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Amiga 510 & 1010 released?
bbrindle writes " An unknown German company called IWin just recently announced the release of the Amiga 510 and Amiga 1010. The company just came about at the beginning of this month and is offering Classic Amiga compatibles at decent prices. It seems though they are slow to respond to the media and have not contacted Amiga Inc. in any way. Check out the story in Wired. " It doesn't look good though-if they've built them without contacting Amiga Inc., then they have violated the copyright-and they don't ship with Amiga installed apparently. You have to get it from a local dealer-wherever you might find one, that is.
Sorry dude, no way. You still have to double the CPU speed a few more times to reach the speed of a o6o/PPC combo. -- kolla
For years since Commodore's demise the the early 90s' (and even some *before* then) companies have been building knock-offs of Amiga models, and giving them similar names. The A1500, A3500 and A5000 come to mind..Machines that sure-enough ran like Amigas, and looked like Amigas, but were not actual production models made by the company. Often, they were simply package deals made by independant shops to attract attention.
:)
For the sake of comedy, it should be pointed out that the "Amiga 1010" has already been used as a name--The first external 3.5" disk drive Commodore made for the Amiga back in '86 was named the "Amiga 1010". Sorry, guys..its been taken.
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
shit head!
just visit www.amiga.com
and see just how dead the amiga really is!
if you were ever to use an amiga you would find
that it is more usfull than an ibm-pc or mac!!
Well, let's give them the benefit of the doubt. A product like PowerSE has been rumored to exist out of Germany for the past few years. This I know because of research that my own company was undergoing a few years ago. But finding out information about this firm was inconclusive, there were some people who had copies of this killer x86 emulation package, but the company was undergoing some major re-shifts of it's structure, so nothing was availible. As far as someone blackboxing the Amiga's chipset, quite possible. They may have even had help from the purchasers of the AAA or Hombre' patents. Remember, Escom only bought enough patents to get the A1200 and A4000 design. And since GW2K bought out Escom, it lacks the complete spectrum of Amiga chipset design. If this company *happened* to have contacts with the Banana belt, where the AAA and Hombre patents vanished into, they might have had help. These specs look suspiciously like the AAA and Hombre' combined, even including the 3D core, which matches the Hombre' almost perfectly. A smart engineer could easily take these patents, or the tech overview of them, and create a backwards compatable chipset for the 68k and PowerPC CPU's. So everything IS possible, we'll all find out for sure on September 9th, when these two products are to be released. Once this date has been reached, I will be one of the guys lining up to buy it. If it's a hoax, oh well, no harm done. If not, well, now I have a new motherboard to play with.
Gosh, I'd say your comments were worth far more than 2/100 of a cent. (I assume you believe in, and understand decimal points.) Are you really *sure* you didn't mean 2 cents? .02 != 2, no matter where. Keep in mind that the units of currency in an expression such as ".79 cents" are centicents. The difference between .79 cent and .80 cent is one centicent, or 1/10,000 of a dollar. Nicholas Bodley // nbodley@tiac.net
You mean there is a ext2 filesystem driver for AmigaOS ? Where did you get it?
That external floppy drive was phenomenal in several ways: For one, its acoustical design assured that it could be heard in the next room. As well, there was enough space inside the housing to install about a dozen Web-servers-on-a-SIMM, or maybe 1 GB of dynamic RAM; you might even fit a small switchmode power supply and a cooling fan inside :)
Ehmm... OSes do multitasking. Aren't you referring to multithreading?
Amiga is about as useful now as the Commodore 64.
Funny you should say that, I was listening to some C64 music the other day. Great stuff. Pales in comparison with the orchestral masterpieces that accompany modern games, but it's got a charm all of its own that no modern computer music can hope to capture.
Some of us like messing about with retro machines. I was browsing around a computer shop in London a couple of weeks ago; they had loads of old hardware, including an old Sinclair Spectrum+, the same model as the first computer I ever owned. I almost got choked up just looking at the thing.
You may have no time for anything other than the latest and greatest, and that's fine. Personally, I find modern systems soulless and without character. I like the Amiga's eccentric charm, and I'd love to run AmigaOS on new hardware.
Some more information about this "300 person" company...
:):
:)
The domain name is, of course, registered to the mysterious Martin Steinbach. His phone number and assorted info can be found by doing a whois lookup.
transcript of an nslookup session (minus all the stuff where I could remember syntax of course
> server ns1.germany.worldcix.net
Default Server: ns1.germany.worldcix.net
Address: 195.206.86.101
> ls -d iwin-corp.com
[ns1.germany.worldcix.net]
iwin-corp.com. SOA ns1.germany.worldcix.net dns.ibg.net. (929948882 10800 3600 604810 41000)
iwin-corp.com. NS ns1.germany.worldcix.net
iwin-corp.com. NS ns2.germany.worldcix.net
iwin-corp.com. MX 10 mail.iwin-corp.com
iwin-corp.com. A 151.196.202.71
mail A 151.196.202.71
www A 151.196.202.71
iwin-corp.com. SOA ns1.germany.worldcix.net dns.ibg.net. (929948882 10800 3600 604810 41000)
pretty amazing that this big company thats made all these wonderful products only has ONE server...
And about that server. telnet shows it to be Sunos 5.6. FTP is more interesting. It prints out the message:
Connected to iwin-corp.com.
220 usahost.net FTP server (SunOS 5.6) ready.
Name (iwin-corp.com:rawlins):
usahost.net? first time I've seen that in my little investigation. Well, upon looking at usahost.net, that seems to be a virtual hosting website! This guy's server count has shrunk from 1 to 0.
The pictures of the amiga boxes (to my untrained eye of course) look like they were done in gimp (or photoshop etc). The different color pics are EXACTLY the same with only color different...same shading, highlights, etc. Not only that, but the computer is advertised as having all these dvd, zip, etc drives, but the pictures show only what appears to be a 3.5 floppy!
well enough of my picking that apart...back to work
As a Amigan from the early days (Anyone remember Andy Warhol's AmigaWorld cover pic?) I was happy to see this article, etc. The more I read the web page, the more I thought it was a hoax. Then I ran a whois, and got this:
Record last updated on 21-Jun-99.
Record created on 21-Jun-99.
Database last updated on 26-Aug-99 04:16:42 EDT.
Somehow, a company that has been creating internet applications since '93 and just got their domain sounds a bit fishy. Anyone else notice that for their Mac Software section they have a picture of an iMac. From above. As in from an on-line ad?
Heck, if this is a hoax (and I firmly believe it is), someone has way to much freaking time on their hands. That, and they need to take a web design class . . .
John
http://www.iwin-corp.com/News/CBM_News/cbm_news.ht m My question..WTF is Tulip?? I missed that part of the CBM saga.
Oh, Tulip. Picked up Commie name in 97. Haven't appeared to do anything with it. www.tulip.nl Woo-friggin-hoo.
While I'm waiting to see if these guys are for real, and not assuming that they are, I can set you at ease about the case issue. They said they were going to be using standard ATX-style cases. I was looking something completely different up on the net and stumbled accross the manufacturer of the cases that iWin has on their site. http://www.antec-inc.com/products/enclos/datgem.ht ml It actually makes sense that they would use the same promo pix from the manufacturer. Not that this proves anything, but neither does the argument that the case pictures are identical except for color and that they don't have all the peripherals in the pix.
Not to mention the fact that if these machines actually do hit, then the Amiga (Classic) could conceivably again outpace the PC in every aspect. The only thing Amigas have holding them back is the slow hardware (which seems a lot faster than it should... ;).
Yeah, why was that drive so big? Surely floppy drives can only be so large?
When they announced this a week or two ago, the whole Amiga scene went crazy. We're split between the believers, the wait and see-ers, and the no-wayers. Alas some of the more vocal of the latter have been ringing up company employees and abusing them :(
It's been ascertained that they are a real company alright, but that's about all. They have promised demos of the machines soon.
As for getting the Amiga OS to run on it - it's no big deal. If you already have an Amiga, you have an OS to transfer, if not there are quite a few dealers for the new OS3.5.
Of course, even if it is true, it may be too little too late for the Classic Amiga. Most of us are waiting for the Linux based MCC now.
Hey, infringements or not, it's always good to welcome another flavour in compu-world. Why .. it's almost even .. *sniff* .. nostalgic. Interesting to see where this goes ...
"Old man yells at systemd"
I wonder if the new (ie; the one nobody can decide what it's gunna be based on) OS will run on these... Did they have plans to back port the OS to the old hardware or where they going to just release the new OS for the new line?
-- trolld
Yup, I remember it. There was supposed to be aliens in the other tanks if I recall correctly. The fun wore off pretty quick with Arctic Fox, but I still fondly recall other games of the era:
Carrier Command
Personal Nightmare
Elvira Mistress of Darkness (believe it or not, it was a great game)
Popolous
Powermonger
I've heard that Bullfrog are producing a new version of Popolous, but are they going to do the same with Powermonger. Even if they ported the original to Linux I'd buy it. I'm pretty sure they ported both Pop and PM to the Mac so who knows?
Chris Wareham
Looks like they say they have released the machines, then on the specifications page they say the two machines are still under development and there's no pricing I can find.
BTW, I owned one of the original machines in the 80's. WOW! Having an Amiga back then was great.
BTW#2, Does anyone remember the game ARCTIC FOX? It was the first true multitasking game I played. Essentially, you were in a large tank, filled with weapons, looking for alien ships and bases in the Arctic. The neat thing was, you could fire a missle with a camera in its nose, fly the missle behind a mountain, and do recon work viewing the camera-eye view of the missle on a small window, all while simultaneously looking out your main tank window at any nasties in your immediate vicinity. Way cool multitasking for when it was released!
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
This has already been discussed in great depth in the Amiga corner of the Internet, and the conclusion we've all come to is that it's bullshit. As for violating copyright laws it is unclear. Certainly they are providing an Amiga compatible but no hardware from the original machines have been used. However, from that point of view it is to be viewed under the same legal umbrella as an emulator, so emulation laws (for what they're worth) would be applied in any legal setting. *IF* these machines are real, then it would be unwise IMO, for Amiga to proceed with any legal action as for all intents and purposes, the classic in it's current incarnation is a dead machine. Any attempt to update it with modern hardware should be welcomed.
We've been following this story all week, and it is absolutely definitely indisputably positively a HOAX.
No one has ever HEARD of the spectacular PowerSE product they claim is their flagship software - even though they claim its first release was in 1993.
They have surprisingly few screenshots of their software - and what they do have are suspiciously boring and devoid of actually displaying FEATURES. This makes perfect sense if screenshots are not merely a keyclick away, but actually require doctoring in paint programs (the few meaningless PowerSE screenshots on their site are obviously NeXTstep screenshots heavily doctored).
All their pages used to have meta tags listing the author as Martin Steinbach, the guy claiming to be their CEO (of what they say is a 300-person company, mind you). When people noticed this and began mentioning it publicly, suddenly the meta tags all change and now the company has an "internet division".
Their software downloads section is perpetually broken.
Most of what is described for the A510 and A1010 feature list is either unachievable or impractical at the listed price points. Some of what's listed would seem to require Herculean engineering efforts, yet iWin seems to have pulled it out of their hats.
Read the specs on their site for what PowerSE is capable of doing. Why aren't we all using this instead of VMware or WINE?
The tech specs are all suspiciously vague and misleading-sounding, but not in a way that can be blamed on poor translations.
It's not yet clear what purpose is to be served by perpetrating such an elaborate (and expensive!) hoax, but especially in light of the Godlike specs of PowerSE, it is the only reasonable conclusion.
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
Cool! This seems like the cheapest PPC box I have seen... finally, a PPC computer w/out MacOS. Linux should work with this... right?
There are at least half a dozen other businesses selling new 680 or PPC boxes in the UK & Germany, with Amiga loaded on. The only difference seems to be price. Those other vendors are all retailing their stuff as up-market video editing equipment & therefore are expected real big biccies, like upwards of 4000 Plds etc. Really, thats damn cheap what Iwin are asking for their PPC boxes, complete with all those video I/O ports. If they really do become availiable, I can't see Apple being happy about it.
that I can't already do with UAE.
Actually, dear fellow anon person, the only "bullshit" is your claim.
Yes, this has been debated in the Amiga groups for nearly a couple of weeks now (nice to see slahsdot finally catching up!), but there is still no conclusion to which we have "all" come.
Opition is still split across 4 groups
Please, oh anon-one, do not try to pass off your OWN views as the view of every Amigan in the world.
Why would ANY company release new hardware on an old design? Given the quest for the 'latest' hardware, this move makes no sense.
And wired points out how the Amiga could multi-task in 512K of memory.
Big Whoop. I have a z80 that runs system III unix and does it in 64K.
Just think, multitasking in 64k. Sure blows the pants off the Amiga's 'low memory' requirement.
And who says PDA's running Unix can't work!
It was a cool machine, and I'd love to have a fresh one with a big drive, etc. Besides, it's like anything: my first car was a '66 Mustang convertible. Any new Honda would beat the hell out of it as a car, but I still want another one.
:-)
Sentimental humans.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
I believe that Franklin wrote their own compatable ROMs, which Apples sued them over. I remember that it definately booted up with a Franklin specific greeting.
You may be thinking of the AMax Macintosh emulator for the Amiga. To use that, you needed to obtain original Mac ROMs (they went into a dongle that plugged into the disk drive port I believe).
Four words: You are mostly wrong.
An Amiga running AmigaOS on a MC68060/50 is quite nice and very alive.
An Amiga with a 233Mhz PPC604e running Linux is really cool - and you can get nearly all new software.
But hey, I didn`t say "go and get some", these freak-systems are expensive like hell, hard to get - but they are not dead!
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
Dead? Oh, probably... As useful as a C64? I'd say more useful.
Hell I STILL use my Ami1200 on a regular basis for all my sequencing (in my studio). Sure there is nothin for hard-disk recording, and its not as high powered as Cakewalk, Qbase, or Logic Audio, but...
Nope. The memory expansion was the A501 and the RF modulator was the A520
Well consider that the company is from Germany, and that on-site internet presences in Germany do cost insane amounts compared to the US. So it would only be economicly sound to have off-site hosting. Many huge software companies and hardware companies from Europe and especially Germany rely on off-site hosting.
Plus the site seems a little WELL designed for being a hoax or vaporware...if that is a hoax that person has a LOT of time on his hands... yet another AC
http://www.iwin-corp.com /News/CBM_News/CBM_FAQ/cbm_faq.htm
The answer to your question young skywalker lies there.
Deary me, we are having a bad day aren't we.
I remember I already had an A-1010 back in 1988. The A-1010 was the official external floppy-drive for the A1000. (You know, the one that looked like some sort of toaster.)
--- If OS were buildings, then the first woodpecker to come around would erase 95 % of civilization.
I *think* Tulip is the company behind the "web.it". See www.commodore64.com. Methinks that is dead, too. Still - cool idea. I *would* like to get a box with instant-on capabilities. Why can't we embed an OS in rom for instant-on capabilities? Would be nice to choose Linux, Win, or Be....
Duh.. :)
The 1010 was the official external floppy drive. One magazine review at the time summarised it as, "If you buy this drive after reading this review, you are profoundly stupid" (or something like that). I had a slim-line RocLite which was v. nice. Wasn't the 510 an A500 add-on of some description?
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Yours might be dead, but both of my PowerAmigas are very much alive and well, thank you.
Let's see UAE emulate THESE two at full speed on yer PCs!!!
Nope they are not dead. The home shopping channel QVC here in the UK are selling the C64 WebIt as a all-in-one internet appliance type thing. Cost is 2-300 gbp I think, and it's not "instant on", from the demo I watched it took around 10 seconds from switch on to being usable. All the software was ROM based, so no browser upgrades. I also don't think it did Java (although I'm not sure about that). All in all didn't appeal to me.
Don`t forget that amiga 3.1 roms are available to buy. It could be that all you will need to do is buy these along with a copy of OS3.5 (there are several companies already offering this bundle) and slot them onto the motherboard. In that way amiga inc gets their slice of the profit and no one breaks any laws.
I'm going to buy an A1200/030/32/850 (or rather swap for a Compaq LTE Elite 486/66) if i'm lucky, i'm going to learn how to program real time systems on it since it have a better multitasking capabillity than PC's do (PC's have "multi jerky capabillity").
(BTW i wrote some 6502 code a month ago - buttmunch!)
It's not the most elegant thing, but I actually possess (that is, not vapor!) direct-to-disk software for my Concierto sound card. I'm not making any allusions to its perfection or beautiful interface, but it does in fact do a pleasantly nice job of laying incoming data onto a drive.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Maybe the purpose of this sight is for him to collect emails and contact details of thousands of geeks wanting demo cd's of PowerSE and then sell his mailing list? Possibly he could make enough money off this to make the time spent designing the site worthwhile.
I wouldn't give my real contact details to this guy....
Didn't the Franklins ship without ROMS, which you had to get from Apple? The rationale was that hardware could be functionally cloned like the PC-clones (or video game emulators [e.g., Atari add-on for ColecoVision]) Apple sued and I don't remember what ever happened. This Amiga situation all sounds strangely familiar.
I remember many years ago I made a fake online "catalog" of hacker/phreaker gear such as redboxes, linemans handsets, etc. The most popular "fake" item I had on there was the Katana laptop, which had a 300MHz processor(this was before they were out). We listed our warehouses in New Tokyo, California. It was totally bogus. Yet, every day, I got email from people asking how to order items from the catalog, especially that Katana laptop. Take note, this was done in notepad, with more drawings of the equipment for sale than photos I grabbed off of other webpages. Regardless, I proved that there was a sucker born every minute. No, I didn't take anyones credit card #s or anything like that. I just told them it was a fake.
You are? Never mind, I'm sure you'll be better in the morning...
three words: amiga is dead.
Amiga is about as useful now as the Commodore 64.