was my father's new Amiga 1000 a while back. I used that computer for at least 5 years and did everything from games to word processing. I can say only one thing, that computer was WAY ahead of its time. I loved it, and even after my father bought a NEW 486 and later on a Pentium, I still used the Amiga for its wonderful programs. My friends and I would spend hours at a time playing the INCREDIBLE games on i, even though there was a Pentium and Super Nintendo downstairs gathering dust. I have had nothing put good things to say about it. Unfortunately my father eventually sold the Amiga 1000. However, the memories live on. Now I unwillingly use a wintel machine that I built. I am waiting for the day to switch with antisipation!
Tell me, when I install linux in my PC, will I cease to be able to
..
carry on a discussion without hiding my ignorance behind personal
insults?
I mean, like you
>If QNX is so good, why is it so that Linux has >10 million users, while QNX is limited to a >niche market?
Your point is? If the quality of a product was determined by number of users then Micro$haft's Wintendo 95/98 would be the clear winner. 10 million Linux users is nothing compared to the Windows userbase.
Sounds like maybe you should jump ship. Bill Gates awaits you.
Cause QNX is real-time OS. And AmigaOS 1.0 and up weren't true real-time OSes, but Commodore had some specification on 250 milisecond max time to finish the operation, so they ran almost as real-time. QNX is stable and small...
One thing about Amiga everybody forgets nowadays is that it was a first multimedia machine (even though they haven't used 'multimedia' as a word then) that ever came out, and with coming of Amiga 2000 it was a first truly Plug 'n' Play (even though it's called Autoconfig on amiga) machine. And Autoconfig works on Amigas, and are not Plug 'n' Pray as some other OSes are known to be...
Go check out www.compsoc.net/ericshwartz and www.coax.net/people/erics and find out more about the Amiga feeling from one great cartoonist...
No offense but I think we all know what dev boxes are for, and I think we know that the new Amiga OS won't run non Amiga applications (again, duh) but the wild speculation here is regards to the CPU and what it can do, and there have been some news about new media chips that can emulate other chips, plus the whole Transmeta thing, so we were just wildly speculating based on bits and pieces of information that of course could be completely worthless. Why not? It passes the time. And it would be nice if the new Amiga platform could be more than just another niche player, of which there are plenty already. If these new chips can do emulation of older chips than this is hardly an insignifcant avenue for the future upgrade path, and hence our wild and uninformed speculation. If the new Amiga is just another closed, proprietary box completely cut off from non-Amiga platforms than I have to wonder why Gateway is wasting their money. Again, pure speculation. Don't get bent out of shape.
That reminds me of a comic strip I saw in a magazine in the
mid-eighties that was intended to convince people that computers
weren't going to get any smaller or, more laughingly, any cheaper.
The comic strip showed a shopper next to a bin full of very small
object with a sign that said "Computers: 10p a pound"
Posted by nOMAAM:
.... OPEN your EYE's
...
.. otherwise
haha
Amiga is back for the future
It has Gateway2000 standing next to them and this
time there is no C= to screw it up.
I think you never even used an amiga
you wouldn't say the things you say
All of the documentation that Be would require to support the PMG3's exists in the form of MkLinux. JLG is just pissed off that Apple bought NeXT instead of Be, hence the FUD.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
'Nuff said. Not the *best* graphics around, but pretty sweet for 1993-94.
-Stu
Looks like they're admitting they've been pissing in the wind for nearly a year, while everyone gets out competing products (Dreamcast, PSX2, etc). It's a shame this comes so late...
--
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
I've not heard about QNX's bad points (apart from it being "Unix-like") - could you elaborate, I'd be interested to hear another side. I assume you have a lot of QNX experience and aren't just spouting off?
--
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
Oh puke - you just showed me (the link) a diagram of Linux. What's the point in that? I run linux and love it, but it's not an OS for game players or graphic artists or a set top box, or any of the other markets AOS5 is aiming for.
--
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
Duh! I was asking about QNX's bad points. That demo doesn't show you jack-shit, except you can compress an OS with browser onto a floppy. Well we already had that with the Amiga, so it was nothing new.
Tell me about QNX's (or preferably Neutrino's) bad points please.
--
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
The Demo is of QNX (not Neutrino), and it's nowhere near a full OS - you can't play around with it to do anything decent. I've tried the demo. I liked it. But it's not possible to use it as your everyday OS, and I can't come up with criticisms of the system as a whole based on that short demo. All I can say is "Yes, they have a reasonable web browser".
--
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
That's exactly what I thought when I saw the article, but I don't know enough about Be OS to know how well it would fit the new architecture.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
I'm guessing it'll run on x86's too, but the new QNX kernel (Neutrino) is fully cross-platform, so technically, Amiga doesn't *have* to go Intel.
-jake
--
Jake
The reason QNX and x86 Linux have a 4GB memory limit is that i386 is a 32-bit architecture. It is natural to use word-sized pointers, and 32-bit fields can access precisely 2^32 bits of memory which equals 4 GB. This limit is rather fundamental to the hardware architecture. Perhaps you could write an system which used 64-bit pointers on a 32-bit chip, but the real fix is to migrate to a 64 bit architecture.
I'm sorry you find this limitation "annoying", but if you really feel your applications need more than 4 Gbyte, than you should probably be using a 64-bit architecture anyway.
Certainly some day 4GB will look small, just as 640K looks small now, but the fundamental problem lies in our hardware, not our software.
--Lenny
While I have always been a fan of the Amiga, I have zero respect for Commodore, and what they did to the machine. The Amiga had the best architecture of any home PC. What killed it? They never (er, rarely) marketed the machine. Yes, it was HUGE in Europe. It was also a relative success in the US. However, companies can't rely on word of mouth alone. This led to the demise of a spectacular machine.
I sincerely doubt this new machine will be anywhere close to successful. As far as I'm concerned, Amiga is dead, and it's going to take a helluva lot more than CPR to bring it back from 6 feet under. Plus, the fact that Gateway is in charge of resuscitation is even more frightening.
-mickey
QNX is a godlike OS..... ( to bad not open source though )
These machines just may RULE.
Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!
The A4000 sucked compared to *contemporary* PCs in most departments - it had slow graphics, slow IDE interface, slow memory bus. Of course it had a few Amiga advantages, but it was really a disappointment.
Anyone know any good places to buy used amigas and/or video toasters? If they aren't much, I would be interested in getting ahold of one.
The only thing holding back the computer industry is the proprietary source code. If every "OS" had the ability to use the same filesystems and binaries, they could compete on an equal footing like DOS once did and Linux and *BSD do today.
I'm sure Gateway, Apple, Be, etc. ( not to mention all the *nix folks ;) would love to get their hands on the source for Win32... the promised Amigas would run Windows Office apps fast enough just in emulation. It would then be an attractive platform for consumers, thus making it accessable to developers who want to take advantage of something as reliable and lean as QNX.
What if everyone freed their code?
sigh...
I guess a competition of merit is not the most desirable situation for the greedy... too bad for the rest of us.
The New Amiga fills a very important niche, offering an alternative for people dismayed by the runaway popularity of BeOS.
I was the person who came up with the directory-name == cd there idea back in 1985 or 86. I put it into a shell I wrote for my own purposes, and after I joined the Amiga OS team in '88 I twisted Andy Finkel's arm to add it to the Amiga Shell (I also added all the support in AmigaDOS for alternate shells, and did the rewrite of AmigaDOS into C/ASM from BCPL (yuck), much of the SCSI/IDE work, hdtoolbox, ramdisk rewrite, notification, dircache in the FS, the whole prefs: idea, etc, etc, etc).
I was always annoyed (and still am) at Unix shells giving useless errors when I forget to type cd.
QNX can run on small embedded systems on up to full SMP machines and multicomputer networks. It is a technicaly impressive OS.
To date, it only runs on the x86. This means that unless the Amiga folks did a port (unlikely),
the next Amiga will run on x86 clone PCs.
and yes, it seems a direct challenge to BeOS.
I love Be Inc., but the BeOS doesn't become
a seemingly-single parallel computer when muliple BeOS-boxen are networked together like QNX can.
ONLY AMIGA MAKES IT POSSIBLE
The new boss is an interesting move in light of all the recent rumours that Gateway management were getting very pissed off about delays and leaks from Amiga Inc (apparently we're not supposed to know who the OS developers are, but they had to reveal it because it was extensively leaked). Putting a new guy in charge with specific orders to "ship something - anything!" shows they aren't willing to drop the whole project at this stage. If they were really sick of it all they'd have disolved the company by now, I reckon.
I'm pretty sure that Amiga Inc have officially disclaimed any relationship with Transmeta. Of course, we can always assume they are lying...:P
Ooh, how intelligent. You must be a tall, handsome super programmer? Now, go look into mirror. No, do not pull in you belly. Ugly, aren't you? And you, anonymous coward, is a moron as well.
If QNX is so good, why is it so that Linux has 10 million users, while QNX is limited to a niche market? Whatever its quality - it will never succeed, and never will be a reliable future investment. If you need your code to run now, on one particular system, fine. Want to be sure it compiles and runs 15 years from now. Use non-proprietory system.
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
you IS a moron!? Well, I see that you have your english down pretty well
;)
Why should I? I am Russian. And I did not bother proofreading a stupid flame post
They may be proprietary. But they work like nothing else
Correct. It can be very good to solve the problem NOW. We use VxWorks for our project - not Linux.
I was talking about long term reliability of your code, and portability. Hardware does change. Your goal do change. With a proprietory system - there is no guarantee it will be ported. People still buy awfully overpriced VAX boxes. If it was an open system - it could have been ported to cheaper hardware. And so on.
Yes, buying a good proprietory system to solve some project right now is a very good solution. Just be aware that in the long run you can overpay thru your nose.
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
No. PPC is the non-official future (and current) path for the "Classic Amiga". Amiga Inc. have not announced the processor for the next generation Amiga but the PowerPC doesn't really fit the description (PPC isn't really that unknown).
I think you are getting confused here. Firstly, the processor you mean is called the PowerPC 750. And it is made by both IBM and Motorola. Apple only uses the processor in their computers. Be's problem is with Apple refusing to give information about other parts of their computers, not the processor itself (which Apple doesn't make, nor own). It could also be true that Be does not want to support their OS on a hostile platform (Apple does not want Be on their hardware so they may continually change little things to introduce incompatibilities).
If a company wants to run their OS on a computer based on the PPC, it has nothing to do with Apple unless they also want their OS to run on the Macintosh.
WinNT?</gag> eeeeeeeeew!
thank you.
and considering by reading all of the posts i've
seen here, most of which are good, the amiga sounds like a
pretty nice platform. Probably faster than my 486
running linux, that's for sure.
Dogma: Dead (mostly because your Karma ran it over)
Eh, and since when did this site become exclusively
linux-only? Try IT'S NOT only linux. If you
read the title of the page when you came in, it
doesn't have a damn thing to do with linux. I believe
it's more along the lines of 'News for nerds, stuff
that matters.' If it doesn't matter to you then
DON'T FUCKING READ IT!!!!!
Thank you.
Dogma: Dead (mostly because your Karma ran it over)
..until you get some hard facts, not rumours. No amiga post ever posted on slashdot has come true (and there have been dozens).
Amiga is a dead platform, and the rumour-mongers need to get on with their lives (perhaps move their energies towards free software)!
Watch your language!
To give you an idea, my A4000 is running off a CyberStormPPC processor card, with 68060@50Mhz/PPC604e@200Mhz dual processing... as well as UWSCSI support to my 9gigs of HD space and my 36X CDROM drive (I tore out the IDE drives, as the on-board controller is slow and horribly out of date). Got something just under 128megs of RAM, though the only time I ever need that much is when I'm running an emulator. Might not seem like much from a PC perspective, but running a compact and efficient OS like AmigaOS, it's pretty blazing fast.
I have a second SCSI card dedicated to my flatbed scanner, as well as perks like multiple monitors and an IV24 video processing card (titling, genlock, balancing, screengrabber). Not bad for a dead computer system, eh? 2gig set aside for my Mac emulator, and 2gig currently lying in wait of Linux... which I'll happily install the SECOND someone (Jes?) finishes the driver for my specific UWSCSI card.
There are plans in the works to bring Amigas to a fully PPC platform, with the 68K code run entirely in emulation. Developers are working on dual-G3 boards which would actually run a Mac emulation faster than an actual Mac. Man, would I looooove to run LinuxPPC on one of THOSE.
I could keep going on forever, but it would appear as though I already have. For more amiga news, check out A HREF="http://www.amiga.org/news.shtml">Amiga News, and for those of you who want to resurrect your old Amigas or have specific questions you'd like answered, contact one of the largest (and few remaining) authorized Amiga retailers around.
-DrPsycho - Coping with reality since 1975
AmigaOS v4 is being constructed. That's just because the parts are cheap and
readily available. The release box for the public, running OSv5 (basically
OS4release vs OS4developer, above), will be based on a chip
yet-to-be-announced... though the minimum criteria for the chip have been
publically available, and are quite impressive.
You get the impression from all of this, though, that Amiga Inc. is quite
staunch in it's stance that Intel's x86 architecture, much like the 68k, is
passe.
-DrPsycho - Coping with reality since 1975
There's talk about integrating the TCP/IP stack, but not of integrating a
browser directly into the OS. As for an OS tax, you can currently get Amigas
without the OS without a problem. The Kickstart chip is required to get
things up and running (chip-based segment of AmigaOS), but you can always
jump right into Linux with no problems at all. In fact, the A3000UX came out
with Unix right out of the box.
-DrPsycho - Coping with reality since 1975
Bad hardware design --> it was considered revolutionary in its time.
Crappy unstable OS --> more stable than anything M$ has going.
Amiga500 --> stripped down bargain version of the A2000.
Amiga is dead --> mine is fine
Obsolete --> mine is fine
WinNT --> bahahaha
Intel --> bahahaha
I love sarcastic posts, don't you?
-DrPsycho - Coping with reality since 1975
The new AmigaOS is being developed on x86 machines (they're cheap),
but the "Next Generation" Amigas will be running on a yet-to-be-announced
chip. No word on custom chipsets, though the current market as it is seems
to be encouraging development of platform-independent operating systems. I'm
personally hoping Amiga will be able to fall into this stream fairly
comfortably... but first I just want to see them do SOMETHING.
-DrPsycho - Coping with reality since 1975
Check out the online prices at National Amiga A. nationalamiga.com/.
HREF="http://www.nationalamiga.com/">http://www
They're one of the largest, and few remaining, authorized Amiga retailers
around... and one of the few I trust. They also specialize in Video Toaster
Flyer systems, if you're curious.
-DrPsycho - Coping with reality since 1975
...All the hot air. Stop talking and get something to the market! At the moment you're as trustworthy as Sun's performance estimates for new sparc chips...
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
--- Jubal Harshaw
What kind of architecture does it have?
;-). The early systems were SCSI only, the A1200 has an IDE ifc (2.5" internal bay). The expansion slots are Amiga only.
;-P) both still and moving, Audio (*Tracker) and games. Lots of games.
;-P ;-P
MC680x0 and special purpose ASICs.
OS(es)?
AmigaDOS, Linux and, IIRC, some BSD. The early systems without MMU only runs AmigaDOS AFAIK.
What hardware does it support?
AMIGA hardware
Apps?
Graphics (I miss DP3, better than GIMP on some things
Was it popular some time ago?
Yes, late 80s and early 90s. Unfortunelately Commodore killed it by being the worlds {largest trators, largest idiots}.
Enlightend?
bwz now connects his A500 to his TV tuner and plays Turrican 2!!
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
--- Jubal Harshaw
God forbid you should look at the demo and decide for yourself what's good and bad.
;-)
;-) Warning I am certainly not a QNX expert..
;-P
He should look on something that is not a demo? A truck-load of hot air? A heap of lies?
If you're just looking for someone else to tell you what to think,
He wanted someone to list and explain the bad points of QNX, not to tell him what h should think.
head on over to www.microsoft.com.
Don't! Just trust me, you'll regret it
They'll be happy to oblige.
Last time I looked they had no information about QNX, could you please tell us where it is?
I'll make a try at QNX bashing
It's a microkernel based RTOS! Microkernels are bad for you! And there are no such thing as a 'Real Time Operating System' by any sane definition of 'real time' I've seen. Further, a system designed for real time embedded systems will have made design decisions that will be inappropriate for a general purpose desktop O/S..
Warning! this QNX bashing is itself a truckload of hot air
bwz is actually playing Turrican 2 by now!!
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
--- Jubal Harshaw
What definition of Real-Time OS are you using?
A system able to process events before they become old.
The rate-of-failing should also be documented (once a month? 1*(10^(-10)) chance during your lifetime?)
My point is that it isn't the OS that is real-time, it's the whole system that is real-time for a specific set of timing parameters.
If you have a good definition of real-time that allows an OS to qualify in and of itself I'd love to hear about it..
Real-Time means 'able to act in time to make a difference'.
Clearly a characteristic of hardware and OS and application.
Real-Time is different for different apps...but QNX holds up darn well on blood analyzers... my company's and the competition, and keeps up with about 200 different motors, servos, A/Ds, etc.
If you only cared about real-time when choosing OS and not when choosing/developing hardware and/or application I would not like to depend on your equipment. However, I believe you've taken care during the design of the whole system.
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
--- Jubal Harshaw
I just don't get it. *How* could use a computer about as fast as a 386 to edit graphics???
;-) For the skilled 32 colour hi-res is just a bit tricky for high quality images.. And the CPU wasn't alone - the system is probably best described as an asymmetrical shared-memory multiprocessor.
;)
:-P
;)
:-( but I did play Wolfenstein, Civilization, Prince of Persia, Golden Axe, +lots of other awesome games. Did you have anything like it on your Amiga?
:-(
Depends on the definition of 'graphics'
You need LOTS of RAM and LOTS of megaflops to do that.
It didn't store tv quality video, it processed it.
Unless of course you actually means something like a paint program - but I could do that on my 386.
DeluxePaint 4 on PeeCee?! BAH!!
How could you use 65 meg HD to store graphics and music??? They just wouldn't fit. Unless by music you actually mean mods / mids - but hey, my 386 had 100 Mb HD, enough to store lots of "music".
MODs, and some damn high quality mods too.
And finally, how can you squeeze a GUI in 300k??? It just doesn't make sence.
512k ROM too, the workbench program was more like 60k IIRC, can't check as I'm currently being 'retro' and plays Giana Sisters on my A500 through my bttv tuner!
I think you are exagurating.
He is NOT!
And finally, how much did your A1200 cost? My 386sx25 with 2 Mb RAM, 100 Mb HD was $1050
With HD the A1200 was something like that. My A500 was ~ USD500 or so (don't remember USD/SEK ratio back then, SEK 4 or 5k).
Oh, and my PC had Windows 3.1
The only Microsoft program I've ever paid for was ms basic for Amiga that came with the '500. it was THE WORST TRIPE ANYONE HAS EVER DARED TO NAME 'PROGRAMMING TOOL'!!!.. If we compare MS Windows 3.1 and MS-DOS to AmigaDOS and Workbench (1.3) I'd choose the non crashing of them every time. You guess which one is the non crashing
Finally, there were *tons* of games for PCs. Of course Doom didn't run on my system
He he, most of those were released for the Amiga before they came for the PeeCee. Wolfenstein 3D (Think that's the one you're talking 'bout - never seen original Wolfenstein for PC) was a PC game and I don't know if it ever was ported. Games were the great thing about the Amiga, lots more and much better graphics and sound than PC contemporaries.
Oh, btw, was AmigaDOS 32 bit? Was it Unix-like?
32bit yes, UNIX like? nooo.. Got the slashes right and the commands were more UNIX like than the MS-DOS commands, but the internals were only Amiga like. The most sorrowly missed feature is that I can't say "dir foo:" and get prompted "please insert volume foo" on Linux ('foo' being a name of the media, not the media reader)
bwz gropes amongst his 2,500 880k floppies, which will the next game be? Ah, better dead than alien.
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
--- Jubal Harshaw
Can I buy one without an operating system?
If memory serves correctly here goes:
The Amiga 4000 could easliy outperform a Win3.1 @ 100Mhz. And beat up on 95 at 133 Mhz when it comes to multitasking and overall responsiveness. The best features were the hardware--with an OS COMPLETELY tied to it.
The processor was a 68040 @ 50 MHz there were CPU upgrade cards that took the machine to the '060' @ 50mhz--clearly as powerful as the p90 or 100. Remember the 68k family had a flat memory model and I believe was clock doubled internally.
The Amiga coprocessors truly ran in Parallel with the CPU. The only thing the CPU was responsible for was executing code. That's it. The chipset did everything else over a separate memory bus. The Amiga had TWO memory buses. One for the chip set in the low 2meg space, and one for the CPU for all memory. The chipset had priority in low memory. Some quick features of the chip set which operated INDEPENDENT OF THE CPU:
25 DMA channels were used like so
16-bit word blitter with 8-bit minterm. The blit used 3 DMA channels, two sources and one destination
4 8-bit digital to analog converters utilized DMA
The video coprocessor had a few instructions to control the video beam. Funky things like multiple color depths coexisting on the same screen were easily programmable--the Amiga pull down the screen trick.
System software:
True Mutitasking, intra application communication using message ports, fully scriptable OS and appications with AREXX. The batch language could do "back-ticks" whatever that is. Although no API existed for it, a programmer could make the Amiga "spawn" tasks in a standard way--can anyone say thread.
Exec was one of, if not the first micro-kernel.
First loadable/unloadable shared library.
Devices. Best explained as the baby brother to something like Be's "server" architecture. The interesting thing is that Devices were a super-set of Libraries. One of the Amiga legends is that the Intuition--the GUI API--was supposed to be implemented as a Device, making it replaceable, but there wasn't enough time to get it done.
And so on and so on and so on.
Michael
I think Amiga have missed the boat on the current wave of OSes. I was an Amiga user way back when, but since Commodore went under the platform has lost a lot of steam. Sure, there is a lot of activity, but the user base has totally shrivelled up.
To get the OS off the ground, there need to be a lot of people using it. This isn't going to happen unless it runs on x86 and has a lot of hardware and software support. Let's face it, this just isn't going to happen overnight. There are other OSes already out there. BeOS is well placed to fill the market that the AmigaOS is aiming for. Linux is gaining a lot of server ground, and will be on the desktop in 2-3 years, with KDE and Gnome. Linux and BeOS have a lot of ex Amiga users, those who faced reality and went to x86 years ago.
Do we really need another OS for the x86 platform, when most of the advantages of the Amiga OS can be had on other OSes now, and the hardware advantages have long since been superseded?
Shame, it was my third computer system and my third favourite.
--
There are no facts, only opinions