Re:It was about REAL Innovation... (now good post)
on
PPC Amigas Go On Sale
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· Score: 2, Interesting
(The one before was my first post to Slashdot) (I have corrected the new lines, I hope...:)
Well, in its time, I LOVED Amigas because they were a far better design that competing architectures:
- Custom chips for specialized tasks.
- True multitasking OS, including dynamically mounted filesystems and device drivers.
- Built in graphical environment.
- True AutoconfigTM (PNP-like).
Only now consumer PC hardware is getting close to that innovation level (once technologic advancement and Moore's law is taken into account).
PC hardware got up with Amiga rather quickly (custom graphic/audio chips, specific cards for specific needs). It took several years for this to happen after beeping 8086's and 80286's.
They lack, anyway, true PNP support. While Autoconfig was REAL "Plug & Play", what today we actually have is "Plug & Install the f***ing broken drivers if you have them for your current Winslows version & Play if you are lucky". In Amiga the driver came in a ROM with the hardware, and you could install filesystem drivers directly into the partition table, so you could take your WhoKnowsWhichFS-formatted hard-drive to your friend's computer and read it flawlessly after pluggin it.
About operating systems, it's true that the original design for AmigaOS left out very important things, like memory protection, virtual memory, security and a truly generical device model.
These shortcomings were the main problems for the system to evolve further, but may be understood taking into account the state of the HW those days (neither 68000 or 8086 knew what an MMU unit was).
But the important thing about the OS (and with lesser importance the HW) was innovation. Nobody had true multitasking then in a home computer (Macs, windows and GEM had stupid, fake multitasking). Nobody got an environment so straighforward, easy, dynamic, versatile and simple.
Windows doesn't have yet all those dynamic features, and even Linux is still catching up (like recent developments for devfs and not so recent kernel modules, for instance).
I won't advocate for the resurrection of the Amiga. I would rather prefer to be able to use a current platform, equally elegant and innovative.
BeOS was the closest thing I saw for a long time. Hard to kill like Unix, friendly to configure like Amiga. What a shame that we allowed Microsoft to kill it!
I think I would currently bet for Linux as my innovation horse, although being so heavily Unix-based, it will never have the elegant, easy to understand philosophy the Amiga had. I only hope the unsurpassable massive power of Free Software allows it to be successful where BeOS failed.
Well, in its time, I LOVED Amigas because they were a far better design that competing architectures:
- Custom chips for specialized tasks.
- True multitasking OS, including dynamically mounted filesystems and device drivers.
- Built in graphical environment.
- True AutoconfigTM (PNP-like).
Only now consumer PC hardware is getting close to that innovation level (once technologic advancement and Moore's law is taken into account).
PC hardware got up with Amiga rather quickly (custom graphic/audio chips, specific cards for specific needs). It took several years for this to happen after beeping 8086's and 80286's.
They lack, anyway, true PNP support. While Autoconfig was REAL "Plug & Play", what today we actually have is "Plug & Install the f***ing broken drivers if you have them for your current Winslows version & Play if you are lucky". In Amiga the driver came in a ROM with the hardware, and you could install filesystem drivers directly into the partition table, so you could take your WhoKnowsWhichFS-formatted hard-drive to your friend's computer and read it flawlessly after pluggin it.
About operating systems, it's true that the original design for AmigaOS left out very important things, like memory protection, virtual memory, security and a truly generical device model. These shortcomings were the main problems for the system to evolve further, but may be understood taking into account the state of the HW those days (neither 68000 or 8086 knew what an MMU unit was).
But the important thing about the OS (and with lesser importance the HW) was innovation. Nobody had true multitasking then in a home computer (Macs, windows and GEM had stupid, fake multitasking). Nobody got an environment so straighforward, easy, dynamic, versatile and simple.
Windows doesn't have yet all those dynamic features, and even Linux is still catching up (like recent developments for devfs and not so recent kernel modules, for instance).
I won't advocate for the resurrection of the Amiga. I would rather prefer to be able to use a current platform, equally elegant and innovative.
BeOS was the closest thing I saw for a long time. Hard to kill like Unix, friendly to configure like Amiga. What a shame that we allowed Microsoft to kill it!
I think I would currently bet for Linux as my innovation horse, although being so heavily Unix-based, it will never have the elegant, easy to understand philosophy the Amiga had. I only hope the unsurpassable massive power of Free Software allows it to be successful where BeOS failed.
Slashdot Mirror
(The one before was my first post to Slashdot) (I have corrected the new lines, I hope... :)
Well, in its time, I LOVED Amigas because they were a far better design that competing architectures:
- Custom chips for specialized tasks.
- True multitasking OS, including dynamically mounted filesystems and device drivers.
- Built in graphical environment.
- True AutoconfigTM (PNP-like).
Only now consumer PC hardware is getting close to that innovation level (once technologic advancement and Moore's law is taken into account).
PC hardware got up with Amiga rather quickly (custom graphic/audio chips, specific cards for specific needs). It took several years for this to happen after beeping 8086's and 80286's.
They lack, anyway, true PNP support. While Autoconfig was REAL "Plug & Play", what today we actually have is "Plug & Install the f***ing broken drivers if you have them for your current Winslows version & Play if you are lucky". In Amiga the driver came in a ROM with the hardware, and you could install filesystem drivers directly into the partition table, so you could take your WhoKnowsWhichFS-formatted hard-drive to your friend's computer and read it flawlessly after pluggin it.
About operating systems, it's true that the original design for AmigaOS left out very important things, like memory protection, virtual memory, security and a truly generical device model.
These shortcomings were the main problems for the system to evolve further, but may be understood taking into account the state of the HW those days (neither 68000 or 8086 knew what an MMU unit was).
But the important thing about the OS (and with lesser importance the HW) was innovation. Nobody had true multitasking then in a home computer (Macs, windows and GEM had stupid, fake multitasking). Nobody got an environment so straighforward, easy, dynamic, versatile and simple.
Windows doesn't have yet all those dynamic features, and even Linux is still catching up (like recent developments for devfs and not so recent kernel modules, for instance).
I won't advocate for the resurrection of the Amiga. I would rather prefer to be able to use a current platform, equally elegant and innovative.
BeOS was the closest thing I saw for a long time. Hard to kill like Unix, friendly to configure like Amiga. What a shame that we allowed Microsoft to kill it!
I think I would currently bet for Linux as my innovation horse, although being so heavily Unix-based, it will never have the elegant, easy to understand philosophy the Amiga had. I only hope the unsurpassable massive power of Free Software allows it to be successful where BeOS failed.
Well, in its time, I LOVED Amigas because they were a far better design that competing architectures: - Custom chips for specialized tasks. - True multitasking OS, including dynamically mounted filesystems and device drivers. - Built in graphical environment. - True AutoconfigTM (PNP-like). Only now consumer PC hardware is getting close to that innovation level (once technologic advancement and Moore's law is taken into account). PC hardware got up with Amiga rather quickly (custom graphic/audio chips, specific cards for specific needs). It took several years for this to happen after beeping 8086's and 80286's. They lack, anyway, true PNP support. While Autoconfig was REAL "Plug & Play", what today we actually have is "Plug & Install the f***ing broken drivers if you have them for your current Winslows version & Play if you are lucky". In Amiga the driver came in a ROM with the hardware, and you could install filesystem drivers directly into the partition table, so you could take your WhoKnowsWhichFS-formatted hard-drive to your friend's computer and read it flawlessly after pluggin it. About operating systems, it's true that the original design for AmigaOS left out very important things, like memory protection, virtual memory, security and a truly generical device model. These shortcomings were the main problems for the system to evolve further, but may be understood taking into account the state of the HW those days (neither 68000 or 8086 knew what an MMU unit was). But the important thing about the OS (and with lesser importance the HW) was innovation. Nobody had true multitasking then in a home computer (Macs, windows and GEM had stupid, fake multitasking). Nobody got an environment so straighforward, easy, dynamic, versatile and simple. Windows doesn't have yet all those dynamic features, and even Linux is still catching up (like recent developments for devfs and not so recent kernel modules, for instance). I won't advocate for the resurrection of the Amiga. I would rather prefer to be able to use a current platform, equally elegant and innovative. BeOS was the closest thing I saw for a long time. Hard to kill like Unix, friendly to configure like Amiga. What a shame that we allowed Microsoft to kill it! I think I would currently bet for Linux as my innovation horse, although being so heavily Unix-based, it will never have the elegant, easy to understand philosophy the Amiga had. I only hope the unsurpassable massive power of Free Software allows it to be successful where BeOS failed.