Slashdot Mirror
Amiga Growing Silent Again?
Dr. Mabusa writes "Seems like Amiga is starting a new period of silence. The executive update section of their site, where Amiga president Jim Collas used to pledge "openness to the community" until recently, has been shut down "for the next several months".
" The rumor is pretty impressive: A Transmeta CPU, a Linux Kernel, released by Amiga within the next 2 months.
I am somewhat curious as to Linus' employement status. Is he in the pipe for an employment based green card? I heard these things take forever (4-5 years). I work with a programmer (German PhD) who just got his green card. He claims to have been trying to get it on and off for something like 17 years.
/me checks inside his Amiga.
Thought so.
Seems by Amiga has both a 50MHz 68060 and a 200MHz PPC604e. So much for your "fastest product claims to be a 68040@50MHz".
Sorry "Just H2", you are talking out of your arse, I'm afraid.
Better luck next time.
Umm, actually, AC, the Amiga is Y2K and has been for about a decade.
Sorry to piss on your parade and all that...
What are you talking about ? I have an Amiga with 3D (permedia2) acceleration, better graphics resolution (I'm using 1024x768x24bitx85Hz right now) and as much memory as I want.
>Macs are dying for the underlying power of linux.
Why would Apple even WANT Linux?
They have NeXTSTEP (A company that outlasted Commodore AND is in more places than Amiga EVER was.) NeXTSTEP is *SO* Sexy to inspire GNUStep. (where is the Amiga OS clone?)
They have Mach
They even have FreeBSD code (Perhaps that is why you are being anal.)
All rolled into one OS. Mac OS X.
Now, if Apple didn't have the past history of screwing developers, they'd go beyond the 5-10% marketshare.
But Apple is not 'dying for the underlying power of linux.' The stench of decay you seem to catch on the wind is the rotting corpses of the dead developers that committed to Apple over the years.
They are using a mix of imigrant workers and trained monkeys to produce and package both the chips and the boards. And since they are being built in a fab on board an alien space craft (the project is presumably being overseen by none other than elvis himself) word isn't likely to leak out.
What do you think the silence is doing? I mean here is a whole article on /. devoted to the fact that Amiga Inc. isn't going to be saying anything for awhile now. The lack of their being news is news, am I the only one who thinks this is ironic (okay, maybe "ironic" is too nice a word...)
Good OS's never die, they just get stronger.
Time to move on. Remove Linux from your boxes please and install only MicroSoft Windows.
That's along the same lines as loyal Mac users during Apple's darkest years. The machines weren't great, the OS was in a rut, but we still got our work done and stuck by because it was the principle of the thing that mattered. Amiga could theoretically go through the same type of resurgance that Apple has.
:) A CHRP motherboard with a G4 PPC (with AltiVec) would be a pretty impressive machine, don't you think?
Here's an interesting thought; could it be possible that Amiga might use the PPC, and adopt IBM's CHRP motherboard design? They could add an on-board video toaster or something
the amigas going to ship with one of those sun java cpus and run a faster than light linux kernel with java vm emulation! who the hell cares anyway ?
Anyone that touched an Amiga was wowed by its impressive multitasking and multimedia that NOTHING else even came close to doing. PCs were doing 16 colors at the time and didnt have full motion video in windows and multiple windows available each running independently. Of course everything was closed back then, why would they want anyone to touch their technology? Do you have any idea how many years jump they had on the entire industry? Near FIVE YEARS before ANYTHING came CLOSE. Thats a LIFETIME in computer years. Games machine indeed. Grow up.
lame clueless self righteous buggering adulturous herpetic scum.
more useful information drips from a defective colostomy bag. what a loser.
don't like amigas? go the fuck away.
Ahem. ./) to run a program that's in the current directory you're in if it's not specified in the path." -- *CLUEBIE ALERT*
"...having to type the path (or at the very least a
Just because you can't set your own shell environment doesn't mean that the entire OS is "archaic and idiotic".
"Having case sensitive commands is another useless feature..." -- *CLUEBIE ALERT #2* Useless to who? Maybe you, but then again, do you run any variant of *nix at all? Or did you just pick up "*nix for Dummies"?
"..ARexx is a much more powerful scripting language than Perl is,..." -- *CLUEBIE ALERT #3* uh... perl is not a OS-SPECIFIC language, CLUEBIE. Perl runs on most flavors of *nix, as well as *gasp* MS's so-called OS'es too (95/98/NT). Besides, lots of people also say that Tcl/Tk is much better than perl for some things, so that's a matter of personal choice, not something to judge an OS by.
By the way... I bet you that the time I spend upgrading the kernel, rebooting, and being fully up on my SMP linux box will be less than the time you take to boot up and use one of your 'apps'.
2 months out? *NOT*
1) Transmeta would have to have production silicon. And where is the rumor from fab-plant employees SAYING 'we are making toxic beach-sand for Transmeta'? This would have have to have started at least 6 months ago.
2) The PC boards would have to be in production, and contracts signed with the contract manufactors. Where are these rumors?
3) Where are the rumors from the printers making boxes to ship the machines, the sales lit, the plastics makers for the case, and the list goes on.
Given this is a story of life, flaming crashing death, a tourtred afterlife to be reborn again, it is a story to be followed. (not to mention the Transmeta rumors)
SO WHERE IS THE RUMORS FROM THE OTHER MAKERS OF PARTS?
Keep leading people on Amiga. Soon we'll ALL get sick of 'crying wolf', and NO ONE WHO MATTERS will care.
but pc users get squat? what the dilly yo on dat?
QNX oughta give away a student or non-commercial version (at the least) for pc people. last time I saw a price, QNX was over $1000 USD for PC's
free qnx for amiga users
OK I'll bite.
Back when I had a A4000/040 with the standard 120 Mb Seagate drive, boot would take 7-8 seconds. Somehow I doubt whether you could beat that, sheez the PC post screens take 10 seconds to get thru.
Loading my WP, paint prog, DOpus, Mod Player etc. would take about 2-3 secs per apps. Pretty snappy.
My current PC for Linux, K6-233, 64 Mb, 2.6 Gig, Boot takes about 50 secs, Loading the GUI (Enlightenment) takes about 10 secs. Running apps in X, WP8.0 about 10 secs, X11amp 5-7 secs, Netscape 10-15 secs.
others are hobbier, but we are the hobbiest! Try "hobbyist".
Linus! Linux! GPL!
*drool*
Just out of curiousity, where did this transmeta and amiga connection start with and can it be considered valid?
Could someone explain to me why the Amiga isn't dead yet? It's almost Y2K.
>- a company whos'e fastes product claims to be >a 60840 @ 50 Mhz? They've been out of it for a >while.... If ignorance is bliss, you must live in heaven. Modern Amigas can be upgraded with PowerPC based accelerator boards, not sure what the top spec. PPC board for the Amiga is since my Amiga died a year ago. They also use 68060 accelerator boards, which are quite snappy to use. Since you claim you've used an Amiga, you must also know how fast they are, how they do more with less, and are simply a lot more fun to use. In my opinion they multitask better than a Linux box with equivalent hardware specs, and the operating system itself is quite elegant. The command line interface is very powerful and much less archaic than other operating systems. For example, Linux which is the current media sweetheart opposition to the MS monopoly. Sure, Linux has a lot of wonderful features, but it has a lot of archaic and idiotic things about it. For example, having to type the path (or at the very least a ./) to run a program that's in the current directory you're in if it's not specified in the path. Having case sensitive commands is another useless feature, and the idea of having one big gigantic tree structure instead of seperate volumes seems like real backward thinking to me. I also think that ARexx is a much more powerful scripting language than Perl is, and with an Amiga I find you spend a lot less time dicking around with the operating system to get things done, and more time actually USING the applications you have.
It's sad to see all the lusers post how something is "dead".
If you don't like it, don't use it. Or at least post something a little more intelligent, like:
"I don't know if I would want to give up my 500 Mhz celeron/19" monitor for their top of the line system, which has a Motorola 68040 running at 25 Mhz and a 17" monitor. Although I admit it does have a 50Mhz option."
I honestly wouldn't buy one. But I do wish the company would make a standard ATX mobo, with a phat PPC/G3 cpu, and use a standard power supply and memory. An alpha or transmeta CPU would be fine, too.
Of course, whatever software it uses MUST SUPPORT DDNS! UNIX DOESN"T! JUST ASK PC WEEK!
I think the days of building odd little computers from non-standard parts is over.
By all that is The Force, I don't know *what* to believe about these people anymore!! After all these years of hype and waiting, if they don't come out with a box that's got a friggin' 15 Thz Transmeta processor, a googleplex of RAM, infinate HD space and the ability to run AmigaOS 5.0, MacOS X, Win2000 and RedHat 6.x SIMULTANIOUSLY no one will take them seriously anymore! Or is that already the case?! Is it any wonder that my A/4000-owning brother is saving for a Mac?? Sheez. Sorry for the freak out, people, but really. . .
here's the fastest amiga available.
>, Amiga could/should have simply posted something on their executive update page that they were in the process of major internal workings
They did, thats where this story came from!!!
Amign gets a Slashdot story announcing that they aren't announcing anything now, and will not for some time? I can't believe their CEO has only an EE degree. Sounds to me like a marketing coup!
no, he said he was dropping qnx and going with linux.
but that statement has since been pulled from the amiga website, which is the point of this "silence" article.
qnx still has their statement posted, ie, they are going full speed to support qnx on the "new amiga".
the only german company mentioned on the qnx site is force5, which makes accelerators for mac and amiga. they will have a G3/G4 accelerator out for existing amigas in september. it will ship with QNX.
some are speculating force5 will make a ATX G3/G4 motherboard, and ship it with QNX.
having a decent quality realtime system for free could be a bonus for the new line of amigas. the various real time packages for linux are kind of a hack, since they are done by third parties outside the kernel development tree.
The screen shots of neutrino, upcoming qnx release, look pretty nice. the company is known for small footprint/high performance/high relibility software.
Jim Collas said not too long ago that they had released more information than anyone in their right mind would release to the Amiga community. He also stated there were many more exciting things that he would love to share but due to NDA's and letting the competition know what they were doing they could release anymore information. Not to mention certiain forces in the computer world that would love to see the AmigaNG fail like the Evil Empire of MicroSoft and Intel.! I think they have realized that they have inadvertantly released much more information than they ever should have, and are not going to say anything else until everything with their partners is set and there is a product to ship. Personally I think they released way too much information, much more than anyone in their right minds would have done at this stage of the game. Perhaps enough to even cause their project harm from certain outside forces. The AMIGA has been in the press very much lately with lots of eyes reading every word.
PowerPC accelerator cards are available from phase5 (www.phase5.de), they're not sold as standard with Amiga Inc machines. Some companies that sell their own Amigas using A4000 motherboards include a PPC card as standard, but yeah.
> You're right - it's like a Harley. An old piece of junk that hasn't been redesigned in far too
> long that is only kept alive because of a cultural quirk. Something that modern machines
> have long since surpassed.
The best description of this "motorcycle" I've ever heard. BTW: In contrast to the Amiga the Harley *never* was "top". Most Harley drivers in combination with their bikes belong to the group of most annoying things on this planets.
Save some money and troubles an buy yourself a BMW or Honda. People living near motorways or speedways will thank you.
> I don't believe there are computers at all in most BMWs. German cars are still centered around
:-)
> solid engineering.
Every German car nowadays needs at least one computer for the three way cathalysator and its lambda probe.
And BTW: I've seen BMWs crashing
(Remember the famous "our car runs without windows" ad from a BMW dealer?)
I have Linux _ON_ my A4000/040, with a little more memory and HD space than it came with originally, and upgraded to OS 3.1 (originally OS 3.01) :)
:)
If you load all the stuff that Linux loads into workbench then I think you'll find it will take an approximately equal amount of time to boot.
Alternatively you could disable all of the things that Linux loads and reduce it to the level of boot-time loaded programs that workbench loads, by default.
My Amiga OS is networked so it loads AmiTCP, requires you to login for permissions etc. I've also installed or have compiled (with GCC) a number of portable unix apps for AmigaOS so that I feel right at home. Overall it's a comparable boot time.
The whole argument seems a little silly, my A4000/040 would do just fine if that's all I had, but for pleasure of use I have my new and economical celeron with accelerated video card (a number of hundred dollars cheaper than PIV) to use. I'd say the economical value of Linux on an Intel platform overtook the Amiga architecture benefits about 2 years ago.
I'll keep using my Amiga because it offers a different and still enjoyable experience, not to mention the still innovative and most playable games. I next plan to upgrade to a Cybervision 64/3D but I keep hearing they aren't making them anymore, and PIV are outrageously expensive around here.
Oh well I've gone off topic, doesn't matter
http://ugn.amiga.org/arn/amigamusicvideo128.mpg
He may have pissed off QNX greatly.
QNX has news about the free QNX for amigans who use the phase5 accelerators.
Not only is QNX going to ship with Phase5's accelerators, but it is interesting to note that part of the agreement involves allowing Phase5 to ship "standalone G3/4 based products" -- could this be a rockin' G4 ATX motherboard?
Here are the links:
Phase5 G3/G4 accelerator news
qnx + phase5 announcement
Although it is off-topic, QNX also has news regarding Real Time Java! Which means the garbage collector has been reigned in. Good news.
Real Time Java/QNX announcement
Dude, "flame" the comment, not me. Calling me "lame" and claiming that I have no "skillz" is plain wrong. I'm a well respected member of a number of social groups. I am considered a celebrity by a number of people in those circles because of my "skill". I am the exact inverse of "lame" and so calling me such is completely without merit. In a number of my comment postings I may be wrong but I am not hypocritical. Now if you were not an AC I could make this reply private and avoid more people's knee jerk reactions to my own defence.
How we know is more important than what we know.
That's just plain flame dude.. You don't know me.. you obviously havn't even tried to know me.. go do a search for 'QuantumG' on altavista.. go have a little look at http://www.virusexchange.org/vlad/ .. try doing a thing called "reading" and then come back and appologize.. oh, and BTW, REGISTER AN ACCOUNT AND TAKE SOME ACCOUNTABILITY FOR YOUR POST. You obviously have no money anyways.
How we know is more important than what we know.
It was completely unbeleivable in the first place. Just give up on it.. I hear that the new BMW will be running linux.. we should post every story (and in this case, complete lack of story) about BMW's on slashdot. The fact that the source that I heard this from happened to be one of the voices in my head (who occasionally tells me to kill things) caused by a complete and utter lack of sleep doesn't mean that slashdot shouldn't pick it up and run with it.. really, this is a great story.
How we know is more important than what we know.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I am not holding my breath; but if it does happen it could be spectacular... those patents make interesting reading; and a Linux optimized to the "native" instruction set of a Transmeta CPU would be something to behold.
I used to be a big Amiga supporter; but after Commodore-Amiga went under (which was no surprise, they did not market the product properly) I thought it was "game over" for the Amiga.
I would be delighted if Gateway/Amiga proved me wrong. Besides, I'd love to play with a Transmeta based Linux box!
--------- Webmaster, http://www.cpureview.com and
This is a feature! :-)
There's less chance of unknowingly running a "trojan horse" program if you have to specify the absolute path to an executable file.
TedC
There's an image of the Transmeta frame posted at AmigaNation.
http://home.att.net/~Amiga401/news.htm
I tried to download the video itself a couple of times, but it was corrupted and wouldn't play.
TedC
Sorry QuantumG, but this is unfounded bullsh*t.
Back in 1985 the A1000 had a multitasking OS, 12-bit graphics, and 4 channel sound. During the same time period, the IBM AT was getting by with MS-DOS, 4-bit graphics, and a speaker that went "beep". The 1985 Mac was still monochrome only.
TedC
Wake me up when Transmeta/Amiga/whatever become REAL product instead of pure PR vapor! OK?
Jón
The Amiga is dead, and has been dead since about 1993.
Any semblance between this new machine and the Amiga is in name only.
It's time to move on...
| In my opinion they multitask better than a
:)
./) to run a program that's in the
... that's the SHELL. Not "Linux". And quite frankly, the Amiga's default shell is rather pathetic all the way up to AmigaOS 3.1. One of the first things an Amiga power user typically does is to install a replacement!
:)
| Linux box with equivalent hardware specs
... of course, since nobody these days has a 7 MHz 68000 with 512K of RAM (base A500), that doesn't really matter. The typical Linux box is also *doing* a lot more, and will crash a lot less than a typical Amiga.
It's an apples/oranges comparison anyway, and don't get me started on how expensive Amiga upgrades such as the PPC boards you mention are.
| For example, having to type the path (or at the
| very least a
| current directory you're in if it's not
| specified in the path.
Oh geez
| the idea of having one big gigantic tree
| structure instead of seperate volumes seems
| like real backward thinking to me
... er, why are "separate volumes" an advantage? So programs can break when you change your HD configuration?
-- Rick
See, the new Amiga's going to be a handheld designed by super-secret startup Handspring, running multiple versions of Linux on a Transmeta CPU emulating an Athlon, an Alpha, a StrongARM, a G4 PPC, a 68060 and a MIPS simultaneously.
But seriously. Gateway is funding this new Amiga project, so the idea of them shipping a series of low-power handhelds, tablets, set-top boxes and whatnot running a locked-down, embedded Linux kernel with custom GUIs and a suite of net-centric apps is certainly possible, and clearly has nothing to do with "classic" Amigas apart perhaps from a few nifty ideas for the A/V subsystem.
Isn't the Amiga name a liability? Shouldn't they just use the patents they want and come up with a name that isn't so synonymous with (a) market failure and (b) a community of babbling loons? Amigas were swell 12-15 years ago.
And a bottle of whisky that fills itself up whenever you drink from it.v iolet colour schemes.
Two. Two bottles of whisky that fill themselves up when you drink from it.
And quantum calculations.
All writen in rebol.
With three bottles of whisky that fill themselves up whenever you drink from them.
And the java environment from the alien ships in independence day that run java-based viruses.
And four bottles of whisky that fill themselves up whenever you drink from them.
And a PAL Video Toaster (tm) with a picture of Kiki Stockhammer that automagically changes Successful Product Background Image every two years.
And sixteen bottles of whisky that fill themselves up whenever you drink from them.
And a mouse you operate with your knee.
And it's available in infraredredorangeyellowgreenblueindigovioletultra
And I had one before you. I had one when I was In My Mother's Womb. I had one Before I Was In My Mother's Womb.
And it's Atari Lynx compatible as the graphics use a superset of the same chipset.
(or substitute similar Amiga(=||!=)Mac-owner style whines as feel fit).
What does Perl have to do with linux? A scripting language is a scripting language, they're really only as powerful as the system commands they can use and how many more lines it takes you to do the same process. In case you didn't realize, case sensitive commands draw from case sensitive file structure. Your most often used commands are in lower case anyways, why are you complaining? Edit your shell if you're that unhappy with uppercase letters.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
HYPE you cant live with out it you cant work with it !
they have shut down their hype machine but the office is still lit up @ night
people also arive and LEAVE 9to5
this is a good thing they are working and you cant work and answer emails all day long
they need some space
they need to actualy think how its sposed to BE
I want one of their mock ups for my front room just to look at !
john jones
a poor student @ bournemouth uni in the UK (a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
THE AMIGA IS DEAD! Get over it.
The Amiga Corp. is dead and gone. It will never come back! There will be no 1 Ghz Amiga 5 billion with 20 gigs of RAM and only cost $599 (What I paid for my Amiga 500).
This hype and vaporware is on the same level as Microsoft.
Linux O Muerte!
I doubt they are thinking that, but I sure am.
Death to Amiga! Long live Amiga! The only thing that's two months away is the arrival of the G3 cards with Neutrino ported to 'em. A few thousand Amiga Classics are about to be reborn as Neutrino development boxes. Next year when complete PPC systems are cheap and someone decides to turn it loose on the general public, PPC Neutrino will hit the ground running. It'll be more Amiga-like than Amiga Inc's platform, and have more hearts and minds behind it.
Amiga's newborn bastard brother (Neutrino) is poised to inherit the legacy, and there's nothing Amiga Inc can do to stop it. They'll never have a product on the market in time, and even if somehow they manage it, whatever Linux variation they release will be an abomination in the eyes of the old Amiga users. They just don't have a chance.
---
Have a Sloppy day!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
OK, the Amiga was *well* ahead of it's time. I would like the Amiga to be brought back with things like 3D acceleration, massive amounts of memory, better graphics resolution, et al. In fact, I believe that Amiga Inc. *could* start turning a buck again.
That being said, I originally liked the volume of Amiga stories that were being posted, but that was when the was real *news*. There shouldn't be too much to report on for a while, until Amiga starts realizing the promise that they made when they said they would be more open. I thought the last Amiga story was interesting, but this is just total fluff. I'm a *big* Amiga fan, but this is really bordering on unfounded bullsh*t.
I'm honestly not trying to start a thread of pure flaming with this, but it needs to be said better than, "D00Dz Th1$ i$ 0Ld Sh*T~!31323 Am1G4 SuX0rz!".
Sorry guys.
aÍÍ©ÍÌÍ£Ì'̽ͩÌÍzÍYÌÍÌY
... er, why are "separate volumes" an advantage? So programs can break when you change your HD configuration? :)
Yes, I'm quite sure that AC just LOVES to Find->Advanced->All Files Containing "D:\path\to\stupid\program.exe" when (s)he moves programs between drives in Windoze. Oh, don't forget the registry... 30 minutes of work that linux just about eliminates (esp w/ Soft Raid)
I think Transmeta is banking on the fact the Linus Torvalds works there.
:-)
In their mind, if they release a CPU, Amiga or not, a large portion of Linux users will migrate to the new Transmeta technology.
Whether this is true or not, IMHO, depends on exactly what it is they release.
My journal has hot
I agree that Amiga has released way more information than a company in their position should. But they have a devoted user community and they feel they should not alienate... unfortunately said user community is for the most part ignorant of why what Amiga is doing is going to be revolutionary. From what I've seen (and I was at AmiWest just to check out and report on the Transmeta rumor), most of the folks there were what you would expect to see of people clinging to a platform that is, for the greater part, dead.
Amiga, Inc. has managed to describe a rather complete view of their new platform. Its technologies that nobody else is pulling together in quite the same way, along with a recognizable brand name and image. I think they will be the first to market with anything on the scale they're talking about, but I think giving away as much as they've had has given a jumpstart to any "me too's" that may dilute their market, and I think that may have been unwise.
Not that I don't have fun with the rumors mind you... :)
s/[BW]ill(y|iam)?( H\.?)?( G(ate|8)(s|z))?(,? ?v?(III|3)(\.\D)?)?/Girly-man/gi
They are planning on relelasing an ATX format board as one of their release platforms. A CHRP board is not out of the question.
s/[BW]ill(y|iam)?( H\.?)?( G(ate|8)(s|z))?(,? ?v?(III|3)(\.\D)?)?/Girly-man/gi
They have recently released version 3.5 of the (old) operating system. Maybe they are trying not to disturb 3.5 sales.
On the other hand, it's been a long time since Amiga released the last version of the OS (before 3.5). Maybe they have released 3.5 just to make an estimation of what could be the coverage of the new OS and now they are waiting to see the market's reaction for later making the necessary changes to the new OS and machine to make it success.
Just my 0.02 Euro.
holding Walt Disney and the contracts for all this in his left suit jacket pocket?? Maybe one of these days people will take the Amiga and the rumors seriously, instead of snickering to themselves how slow a 68040@50MHz is. Maybe the throngs of people will surround Disneyland in a giant show of Civil Disobedience demanding both their Amiga computer with Linux RTOS and Transmeta asyncrhonous CPU and that Pluto be given bi-pedal motion the same as Goofy. I mean, when is corporate America going to take the demands of the lowly consumer seriously????
The truth is out there, but don't hold your breath
Well, that's a nice rumor and sounds like it could be an interesting piece of hardware. However, Amiga's problems before were never with their hardware, it was with their marketing. If they don't get that right this time they're still going nowhere.
It will be difficult for a new system to really wow people when it uses stock hardware. Or, more likely, it will have some wow factor up front, but it will be lost as soon as the next wave of improved stock hardware hits the market.
What's been keeping amazing new makes of computer from breaking into the home market is that the PC makes up for quality of overall design by getting greater horsepower every few months. So if you put something in an Amiga box that can be compared to a current offering--say ATI's RAGE 128 core--then it will start to look dated very quickly--as soon as the next generation of ATI chips shows up for the PC next quarter. Imagine if the audio/visual hardware in the original Amiga kept getting upgraded and improved--for a machine other than the Amiga.
Yes, you could upgrade this new Amiga to use the latest hardware, but then what have you gained? You might as well have bought a PC.
There are some amazing things that could be done with a new machine. How about some of the ultra low power CPUs that are being developed (like Chuck Moore's F21, which will use practically no power and cost only a buck or two to manufacture). Or how about the graphics chip developed at VM Labs? What about graph reduction hardware designed for running functional languages? For a new system to break the PC blahs, it needs to be very forward thinking. Putting PC parts in a new box won't cut it.
was transmeta nearly as "popular" before linus started working there? i don't know, but i think linus has more to do with their popularity than their secretiveness. i mean, if some random company in silicon valley said nothing about what they were doing, who would care?
the fact that linus is working there _and_ nobody knows what they're doing makes it very interesting. and while saying nothing about what they're doing is an interesting marketing plow, they're not making any money doing that, so at some point they're going to have to release an actual product that actual people will buy. it may or may not be the amiga CPU, but it will have to be _something_ whether or not it eliminates their popularity.
My thoughts as well. A further thought was that, assuming we (and all the other like minded /.ers) are correct, Amiga could/should have simply posted something on their executive update page that they were in the process of major internal workings, and that further details won't be available until they can organize their thoughts, or something like that. At least that way, their going ahead and just keeping people like us from major speculation, and making themselves look a bit more organized.
Insert mind here.
oops..
silly me
what was I thinking?
well, darn it, I feel rather stupid now. Oh well...
I guess I was thinking they could do something more in the way to keep us from speculating, although that's an impossibility. but anyway, sorry about that wasted post of mine
Insert mind here.
And emailers, and (more) newsreaders, and IRC clients, and TCP stacks, and.... well, there's a "Better than official" version of ICQ, but ICQ sucks :)
Anyway, this new machine and OS carries the Amiga name, but it ain't gonna be just another, faster A4000, it's a totally new architecture.
Transmeta isn't exactly thriving on this mystery. since they don't have a product, it currently doesn't matter what people really think of them. obviously they have SOMETHING. i doubt that they just sit around the office sipping coffee all day.
I know Gateway now owns Amiga, are they going to make this evident and offer Gateway Amiga PC's with Linux? If so it could really be the push software manufacturers need to jump on the linux wagon. I would love to see linux be more than hype in the media and have a place in joe computer users home.
Anyway, anyone know if this will be the case or will Gateway keep out of Amiga affairs for the most part?
Yep.. that's the knee jerk reaction I was looking for.. thanks AC.
How we know is more important than what we know.
So like, when transmeta releases a product does Linus' visa run out? :)
How we know is more important than what we know.
No, I think you have something there with the hall of presidents..
How we know is more important than what we know.
Blah.. Commodore made HOME computers to be used by HOME users and programmed by BIG companies. Hobbiests started coding on them because they were open and a bit of fun but they were NEVER ahead of their time and they were NEVER real computers. What's more, they PATENTED all of their chips and designs making it ILLEGAL for anyone else to make amigas. This is worse than keeping the design secret because they said "here is exactly how all our parts work and here is where you can buy the replacements but don't even think about making your own amiga".. or designing a better one for that matter. I honestly compare this behaviour with Apple who still to this day have "registed service centers" that charge through the nose. Apple is a company based on FUD and ignorance and so was Commodore. By targeting the HOME user and discouraging independant developers (ala Nintendo) they bred a market that was hopelessly devoted to a lost cause. Crappy games machines.
How we know is more important than what we know.
That annoyed me too, at first, but simply adding ./ to the PATH envirionment at startup made that headache go away fast.
-- www.bteg.com | bleh.n3.net | hac47.dhs.org
It started out when Walt Disney first constructed Disneyworld. It was at that moment the Amiga/Transmeta deal was formed because it was necessary to ensure the secrecy of the truth that the Hall of Presidents at Disneyland conatins the true leaders of the world. Also, Ameritech and TCI Cable are involved in this shadowy games. Torvalds is merely a pawn in their elaborate plan. I'm not paranoid, they are just all out to get me.
Now, this is very, very bad marketing. In this situation, when the new product is planned to be published in few months, the company should do everything to make people interested in their products.
For me, this silence just tells that something has gone very badly wrong and the company is currently trying to figure out how to not to lose their face.
Well lets see, what else has happened recently? They "released" AmigaOS3.5, some company called IWin is making unbelievable claims about their new Amiga compatible, while makers of PPC cards are making a push for QNX on the Amiga.
Maybe there is a much bigger demand for 3.5 than they thought, maybe the IWin thing is for real, maybe QNX-PPC on existing Amigas is looking to be a real threat... maybe they realized the Linux choice was a big mistake in the eyes of the Amiga community?
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
I swear to God, out of all the communities on the net, there is none that can create and support rumors quite like the Amiga community.
How anyone can believe a bit of this is beyond me. When they actually produce silicon that can sit in a pile of packaging on a store shelf, get excited. Otherwise, just lump it in with the other BS we've been hearing for years now. My personal Amiga compost heap could fertilize the Gobi for growing corn.
I can't find the article but didn't the Prez of Amiga post a note two months ago stating that they had decided to go with BeOS because Be had the Amiga UI built in? Anyone remember that German MacOS Clone Vaporware last year...what was it...COS?
I'm not negating Amiga's positive's... Back in the day, It was the kick ass - more for less. A color Screen!! Key words there is back in the day. Sure it can be upgraded etc, but considering there has'nt been a core product line in years, I question the ability of that company.(albeit owned by Gateway now - a good thing!). Why did the productline die? Apart froma few true beleivers, there's nothing more than a carcass left of that company. How can they have the momentum to bring the "Transmeta" CPU to the spotlight and do it justice?
Hmmm - Acording to Amiga... This is their fastest(off the shelf)
Competition is always a good thing. Besides,
it's always great to root for the underdog,
even if he's a "carcass", isn't it?
Bob
The PC Weenies: 11 Years of Online Tech 'Too
This makes me suspect that there is no actual Amiga product, after all, at least not in the forseeable future.
--
Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page
If they knew they would produce something in two months they would be shifting their publicity machine into overdrive.
The fact that they're not saying anything indicates that they're not sure what's going to happen and want to keep their mouths shut until they have something coherent to say.
It could be Gateway is shutting them down or forcing a change in direction. Or maybe they're looking for capital. Or maybe they're being sued for dropping QNX. It could be lots of things, but it's bound to be bad.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
Is it just me, or does this seem unlikely? I know, I know, if it does happen you'll all be thinking "We told you so," but Transmeta seems to thrive on mystery... if they actually released a product, their popularity (such as it is) could disappear. I'm not saying it will, but where they've been keeping whatever it is they're doing a secret for so long, could it be too little, too late? Just a thought.
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try."
I mean really,
Amiga? The Toy right? Not to bruise anyone's ego (I am a former Amiga and Atari ST owner), but let's see - a company whos'e fastes product claims to be a 60840 @ 50 Mhz? They've been out of it for a while.... Let's face it, Transmeta would be bett'n the farm (pigs and all) if they expect Amiga to launch them into the next millenium...
My answer is: if a machine and it's users can continue a market for Amiga, without a functional parent company (the fastest Amiga is as fast as whatever PowerPC chip you care to mention), and people like the doubters still have to ask that question 5 years after Commodore fell, you know that there is something about Amiga that will never let it die.
It had *principle*. Jay Miner did it right first time around - the linux kernel this time will make Amiga no longer conceivbale as a toy by the uninitiated (it is far beyond toy OSs like Windows and Macs, but lags behind the *nix's). CPU is irrelevant - as are the latest fastest graphics cards with xxxmillion polys/sec.
It will undoubedly have impressive hardware - be it the MIPS+ATI graphics core, the Transmeta or PPC CPU. All these things are readily available. What makes Amiga live on is not the original hardware or software, but the vision of design.
WIndows and Macs are dying for the underlying power of linux. But they lack robust design. Linux has the power, but as Torvalds has indirectly said on many occations, due to it's development implementation, it never *had* a design.
Amiga combines it all - and adds the special sauce that makes it Amiga. :)
Acting stupid isn't much fun when there's someone around who knows better