it's hobbyist hardware. i'm not sure there's any kind of great software available for it yet. it's really just meant as a platform that people can program themselves and make into any kind of computer they please.
i guess from the get-go it's going to have built-in software to act like a c64, but in essence it could be programmed low-level (and re-flashed?) to run any OS designed for it. it gives the coder all the basic interfaces (framebuffer, keyboard, mouse, etc) but doesn't lock him/her down in what he/she does with it.
and, afaik, it's not out in main production yet (they just got the boot firmware completed... after heavy engineering... i think most everything else is done?)
I think that the Pegasos with MorphOS is pretty similar to the Amiga community designing its own hardware with software. The MorphOS was running on original Amigas with PPCs before this whole AmigaONE thing was even invented...
But really, the CLOSEST thing to a new computer from scratch with software coming from the Amiga community has got to be the C=ONE, with backing from individual Computers. though it's meant to emulate [not like SOFTWARE emulate, but like DICTIONARY emulate] a C64.
individual Computers have consistently been some of the most ingenious hardware designers on ANY platform... but who choose [have chosen] to use the Amiga as their basis for most projects over the past decade...
Yeah, my point was that *I* don't want to have to sit down and help him fix it. It may be easier to dig into the internals (using vi vs. using the registry editor) but I don't want to spend the time.
And yes, the company *will* provide paid support. Didn't I say that? I would hope the support would be free, because if something goes wrong he's going to be on the phone for fifteen hours as they tell him how to use vi.
Note that I said if he buys a *new* computer that has Linux on it. That would mean that the Linux distro came pre-installed.
And yes, once it gets to the point where he could run out to the store (or call up Dell/Gateway/whomever) and order a new computer that has Linux as its default OS, hopefully all these shortcomings will have been addressed. But that doesn't happen right now with Lindows, does it? Some companies are making great progress with this, but my experience with Mandrake, SuSE and Debian indicate that low-level ease of use are not priorities. The priorities regarding ease-of-use come at the top-end, where the user graphically operates the computers under X and some desktop environment. Once those fail, because they're still a work in progress, it's right back to the command line.
And I'm not going to putz with that.
Another great thing is that if there's Linux on the desktop at work, he's more likely to choose Linux on the desktop at home, if given the opportunity. We've seen what happened when IBM introduced the IBM PC and sold hundreds of thousands of those underpowered machines, taking out Commodore, Apple, Osborne, et al.
Please, can't we just keep Linux desktop installations in corporate environments? I don't want to see my dad buying a new computer and having Linux on it. If there's ever a problem, he's going to have to spend 3 hours on the phone, get charged $450, and end up returning his computer, because there's no way I'm going to sit down and start digging around in the internals to try to get it up and running again.
On the other hand, if he's using Linux on his desktop at work, I'm happy, because there is a paid support staff (made of people like you!) who must administer the machines, and he gets his job done just as well (if not better), while the corporation doesn't have to pay the Microsoft tax (and thereby support the Republican party [and thereby support terrorism]).
I don't think I'd want my dad using Macs at work though, because he'd be complaining all the time about how "foo-foo" it is. He'd make little limp-wristed gestures and talk about the pretty pictures and bouncing icons. I'd try to explain better to him, but he wouldn't care. "Too foo-foo," he'd say.
[I use a PowerBook as my main computer. I'm typing this on an Amiga right now. No joke. Still almost posted this as AC to avoid flamebait accusations. Darn you all.]
This was done -- as was mentioned in previous comments -- by the makers of the Casablanca and Draco workstations.
It has also been done by a company called Screenplay, though they didn't use the actual Amiga-style hardware/software like Draco did.
A little 1U video editing box can actually be done a lot cheaper these days by using off-the-shelf ATI, nVidia, or Matrox hardware and a cheap motherboard design than it would be to do something Amiga-like.
No. The VideoToaster 2/3 (VT/NT) from NewTek is akin to the early Toaster/Flyer, but on a modern PC. The interface can look almost exactly like the original Toaster, and the bundled software provides the same featureset. (It, of course, does a ton more too).
With the SX-8 breakout box, users get live switching between countless composite/s-video input sources. It's an amazing set up, I nearly s**tted my pants every time I got to use one.
It does what Play set out to do for a tenth of the price -- and it actually WORKS!
But! we have IBM to thank for the BRILLIANT "LinkWay" multimedia authoring system, running on PS/1 or PS/2 workstations going back to 1992 or so.
I have now pulled my tongue from my cheek.
Back in fourth through sixth grade, we had a computer class with a whole load of PS/1s, and then one or two Amigas which only our professor could use. He would do all image capture and editing on the Amigas, and then we would modify them on the PS/1s. We thought his computer had some kind of powerful black magic, but it was actually an Amiga. Some other kind of magic then.
LinkWay was a lot like throwing an Amiga-like interface with Deluxe Paint IV onto a DOS box.
The Toaster wasn't a Zorro board. It was a Video Slot board. The Flyer was a Zorro board.
The source code is to an Amiga-based program which drives this hardware (separate or in tandem) while also providing many features to the user which doesn't really use the hardware at all. There's bound to be some great stuff in the ToasterPaint code as well as the ToasterCG code. And probably some nice code in the Flyer NLE...
But you're right, porting the code to a PC wouldn't give them the bulk of anything because the original Toaster is a strictly Amiga phenomenon. Especially since most of the code is in 68k assembly. Open-source developers might find some nice timing routines in there, for audio/video sync.
Yeah, a person with a modern PC can do more *editing* than the *original* Toaster. But that person can not do it LIVE. The Toaster was all LIVE, remember that. It was not so much (by itself) an editor as it was a Switcher/Keyer/Character Generator/24-bit Framestore.
And as far as the editing goes, the Flyer when added to the Toaster hardware did some pretty nice editing with broadcast-quality output, again live, no rendering required (until you get to really special effects).
Yeah, the 6888x chips would be good (and have proven to be good) for all the math-intensive floating point operations. From what I understand, this is mainly useful for formulaic math operations, such as JPEG decoding and uncompression and that sort of thing. Also probably for compiling really math-intensive code.
However, that's where the Falcon's DSP chip would *really* shine. DSPs are famously well-suited for handling image streams (and of course also audio streams and other sorts of data streams). Since this is one of the most computationally intensive parts of browsing (from my experience), having these chips available on the two platforms can make a world of difference.
I know on my Amiga that the speed difference between using a 6888x-compiled image decoder and a stock 680x0 image decoder is actually deceptive; IIRC the FPU (6888x) code actually runs *slower* because it's more accurate, though the *same* accuracy on a *non-6888x-equipped* Amiga would be like DOZENS of times slower.
So for big image processing tasks like Photoshop-esque operations the FPU comes in handy. But for real decoding speed the DSP is where it's at. And no Amigas came stock with DSPs.
You had a Falcon? You're pretty lucky:) I tried to get one once but only ended up getting a TT with the 19" monochrome monitor:)
You're pretty much right on the memory addressing on the Amiga; the difference comes in on which model you're using and what sort of accelerator board you have (if you have one). Zorro-II bus in A2000 and A500 (sorta) and the Zorro-I bus (sidecar) in A1000 can only address 8 megs. Meaning if you plug a memory expansion board into a Zorro slot it can only have 8 megs max *and* when equipped that way, any ROMs on other expansion boards often won't have any spare memory to map themselves! So sometimes it's best to only go up to 6 or something.
(Sorry if I'm getting into Too-Much-Information realm here, but...)
Accelerator boards with 030/040/060 chips on them often have standard or non-standard SIMM slots which can be expanded up to 64MB or so; the limitation is usually just in how many SIMM slots there are and the max SIMM size allowed on that accelerator board. Lots of people have 128mb/256mb in their Amigas. It's just so hard to come by 128mb 72-pin EDO FPM SIMMs these days:) (Memory on Accelerator boards in these systems is a lot faster than memory on the Zorro bus because it's local to the expansion processor).
Zorro-III bus in the A3000 and A4000 can map a heck of a lot more RAM on the bus. Probably because these machines had '030s in them by default, or '040s. Which can map a lot more RAM than a stock 68000 or 68010.
You're right too about the older STs; I have a 1040STe which has 4 30-pin SIMM slots on it and can be expanded to 4mb. By default it had 4 256k SIMMs. (I think I read a report on the net somewhere that somebody installed 2mb SIMMs in an STe). The bigger machines like Mega STe I'm not sure about; they probably had 8 30-pin SIMM slots for up to 8mb or 16mb.
Okay, sorry. Haven't had my coffee this morning, I'm waxing nostalgic...:) have a good one
There are some more modern GUI toolkits available on the Atari which possibly could be hooked into Mozilla's GUI system, but developer documentation is sparse, AFAIK. I've looked around for decent docs on GEM & NVDI programming, and have found maybe two or three documents on the web.
MiNT seems to provide a decent UNIX-like environment on the Ataris, though last I checked most of the tools were sorrowfully out of date.
Plus, most Atari computers to have a decent resolution must run in monochrome mode, which naturally severely limits the browsing experience. That's why Atari browsers such as CAB (and some newer one that I haven't tried) thrive, is that they are aware of the limitations on stock Atari computers, and compensate adequately.
I have a hunch (as I frequent both Atari forums and Amiga forums) that there are a lot more graphics-card-equipped Amigas out there, and a lot more beefy Amigas out there, than there are Ataris. Though machines like the Hades '060 Atari with PCI graphics would be great for running Mozilla, there's gotta be -- what -- less than 4,000 of those machines in existence. And that's probably a GROSS overestimate.
Yeah the Falcon would be great, but as you say those are rare too. The Falcon and the TT would be the only stock Atari machines capable of running Mozilla, and even these would be long-shots as the TT can only be upgraded to ~18MB RAM... the Falcon I'm not sure about.
The machines are also difficult to equip with ethernet (at least in the United States). Some VME-Bus "Riebl" ethernet card is available (used, and in Germany), but the native TOS TCP/IP stacks are apparently buggy with the hardware drivers. I could, on the other hand, eBay a $18 PCMCIA ethernet card for my Amiga 1200 or an Amiga 600 and be on the net in no time. Likewise, for a big-box Amiga I could just call up Software Hut and buy an Ethernet card for my Zorro bus, for in the neighborhood of $120. And it would come with drivers and software and all sorts of goodies.
There are very few websites I regularly visit which I can't access with my Amiga browsers AWeb, IBrowse or Voyager. The main browser I use is IBrowse 1.22, which probably had its last revision in '98. (It since has been updated to 2.xx, but I haven't upgraded because 1.22 works great for me).
This is mainly due to my web browsing patterns, though. I tend not to go to the mega-sites that require CSS and Flash (and even JS). Instead, I tend to go to more technically oriented websites and message boards and the like, which work just fine due to their simple design.
Slashdot works great in all the browsers too.
A lot of Amiga fans are under the misguided impression that a Mozilla or Firebird port will bring a Java Virtual Machine and Flash to the computer. It won't, of course. Work was started and aborted on two different JVMs over the years, and a half-baked port of Kaffe exists. As far as Flash, of course nothing but basic spline rasterization could be possible without bogging down the 75mhz '060 in the fastest 68k-based Amiga. On PPC-equipped machines, more is possible, but even a 233mhz 603 will get choppy on sites like homestar runner.
I look at the BeOS port of Mozilla as a sign that an Amiga port is possible, but they had serious kernel issues they had to get around (and did so with the help of sidelined Be engineers -- the closest thing we have to help like that on the Amiga side are people like Olaf Barthel and other AmigaOS geniuses). I imagine that if a more modern OS like BeOS had limitations, so will AmigaOS; Be had a problem with maximum library size allowed in memory, and some sort of segmentation scheme had to be introduced to allow Mozilla's huge library collection to be available in RAM.
My Amiga is fast, but it's only got 32 megs of RAM, and this is fine for day-to-day use with native Amiga software. With most things loaded, I'm left with about 18 megs free. This is hardly enough to get NSPR and some GUI toolkit running, let alone an entire Mozilla experience.
Sorry, I'm getting off your topic. But yeah, for the old Amiga to get re-introduced and marketed toward mainstream, the lack of a wonderful browser would be a killer. But for everyday use by Amiga fans such as myself, the browsers all work fine, and they're fast. We know our limitations.
Honestly, Voyager (under AmigaOS and MorphOS) isn't a bad browser, and has decent support for CSS, though it's unstable. IBrowse (1.22) is stable and fast, but doesn't support CSS or JavaScript *at all*. AWeb supports JavaScript and is now open-source, and even lets me get on HotMail (which Safari on OS X.2 can't do anymore, and neither can Mozilla/Camino). So I think we've got a grand browser problem in general, and I'm used to not getting the whole web when I'm on anything except the sh*tty Explorer. (Interestingly, AWeb used to be AMosaic, based on the Mosaic source code, just as we all know earlier versions of IE was).
I really get sick of all these people saying "The Amiga is Dead" simply because there's no marketing machine or company behind the name. (Even if there is, and they are a poor company).
Since when did a marketing machine and financial support determine an OS's (or platform's) viability? Is Windows 98 dead now that Microsoft no longer supports or markets it? I don't think so, since so many programs you buy still work on it and countless computers still run it.
I think it's a bit silly for people hanging out in an open-source, FREE SOFTWARE themed forum, to say that a platform is dead because it's not CORPORATE.
Nevermind that there are still tens of thousands of dedicated users who operate Amigas side-by-side with other more advanced computers; who use the Amiga for what it can do because they like the way it does those things, but use the more advanced hardware for what the Amiga lacks. That independent software developers have been inventing their own solutions to internet connectivity and audio playback/editing and UNIX cross-platform compatibility for YEARS now, ABSOLUTELY FREE, and oftentimes WITHOUT the help from all the befuddling Linux/sf.net open source existing code. These people are doing it from scratch using the AmigaOS's API because it's GOOD, and EFFICIENT, and actually rather fun to program.
Isn't that incredibly respectable in the mindset of this forum? No?
So I guess I should stop now. I could go on forever. I find it incredibly painful that otherwise open-minded, inspired folks find it perfectly fine to diss a platform and make value judgments about it when THEY'VE NEVER EVEN USED IT.
Unemployed Mozilla coders? Here's $4,000 for ya..
on
The Mozilla Foundation
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Sorry to hear about this tragedy, but at least there's a good opportunity for some super-easy, quick cash while in between jobs!
Maybe you laid-off Gecko folks should check out the AmiZilla project, and pitch in to port Mozilla to the much-maligned Commodore Amiga!
As of now, there's a booty of over $4,000 to be earned... that's probably a small portion of what you were earning at Netscape/AOL per year, but it's enough to keep you alive for a few months, right?
Definitely your expertise could be of benefit to these intrepid folks... especially if you don't mind being on the bleeding edge with a barely-tested port of gcc 3.3 to the 68k-amigaos architecture!
> Set up a bunch of 486s, or P-Is running DV/X,
> give them each a Gnome or KDE desktop running
> on some other server, and let people surf, or
> whatever. One high power machine, lots of
> terminals.
That's a good idea, but how in the world are you supposed to network these machines? That free open-source version of Novell Netware? [Blink?]
Does anybody know of any free Ethernet TCP/IP networking software (with NIC drivers!) for MS-DOS or FreeDOS or DR-DOS? Because this could open the door to having a bunch of cheap MS-DOS-based X terminals... definitely a conversation piece for geeks. I think I already know a few dumpsters with 486s for me to rescue...
[Reminiscing: I remember I could only run regular DesqView on my old 486SX/25 with 4mb RAM, but my friend with his DX2-66 (!) and 16mb RAM (!!) could run DesqView/X and I was SO JEALOUS. It looked like the future of the PC (even though DV/X was already outdated)... that great X GUI of Linux, in only 8 megs of RAM, on MS-DOS! And so fast! But alas... it never caught on... so I bought an Amiga]
If you have no limit to your spending, you're going to want the best. Using an Amiga would only be a solution if you're happy with 640x480 video and can afford acceleration boards (if they're still available). Jurassic Park was --not-- done on Amigas. Some of the dinosaur rough-up proof-of-concept animations were done on an Amiga with Lightwave, but all of the final work was done on high-end workstations and edited the old fashioned way on film.
An Amiga equipped to do desktop video with a Video Toaster can do full broadcast-quality resolution (784x492 or whatever) in 24bit color. Lightwave on the Amiga can also render to that resolution or better.
If one were to purchase a Video Toaster-equipped Amiga in this modern world, he would want it to be an Amiga 4000 with a Video Toaster 4000. Any _new_ VT/Amiga system is exactly that. The Amiga 4000 has the updated AGA graphics chipset which can do higher resolutions at more colors (compared to the OCS/ECS chipset in earlier Amiga models such as the A500, A2000, and A3000). The VT4000 takes advantage of the AGA chipset, so it can do some neat things the old original Toaster can't.
There's also the Video Toaster Flyer, which has a spider-like 6-way (?) SCSI controller on-board. It does high-speed on-disk video editing. Remember that the old Video Toaster and VT4000 are not for editing video clips stored on disk, they switch between video sources and fade and grab video and genlock and change colors and render text and apply 3D graphics and all sorts of other neat things -- and it's all done in hardware, so it's blazing fast.
I have never seen the Video Toaster Flyer in action, but I hear it is neat. Seems that it can do almost all the things that its big-name competitors have implemented, while perhaps requiring more creativity. That is to be expected, though, since it is a product on the Amiga, the choice for creative professionals.;)
And yes, accelerators are still available, both used and new, for all Amiga models. A few places to check would be Software Hut and Compuquick Media Center. They seem to be two of the leading Amiga dealerships these days.
Check out Newtek's website, they have had a number of deals lately on their Video Toaster line.
The only problem with getting into Amiga production these days is researching all the software available. A lot of it still sits on shelves at the older Amiga dealerships, waiting to be bought and used. When combined well, the old software packages all mingle to form one really powerful system (again, when used creatively). Remember that the Amiga was years ahead of its time, so though a program may have a (C) date of 1993, it could still be very useful and productive. Also, most decent Amiga applications can talk to each other (and the Toaster / Switcher) through ARexx scripting. Combining the Toaster with the kick-ass ImageFX package and a modeller like Pixel3D can really melt an audience's mind.
Seems that the majority of readers are peeved when Slashdot posts news that doesn't conform to an X86-dominated society.
Now, here's some happy news about a new X86 OS and it's getting knocked for not being portable to other architectures.
Why are you unhappy? Are you jealous? Insulted?
I run an Amiga, which comes standard with an OS written mostly in fast assembly. Apps for it can be developed in a large number of languages, with abundant resources for further assembly coding.
It doesn't have virtual memory. This means that large apps don't freeze my system for a minute upon closing, while they frantically chug my hard drive. It also means that applications must make efficient use of memory, because once all your RAM is used up, you're done.
But apps wouldn't do that anyway, since they all have an extremely small memory footprint. Chances are that I can load my email program, web browser, telnet app, irc client, and mp3 player in as much time as it takes for most to load Netscape Communicator. And in half as much memory. And with a tenth of the disk chugging.
And since they're all in memory at the same time, my hard drive won't even be touched as I rapidly switch between all the different programs.
Oh! And I don't have memory protection. This means that application developers have to be very careful in debugging their software. They have to make sure that there are no leaks, no stray pointers.
Yeah, in a system with no memory protection, software _can_ overwrite important areas of memory.
Obviously you don't know that much about BeOS, or you would understand that it was basically designed to be MacOS with the power of AmigaOS and UNIX... read what JLG has to say about Amiga, and you'll realize that it inspired him to create a modern, efficient, high-powered operating system. From the dawning of the BeBox, a large percentage of Be developers and users have been ex-Amiga fanatics. Half the websites of Be developers house Be software _and_ Amiga software. It's a natural progression. Sounds like you need to appreciate your heritage more, boy, or pappy's gonna whoop ya.
Wake up... Amigas are being redesigned, the new ones are not going to be at all like the old ones. They will, though, likely be able to run non-hardware-intensive software from the old (current) Amiga lineup. The new machines are going to use a chip from Transmeta, which will be very powerful.
Old Amigas still can do things that any Unix-based system would be terribly jealous of.
Sorry buddy. Atari no longer exists. It was bought out by JTS, a hard drive manufacturing company, and now it seems that its most important intellectual property has been sold to Hasbro. Hasbro might do something with the Lynx technology in the future.
The ST technology, still quite popular in Germany, was bought by a company named Milan Computer. They have updated TOS (the Atari ST's operating system) and re-engineered the ST's pretty basic system architecture and have released a new system. I believe it's based around the 68060 and also is PowerPC capable. It has PCI slots and other nice things.
You can check it out at http://www.milan-computer.de
No, of course not. Besides the fact that they're partnering with Sun, ATI, and Transmeta, it really looks like this will never happen! No way! Even though Sun is really shaking like a piece of angry candy right now, and Transmeta is just about ready to pop up, there's no chance that all you folks will put two and two together and see that it's this new Amiga which is the product. It's not vaporware. There's way, way too much going on right now for this to be vaporware. Too many big forces have too much interest in this for it to amount to nothing.
You just wait. You might not want to be one of the people using it, but there could be 2 or 3 million other people who will.
The Amiga's hardware is nice and its OS is nice. But there's something underlying that really makes the Amiga what it is. There's a Spirit. What Gateway/Amiga is doing now is looking at what made the Amiga so special back in the day, and seeing how they can reproduce that today. I think that's possible. I think there's a place for that. It's not based on the original OS because it can't be. It's not based on 68K because it can't be. That would almost be a dead-end right away. The currently available Amigas are for Amiga-lovers. They're not for a mass-market. The new ones will be.
I, personally, see very little Spirit in a UNIX-based operating system like Linux. Sorry.
And, FYI, there will be Classic-Amiga boards that will plug into the new machines. These will essentially be 68040/68060-based Amigas on PCI cards.
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it's hobbyist hardware. i'm not sure there's any kind of great software available for it yet. it's really just meant as a platform that people can program themselves and make into any kind of computer they please.
... after heavy engineering... i think most everything else is done?)
i guess from the get-go it's going to have built-in software to act like a c64, but in essence it could be programmed low-level (and re-flashed?) to run any OS designed for it. it gives the coder all the basic interfaces (framebuffer, keyboard, mouse, etc) but doesn't lock him/her down in what he/she does with it.
and, afaik, it's not out in main production yet (they just got the boot firmware completed
I think that the Pegasos with MorphOS is pretty similar to the Amiga community designing its own hardware with software. The MorphOS was running on original Amigas with PPCs before this whole AmigaONE thing was even invented...
... but who choose [have chosen] to use the Amiga as their basis for most projects over the past decade...
But really, the CLOSEST thing to a new computer from scratch with software coming from the Amiga community has got to be the C=ONE, with backing from individual Computers. though it's meant to emulate [not like SOFTWARE emulate, but like DICTIONARY emulate] a C64.
individual Computers have consistently been some of the most ingenious hardware designers on ANY platform
Bravo.
The only thing I think these new computers have got going for themselves is that the OS is probably really, REALLY fast.
Yeah, my point was that *I* don't want to have to sit down and help him fix it. It may be easier to dig into the internals (using vi vs. using the registry editor) but I don't want to spend the time.
And yes, the company *will* provide paid support. Didn't I say that? I would hope the support would be free, because if something goes wrong he's going to be on the phone for fifteen hours as they tell him how to use vi.
Note that I said if he buys a *new* computer that has Linux on it. That would mean that the Linux distro came pre-installed.
And yes, once it gets to the point where he could run out to the store (or call up Dell/Gateway/whomever) and order a new computer that has Linux as its default OS, hopefully all these shortcomings will have been addressed. But that doesn't happen right now with Lindows, does it? Some companies are making great progress with this, but my experience with Mandrake, SuSE and Debian indicate that low-level ease of use are not priorities. The priorities regarding ease-of-use come at the top-end, where the user graphically operates the computers under X and some desktop environment. Once those fail, because they're still a work in progress, it's right back to the command line.
And I'm not going to putz with that.
Another great thing is that if there's Linux on the desktop at work, he's more likely to choose Linux on the desktop at home, if given the opportunity. We've seen what happened when IBM introduced the IBM PC and sold hundreds of thousands of those underpowered machines, taking out Commodore, Apple, Osborne, et al.
Please, can't we just keep Linux desktop installations in corporate environments? I don't want to see my dad buying a new computer and having Linux on it. If there's ever a problem, he's going to have to spend 3 hours on the phone, get charged $450, and end up returning his computer, because there's no way I'm going to sit down and start digging around in the internals to try to get it up and running again.
On the other hand, if he's using Linux on his desktop at work, I'm happy, because there is a paid support staff (made of people like you!) who must administer the machines, and he gets his job done just as well (if not better), while the corporation doesn't have to pay the Microsoft tax (and thereby support the Republican party [and thereby support terrorism]).
I don't think I'd want my dad using Macs at work though, because he'd be complaining all the time about how "foo-foo" it is. He'd make little limp-wristed gestures and talk about the pretty pictures and bouncing icons. I'd try to explain better to him, but he wouldn't care. "Too foo-foo," he'd say.
[I use a PowerBook as my main computer. I'm typing this on an Amiga right now. No joke. Still almost posted this as AC to avoid flamebait accusations. Darn you all.]
This was done -- as was mentioned in previous comments -- by the makers of the Casablanca and Draco workstations.
It has also been done by a company called Screenplay, though they didn't use the actual Amiga-style hardware/software like Draco did.
A little 1U video editing box can actually be done a lot cheaper these days by using off-the-shelf ATI, nVidia, or Matrox hardware and a cheap motherboard design than it would be to do something Amiga-like.
No. The VideoToaster 2/3 (VT/NT) from NewTek is akin to the early Toaster/Flyer, but on a modern PC. The interface can look almost exactly like the original Toaster, and the bundled software provides the same featureset. (It, of course, does a ton more too).
With the SX-8 breakout box, users get live switching between countless composite/s-video input sources. It's an amazing set up, I nearly s**tted my pants every time I got to use one.
It does what Play set out to do for a tenth of the price -- and it actually WORKS!
But! we have IBM to thank for the BRILLIANT "LinkWay" multimedia authoring system, running on PS/1 or PS/2 workstations going back to 1992 or so.
I have now pulled my tongue from my cheek.
Back in fourth through sixth grade, we had a computer class with a whole load of PS/1s, and then one or two Amigas which only our professor could use. He would do all image capture and editing on the Amigas, and then we would modify them on the PS/1s. We thought his computer had some kind of powerful black magic, but it was actually an Amiga. Some other kind of magic then.
LinkWay was a lot like throwing an Amiga-like interface with Deluxe Paint IV onto a DOS box.
The Toaster wasn't a Zorro board. It was a Video Slot board. The Flyer was a Zorro board.
The source code is to an Amiga-based program which drives this hardware (separate or in tandem) while also providing many features to the user which doesn't really use the hardware at all. There's bound to be some great stuff in the ToasterPaint code as well as the ToasterCG code. And probably some nice code in the Flyer NLE...
But you're right, porting the code to a PC wouldn't give them the bulk of anything because the original Toaster is a strictly Amiga phenomenon. Especially since most of the code is in 68k assembly. Open-source developers might find some nice timing routines in there, for audio/video sync.
Yeah, a person with a modern PC can do more *editing* than the *original* Toaster. But that person can not do it LIVE. The Toaster was all LIVE, remember that. It was not so much (by itself) an editor as it was a Switcher/Keyer/Character Generator/24-bit Framestore.
And as far as the editing goes, the Flyer when added to the Toaster hardware did some pretty nice editing with broadcast-quality output, again live, no rendering required (until you get to really special effects).
Yeah, the 6888x chips would be good (and have proven to be good) for all the math-intensive floating point operations. From what I understand, this is mainly useful for formulaic math operations, such as JPEG decoding and uncompression and that sort of thing. Also probably for compiling really math-intensive code.
:) I tried to get one once but only ended up getting a TT with the 19" monochrome monitor :)
:) (Memory on Accelerator boards in these systems is a lot faster than memory on the Zorro bus because it's local to the expansion processor).
:) have a good one
However, that's where the Falcon's DSP chip would *really* shine. DSPs are famously well-suited for handling image streams (and of course also audio streams and other sorts of data streams). Since this is one of the most computationally intensive parts of browsing (from my experience), having these chips available on the two platforms can make a world of difference.
I know on my Amiga that the speed difference between using a 6888x-compiled image decoder and a stock 680x0 image decoder is actually deceptive; IIRC the FPU (6888x) code actually runs *slower* because it's more accurate, though the *same* accuracy on a *non-6888x-equipped* Amiga would be like DOZENS of times slower.
So for big image processing tasks like Photoshop-esque operations the FPU comes in handy. But for real decoding speed the DSP is where it's at. And no Amigas came stock with DSPs.
You had a Falcon? You're pretty lucky
You're pretty much right on the memory addressing on the Amiga; the difference comes in on which model you're using and what sort of accelerator board you have (if you have one). Zorro-II bus in A2000 and A500 (sorta) and the Zorro-I bus (sidecar) in A1000 can only address 8 megs. Meaning if you plug a memory expansion board into a Zorro slot it can only have 8 megs max *and* when equipped that way, any ROMs on other expansion boards often won't have any spare memory to map themselves! So sometimes it's best to only go up to 6 or something.
(Sorry if I'm getting into Too-Much-Information realm here, but...)
Accelerator boards with 030/040/060 chips on them often have standard or non-standard SIMM slots which can be expanded up to 64MB or so; the limitation is usually just in how many SIMM slots there are and the max SIMM size allowed on that accelerator board. Lots of people have 128mb/256mb in their Amigas. It's just so hard to come by 128mb 72-pin EDO FPM SIMMs these days
Zorro-III bus in the A3000 and A4000 can map a heck of a lot more RAM on the bus. Probably because these machines had '030s in them by default, or '040s. Which can map a lot more RAM than a stock 68000 or 68010.
You're right too about the older STs; I have a 1040STe which has 4 30-pin SIMM slots on it and can be expanded to 4mb. By default it had 4 256k SIMMs. (I think I read a report on the net somewhere that somebody installed 2mb SIMMs in an STe). The bigger machines like Mega STe I'm not sure about; they probably had 8 30-pin SIMM slots for up to 8mb or 16mb.
Okay, sorry. Haven't had my coffee this morning, I'm waxing nostalgic...
There are some more modern GUI toolkits available on the Atari which possibly could be hooked into Mozilla's GUI system, but developer documentation is sparse, AFAIK. I've looked around for decent docs on GEM & NVDI programming, and have found maybe two or three documents on the web.
... the Falcon I'm not sure about.
MiNT seems to provide a decent UNIX-like environment on the Ataris, though last I checked most of the tools were sorrowfully out of date.
Plus, most Atari computers to have a decent resolution must run in monochrome mode, which naturally severely limits the browsing experience. That's why Atari browsers such as CAB (and some newer one that I haven't tried) thrive, is that they are aware of the limitations on stock Atari computers, and compensate adequately.
I have a hunch (as I frequent both Atari forums and Amiga forums) that there are a lot more graphics-card-equipped Amigas out there, and a lot more beefy Amigas out there, than there are Ataris. Though machines like the Hades '060 Atari with PCI graphics would be great for running Mozilla, there's gotta be -- what -- less than 4,000 of those machines in existence. And that's probably a GROSS overestimate.
Yeah the Falcon would be great, but as you say those are rare too. The Falcon and the TT would be the only stock Atari machines capable of running Mozilla, and even these would be long-shots as the TT can only be upgraded to ~18MB RAM
The machines are also difficult to equip with ethernet (at least in the United States). Some VME-Bus "Riebl" ethernet card is available (used, and in Germany), but the native TOS TCP/IP stacks are apparently buggy with the hardware drivers. I could, on the other hand, eBay a $18 PCMCIA ethernet card for my Amiga 1200 or an Amiga 600 and be on the net in no time. Likewise, for a big-box Amiga I could just call up Software Hut and buy an Ethernet card for my Zorro bus, for in the neighborhood of $120. And it would come with drivers and software and all sorts of goodies.
There are very few websites I regularly visit which I can't access with my Amiga browsers AWeb, IBrowse or Voyager. The main browser I use is IBrowse 1.22, which probably had its last revision in '98. (It since has been updated to 2.xx, but I haven't upgraded because 1.22 works great for me).
This is mainly due to my web browsing patterns, though. I tend not to go to the mega-sites that require CSS and Flash (and even JS). Instead, I tend to go to more technically oriented websites and message boards and the like, which work just fine due to their simple design.
Slashdot works great in all the browsers too.
A lot of Amiga fans are under the misguided impression that a Mozilla or Firebird port will bring a Java Virtual Machine and Flash to the computer. It won't, of course. Work was started and aborted on two different JVMs over the years, and a half-baked port of Kaffe exists. As far as Flash, of course nothing but basic spline rasterization could be possible without bogging down the 75mhz '060 in the fastest 68k-based Amiga. On PPC-equipped machines, more is possible, but even a 233mhz 603 will get choppy on sites like homestar runner.
I look at the BeOS port of Mozilla as a sign that an Amiga port is possible, but they had serious kernel issues they had to get around (and did so with the help of sidelined Be engineers -- the closest thing we have to help like that on the Amiga side are people like Olaf Barthel and other AmigaOS geniuses). I imagine that if a more modern OS like BeOS had limitations, so will AmigaOS; Be had a problem with maximum library size allowed in memory, and some sort of segmentation scheme had to be introduced to allow Mozilla's huge library collection to be available in RAM.
My Amiga is fast, but it's only got 32 megs of RAM, and this is fine for day-to-day use with native Amiga software. With most things loaded, I'm left with about 18 megs free. This is hardly enough to get NSPR and some GUI toolkit running, let alone an entire Mozilla experience.
Sorry, I'm getting off your topic. But yeah, for the old Amiga to get re-introduced and marketed toward mainstream, the lack of a wonderful browser would be a killer. But for everyday use by Amiga fans such as myself, the browsers all work fine, and they're fast. We know our limitations.
Honestly, Voyager (under AmigaOS and MorphOS) isn't a bad browser, and has decent support for CSS, though it's unstable. IBrowse (1.22) is stable and fast, but doesn't support CSS or JavaScript *at all*. AWeb supports JavaScript and is now open-source, and even lets me get on HotMail (which Safari on OS X.2 can't do anymore, and neither can Mozilla/Camino). So I think we've got a grand browser problem in general, and I'm used to not getting the whole web when I'm on anything except the sh*tty Explorer. (Interestingly, AWeb used to be AMosaic, based on the Mosaic source code, just as we all know earlier versions of IE was).
I really get sick of all these people saying "The Amiga is Dead" simply because there's no marketing machine or company behind the name. (Even if there is, and they are a poor company).
Since when did a marketing machine and financial support determine an OS's (or platform's) viability? Is Windows 98 dead now that Microsoft no longer supports or markets it? I don't think so, since so many programs you buy still work on it and countless computers still run it.
I think it's a bit silly for people hanging out in an open-source, FREE SOFTWARE themed forum, to say that a platform is dead because it's not CORPORATE.
Nevermind that there are still tens of thousands of dedicated users who operate Amigas side-by-side with other more advanced computers; who use the Amiga for what it can do because they like the way it does those things, but use the more advanced hardware for what the Amiga lacks. That independent software developers have been inventing their own solutions to internet connectivity and audio playback/editing and UNIX cross-platform compatibility for YEARS now, ABSOLUTELY FREE, and oftentimes WITHOUT the help from all the befuddling Linux/sf.net open source existing code. These people are doing it from scratch using the AmigaOS's API because it's GOOD, and EFFICIENT, and actually rather fun to program.
Isn't that incredibly respectable in the mindset of this forum? No?
So I guess I should stop now. I could go on forever. I find it incredibly painful that otherwise open-minded, inspired folks find it perfectly fine to diss a platform and make value judgments about it when THEY'VE NEVER EVEN USED IT.
Sorry to hear about this tragedy, but at least there's a good opportunity for some super-easy, quick cash while in between jobs!
... that's probably a small portion of what you were earning at Netscape/AOL per year, but it's enough to keep you alive for a few months, right?
... especially if you don't mind being on the bleeding edge with a barely-tested port of gcc 3.3 to the 68k-amigaos architecture!
Maybe you laid-off Gecko folks should check out the AmiZilla project, and pitch in to port Mozilla to the much-maligned Commodore Amiga!
As of now, there's a booty of over $4,000 to be earned
Definitely your expertise could be of benefit to these intrepid folks
> Set up a bunch of 486s, or P-Is running DV/X,
> give them each a Gnome or KDE desktop running
> on some other server, and let people surf, or
> whatever. One high power machine, lots of
> terminals.
That's a good idea, but how in the world are you supposed to network these machines? That free open-source version of Novell Netware? [Blink?]
Does anybody know of any free Ethernet TCP/IP networking software (with NIC drivers!) for MS-DOS or FreeDOS or DR-DOS? Because this could open the door to having a bunch of cheap MS-DOS-based X terminals... definitely a conversation piece for geeks. I think I already know a few dumpsters with 486s for me to rescue...
[Reminiscing: I remember I could only run regular DesqView on my old 486SX/25 with 4mb RAM, but my friend with his DX2-66 (!) and 16mb RAM (!!) could run DesqView/X and I was SO JEALOUS. It looked like the future of the PC (even though DV/X was already outdated)... that great X GUI of Linux, in only 8 megs of RAM, on MS-DOS! And so fast! But alas... it never caught on... so I bought an Amiga]
Set to a threshold of +3, all visible comments on this news item
are off-topic bickerings about Slashdot policy.
I suppose this is because the news item is a "repeat", so Slashdot
readers use this article's Comment section as a forum for debate.
But, well, shucks!
I had simply been hoping I would find some quality (read: +3) discussion
of the article at hand!
If you have no limit to your spending, you're going to want the best. Using an Amiga would only be a solution if you're happy with 640x480 video and can afford acceleration boards (if they're still available). Jurassic Park was --not-- done on Amigas. Some of the dinosaur rough-up proof-of-concept animations were done on an Amiga with Lightwave, but all of the final work was done on high-end workstations and edited the old fashioned way on film.
An Amiga equipped to do desktop video with a Video Toaster can do full broadcast-quality resolution (784x492 or whatever) in 24bit color. Lightwave on the Amiga can also render to that resolution or better.
If one were to purchase a Video Toaster-equipped Amiga in this modern world, he would want it to be an Amiga 4000 with a Video Toaster 4000. Any _new_ VT/Amiga system is exactly that. The Amiga 4000 has the updated AGA graphics chipset which can do higher resolutions at more colors (compared to the OCS/ECS chipset in earlier Amiga models such as the A500, A2000, and A3000). The VT4000 takes advantage of the AGA chipset, so it can do some neat things the old original Toaster can't.
There's also the Video Toaster Flyer, which has a spider-like 6-way (?) SCSI controller on-board. It does high-speed on-disk video editing. Remember that the old Video Toaster and VT4000 are not for editing video clips stored on disk, they switch between video sources and fade and grab video and genlock and change colors and render text and apply 3D graphics and all sorts of other neat things -- and it's all done in hardware, so it's blazing fast.
I have never seen the Video Toaster Flyer in action, but I hear it is neat. Seems that it can do almost all the things that its big-name competitors have implemented, while perhaps requiring more creativity. That is to be expected, though, since it is a product on the Amiga, the choice for creative professionals. ;)
And yes, accelerators are still available, both used and new, for all Amiga models. A few places to check would be Software Hut and Compuquick Media Center. They seem to be two of the leading Amiga dealerships these days.
Check out Newtek's website, they have had a number of deals lately on their Video Toaster line.
The only problem with getting into Amiga production these days is researching all the software available. A lot of it still sits on shelves at the older Amiga dealerships, waiting to be bought and used. When combined well, the old software packages all mingle to form one really powerful system (again, when used creatively). Remember that the Amiga was years ahead of its time, so though a program may have a (C) date of 1993, it could still be very useful and productive. Also, most decent Amiga applications can talk to each other (and the Toaster / Switcher) through ARexx scripting. Combining the Toaster with the kick-ass ImageFX package and a modeller like Pixel3D can really melt an audience's mind.
Seems that the majority of readers are peeved when
Slashdot posts news that doesn't conform to an
X86-dominated society.
Now, here's some happy news about a new X86 OS
and it's getting knocked for not being portable to
other architectures.
Why are you unhappy? Are you jealous? Insulted?
I run an Amiga, which comes standard with an OS
written mostly in fast assembly. Apps for it can
be developed in a large number of languages, with
abundant resources for further assembly coding.
It doesn't have virtual memory. This means
that large apps don't freeze my system for a minute
upon closing, while they frantically chug my hard
drive. It also means that applications must make
efficient use of memory, because once all your RAM
is used up, you're done.
But apps wouldn't do that anyway, since they all
have an extremely small memory footprint. Chances
are that I can load my email program, web browser,
telnet app, irc client, and mp3 player in as much
time as it takes for most to load Netscape Communicator.
And in half as much memory. And with a tenth of the
disk chugging.
And since they're all in memory at the same time,
my hard drive won't even be touched as I rapidly
switch between all the different programs.
Oh! And I don't have memory protection. This means
that application developers have to be very careful
in debugging their software. They have to make sure
that there are no leaks, no stray pointers.
Yeah, in a system with no memory protection, software
_can_ overwrite important areas of memory.
But that's when you delete that software.
Obviously you don't know that much about BeOS, or you would understand that it was basically designed to be MacOS with the power of AmigaOS and UNIX... read what JLG has to say about Amiga, and you'll realize that it inspired him to create a modern, efficient, high-powered operating system. From the dawning of the BeBox, a large percentage of Be developers and users have been ex-Amiga fanatics. Half the websites of Be developers house Be software _and_ Amiga software. It's a natural progression. Sounds like you need to appreciate your heritage more, boy, or pappy's gonna whoop ya.
Wake up... Amigas are being redesigned, the new ones
are not going to be at all like the old ones. They
will, though, likely be able to run non-hardware-intensive
software from the old (current) Amiga lineup. The new
machines are going to use a chip from Transmeta, which
will be very powerful.
Old Amigas still can do things that any Unix-based system
would be terribly jealous of.
Sorry buddy. Atari no longer exists. It was
bought out by JTS, a hard drive manufacturing
company, and now it seems that its most important
intellectual property has been sold to Hasbro.
Hasbro might do something with the Lynx technology
in the future.
The ST technology, still quite popular in Germany,
was bought by a company named Milan Computer. They
have updated TOS (the Atari ST's operating system)
and re-engineered the ST's pretty basic system architecture
and have released a new system. I believe it's based
around the 68060 and also is PowerPC capable. It has
PCI slots and other nice things.
You can check it out at http://www.milan-computer.de
No, of course not. Besides the fact that they're
partnering with Sun, ATI, and Transmeta, it
really looks like this will never happen! No
way! Even though Sun is really shaking like
a piece of angry candy right now, and Transmeta
is just about ready to pop up, there's no
chance that all you folks will put two and two
together and see that it's this new Amiga which
is the product. It's not vaporware. There's way,
way too much going on right now for this to be
vaporware. Too many big forces have too much
interest in this for it to amount to nothing.
You just wait. You might not want to be one of
the people using it, but there could be 2 or 3 million
other people who will.
The Amiga's hardware is nice and its OS is nice. But there's something underlying that really makes
the Amiga what it is. There's a Spirit. What Gateway/Amiga is doing now is looking at what made the
Amiga so special back in the day, and seeing how they can reproduce that today. I think that's
possible. I think there's a place for that. It's not based on the original OS because it can't be.
It's not based on 68K because it can't be. That would almost be a dead-end right away. The currently
available Amigas are for Amiga-lovers. They're not for a mass-market. The new ones will be.
I, personally, see very little Spirit in a UNIX-based operating system like Linux. Sorry.
And, FYI, there will be Classic-Amiga boards that will plug into the new machines. These will essentially
be 68040/68060-based Amigas on PCI cards.