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Amiga Reveals Future Design Plans
DrPsycho writes "The folks at Amiga International have
put out some information about where their next generation computer
systems might be headed.
Jim Collas president of Amiga, gives a few tidbits
in his ">Executive Update, but to cut to the juicy bits... they've posted
concept drawings for their "next generation mulitmedia computer" due out in late
Q4 of this year. These concepts
look suspiciously like PalmPilots and iMacs, if you ask me.
"
It was announced a bit ago that the Amiga NG OS 5 will run ona variety of platforms/CPUs, depending on the task.
The specific machines will mimic the A500/A2000 marketing system (cheap home machine (which is very much missing from the market you must agree) and a desktop).
For these machines (which will be the *real* successors (i.e., not the set-top boxes, etc., )), many different chips have been thrown around, from Merced to Transmeta.
No-one knows what it will be, but performance figures are estimated to be in the 5xPentium2-500 range (i.e., very very VERY fast).
I'm very amused by the Amiga owners who say
that they'll buy one. What on earth makes you
guys think it'll bear any resemblance (good or
bad) to the old Amigas?
It's gonna be designed be a completely different
set of designers to a different set of business
criteria in a different software 'world' - and
build and sold by an utterly different company.
Would you say this sort of thing about *any*
computer called "Amiga" ?
Whats the point of OSS all the time? Is it that necessary for you to push that on everyone?? Linux users are making up for the lack of MS by forcing everone to do it their way or you trash it. I like other options, im sure im not the only one. Linux may be getting more and more friendly, but there begins to get too much trash out there. Whats the point of having one good program have its source released and a bunch of monkeys add a few lines to the code and call it theirs. I think its pretty sad, if your going to code something why not get all ur 'must have innovation ideas' sounds like too much contradicting to me..
Right. It is often said that MacOS keeps the user out of the system. The word patronising may be suitable, but in a way it works the other way around. The System Folder in MacOS has a rather simple structure, which even rather computer illiterate people aren't afraid of going into. You put in extensions, control panels, font or whatever you need to have there.
Sure, MacOS keeps you out of the core functionality of the system, but it also invites to the not-so-core functionality. Linux et. al (But not AmigaOS as much) alienates regular computer users by its structure. "/usr", "/etc", "/local"....come on...it isn't user friendly. Period.
Just thought I would share that with everyone who forgot. ;)
/Briefs/Guidebook/WhereNow/ss02.html
Here are some URL's:
The not very informative one:
http://cnet.bigpond.com
The informative one:
http://www.usawebsite.com/~aau g/1997/03/ss9703a.html
>I'm inclined to call lack of memory protection a bug..
I'll agree that this was not a good place to cut corners in the hardware. Not a bug though - if the hardware doesn't support memory protection the software can't do much about it.
If AI include a floppy drive then The IMAC is DOOMED !!!!!!
First of all, it does NOT defy common sense and logic trying to come out again with a new Amiga and AmigaOS.
Rather, the author has a limited view and lack of imagination. There are many reasons why I think that the new launch of Amiga will be successful.
There is currently a trend to move towards alternative operating systems other than Microsoft. Just look at the success of the iMac and Palmpilots. Both completely different and yet very successful. Why? they do exactly what you want them to do. Easy. Microsoft Windows is not easy and frequently does not do what you like.
In fact, its frequent crashes is how it acquired its fame rather than with its marketshare.
Amiga will be another competitor in a world which could use new innovative ideas. Amiga will be exactly that. Just remember, competition provides you with choice and quality. Unfortunately, Microsoft hasn't provided me with any of that.
Even if Amiga itself will not make it, it still might have a significant impact on the market by its innovative ideas it will no doubt introduce.
And this is by no means a "cheap hooker with a wig".
The Amiga from 1985 has had profound influences on the market by its revolutionary design and I am looking forward to their latest Amiga. In a world which is dominated by a few common architectures and operating systems, it will be a welcome addition to provide us with more choices.
At this point, this is exactly what people want and need.
If they can provide the quality and design we like, applications and support will soon follow.
Amiga is not dead, there are developers actively working to bring you a brand new amiga. And of course it won't be exactly like the old machines. It, too, will have matured over time and bring you new technology and features.
I congratulate Gateway and Amiga that they invest their money to give me choice and quality. To use a comparison, Netscape is the reason why Microsoft Internet Explorer is free and well worked on.
And as far as I am concerned with the author of this thread. His story really does defy common sense and logic.
I wish Amiga a lot of success with the launch of their new products.
Amen! There's nothing to be added to (or removed from) your posting. It's all there. Goddamnit, gimme a computer/OS with that Amiga feel again!
Get clear on what FUD is. MS FUDs its competitors, spreading rumours about them and sowing discontent ( like you're doing now).
The Linux community does not FUD MS. It doesn't have to spread rumours about MS's unreliability and nasty business practices. MS happily acknowledged them all by itself in the Halloween Memos, and not so happily in a court of law. What saddens me is that MS are still in court - faking evidence is very illegal. If you or I were in court, and got caught faking evidence, we'd be in deep shit, but MS, as a mulitbillion dollar company, have bought themselves further time...
Then what happened to all this about Be dropping PPC support?
By the look of that big, cushy grip on the side the handheld is designed after the universal comm units from "Earth: Final Conflict."
The closer you are to the code, the happier you are. - Ancient Geek Proverb
All in all, it's nice to see *SOMETHING* emerge from the vacuum of secrets that has been the current Amiga.
-DrPsycho - Coping with reality since 1975
Its "soul" is its community. Because when you use it, you have the feeling you are part of something great.
One should also know that the AmigaOS was written on a VAX. (I'm not sure if it was Unix or VMS that was running on it) So a lot of the OS ideas came from Unix/VMS. Which contributed to some of the great ideas. It's still the only home computer that can mount a unix partition. :-) Or can mount filesystems created by other people, Windows NT can't even do that today!
sri
I suppose thats why the amiga was designed with hardware sprites and a blitter then?
I have to say that it doesn't work like that. SetFunction lets you replace a library function, and is meant for fixing bugs. Any "improvement" risks destabilising the system. Furthermore, removing patches safely is very difficult, and few if any programs do it properly.
Furthermore, it is not always possible to change the internal behaviour of the OS by patches to external interfaces. When I patched a couple of AmigaGuide bugs, I found that I could only do so by modifying the existing machine code. Thankfully AmigaGuide gets loaded into writable memory.
Atari may be gone but the Atari community is still there (not as strong as the Amiga community I think, but still alive) and we have got new machines too (Ever heard about Milan, Hades,...).
And the Free software community never needed any big company behind them to exist or to survive.
A little history note from a former CBM employee:
Amiga OS revs before 1.3 were indeed buggy; 1.3 and its predecessors were ugly. 2.04 and its successors were fairly stable.
No, no memory protection -- but this meant that useful apps (remember Bryce Nesbitt's & Mike Sinz's Enforcer?) could play with it (if available). No graphics-independence, either, but at least you could run X (thanks to Dale Luck).
It was fun stuff, in its day, but the folks at Amiga have a *huge* task in front of them. Lots of 680x0-specific things, lots of custom-chip things, and a lot of OS features that need to be added to make it a 21st-century OS. And once that's done, there's marketing... Let's hope they don't have anything in common with the old C= stealth marketeers...
And no, I'm not signing this -- I loved Amiga, but I really don't care to hear more details on history or vapor. Let's see if Gateway/Amiga actually fields a tangible product...
Very good. OT, I believe Gateway is the current owner of the Amiga, and has established it as it's own subdivision: Amiga International. Hence the cheese and cow relationship isn't that far-fetched : ) miyax
So, then, did you EVER own a personal computer before 1992? The Amiga, like ALL of its competitors for the home market, lacked memory protection because the processors didn't support such a thing. (Well, my AT&T 3b1 had it, but it was a Unix machine not meant for the home, and its MMU was custom made...)
Sure, if someone developed an OS NOW that didn't use memory protection, it would be considered silly, but 13 years is a long time in the computer industry...
Maybe not so. Remember, the only thing common with the new and old models is the name. They are now building the new models on totally different OS core (QNX). This means it will practically be a new OS and new machine. So there are no old MC680x0 or custom chip dependencies to take care of, as there is no trace of the old OS in place!
This is not a new idea. Check out the AMiGA Research OS home page.
In quoting C:\windows you've already invalidated your own point.
/usr, /bin, /etc
C:\"windows"--- Note the actual word.
As opposed to
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47
AmigaOS was effectively in beta until OS 1.2. OS 1.3 was mostly a bug-fix release (though there were extras on disk). It didn't get really stable until 2.0.
Why does everyone insist that every OS must be a server? Cant their be OS's for different uses? I wish people would get their head out of their ass before they start typing. Anyway I could care less if my computer ever serves any network, whats the point for a home user? I couldnt give a crap if I never see a login screen, i have no use for it! What I do want is a OS designed to meet my purpose without a bunch of extra crap in it lagging me down that i will never use. I will just stick with BeOS thank you very much.
I ran screaming from Microsoft to Linux--- I ran screaming from Linux even harder.
In a shock move today, AMIGA INTERNATIONAL released a press release detailing plans for their new AMIGA platform. The computer, to be released Q4 1998^H9, is under intensive development. While no firm technical details are yet available, sources close to the company are quoted as saying the system will be "very cool". Expected to be fully trademark-compatible with the original COMMODORE AMIGA, the new version will be upgraded to full Y2K buzzword-compliance.
...
fish and pipes
I beg to differ on the point about iMacs doing "exactly what you want them to do." The iMac is successful because of the X Factor that is cuteness, it's the Leonardo DiCaprio of computers: anemic, underpowered, overpriced, but, "Garsh, it sure is pretty!" The iMac would be "king of the world" if teenage girls were making the purchase decisions, as is it's catching on amongst people that really don't know better. I'm astounded by the fact that the most media generated for the new Apple offerings is about the cases. This is on a level with Microsoft's evil twisting of consumer thoughts: "It's only logical for Windows, which is a big program, to be buggy. You can't expect anything more."
The reality of the situation is that the iMac isn't worth anyone's time or money, the cutesy design is impractical and gives the computers a short life span and no upgrade path. Mark my words (even if I am an AC), people are going to be regretting that purchase for years to come. It remains to be seen if the new Amiga is going to be worth anything, but I have my doubts about it challenging MS's home user market share. Hell, I love Linux, and I must admit that its chances are slim to none, though they are increasing every day. But, I've been wrong before, and I hope I'm wrong now. If the Amiga can garner software support (because even the best hardware and the cutest cases mean nothing without it), I may waste my money on one. Of course, I'll still have my Linux box, the Solaris box, and the Wintel box until such time as I don't need or want them anymore.
can someone say Guru meditation?
---
The Amiga as I once new it is dead. Commodore just let the ahead of its time architecture die off through stagnation. Saying that... a few years ago when Amiga was being bought and sold every few months, it seemed that the technology was going to be used for top set boxes for web tv type stuff. It seems the execs in charge of the Amiga have finally gotten around to preliminary designs of such systems. Unfortunately there is almost certainly no way to get the Amiga design up to todays PC specs before todays specs obselete themsleves... i mean did they even finish the AAA chipset?
Protected memory slows the computer down? hardly. Relying on memory protection (especially in a computer doing ANYTHING but one task at a time) isn't a frivolity; it's a necessity.
:-) As long as your code is good, you shouldn't run against memory protection hardware. But if you slip up it's nice to know that (in theory at least) you won't bring down the entire ship.
There's no way in HELL I'd trust a programmer to write a bug-free program, since I are one.
I remember that the original purpose of the Amiga was that it was a really cool games machine. The operating system at first really stank because it was buggy and looked awful. But it did grow into something special. Now, thanks to the likes of Sony with their playstation (I+II) I don't think the Amiga has a future.
"Weakness of Open source" eh?
You been living in a cave? This type of software is experienceing growth that is going to go down in the history books. I just installed over *5* gigs of software on my machine..You know how much I paid for the cd's? 30 bucks!!!! Over *1000* packages! How much do yo think you would pay for 1000 commercial software products? hmm..? At 10 dollars a pop, were talking 10 grand. 10 commercial software even exists? hahah! I have all this software and can do damn near *anuthing* that can be done on a computer...Can you say that about your machine?
VisualPrefs has been out for years. go to Aminet and search it. The amigaos, while not open source,
has the SetFunction() call for on-the-fly system call replacement - virtually everything has been replaced by now, just so long as you have a list of patches in your user-startup.
What's kept the Amiga alive for the past 7 years has been the tireless efforts of many dedicated people. The antics of the "Amiga rulez, PCs suck!" crowd counteract that to a large degree. It's depressing that a single statement that can be construed in any way to be anti-Amiga will still tend to attract a wave of hate mail. It's that sort of behaviour that means I'm not using one at the moment...
Just like modern PCs then, with their specialized chips for 3d graphics etc
Amiga once was a really cool computer with all kinds of neat features.... I kept using my old A2000HD (unaccelerated) until '97.
Now all they are doing is jumping on the latest buzzwords and creating cheap knock-offs of the iMac and P1.
And to think they almost had guts once upon a time....
RobK
Uh.. we've had plan9 here for years.
How many promises, comebacks etc have happened in the years since Amiga died? AFAIK the last Amiga feather in it's cap was Babylon 5 (with Screamer ?) and that is nothin to write home about. Pretty cool OS for its time tho...
And how many of these packages do you use? how many of them are any good? Back when i used linux and installed everything I could found, and never even tried to use half of them, of the ones I did try, many could only run after a lot of time/effort in tweking things, and some never ran at all no matter what. Of those that did run on my system many were of limited usefulness. Sure there is some great OS software out there, but OSS != good.
Software is just a tool, not an end in itself. SW should only be judged on how well it does the task it was designed for.
Personaly, after bad experiences with SMP, I dumped linux for BeOS (any one who appreciates a good tool and is open-mined on the OSS thing should give beOS a try, its very good)
Well put.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. Instead of holding their breath waiting for the next vaporware announcement from whoever owns the Amiga name today, anyone with an interest in preserving what was great about the Amiga should be working on getting those features working in a current OS and platform that has a future. Why wait? A new "Amiga," if it ever appears (and I'm skeptical) won't have anything in common with the old one unless it runs an emulator, while open systems like Linux are here today and would benefit from more multimedia features.
Well I hope it does come back in some form, more
than likely I will purchase one.
I got away from my Amy over the past few yrs
and now I have acquired an A3000 and I really enjoy using it again. Now just to upgrade her.
Long Live Amy!!
The original 68000 chip has a breakout signal that says if they processor is running in supervisor mode. With some additional logic, C= could've allocated memory regions *exclusively* for the OS that were gated as writeable only for the OS. But the amiga was developed to be a videogame machine..no need for what's essentially an embedded app.
>>>However Windows NT 4.0 is equally great (in amount - not type) due to it's security and that Microsoft are so quiet on its inner workings.
I use Windows NT 4.0 to store V-V-VITAL files - which coult not posssible be stored on a Linux machine
...uhh...I don't mean to flame here, but NT has more security holes than I can shake a stick at. MS gives it "C2" security, sure. But that is provided the following conditions are met:
a) not connected to a network
b) is not accessible from outside....
Thats not very secure. Check out www.rootshell.com (if anyone is still updating that page) and be amused...
I would NEVER trust any sensitive data on Windows NT. Ever....
Why are they calling it an Amiga if it's a totally different computer? Get real, there's no other way it could be done - AmigaOS in it's current form simply couldn't be brought up to scratch - the likes of MP simply are not possible, not unless you want another Windows... the hardware is old, slow and expensive as hell, so OF COURSE they are making a new machine.
:)
:)
QNX is a very suited OS to the Amiga - a fully real time, protected microkernel OS. OK, so it's not exec, but who cares if Exec doesn't cut it any more?
I think some of you need to take a long hard look at the current crop of OS's.
Linux is lame because it's totally baffling to just about everyone, and needs it's kernel recompiling just to change a few bloody drivers.
Windows is lame because it can't do anything without touching the swap file, has a horrible GUI (so does Linux, btw, Windows is lame, but at least it has some sort of uniform look...), is a nightmare to fix when things go wrong, has... well, I'm sure you all know the problems by now
BeOS is lame because nobody supports it, and it only support x86.
AmigaSoft is aimed to be a bombproof OS, with a powerful and more uniform UI, which combines power, ease of use, stability and expandibility in the one OS, not, as it is now, spread out among many OS's. I just hope they manage it
The decision to expand the project and go for a full-fledged computer (instead of a games machine) was made in 1983 - long before the release of the first Amiga, A1000, in 1985.
A1000, with its £1500 price tag, was definitely not a games machine nor marketed as one. The game aspect only came in picture with A500, a couple of years later.
Get your history facts straight here.
It's a good thing the Gnome/KDE coders don't have your attitude, or else OSS wouldn't stand a chance.
;-)
Anyway, I don't see how you missed the fact that Linux, *BSD, and other OSS systems are getting more and more usable every day by "non-geeks".
Bah, you're probably one of those 10 Microsoft anti-Linux team members.
The task bars are out of proportion due to the fact the OS hasnt been updated in 7+ years. Hello! Do you know anything about Amiga... I can see now. The comments about open source and AmigaOS is so funny, why open source something which has reached its end. AmigaOS5 which is 100% new is where the future lies. If Amiga went open source with this all that would happen is it would become as slow and bloated as linux and thats something Amiga doesnt want.
What is the meaning of Amiga? It used to stand for a particular nifty hardware/software system that did cool stuff. But any new Amiga system will not fit that same definition because it will not be the same hardware or the same software as what we used to call an Amiga.
What is it then? It is the embodiment of the spirit of innovation and coolness in computer hardware and software. Who cares what the Amiga NG is, just make it and make it cool. Even it is never commercially successful, it can still help advance the industry. The original Amigas never achieved market dominance, but think of what they did. Would we have multimedia the way we have today? Probably not. Think of all the pioneering multimedia apps that started on the Amiga and were then ported to other platforms. Lightwave. Truespace. Real3D. Elastic Reality. WCS. Think of all the PC/Mac apps that were written by ex-Amigans who had seen the light, and then seen the money elsewhere.
I still program for Amigas. Why? Because I enjoy it, and despite making a living writing software, I still have to be able to enjoy it in order to justify getting out of bed in the morning and sitting at a keyboard all day. I do not enjoy programming for the Mac or Windows, but I do it for money. I think I would enjoy programming for the Be. Because it's elegant and different and cool, the same adjectives that you find when you look up Amiga in the thesaurus. Be is just defining a new synonym for Amiga, and I for one, approve.
Don't get me wrong, the original Amiga had/has its problems, and deserves a just retirement. But the spirit must go on, and the more people pursuing their different visions of that spirit, the better.
What does Linux/BSD have to do with Amiga? Much in spirit, little in substance. Linux embodies the same pursuit of elegance and coolness and difference as the Amiga, but with more of a technical power aspect rather than the visual whiz-bang. No screen hacks or Euro-demos for Linux. But that's ok, too. To each their own. I like them both.
I don't think any new Amiga hardware needs to run Linux. It'd be neat if it _could_, and it probably will someday.
All I really want to get across is that you shouldn't disparage the idea of Amigas (should new ones ever materialize -- I have my doubts) based upon what you didn't like about the old Amigas or their users or that you prefer Macs or Windows or Linux. Just recognise that new blood is good purely for the sake of new ideas.
Nike says Just Do It.
Amiga and Linux say Just Do Something Different.
(Yes, I'm writing this on NetScape on my WinNT Intel PC. I'm a realist too.)
-- There is no truth. There is only Perception. To Percieve is to Exist.
If the original operating sytem is poor, why not code another one?
Some mad German programmers wrote an entirely new operating system for Atari computers a few years ago. It's called MagiC, and it uses pre-emptive multitasking, memory protection (if the hardware supports it), is coded in optimised assembler, and is compatible with most well-written software.
Or, if you don't want to use MagiC on your Atari, there's MiNT, a freeware UNIX-like kernel which can be used to run X11, all your favourite UNIX apps (gcc, pine, lynx etc) and also runs most well-written software.
Atari hardware may not be so great, but the software is amazing. Papyrus, CAB (now known as iCab), Texel, Photoline, Calamus, Cubase...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
You're right, Windows is complicated, and the structure of C:\Windows is only the surface of it.
But you're wrong when you say that Windows only seems to be easier to use. Perceived simplicity is simplicity from an end-user standpoint. Windows is easier to use than any Unix because, for example, it has a desktop environment which provides a graphical view of files, and configuration by means of control panels rather than obscure text files with arbitrary syntaxes.
Note that these niceties don't always help a power user -- in fact, they frequently get in the way. A power user knows what's going on, and when the user interface starts obscuring the facts about what's actually going on (as Windows often does), then the user interface becomes a patronising hinderance.
It's my opinion that the presence of "wizards" implies that the whole underlying process has become too badly organised to be handled in a sane manner. Ironically, "wizards" would improve certain areas of Linux, but I'd prefer that the underlying processes were tidied up and proper graphical interfaces put in place -- not that I'm expecting it. When a wizard doesn't do quite what you want, you're back in the old situation of trying to figure out what the wizard actually did, and then modifying the underlying data files to suit. At least Unix tends towards partially inscrutible text files for configuration rather than completely inscrutible binary files.
In my opinion, and getting back on topic, the Amiga is still the best example of a system which provided good ease of use without being patronising and getting in the way of people who knew what they were doing. The Mac is too patronising. Unix is inconsistent and makes you do all the work. Windows is a disaster area with a patronising front. The Amiga, I felt, was clean, friendly, and didn't treat the user like an idiot who needed protecting from the facts.
Just another thing I miss from my computing experience in the post-Amiga world.
Maybe if they dedicated the Amiga to be the first Linux dedicated hardware, then it might gain a larger following... Maybe they should change the name due to its poor reputation...
Hardware built from the ground up to run Linux would be awesome... (My pc at home was built for linux, but thats not what I mean)
They've been wrong since 1990 (OS 2.0), when everything else became scalable and the OS became able to handle arbitrary screen modes (rather than the 4 OCS ones and possibly A2024 modes. There were a further 2 years of development after that in which major features such as locale and datatypes support were added.
Man, this talk about the amiga. I'm an old ... BEOS RULES. ..
amiga fanatic but when i saw beos and what it could do, no question about it
I rather pay a fee for the os and have open source programs
When/If AmigaOS 5 comes out, I just know amiga users are going to BASH THE SHIT out of Linux. More so then linux users have to amiga users. Just so you are aware, A LOT of linux users are former/current Amiga users anyway.
:)
Linux and Amiga should be friends
People overlook all the weaknesses of Open Source,
/. and you'll see it for yourselves.
the complexity of Unix that will NEVER bring it to
the community that Windows owns, and god knows what else. Its a geek TREND, nothing else. If you're a self-imposed geek, its cool to like Linux and Open Source and nothing else.
Thats all there is to it. Go ahead and flame me, but all one has to do is read enough
Thank god all these 'geeks' aren't racists because the world would truely be screwed up with one sided ignorance with the likes that the KKK has never seen.
Why on earth would they put Linux on there - it's obviously aimed at being a easy-to-use games/internet machine, not a server! I know that yes, you can play games on Linux, and yes, it supports sound aand a little bit of OpenGL etc... but it's all rather shoehorned in, as far as I can tell.
If you're going to go with a new machine architecture with an operating system with no (or hardly any) games written for it, why would you go for Linux? Far better to go for something that is much more multimedia friendly...
First of all, the Amiga isn't really dead. We still have Amiga
... well,
Format, selling ~15.000 copies a month, as well as tens of other
printed mags. Some of them really professionally done. The Video
Toaster is still used lot's of places, as is Scala. They still do
their job very well.
However, the biggest proof of the Amiga still being alive is
probably the user community. Although not of the same size as the
Linux one, it is truely a special thing to be part of. Lot's of
new free- and shareware is uploaded to the Aminet every day, and
that's just a part of what is being released. The demo scene is
very vibrant even these days, and Amiga coders are doing full
screen texture mapping in 20 FPS even on the AGA chipset, which
most people claimed was useless for anything like this a few
years ago. Quake was released commercially for the Amiga, Myst was
released commercially for the Amiga. All thanks to active users who
have been pestering the software houses. We'll get Shogo this
autumn as well!
G3 and G4 boards are on their way, 603 and 604 boards are already
out and quite well supported (though only as a co-pro to the existing
68040 or 68060 processor - yet!) We have 3D boards and brill 16
bit sound boards, and even the A1200 have proven to be quite
upgradable. Just apply a bit of creativity and you can have lot's of
equipment attached to even the clock header on the mother board!
Sure, we're lagging a bit behind Wintel boxes hardware wise, and
the OS still lacks some important functions, but we are having fun,
and there's still lots and lots of stuff happening out there,
and tens of thousands users proving that the Amiga is not dead.
Together with the user community, I believe that there's still a
good chance the Amiga can make a large comeback. Gateway isn't
exactly poor either, and with the latest hirings of staff
I belive they can do it.
impressive comeback
Amiga Linux[1] has existed for many years. It was the first port of Linux to non-x86 hardware, and was done by Amiga people who wanted a better[2] OS.
You talk about the essence of the Amiga coming from it's wonderful multimedia hardware and the people around it, and I agree. My first two computers were Amigas and I loved them. However, time has moved on. After Commodore's bankruptcy the Amiga community has been scattered to the winds, leaving only a tiny hard core, and the hardware and OS that made the Amiga amazing in 1989 are now obsolete.
I don't see any reason why we old Amigans should get excited about this, or even any reason to call the new machine an Amiga: it will be entirely different hardware running an entirely different OS. It will presumably have an Amiga-like GUI but such things are already available[3]. If it runs old Amiga binaries it will in effect be running an Amiga emulator but such things are already available [4]
The Amiga was a wonderful machine in its day but I'm afraid it's time to let it die...
[1] see http://lxr.linux.no/source/arch/ m68k/amiga/?a=m68k and http://www.linux-m68k.org/faq/history.ht ml. Although the amiga version wasn't reintegrated into the linux source 'till 2.0 it did exist as a separate project.
[2] for their definition of better, which is not necessarily yours.
[3] http://www.lysator.liu.se/~marcus/amiw m.html
[4] UAE is written in C and runs under many platforms and OSes.
Fellow is written in x86 assembler and runs only in MS-DOS but is damn fast.
I recommend having a look at one of these. Certainly brought back memories for me
I know the Amiga Intuition scrollbars have the wrong aspect ratio,
:) Get it from
but what do you expect after all these years with no development?
Sure, making Amiga OS open source would probably be a good thing to
the community, but I cannot see how Amiga, Inc. would gain a lot from
it.
By the way, Visualprefs is getting pretty stable, and it makes your
window borders look ace, amongst lots of other things.
Aminet.
With OS 3.5, we might just see an update to this as well. I think the
current specs sound interesting, though I wish they would update the ROMs
as well, and include RTG etc. They could call it OS 4.0 and sell
lots more copies. Well, probably.
Amigas run native 68k apps and native PPC apps concurrently (unlike PowerMac).
How do you figure that? I hardly think Linux is "old and crummy". One of the reasons why amigas kicked ass was cuz of it was great on a hardware level. Lets see AmigaOS on some i386 hardware... it wouldnt be as great.
Ever look at c:\windows ?
You can't tell me thats not complicated. The only reason Windows SEEMS easier to use than any unix variant is Windows has a standard GUI and developer kit. And the GUI is built-in which means people can equate things visually rather than logically by reading it on a CLI. Wzards make a big difference in handling complex projects, if someone would create visual scripting/wizards for *nix then all wouldb e well, and I would have to fsck with RPM anymore.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Nothing but Linux runs on the NetWinder and Cobalt Qube (yet).
I wish that picture wasnt posed on slashdot. Its a beta picture of ONE of the several designs Amiga can pick from for its custom machines. It is NOT based on the iMac, if people waited till all the pictures were out they would see thats just a monitor sitting on a standard desktop machine. As for the PDA that people say is insipred by the PalmPilot. It wasnt. Once people see the other pics you'll understand.
It's time people stopped thinking that you have to have the latest computer to do anything useful.
If you don't want to play Quake XXXVIIII then even old Amigas are fine. You can utilise information on any computer.
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47
Sorry, I wasn`t bashing the Atari community. I used to own an ST and am currently running Cyrix 333 with Viper 770 (TNT2) with Win98 and SuSE Linux 6.1 networked to my 060 & 604e PPC Amiga running AmigaOS and unofficial Redhat 5.2. It is definitely the Free Software community that is keeping the Amiga (and Atari) alive. The Amiga`s strong Unix background also helps
Alan Day - Dumfries & Galloway, Scotland, UK
So it isnt using everything from the old amiga? Most of the stuff made 7 years ago is pointless to try to fix up anyway. Why keep saving legacy devices? Sounds too much like MS to me...
To call a amiga when its really not is more as a symbol. Amiga has been known to be the best, many ex amiga users are out there and many amiga users are still out there. The new amiga is keeping 'the best' symbol their machine. Whether its performance will actually live up to the old will 'hopefully' show before the years end. If gateway does do it tho, all the better for them.
http://www.amiga.de/pics/products/concept/01_kyoto .jpg -- some more concept drawings.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
In 1984 memory-protection actually did slow down systems. The PMMU of an MC68000 ate $30 and could slow systems down by 10-30%.
:-)
And up to today memory-protection is a feature, not a neccecarity. Hey, Windows doesn`t have it until now and Bill can`t be wrong, can he?
Until 1994 not even one important massplatform OS featured memory-protection, why should have AmigaOS back in early 1984?
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
Well, uhm... I've never seen an Amiga, all I really know about them comes from /. threads, but as I understand it, the Amiga platform utilizes lots of higher powered coprocessors... So it's faster. Try doing FMV editing on the fly with an old 286... Of course, they may stray away from that model but uhm, why?
There's a lot of crap written about SetFunction() and you've just contributed. Claiming that using SetFuntion() risks destablising the system is just FUD IMO. The use of SetFunction() doesn't inheriantly cause instability anymore than some other badly written program. Although admittedly, because you are altering the OS you would have to be extra careful. But how is this any different from hacking the Linux kernal?
And what's this crap about removing patches? The only problem you may have is if you remove a patch for a function, which has been patched subsequently by another program. As long as you remove them in the reverse order to which they were added, you're okay. Furthermore, how many programs that patch SetFunction() to get around this problem have they're been? Let's see.... Kiskometer, PatchControl, my own, PatchSpotter, there's 3 off the top of my head.
Sure you can upgrade an Amiga with Voodoo, Permedia2, PPC604e, 256MB RAM, UW-SCSI, 16Bit-Sound and so on but it costs a terrible-amount of money - expect for a uptodate-amiga something around $8000 as a minimum. :-)
:-) in a dry position and use it where I need it, but don`t invest anything into it.
:-)
I know better ways to get rid of that awfull number of bucks (most are illegal in religious nations
But you can also upgrade a CBM-64 to a 65416-66Mhz, 16MB RAM, 2GB Harddisk and CDROM but again I don`t think its worth it.
I simply put my good old miggy (hey, the mighty Amiga3000 with 18MB-RAM, 1,4GB Harddrive, SVGA, Ethernet, MultiIO and so on in the slickest case mankind has seen until today
I`ll better buy more RAM for my server or a RivaTNT for Quake
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
It's apparent this man has no clue of what he's talking about. I have a few inside tid bits of info... First of all, the New Amiga's WILL have some backward compatibility, either in software emulation or by putting the entire old amiga chipsets and custom chips in one chip.
What will make the New Amiga's REALLY stand out from the crowd is the new proccessor. This is not 100% official, but it looks like it is going to be using a New Proccessor, that is not on the market yet.. Not Intel, Not Motorola, but a joint project between the two, a new chip designed by... guess who...Mr Linus himself, the maker of Linux!
This chip will really rock the industry, by doing things completely unheard of before. It has a REPROGRAMMABLE core! This means the ability to say, add new features, on the fly. I'm not totally for sure, but it looks as though it might be able to actually reprogram it self to emulate anything, on a hardware level, so it can look and act just like an Intel crapper, or a PowerPC, or DecAlpha, Playstation, or what it wants to be, and get this, do them all at the same time 10-100s of times faster than anything out. Sound pretty amazing, I guess only time will tell.
The New AMiga's WILL have a multitude of custom chips like the old amiga's, but all based on an open end architecture. It will have PCI and Zorro4 slots.
IF the new Amiga's can truely emulate and outpeform any computer on the market, I think it may have a true chance to come back and whip some major ass. Marketing is the key though. Gateway, unlike Commodore, is a good one for this, we'll see how well they do with the Amiga.
> I was a long time Amiga user ... started with A500 way back when, so
... in year 2000, we're finally going to have a shot at
...
... okay so it
... it's multiuser, just not-all-at-the-same-time.
... you have to sit there in front of the monitor just like you have to
...it took them how long to come up with a decent common file requestor?
:/
... god, even talking about this is making me sick.
> don't accuse me of not knowing my root.
I've used Amigas for over 7 years. I run one of the most populour Amiga news
sites.
> So, let me see
> AmigaOS 4.0
Erm, what? AmigaSoft, AKA AmigaOS 5.0 is the next gen OS. Not OS 4.0.
You've obviously become lost in all the name changes (first OS 4, then
OS5 Dev and OS5 Prod, and now AmigaSoft).
4.0 is a possible future Classic Amiga OS to be developed by Haage and
Partner (http://www.haage-partner.com/) although I somewhat doubt it will
appear.
> running on a CPU family that's almost as good as abandoned by its maker.
You call x86, PPC and MIPS abandoned by their makers?
> The OS has not been ported to any other CPU
This isn't going to be a port, this is going to be a new OS. Please get your
facts straight. OS 4, if it appears, will be a port to PPC, but as I said,
I doubt that will appear.
> granted, it can be
> emulated on the PPC but the power of the PPC is wasted on emulation.
> Brilliant.
Erm, no. AmigaSoft is likely to emulate the Classic Amiga through something
like UAE, but hopefully we won't need to except to see what computers used
to be like...
> It's doubtful the OS will ever have memory protection.
Erm, AmigaSoft is to be based on the QNX kernel (Neutrino). With it's
microkernel design, leaving pretty much everything running in user space, it
probably has better memory protection than Linux. We are talking about the
kernel which runs nuclear power stations and the space shuttle!!
http://www.qnx.com/
Read and learn.
> Multitasking, sure.
> Dont give me the crap about being able to multitask in 512K
> can, but are YOU really going to have 512 in Y2K? I don't think so. Memory
> is cheap, so this won't be an issue.
Sure, memory's cheap, but effeciency is good. 4MB is quoted on the Amiga web
site.
> Will it be multiuser? Sure, in the sense that Microsoft Windows is
> multiuser
How the hell can you pretend to know this much about an OS that hasn't even
been released yet?
> Will it have remote management/remote display capability? Like X? Doubtful
>
> with Windows NT. Another plus.
LOL! Neutrino has AMAZING network/remote management capabilities!
Exporting the display is a build in OS feature. One of the demo's QNX
performed to show the power of QNX was to network 2 machines, run Doom on
one machine, and drag the window over to the machine next to it, so it was
half on one machine's display, half on the others over the network. QNX is
probably better than Linux in this respect.
> The User Interface? Intuition? God, what a pig.
The UI will be user-configurable (it will have different "skins" - it will
have to if they want it to scale well).
> Whoever designed this
> thing has no aesthetic sense
Good job different people are working on it then, hu?
>
Something, I hasten to add, yet to be achived by Microsoft
> And the layers! the damn layers! the ROM code for handling layers is
> broken beyond belief
So? Since when was this relevent to AmigaSoft?
> Ex-Amiga coder
You obviously left ages ago, or you've had your eyes closed for the past
year.
Ya so amiga is closed and propriatory. Why trash everything NON-Linux?? I really cant wait until linux runs itself into a hole and watch people screaming from it because "god forbid" any companies keep the source code to the software they worked hard at, because they dont want others to copy the code change a line and call it their own. About amiga just leave to see what happens, why always think negatively about other things you never used or seen. When it comes out, if its a failure we will see, if it isnt then give it the credit it deserves. People arent still using amiga's because they cant afford a new computer or because they are too stubborn to change, its because they enjoy using the amiga. Linux is not the superior choice for everyone!
Correction about BeOS:
Check the bottom of this page for supported hardware.
AC
Oh, you would be surprised at the number of A3000/A4000 systems out there running Scala for the multimedia info-channels for cable companies... :-)
Just like modern PCs then, with their specialized chips for 3d graphics etc
Complete with crappy busses eh?
You just summed it up perfectly. I personally don't care that my machine is old, slow and outdated. It's fun, and that's important to me. I'd rather use an old computer that I can have fun with than get involved in the "my computer is better, newer and faster than your computer" wars that seem so prevelant everywhere these days.
It really is time that somebody classify, diagnose, and assign a name to this kind of behavior.
The Amiga is clearly the walking dead of computing platforms. Existing in the netherworld of computing somewhere between the reality of a viable business to a company being reduced to paper filled cardboard boxes in a storage unit. All the while tormenting former users with empty dreams of support and innovation.
Thus, the amiga is "Zombieware". Remember, this is where it was first defined.
Some may ask "is this not Vaporware??". No, it is not. Vaporware comes primarily from companies that actually are producing some kind of product and seem to have a viable existance.
In other word, Zombieware makes Vaporware look good.
I'm sick and tired of reading posts from "amiga" owners who quite clearly had no idea what they were doing when they owned one (if they ever did.)
Imagine if I came on slashdot and complained about Linux only running on a 386, neglecting to mention that I was running the original release - to me this is akin to some of these posters complaining that the 1.3 looks shite. Well yes it might have done with hindsight but it's kind of irrelevant in todays Amiga climate. Has anyone here actually seen a modern Amiga (I'm not talking about the NG)? No? Didn't think so. So if anyone has anything to say on this subject in the future, at least give do us all a favour and do some research.
Ho hum :)
People love Unix because it has been around a long time and it'll probably be for a long time. It is very stable and well known, the AmigaOS 5 doesn't even EXIST yet. Like many experimental OS's like Plan9 or GNU/Hurd, it just isn't there yet.
I didn't understand your last couple sentences at all. Actually, I don't think they are sentences. What exactly do you mean? Oh well, never mind.
Nobody is forcing you to use Linux. If you don't like it, then don't use it. On the other hand, there are quite a few people who do like it, so it's not about to go away. Open source is not about making money, it's about freedom. Quite frankly I don't care if average user Joe even hears about Linux. As long as there are geeks, Linux will survive and prosper. What makes GPL software great is the fact that it belongs to nobody. It will always be available to the community. No monopolistic coorporation will ever be able to change that.
Just another Anonymous Coward
Some guy named "Clown Sex" posted this one a while back on ISCA. I think this about sums up all the fanaticism and disillusionment of amiga peoples..
Skal leaned over the window ledge in the old bell tower. He
peered through the scope of his high powered precision sniper rifle.
He saw his target move into the crosshairs. He picked up the necklace
he was wearing and kissed it. The necklace was given to him by Jay
Miner, and was actually a FAT AGNUS chip with a hole drilled into it.
Under his breath, he began to recite:
"God, give me the strength and the power to do resist and to
fight evil and oppression in this world,
the power of an Amiga 1000. In 1984,
4096 colors,
Preemptive multitasking,
68000 microprocessor at 7.14 Mhz,
Keyboard drawer,
Video toaster,
Hardware sprites,
Hold and Modify pictures,
Stereo sound --" Just then, Skal was spotted in the bell
tower, and the police quickly ran up and captured him.
As they dragged him away he could be heard yelling, "If the Amiga
didn't have so many god damn features -- even in 1984 -- I would
have succeeded in my mission! God damn it!"
Because of the public outrage over Skal's action, and to avoid
any problems that could arrise from him being in the general
prison population, they stuck Skal in solitary confinement, in
Mexico.
Days were long for Skal, he mostly spent his time reading computer
magazines from 1989, and trying to braid his pubic hair.
One day, he heard the door to his dark, stank cell unlock. A guard
let himself in. He hit Skal in the head with a nightstick, and Skal
was out cold.
When skal awoke, he was lying on sandy soil. He woke up and rubbed
his eyes. in this distance, he saw a pyramid. What the hell was going
on?
A voice boomed out from behind him. "So, we meet again."
Skal spun around and saw hero-turned-supervillian Paul Norman of
Cosmi fame! Skal ran towards him, issuing futile punches. Paul Norman
did some C-64 god-type-shit and beat up skal.
As Skal was lying bewildered onthe ground, Paul Norman spoke up, "Ok
you shitbag. Here's the deal. You remember my masterpiece creation
Aztec challenge? Well, you couldn't beat it then and you can't beat
it now. "
Just then, hundreds of microsoft employees, wearing loincloths and
holding spears came out of the pyramid, and lined up in two lines.
"To get to the pyramid, you have to run down this corridor constructed
of microsoft programmers. You must run at a consistent pace. You can
not slow down or speed up. At a random interval, a microsoft
programmer will throw a spear at you. the spear will either be 4
inches off the ground, in which case you will have to jump over it,
or 4.5 feet off the ground, in which case you will have to duck. A
brand new Amiga-NG will be waiting for you at the pyramid."
Skal began his journey. On the third spear, he jumped too soon, landing
on the spear, ending his life. But he had Paul Norman music played
at his funeral.
Let's all just drop our "crappy" non-functional, unstable Linux/*BSD systems and all rush and install AmigaOS 5 on our servers and workstations. Let's see how long it takes before 1/3 of the net collapses under OS bugs. Yeah, sounds like loads of fun. Sign me up right now dude!
J. Random Luser will buy Windows, at most he will buy one of those trendy iMacs. BeOS or Amiga are not, and never will be even on the list of choices when J. Random Luser makes her decision to buy a computer.
It was mainly developed on Sun 2s using an assembler and the Green Hills C compiler. Parts of it are still built using that compiler! I don't know what you think was developed on a VAX. Perhaps TRIPOS (from which AmigaDOS was derived)was available for the VAX? TRIPOS is, however, a TRIvial Portable OS, so I don't see that that's important.
Are you sure you're not thinking about the ST? (Anyone remember that old flamewar?)
The way I remember it the Amiga OS looked amazing for the time and wasn't at all buggy. The *apps* were a different matter though. IMO this was because the microcomputer community - more specifically the game developers - were still learning how to code for a preemptive multitasking OS. In the end most of them gave up and just disabled multitasking and took over the system. I remember one coder boasting that the only OS call he ever used was forbid(), not seeming to realise that this wasn't anything to be proud of.
As for how Workbench looked; by today's standards it was a bit clunky, but for the time it was awesome. I still remember a TV programme where they demo'ed an A1000 showing the King Tut picture (impressive enough) and then dragged the screen down to reveal the Boing demo running on the desktop behind it. That was when I knew I had to get an Amiga. Fifteen years on I've only recently found a way to get the same feature on a PC : thank-you, Enlightenment and Linux.
Disk drive click is not and has never been an issue in Amigas.
It was originally related to the fact that the drive mechanism (especially in older drives) cannot tell whether a new disk has been inserted unless you move the R/W heads from one track to another - hence the clicking.
However, in most (if not almost all) drives you can actually work around this, so there have been system patches available to prevent clicking as long as I can remember.
>The specific machines will mimic the A500/A2000
>marketing system (cheap home machine (which is
>very much missing from the market you must
>agree) and a desktop).
A cheap home machine... How about a econo-box Celeron 300A with i740 video card? How much does that cost in your neighbourhood? Less in today's dollars than that old A500!
Hard disks, memory modules, and monitors are going to cost the same, no matter how you're using them.
I surely don't want to see those all-in-one-inside-the-keyboard abominations again...
I don't know whether this latest batch of promises and vapour will materialise into something solid and worthwhile. Wake me up when it's actually in the shops, because I lost heart years ago and gave up on the Amiga, at least as far as being interested in what's supposed to be coming next.
I have a few Amigas lying around amongst my various pieces. I don't remember what happened to the original A1000, and I don't really care, since it was only of historical interest. The A2000s I have are becoming terribly long in the tooth and hard to maintain. I'm running out of monitors that work, and I have to cannibalise one to fix the other now and then. This makes using the Amiga less than a joy. I only use it for the things that the PCs just can't do, and for the occasional bit of nostalgia.
Although I've basically given up on the Amigas I have lying around the place, I haven't given up on the essence of Amiga. This is best explained by comparision with Linux. Linux is a robust implementation of Unix, it's free, and it comes with the source code. That description, although accurate, completely fails to capture the essence of Linux. The essence of Linux, and of Amiga, is the sense of being part of a large, creative community of people who are truly passionate about their use of computers. Contrast this with anything Microsoftian.
On the other hand, Linux and Amiga are two very different things. The one will never be the other, and there's no reason why they should. It would be nice if the two communities would work on their similarities rather than their differences, of course. We know about the strengths of Linux, so let me reintroduce the strengths of the Amiga to those who have forgotten (or never knew).
Amiga was the epitome of multimedia. The Amiga had been around for years before the term "Multimedia PC" was coined to describe a PC that came with a CD-ROM drive, sound card, and a pair of jam-tins-on-string speakers. The Amiga didn't just have sound and graphics capabilities, it had well-implemented sound and graphics capabilities. The entire architecture screamed out "make me do cool stuff!" It inspired an entire sub-culture of demo-coders. It could do stuff with one meg of memory and one floppy disk that would stop people in their tracks and make them look. The enthusiasm and passion for coolness possessed by the designers of the Amiga exuded out of it and inspired you to use it in cool and creative ways.
Linux is no substitute for the Amiga, folks. I have to explain this to those of you who never experienced the essence of Amiga first hand. Linux has its own essence, and a good one at that, but I really would rather have both than just Linux. I like to do cool stuff on-screen and genlock it over video. I have a game-show which runs this way on ten year old Amiga hardware, and I haven't been able to get a PC to do the same thing yet.
Whether or not Gateway (or whoever else may come into ownership of the Amiga trademark) succeeds in creating a new Amiga is not my main concern. I'm not waiting for the next computer which has "Amiga" stamped on the case. I'm waiting for the next computer which embodies the essence of Amiga, and I think it will be a hard task to produce such a machine. The PC architecture is chronically un-cool but it's the most economically viable thing to produce: anything else starts at an economic disadvantage. Then there's the question of what software it will run.
It's not a question of Linux or Amiga, and I think that suggestions of Amiga hardware running Linux are pretty misplaced. The essence of Amiga is up-front cool fast right-now happening in-your-face stuff, and the essence of Linux is low-down foundational stability and dammit we own the computer right down to the hardware none of this "licensing" and denial of responsibility by software vendors crap.
There is one final point which does bear mentioning: can the Amiga ever be the same again without also being open source? Well, I don't have the answer to that. I'd prefer it if all the software was open source and the hardware was commoditised and available everywhere, cheaply, but I can live with options not quite so rosy as that. Bear in mind that the original Amiga hardware and OS was proprietary, under any reasonable definition of the word, but it was never secretive. You never got the feeling that some company was keeping secrets from you so they could hook you in and screw you over later.
You frequently did get the feeling that the upper management of Commodore were quite possibly the stupidest beings ever to stand on the face of the planet, but that's a different story.
"more and more usable every day by "non-geeks""?
Have you ever tried BeOS?
I don't think Linux with something like KDE or Gnome will ever be as good as BeOS or (hopefully) AmigaOS 5. Linux is great for servers, programming and general 'geeky' stuff, but it's far too complicated for J. Random Luser and things like KDE/Gnome can go only so far in hiding that.
And KDE has a horrible interface copied from Windoze. BeOS has a clean, simple, well-designed interface. If you've used both, you'll know the difference. Hopefully AmigaOS 5 will also have a good interface.
When it first came out, and for a good while, Amiga was hands down the BEST damn home computer you could buy. It did things that lesser operating systems STILL can't do, or have just recently added.
The soap opera was bad enough with Commodore, but when Commodore went belly up, it just got worse. Passed from owner to owner, each holding out some hope of a new product. The fact is that the Amiga remains stuck in the same form it was when Commodore went under.
The Amiga Soap Opera is mainly one of broken promises. Like Amiga STILL doesn't have a Java enabled browser, even though one has been "almost done" for like years. Escom never did anything they promised. Now Gateway has let all the original dates slip by that they promised to make this or that available. Now we see napkin drawings and are supposed to get excited?
I think it is important for all true Amigians to realise that whatever Gateway is making, it isn't an Amiga. I mean, if they are going to start over from scratch and create a machine based on QNX instead of AmigaOS, why the hell are they calling it an Amiga?
IF they get anything off the ground, my guess it will be some intel based system with standard hardware and a sorta Amiga looking GUI. Won't run anything from anyone. Will somehow stay in existance defying logic and common sense, cause, well, that is just what Amiga does.
The truth of the matter is that the Amiga is well and truely dead. Let her rest in peace. Let her go, my fellow Amigans. Whatever Gateway might possibly make won't have AmigaOS, won't have any sort of special graphical co-processors, won't have Amiga programs that can run on it. It will be some cheap hooker with a wig thrown on to look like the long dead love.
At this point, I have no clue WHY Gateway spent good money on technology they will never use and a name that everyone has forgotten. It defies common sense and logic.
But, that is what the Amiga has done best anyway...
Rest in Peace, Amiga.
Killed by proprietary hardware and crappy marketing. Doomed to spend the rest of eternity as one of the walking dead. With OS/2 on your left and DR/DOS on your right, your loyal followers still search for the book of the dead, which may contain the magical incantations that will resurrect you. But probably not.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I for one support anything that is not "PC" hardware or wintel based. I am visually minded (extremely so), and UNIX just plain pisses me off. So does DOS. I for one am not a fan of typing in a lot of hooey to get where you're going, and while I've never used an Amiga beyond video toast, I'll bet money that it's a hell of a lot better than what's out there now. Heck, anything would be. The Law of Ninety Percent Shit applies to everything in the computer world as well as the real world- 90% of the Users I know are either elitist pigs or idiots, same as the real world. I think Amiga is near the end of its 90% phase. Of course, being an advocate of both the Amiga AND the Mac will probably get me kicked off this site, but screw it! Visual users need to be represented as well. Every OS I've used has serious issues in it, and for me the Mac solves most of them. But then, just try to debabelize 1500 targa files. There are some things you CAN'T do with Mac. Great. I accept it. I'm still not buying a PC: i've heard too much Mac bashing by Users and frankly I think it speaks of ignorance and bias- I know enough about both mainstream operating systems to destroy them and necessitate a reinstall if need be, while the average "Mac Sucks" person doesn't know that oyu need to empty the trash to delete your data. I'm seeing the same general sort of attitude toward the Amiga. I think it will be great, simply because what is avaialable now is so rotten. And I've always favored the underdog. Following the 90% theory, it is a natural extrapolation that whatever is apporved of by The Majority is obviously hideously flawed in some way- we have Microsoft, the Bible, and the US governement to prove this little concept.
Bring back the damned Commodore already!
Gee, and where should this ÜberChip come from? I don't see anything with that kind of performance in the late 99 time frame.
Yeah, BeOS was widely hailed as AmigaOS done right - but Ol' Gassy has proved himself an arrogant french windbag on a number of occasions, and really, linux is pretty mutable, and can develop any way people want it to - including adding multimedia stuff.
I believe that is the reason for so much hate against alternatives. I think a lot of people are scared all their time porting ect in linux will be wasted when other os's are superior for the majority.
I was a long time Amiga user ... started with A500 way back when, so don't accuse me of not knowing my root.
... in year 2000, we're finally going to have a shot at AmigaOS 4.0 running on a CPU family that's almost as good as abandoned by its maker. The OS has not been ported to any other CPU ... granted, it can be emulated on the PPC but the power of the PPC is wasted on emulation. Brilliant.
... okay so it can, but are YOU really going to have 512 in Y2K? I don't think so. Memory is cheap, so this won't be an issue.
... it's multiuser, just not-all-at-the-same-time.
... you have to sit there in front of the monitor just like you have to with Windows NT. Another plus.
... god, even talking about this is making me sick.
So, let me see
It's doubtful the OS will ever have memory protection. Multitasking, sure. Dont give me the crap about being able to multitask in 512K
Will it be multiuser? Sure, in the sense that Microsoft Windows is multiuser
Will it have remote management/remote display capability? Like X? Doubtful
The User Interface? Intuition? God, what a pig. Whoever designed this thing has no aesthetic sense...it took them how long to come up with a decent common file requestor?
And the layers! the damn layers! the ROM code for handling layers is broken beyond belief
Ex-Amiga coder
Your last point is a good one,
:-)
IF they manage to get something SPECIAL, MIGHTY and IMPRESSIVE done, Ill will be very likely to buy it - and would it be just to remember the good old days. Back in 1987 my first amiga cost me quite a lot, but then I had to pay it by working after school and pocketmoney.
"Never had sex" is already sad, but "Never had an amiga" really sucks
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
BeOS is here now. Developers are writing modern apps for it now. Amiga OS (if it ever comes) will be too little too late.
---
Does anyone remember ram pack wobble?
AFAIK they never did. If you look at their main page, PowerPC hardware is listed under supported hardware for all to see.
I do know that not all PPC hardware is supported by Be. Such as any G3 Mac because Apple refuses to give out proper specs. Some 8500 and 9500's too I think depending on what revision the mobo is.
I suppose they could look at LinucPPC and derive from that but it would probably be a tedious thing to do especially if Apple then turned around and messed with the specs shortly thereafter. IE the beige G3 vs the BW G3 and so on. Wouldn't be worth the hassle. Not to mention using LPPC might muddle up their licensing too. Hmmm.
I remember compiling on Lattice C, the M68K's, dedicated processors named Denise, Agnus, and Paula. Those were the days. I even have my Amiga System Programmer's Guide from Abacus books. Hmmm, I fear that Amiga shall never recapture its former glory. I hope that I am wrong. I would love to return to my roots, and program once again for the Amiga. I miss my workbench.
-Master Switch, one more element in the machine
I knew it! I always knew it! Amiga is still alive.
Though I have not used it for about two years now, it's still standing beside my desktop.
I've not sold it and I'll never will sell my beloved Amiga 3000 Tower. It's old, it's got only an 68030 along with 14 MByte of RAM and Kick 3.1. But it's still as much powerful as some PC. Not because of it's technical advance but because it's a computer with soul.
I guess, I'll just have to go to the amiga-store (which is still there) and get me one of those ariadne-network-cards and plug it in my LAN.
Take Quake, Half-Life or any of those PC-Games. Compare it to Turrican or Walker and you'll see...
It's like the C64. Not just a bunch of chips but a computer with soul.
If it doesn't still have that, it ain't genuine ;)
PC architecture is and always will be pathetic in comparison to almost any current generation of 16/32/64bit architecture. The OS, was brilliant in its days due to its small overhead. Against same cpu in a mac, Amiga kicked.
What OS do u know of that multitasks so sweet in even 256k RAM. If you ever owned an Ami and others saw it running, you will probably remember a number of times people get amazed at its capabilites.
Amiga is a nice multimedia machine that admittedly can improve - which is why I am hanging out for their adoption of QNX.
Still dissagree? download the single disk qnx demo and see what its like
it sure reminds me of using my ami
Do your best, hope for the best, suspect the worst.
I'd love to be given the chance to buy an Amiga again. I really think that Linux has a place in the server environment. But I doubt very much that it's ever going to take over the desktop market. The UNIX structure is just too complicated for many users.
I'd like to see Amiga on the desktop and Linux at the server.
But can we trust Amiga any more? Remember AAA, and the Walker?
They dropped AAA at the last moment. And the Walker was a hoax. Who's to say that this is much the same thing? I honestly can't think what they have to gain by leading us on, but all we have to go by is a vague letter from the president and a sketch that I could've done.
I'll get excited when I see more.
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47
Dave Haynie designed and implemented the Amiga's Zorro III and was working on its successor in the late days of Commodore. When he discovered PCI, he knew that there was no point in creating Zorro IV since PCI would be at least as good and much cheaper. If you don't believe me, ask him yourself. He's not hard to find.
I couldn't care less whether it is an Amiga or not.
Whether they brand it a Amiga or something completely new, who even cares.
I'm just hanging out for something new, ANYTHING new. Whether it's good or not remains to be seen.
I'm completely sick and tired of the current hardware situation. Intel think that putting serial numbers in CPU's is the way to go, and I can't buy a Mac because I don't look like a hippie. Maybe something new, and intelligent (like the Amiga was back then) would help re-instate my trust in the industry. If it weren't for Linux and open source I would've got the Abacus out ages ago.
"How much truth can advertising buy?" - iNsuRge - AK47
I fear Amiga has no chance in the marketplace. I had been an Amiga user until the two blood suckers (you know who they are) sucked the company dry.
... I've done Unix off and on in the past, but that mark the first time I had a Unix machine at home.
... after TEN FUCKING YEARS Amiga Intuition's scrollbars still have wrong aspect ratio. How PATHETIC is this?
I have since been a linux user
I never looked back. Having access to the entire open-source community was very liberating. Just think
I shudder to think how many other bugs lie hidden in AmigaOS - all because Amiga, inc. is too stupid to make the OS open-source and invite cooperation instead of exclusivity.
I think what people miss are the heady days when there were lots of different systems they could get hot under the collar advocating. Now its all Intel, with the dark side from Redmond set to take over the whole planet. Lack of competition isn't just unhealthy, it's also no fun. Thank God for Linux and its kin!
:)
:) At least FFS and then DCFFS saved us all from slow disc access.
:)
Yes, I am one of the many Amiga -> Linux converts. Just got a new machine with RH6 and GNOME, and already I'm in love
I still have 2 of my Amy's (an original EHB 1000, and a 3000/040) and I still marvel at some of the stuff in AmigaOS. I even have FreeBSD on the latter. I think we have all forgotten just what a kickin' bit of kit it was, and how far other things have come in the meantime.
A real OS with pre-emptive multitasking. Extensible file system and library API. Core libraries in ROM; boots in seconds into a full desktop GUI - from floppy. Library and driver management still kicks the whatsit out of the Windows DLL and SYS files. I have 3 versions of AmigaOS on the SAME 49Mb hard drive partition, with room to spare for software.
PC's at the time had DOS, and the nearest thing to a GUI was GEM. The Mac had a comparable GUI, but no CLI.
Unparalleled GUI for its day - multiple screens in different video modes, cunning colour support, graphics co-pro's, variable bitplaning. Hardware scrolling for larger-than-monitor frame buffers.
Built in stereo sound. ChipRAM is brilliant in concept. Genlock capability. Hardware support for 2 mice (none in a PC back then) - remember 2 player Lemmings?
Plug and play hardware - that WORKED. In the mid 80's. PC's are *still* bogged down in the IRQ blues.
The A2000 and B2000 - a "proper" man size box. Expansion slots for both Zorro and AT bus. Bridgecards. All excellent.
Then the A3000 - true 32 bit system, built-in fast SCSI. Sensible form factor. When it came out, it was the fastest desktop machine on the market, bar none. For years, the fastest Mac you could buy at any price was an Amiga with an emulator board. They even did a Unix version, crock though it was.
Deluxe Paint - what can I say?! Dan's Xerox heritage shone through there. Photoshop and the GIMP are only now coming up to its level.
The community of shareware and PD - second to none. Windows and Linux still don't have that. Remember Fred Fish, and the ab20 ftp site?
And the games, we can't forget those. They were its greatest strength, and ultimately what held it back.
There were also many things that sucked, and were done wrong...
488 byte per sector filesystem - whose idea was THAT? And not having directory files - not good in an advocacy war
The 3000's graphics were too little, too late. They stayed with TV standards too long. The flicker fixer was a horrid kludge. Why couldn't the 3000 write straight to the fixer's expensive static RAM buffer and give 800x600x4096?
What was all that with the softkick 3000? Give us a break! Dual boot was handy for poorly coded software though. Before I upgraded mine with the 2.04 ROMs to support the '040, I munged it around to get it to load the 1.4 Beta Workbench - wierd man, very wierd. Augustus John icons. Glad it never saw the light of day.
Half speed drives for 1.44/1.76 Mb formats - a nasty bodge. Ever tried to BUY one? Impossible to get. Mine cost a fortune to import from the USA. Chinon must have made a mint.
AGA - again, too little too late. Tied down by hardware compatibility for the games market. Should have had 24 bit colour at 0124x768, and a blitter with a (simple) 3D transform engine.
CDTV had potential, as did CD32, if they'd been marketed right. But they weren't.
The 500Plus - a bodge, and poorly marketed. That acursed ECS chipset again. I had a 68030 in mine which made it livable, but had to give it up for the more sensible A3k.
The 4000/030 - an overpriced joke. Where was the damn MMU??? No OS support for memory protection and virtual memory - a big mistake there.
Lack of decent and timely networking support - $hundreds for a 10-Base2 card. PARnet was great though - still have my homemade A1000 cable. Xetec's SCSI LAN was hairy but very fast
If you still have an A500 in your cupboard, dust it off and plug it in to that TV, have a quick game of Menace, or Xenon 2, or Shadow of the Beast. Shed a quiet tear. You have a ground breaking piece of computer history in your hands. Never let it go.
It`s the so called "whining childish hatemonger" that has kept the Amiga platform alive for the past 7 years. Every week since Commodore`s demise, somebody declares the Amiga dead.
Commodore is gone, Escom is Gone
Atari is gone
Sega Saturn & Sony playstation have been and are going (not to mention the SNES, & Megadrive (Genesis))
Acorn is gone
Sega is on it`s last legs
and the AMIGA is STILL here. Pretty amazing really.
Alan Day - Dumfries & Galloway, Scotland, UK
Try this one:
Executive Update