The reason to why the Pegasos is not an option today is the existence of the licensing/bundling/dongling requirement. You don't have to be best buddies or business partners with a hardware vendor to sell your software to be used with their hardware.
Same thing with Macs, or whatever else you could think of.
To write drivers for hardware, you need no more "cooperation" from hardware vendors than availability of documentation/specs. These don't tend to magically appear any easier if you require that the hardware vendor buys a licence to sell your OS, in order to make it worth even discussing a port in the first place. And if you don't have docs directly from the maker, see if Linux, *BSD, Darwin or another FOSS OS has drivers.
Yes, of course it would only be feasible to (officially) support a limited number of Macs, just like with any other type of hardware. The point here is that an arbitrarily created and unnecessary licence situation has taken precedence over technical and financial feasibility issues. No licence, no AmigaOS for the hardware, no matter how little technical effort that would be required.
Also keep in mind that if AmigaOS was available for shrinkwrapped sales, it wouldn't even have to be Hyperion/AInc that did the development. As both a Linux and AmigaOS user, I'm quite used to depend on third party drivers. AmigaOS installations made compatible with new hardware this way would naturally not have to be officially supported by AInc/Hyperion, or published on their hardware compatibility list. And it still wouldn't exclude the existence of optional complete and bundled systems, licensed and officially supported, for those who would be interested in such an option.
And I would tend to agree with you. But you really seem to think AInc or Hyperion are secretly gaining from forcing a dongle-ROM requirement on motherboards, in some way other than an anti-piracy attempt!! How on earth is the dongle-ROM thing anything BUT an anti-piracy measure?
I don't think that Hyperion has anything to gain from this, on the contrary they have gotten a smaller possible market.
AInc had some quick licence money to gain, but as it turned out the only licencee they have is Eyetech, who suggested the scheme and already was a "hardware partner" since before the original "AmigaOne" project failed. It's been obvious, and after e.g. the CEO's court deposition it's publicly known, that AInc has been extremely strapped for cash since before AmigaOS was announced to be revived (after they first declared it dead). While this scheme certainly looks like a deliberate attempt to kill AmigaOS once and for all, I think AInc allowed Eyetech to create it due to AInc's shortsightedness, a desperate need for quick funding, and blatant disinterest and disregard for the product (AmigaOS). After all, once a little funding for bare essentials like rent and taxes would be secured, the green pastures of mobile phone content and Microsoft OEM sales were supposed to be right around the corner anyway...
The dongled firmware is a hardware market control mechanism. It does not protect any better or worse against piracy than e.g. copy protection on a CD or a USB dongle in each sold shrinkwrapped AmigaOS box would do. But it does introduce severe disadvantages that the other methods and separately sold AmigaOS boxes don't have: a separated hardware market, total dependence on the interest in licences from hardware vendors, fewer available or even possible hardware options and fewer vendors of compatible hardware, lower volumes, higher hardware prices, and so on. All in all: AmigaOS is intentionally made a worse product with fewer possible users. The perhaps most disturbing logical leap is that AmigaOS is alleged to be protected from piracy (i.e. loss of sales) by not selling it! And at the same time AmigaOS4 will be available as separately sold copies, but only for old Amigas, without any mentioned "protection".
The boring old "piracy" card was played for emotional effect. I think it's totally irrelevant.
You think they have something to gain other than ant-piracy with the dongle-ROM, and you think whatever gain that is, is being made in bad faith.
No, I don't. The only one that could possibly gain from this, in the short run since this closed market is quickly saturated, would be Eyetech.
Who exactly is the one that would suddenly stop making the "big bucks" other than Eyetech, who has no say over the donglised AmigaOS issue, and is certainly not the only possible exclusive teron distributor for the OEM licensing program?!
Eyetech for some reason (my speculation judged from what I've seen is AInc's incompetence and disinterest) was allowed to have a say about hardware and sales thereof, even though the final attempt to build new Amigas had failed. They had become irrelevant, yet they were allowed to provide the "consultation" that lead to all this, as if they still were or as if there still was a need for "hardware partners".
Not the only possible licencee? No, not officially, but who else would want to pay AInc and comply to their terms for the privilege of competing with Eyetech on an artificially created hardware market of say 2000 potential customers, when Eyetech have already saturated it? When "the AmigaOne" (a trademark owned by Eyetech) has been marketed and promoted by "everyone", INCLUDING THE LICENSOR AInc, as "the new Amiga" for close to 3 years?
In the unlikely case that another licencee appeared, for whatever hardware, then so what? To AmigaOS and its users and potential customers it would still mean that the hardware would only be available when bought new (existing users of the hardware in question + second
Eyetech is the only one who applied for a license.
Which, if it were true, would serve as yet another excellent illustration of how retarded the compulsory licensing idea is. But it's not true. There's been one more (w00t!) interested distributor. Bigger, better, cheaper, more competent than Eyetech. They suddenly stopped getting replies from AInc. Ask "T_Bone" if you don't know what I'm talking about.
It's a support and anti-piracy measure...
Both AInc's illogical and transparent "anti piracy" and "support" excuses for a compulsory hardware licensing/bundling/dongling scheme are pure nonsense.
The AmigaOne SE is no longer available from eyetech.
Yes, it's discontinued, as I said. Did you have an objection to something here?
"AmigaOne PX"
Sorry, that was a typo. Not a lie. Yes OF COURSE I meant "XE".
An AmigaOne is 80% cheaper than a Teron CX evaluation board!!!
No. Perpetuating that ridiculous claim used to be the job of Eyetech, but not even they are trying to make people believe this any longer. I suggest you don't start doing it instead.
A Teron motherboard sold as an "AmigaOne" is 80% cheaper than a complete evaluation/developer's kit with participation in Mai's developer program, and that includes a Teron motherboard, which is what you linked to.
If you don't plan on designing hardware applications using Mai Logic chips, then a Teron motherboard sold as an "AmigaOne" ($800) is 60% more expensive than a Teron motherboard sold normally ($500).
4. "Micro AmigaOne", respectively. Show me where these are available to the public... these are targeted at embedded markets? and are not available to the public
Yes, the Teron Mini/"Micro A1" (which is not targeted exclusively at any embedded market more than any other mini-ITX motherboard) is not available to the public. Duh - It's not yet in production, and I haven't heard from Mai that the design is even finalised yet.
5. No need to confirm my arguments with more examples, it's already been done.:) Yes, one hardware vendor would like to see Amiga Inc dead and they already have an OS of their own. Most hardware vendors don't give a $h1t about Amiga Inc (if anybody would know who they are), and AInc's licence "offer" would only be laughed at.
Thus, to get an increasing hardware base for AmigaOS, the compulsory nature of the licencing scheme must be taken out behind the barn and shot.
AmigaOS must be made for and SOLD for the hardware that people want or already own, regardless of whether the vendors of that hardware are interested in playing "Amiga". If someone would like to sell AmigaOS bundled with hardware, sure, sell licences for that, but don't make this the only way AmigaOS can be sold, and the only way there could be more hardware for AmigaOS.
As it is today, only a subset of the pathetic and decreasing current AmigaOS userbase would become AmigaOS4 users/customers. If this indeed is the plan, the whole project would be pointless.
I was as surprised as you are. It's almost as if they rediscovered that slashcode was meant to be used on TEH INTARWEB where it happens that people use more than US ASCII.
It'll probably be "fixed" again in the next release...:P
Ja jävlar i min lilla låda, är det värt att försöka med svenska bokstäver?
The original Amiga was, but this is all new hardware.
No, it's an all new (well, updated and ported to PPC) operating system we're talking about. There is no new Amiga.
But, what about the new hardware? Does it have capabilities as advanced when compared to PC hardware today? I doubt it.
The only motherboard that's sold under an "Amiga licence" today is basically a series of PC motherboards of ca 1999 standard, but with a PowerPC CPU. PC133 SDRAM, VIA 82C686B southbridge (think KT133 era), "almost-2x" AGP, 933 MHz G4 as the fastest option. All for a measly $800. No, it's really supposed to be *two* zeroes.
Yes, the Amiga is dead, and in 2004 it's good riddance (but the old workhorses will be kept running until their capacitors explode, thank you very much).
Amiga (as in what Amiga Inc like to refer to themselves as) could finally be even formally and legally dead now for all we know, and nobody cares.
But AmigaOS 4 has a chance to not be stillborn, if only the powers that be would quit pretending that there's a valid reason for "Amiga hardware" in this day and age.
Re:Extreme yo-yo-ing, Mr Bond
on
Extreme Yo-Yoing
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Am I the only one who read the headline as "Extreme Yu-Gung" and thought it was about a new CD with Einstürzende Neubauten remixes?
Amiga Inc. (not "Amiga", that's a dead computer platform) have had nothing to do with developing AmigaOS 3.5/9. Thank Haage & Partner instead.
"AmigaOne" is not a new computer. It's a trademark owned and used by one distributor (Eyetech) to sell Mai Logic's Teron series motherboards. They've been trying to sell these for two years now (but the Teron CX model first appeared in 2001, later a.k.a. "AmigaOne SE").
"AmigaOne" once was the name of a project for a new Amiga, managed by Eyetech but designed by Escena (Eyetech does not design hardware). This is the motherboard you're talking about that was supposed to take your A1200 as an expansion card, not the "new" Terons. It failed to even reach functional prototyping stage.
The Amiga has been dead for a decade and nobody is planning to bring it back. Now the question is if AmigaOS will be killed off as well.
Here is Hyperion Entertainment's announcement. The link in the/. article goes to a rather disgusting corporate fansite (deceitfully labelled "Amiga community portal") that's best left alone in their alternate reality.
- Is this a standalone OS, or a modified Linux / BSD system?
Standalone. It's a direct update to AmigaOS 3.x.
- Does it run on Amiga hardware, PowerPC, x86, or something else?
It's for PowerPC. It's initial target are the current Teron series by Mai Logic (a.k.a. "AmigaOnes" when sold with a new trademark licence by the only distributor that AmigaOS4 users are allowed to buy their hardware from).
It will also be available for old Amiga 3000/4000 computers if they've got Cyberstorm PPC accelerator boards.
- It is compatible with the old Amiga software, API's, etc?
Yes. It will have a JIT 68k-emulator integrated too (think of when the Macs and MacOS went 68k to PPC). Most system friendly software is said to run fine. If your old software bangs the metal (depends on Amiga hardware) it's not likely to run, however.
- What is the compelling reason for this to exist? What does it do better than all the other options available?
What's the compelling reason for any OS besides Windows to exist?;) Sadly Amiga Inc/Eyetech have killed any chances for AmigaOS4 by throwing a definitive and unnecessary stumbling block as their "Amiga hardware market" invention on the race track, but that's just a business decision that's easily revoked with a stroke of a pen. It has to be.
Nope. Amiga, Inc. sells trademark licences. Well, they were trying at least, until it was announced during a lawsuit that they had transferrred the AmigaOS + "Amiga"(TM) rights to something they call "KMOS, Inc."
Since there won't be any more Amigas, AmigaOS will run on old Amigas (with old PPC expansion boards) and third party hardware. The first hardware to be supported are the Teron CX (discontinued), Teron PX and Teron Mini motherboards designed by Mai Logic.
Amiga, Inc. got "consultation" from the UK computer shop Eyetech to decide that we should still have to pretend that there is "Amiga hardware". I.e. in order for AmigaOS to run on (be ported to) a piece of hardware, that hardware must be sold on a separated "Amiga market" by a distributor with a licence from Amiga, Inc. AmigaOS will not be available for sale, except as in a bundle with licensed hardware (and later on for those ancient PPC-equipped Amigas).
Only Eyetech have been granted such a license, and are now (well, since two(?) years) selling the Teron boards mentioned above with an extra 60% on the price as "AmigaOne SE", "AmigaOne PX", and "Micro AmigaOne", respectively.
Thereby suitable Macs (otherwise a pretty damn obvious target for a PPC "consumer" OS), Terons sold by anybody else regardless of trademarks, Pegasoses, and whatever you could possibly think of in the future, are all out of the question by default. No licence/licencee, no new hardware base for AmigaOS.
Stupid people shouldn't have that kind of money in the first place.
The people who fall for 419 scams usually don't have the money they lose. They often resort to borrowing, theft and embezzlement themselves (after all, when they have their ONE BAZILLION U.S. DOLLARS, they'll be able to pay everything back, nobody will notice...).
But unification can defeat identification. I like that the LED on my monitor turns from green to orange when it enters a DPMS mode. On my computers, activity on the IDE and SCSI buses are indicated by different colours. My old mobile phone indicated "low battery" with its LED flashing red instead of green (the new one doesn't have any LED at all, so checking that it's really turned off in a dark cinema theatre requires more than a quick glance down my breast pocket).
Some LEDs still do serve a genuine purpose other than to "look cool" and match the decor.
Well, not exactly vaporware. They did exist, but the problem was that the motherboard itself cost as much as a complete x86 system.
Speaking of which, here is Momentum's 970FX evaluation mobo. Only $4500 for a basic evaluation system.:)
There's of course the more humanely priced Pegasos II for 500 Euros, but it's rather underperforming for 2004 and compared to those complete x86 systems you speak of. I've heard Marvell, who supply the northbridge for the PegII, will sell a "Discovery III" northbridge for the PPC970, so things might improve. Mai Logic, who made the failed Articia S northbridge and Teron motherboards (a.k.a. "AmigaOne", "Dragon", "Boxer" and whatnot), are supposedly planning an "Articia I" (IIRC) northbridge for the 970. I guess it's likely that they'll make a Teron based on this as well.
But wouldn't that, just like the rest of XFree86, then be covered by the new XFree86 4.4 license which RH apparently has got something against?
If X.org/FD.org can go and slap their own license on something (XFree86) that's already covered by another license, couldn't RH do this themselves with XFree86? Slap the GPL on it and go on as if nothing's happened.:) I don't get how all this is done.
The Mil Spec version of this story, courtesy of Babelfish:
An anonymous reader writes "in accordance with of ScienceBlog, the office of the research of the blue marine and the tests, of the roast meat in the United States the friendly armies in Iraq of the disturbance that to maintain those cause smithereens, to the application software locally those the communication (IM) immediately with a machine translation (M.Ue.), to attention. The result: One automatically translates of Plaudern in Iraq the software, those his publicity in the correct language of the reader, the city of Koalition-Schwaetzchen-Linie - ' it receives from Raveberichte of the United States and the coalition of the alliance of the personnel '
Could the moderator who mismodded a correction to my own post "Troll" please post to this thread while logged in and undo your mistake, (instead of losing your moderation privileges in meta-mod)?
Heaven forbid that a company has a motive to do anything but market demand.
Like ethics and corporate responsiblity.
Thanks for the concern, but I'll buy whatever the hell I want and use it according to MY OWN ethics and take the responsibility which belongs TO ME and nobody else, should I decide to do something illegal with the product.
Cars kill when used the wrong way. Yet they're not limited to drive at max 20 km/h and made out of foam rubber. A pen is the preferred tool for counterfeiters worldwide, it makes forging a signature child's play. Yet there are no restrictions on the pen market and its products. Is it HP's responsibility to fuck up printed copies of documents if the printer/software detects a human signature? Are HP unethical if they let the customer get away with printing things just like he wants them printed?
a machine would perforate them if it reliably detects you are running away from police...would not that be acceptable??
To follow the HP example, the machine wouldn't detect "police boat" as such. Just like the machine doesn't say "this is a 50 Euro banknote", but "this document contains patterns that are common to find on, for example, banknotes".
It would detect that you're driving ahead of a blue boat. Shouldn't you be allowed to drive YOUR boat in front of blue boats? Shouldn't you be allowed to print whatever the hell you want with YOUR printer even if your document contains little wavy patterns?
Besides, no printer prints watermarks inside of banknote cotton paper, and then finishes off with relief printing, UV light absorbing/reflecting ink, and a silver security thread with microtext. When computers do THAT, then it might be time to impose restrictions.
I don't know what field(s) my colleague is specialised in, but judging by the handle "WomensHealth" I would wager it's gynaecology/obstetrics.
Are you suggesting (s)he should first get into neurology before entering the IT industry?
(BTW, what do "pre-meds" and engineers have in common in the USA? Do pre-meds (I assume this simply means pre-clinical medical students) study maths or physics there? Which undergrad engineers study biochemistry, cell biology or othermedical/biological subjects?)
Slashdot Mirror
should be enough for everyone.
The reason to why the Pegasos is not an option today is the existence of the licensing/bundling/dongling requirement. You don't have to be best buddies or business partners with a hardware vendor to sell your software to be used with their hardware.
Same thing with Macs, or whatever else you could think of.
To write drivers for hardware, you need no more "cooperation" from hardware vendors than availability of documentation/specs. These don't tend to magically appear any easier if you require that the hardware vendor buys a licence to sell your OS, in order to make it worth even discussing a port in the first place. And if you don't have docs directly from the maker, see if Linux, *BSD, Darwin or another FOSS OS has drivers.
Yes, of course it would only be feasible to (officially) support a limited number of Macs, just like with any other type of hardware. The point here is that an arbitrarily created and unnecessary licence situation has taken precedence over technical and financial feasibility issues. No licence, no AmigaOS for the hardware, no matter how little technical effort that would be required.
Also keep in mind that if AmigaOS was available for shrinkwrapped sales, it wouldn't even have to be Hyperion/AInc that did the development. As both a Linux and AmigaOS user, I'm quite used to depend on third party drivers. AmigaOS installations made compatible with new hardware this way would naturally not have to be officially supported by AInc/Hyperion, or published on their hardware compatibility list. And it still wouldn't exclude the existence of optional complete and bundled systems, licensed and officially supported, for those who would be interested in such an option.
And I would tend to agree with you. But you really seem to think AInc or Hyperion are secretly gaining from forcing a dongle-ROM requirement on motherboards, in some way other than an anti-piracy attempt!! How on earth is the dongle-ROM thing anything BUT an anti-piracy measure?
I don't think that Hyperion has anything to gain from this, on the contrary they have gotten a smaller possible market.
AInc had some quick licence money to gain, but as it turned out the only licencee they have is Eyetech, who suggested the scheme and already was a "hardware partner" since before the original "AmigaOne" project failed. It's been obvious, and after e.g. the CEO's court deposition it's publicly known, that AInc has been extremely strapped for cash since before AmigaOS was announced to be revived (after they first declared it dead). While this scheme certainly looks like a deliberate attempt to kill AmigaOS once and for all, I think AInc allowed Eyetech to create it due to AInc's shortsightedness, a desperate need for quick funding, and blatant disinterest and disregard for the product (AmigaOS). After all, once a little funding for bare essentials like rent and taxes would be secured, the green pastures of mobile phone content and Microsoft OEM sales were supposed to be right around the corner anyway...
The dongled firmware is a hardware market control mechanism. It does not protect any better or worse against piracy than e.g. copy protection on a CD or a USB dongle in each sold shrinkwrapped AmigaOS box would do. But it does introduce severe disadvantages that the other methods and separately sold AmigaOS boxes don't have: a separated hardware market, total dependence on the interest in licences from hardware vendors, fewer available or even possible hardware options and fewer vendors of compatible hardware, lower volumes, higher hardware prices, and so on. All in all: AmigaOS is intentionally made a worse product with fewer possible users. The perhaps most disturbing logical leap is that AmigaOS is alleged to be protected from piracy (i.e. loss of sales) by not selling it! And at the same time AmigaOS4 will be available as separately sold copies, but only for old Amigas, without any mentioned "protection".
The boring old "piracy" card was played for emotional effect. I think it's totally irrelevant.
You think they have something to gain other than ant-piracy with the dongle-ROM, and you think whatever gain that is, is being made in bad faith.
No, I don't. The only one that could possibly gain from this, in the short run since this closed market is quickly saturated, would be Eyetech.
Who exactly is the one that would suddenly stop making the "big bucks" other than Eyetech, who has no say over the donglised AmigaOS issue, and is certainly not the only possible exclusive teron distributor for the OEM licensing program?!
Eyetech for some reason (my speculation judged from what I've seen is AInc's incompetence and disinterest) was allowed to have a say about hardware and sales thereof, even though the final attempt to build new Amigas had failed. They had become irrelevant, yet they were allowed to provide the "consultation" that lead to all this, as if they still were or as if there still was a need for "hardware partners".
Not the only possible licencee? No, not officially, but who else would want to pay AInc and comply to their terms for the privilege of competing with Eyetech on an artificially created hardware market of say 2000 potential customers, when Eyetech have already saturated it? When "the AmigaOne" (a trademark owned by Eyetech) has been marketed and promoted by "everyone", INCLUDING THE LICENSOR AInc, as "the new Amiga" for close to 3 years?
In the unlikely case that another licencee appeared, for whatever hardware, then so what? To AmigaOS and its users and potential customers it would still mean that the hardware would only be available when bought new (existing users of the hardware in question + second
Eyetech is the only one who applied for a license.
...
:) Yes, one hardware vendor would like to see Amiga Inc dead and they already have an OS of their own. Most hardware vendors don't give a $h1t about Amiga Inc (if anybody would know who they are), and AInc's licence "offer" would only be laughed at.
Which, if it were true, would serve as yet another excellent illustration of how retarded the compulsory licensing idea is. But it's not true. There's been one more (w00t!) interested distributor. Bigger, better, cheaper, more competent than Eyetech. They suddenly stopped getting replies from AInc. Ask "T_Bone" if you don't know what I'm talking about.
It's a support and anti-piracy measure
Both AInc's illogical and transparent "anti piracy" and "support" excuses for a compulsory hardware licensing/bundling/dongling scheme are pure nonsense.
The AmigaOne SE is no longer available from eyetech.
Yes, it's discontinued, as I said. Did you have an objection to something here?
"AmigaOne PX"
Sorry, that was a typo. Not a lie. Yes OF COURSE I meant "XE".
An AmigaOne is 80% cheaper than a Teron CX evaluation board!!!
No. Perpetuating that ridiculous claim used to be the job of Eyetech, but not even they are trying to make people believe this any longer. I suggest you don't start doing it instead.
A Teron motherboard sold as an "AmigaOne" is 80% cheaper than a complete evaluation/developer's kit with participation in Mai's developer program, and that includes a Teron motherboard, which is what you linked to.
If you don't plan on designing hardware applications using Mai Logic chips, then a Teron motherboard sold as an "AmigaOne" ($800) is 60% more expensive than a Teron motherboard sold normally ($500).
4. "Micro AmigaOne", respectively.
Show me where these are available to the public... these are targeted at embedded markets? and are not available to the public
Yes, the Teron Mini/"Micro A1" (which is not targeted exclusively at any embedded market more than any other mini-ITX motherboard) is not available to the public. Duh - It's not yet in production, and I haven't heard from Mai that the design is even finalised yet.
5. No need to confirm my arguments with more examples, it's already been done.
Thus, to get an increasing hardware base for AmigaOS, the compulsory nature of the licencing scheme must be taken out behind the barn and shot.
AmigaOS must be made for and SOLD for the hardware that people want or already own, regardless of whether the vendors of that hardware are interested in playing "Amiga". If someone would like to sell AmigaOS bundled with hardware, sure, sell licences for that, but don't make this the only way AmigaOS can be sold, and the only way there could be more hardware for AmigaOS.
As it is today, only a subset of the pathetic and decreasing current AmigaOS userbase would become AmigaOS4 users/customers. If this indeed is the plan, the whole project would be pointless.
I was as surprised as you are. It's almost as if they rediscovered that slashcode was meant to be used on TEH INTARWEB where it happens that people use more than US ASCII.
:P
It'll probably be "fixed" again in the next release...
Ja jävlar i min lilla låda, är det värt att försöka med svenska bokstäver?
The original Amiga was, but this is all new hardware.
No, it's an all new (well, updated and ported to PPC) operating system we're talking about. There is no new Amiga.
But, what about the new hardware? Does it have capabilities as advanced when compared to PC hardware today? I doubt it.
The only motherboard that's sold under an "Amiga licence" today is basically a series of PC motherboards of ca 1999 standard, but with a PowerPC CPU. PC133 SDRAM, VIA 82C686B southbridge (think KT133 era), "almost-2x" AGP, 933 MHz G4 as the fastest option. All for a measly $800. No, it's really supposed to be *two* zeroes.
Yes, the Amiga is dead, and in 2004 it's good riddance (but the old workhorses will be kept running until their capacitors explode, thank you very much).
Amiga (as in what Amiga Inc like to refer to themselves as) could finally be even formally and legally dead now for all we know, and nobody cares.
But AmigaOS 4 has a chance to not be stillborn, if only the powers that be would quit pretending that there's a valid reason for "Amiga hardware" in this day and age.
Am I the only one who read the headline as "Extreme Yu-Gung" and thought it was about a new CD with Einstürzende Neubauten remixes?
;)
Let me answer that question: yes.
Wrong, on as good as every point.
Amiga Inc. (not "Amiga", that's a dead computer platform) have had nothing to do with developing AmigaOS 3.5/9. Thank Haage & Partner instead.
"AmigaOne" is not a new computer. It's a trademark owned and used by one distributor (Eyetech) to sell Mai Logic's Teron series motherboards. They've been trying to sell these for two years now (but the Teron CX model first appeared in 2001, later a.k.a. "AmigaOne SE").
"AmigaOne" once was the name of a project for a new Amiga, managed by Eyetech but designed by Escena (Eyetech does not design hardware). This is the motherboard you're talking about that was supposed to take your A1200 as an expansion card, not the "new" Terons. It failed to even reach functional prototyping stage.
The Amiga has been dead for a decade and nobody is planning to bring it back. Now the question is if AmigaOS will be killed off as well.
Here is Hyperion Entertainment's announcement. The link in the /. article goes to a rather disgusting corporate fansite (deceitfully labelled "Amiga community portal") that's best left alone in their alternate reality.
- Is this a standalone OS, or a modified Linux / BSD system?
;)
Standalone. It's a direct update to AmigaOS 3.x.
- Does it run on Amiga hardware, PowerPC, x86, or something else?
It's for PowerPC. It's initial target are the current Teron series by Mai Logic (a.k.a. "AmigaOnes" when sold with a new trademark licence by the only distributor that AmigaOS4 users are allowed to buy their hardware from).
See this post and this introduction for more info (and opinion).
It will also be available for old Amiga 3000/4000 computers if they've got Cyberstorm PPC accelerator boards.
- It is compatible with the old Amiga software, API's, etc?
Yes. It will have a JIT 68k-emulator integrated too (think of when the Macs and MacOS went 68k to PPC). Most system friendly software is said to run fine. If your old software bangs the metal (depends on Amiga hardware) it's not likely to run, however.
- What is the compelling reason for this to exist? What does it do better than all the other options available?
What's the compelling reason for any OS besides Windows to exist?
Sadly Amiga Inc/Eyetech have killed any chances for AmigaOS4 by throwing a definitive and unnecessary stumbling block as their "Amiga hardware market" invention on the race track, but that's just a business decision that's easily revoked with a stroke of a pen. It has to be.
Nope. Amiga, Inc. sells trademark licences. Well, they were trying at least, until it was announced during a lawsuit that they had transferrred the AmigaOS + "Amiga"(TM) rights to something they call "KMOS, Inc."
Since there won't be any more Amigas, AmigaOS will run on old Amigas (with old PPC expansion boards) and third party hardware. The first hardware to be supported are the Teron CX (discontinued), Teron PX and Teron Mini motherboards designed by Mai Logic.
Amiga, Inc. got "consultation" from the UK computer shop Eyetech to decide that we should still have to pretend that there is "Amiga hardware". I.e. in order for AmigaOS to run on (be ported to) a piece of hardware, that hardware must be sold on a separated "Amiga market" by a distributor with a licence from Amiga, Inc. AmigaOS will not be available for sale, except as in a bundle with licensed hardware (and later on for those ancient PPC-equipped Amigas).
Only Eyetech have been granted such a license, and are now (well, since two(?) years) selling the Teron boards mentioned above with an extra 60% on the price as "AmigaOne SE", "AmigaOne PX", and "Micro AmigaOne", respectively.
Thereby suitable Macs (otherwise a pretty damn obvious target for a PPC "consumer" OS), Terons sold by anybody else regardless of trademarks, Pegasoses, and whatever you could possibly think of in the future, are all out of the question by default. No licence/licencee, no new hardware base for AmigaOS.
Stupid people shouldn't have that kind of money in the first place.
The people who fall for 419 scams usually don't have the money they lose. They often resort to borrowing, theft and embezzlement themselves (after all, when they have their ONE BAZILLION U.S. DOLLARS, they'll be able to pay everything back, nobody will notice...).
But unification can defeat identification. I like that the LED on my monitor turns from green to orange when it enters a DPMS mode. On my computers, activity on the IDE and SCSI buses are indicated by different colours. My old mobile phone indicated "low battery" with its LED flashing red instead of green (the new one doesn't have any LED at all, so checking that it's really turned off in a dark cinema theatre requires more than a quick glance down my breast pocket).
Some LEDs still do serve a genuine purpose other than to "look cool" and match the decor.
It's not "a motorcycle". It's a piece of plastic.
:)
This is a motorcycle. Well, almost. It's missing one MG-42.
Well, not exactly vaporware. They did exist, but the problem was that the motherboard itself cost as much as a complete x86 system.
:)
Speaking of which, here is Momentum's 970FX evaluation mobo. Only $4500 for a basic evaluation system.
There's of course the more humanely priced Pegasos II for 500 Euros, but it's rather underperforming for 2004 and compared to those complete x86 systems you speak of. I've heard Marvell, who supply the northbridge for the PegII, will sell a "Discovery III" northbridge for the PPC970, so things might improve. Mai Logic, who made the failed Articia S northbridge and Teron motherboards (a.k.a. "AmigaOne", "Dragon", "Boxer" and whatnot), are supposedly planning an "Articia I" (IIRC) northbridge for the 970. I guess it's likely that they'll make a Teron based on this as well.
Thank you for that post. Most informative.
:) I don't get how all this is done.
The X.org X server is the XFree86 4.4 codebase
But wouldn't that, just like the rest of XFree86, then be covered by the new XFree86 4.4 license which RH apparently has got something against?
If X.org/FD.org can go and slap their own license on something (XFree86) that's already covered by another license, couldn't RH do this themselves with XFree86? Slap the GPL on it and go on as if nothing's happened.
The Mil Spec version of this story, courtesy of Babelfish:
An anonymous reader writes "in accordance with of ScienceBlog, the office of the research of the blue marine and the tests, of the roast meat in the United States the friendly armies in Iraq of the disturbance that to maintain those cause smithereens, to the application software locally those the communication (IM) immediately with a machine translation (M.Ue.), to attention. The result: One automatically translates of Plaudern in Iraq the software, those his publicity in the correct language of the reader, the city of Koalition-Schwaetzchen-Linie - ' it receives from Raveberichte of the United States and the coalition of the alliance of the personnel '
Mmmmmmm.... Roast meat!
I could almost swear this was the subject of a Far Side cartoon..
I could almost swear they are trying to reenact a couple of Kraftwerk albums.
Showroom dummies, outside the Spacelab, to study Radio-Activity?
Could the moderator who mismodded a correction to my own post "Troll" please post to this thread while logged in and undo your mistake, (instead of losing your moderation privileges in meta-mod)?
I agree. And I agree with the story submitter; the site certainly does have that "made with Vi" look. ;)
Heaven forbid that a company has a motive to do anything but market demand.
Like ethics and corporate responsiblity.
Thanks for the concern, but I'll buy whatever the hell I want and use it according to MY OWN ethics and take the responsibility which belongs TO ME and nobody else, should I decide to do something illegal with the product.
Cars kill when used the wrong way. Yet they're not limited to drive at max 20 km/h and made out of foam rubber. A pen is the preferred tool for counterfeiters worldwide, it makes forging a signature child's play. Yet there are no restrictions on the pen market and its products. Is it HP's responsibility to fuck up printed copies of documents if the printer/software detects a human signature? Are HP unethical if they let the customer get away with printing things just like he wants them printed?
When computers do THAT,...
When computer printers do that,...
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.
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Slow Down Cowboy!
Slashdot requires you to wait 2 minutes between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
a machine would perforate them if it reliably detects you are running away from police...would not that be acceptable??
To follow the HP example, the machine wouldn't detect "police boat" as such. Just like the machine doesn't say "this is a 50 Euro banknote", but "this document contains patterns that are common to find on, for example, banknotes".
It would detect that you're driving ahead of a blue boat. Shouldn't you be allowed to drive YOUR boat in front of blue boats? Shouldn't you be allowed to print whatever the hell you want with YOUR printer even if your document contains little wavy patterns?
Besides, no printer prints watermarks inside of banknote cotton paper, and then finishes off with relief printing, UV light absorbing/reflecting ink, and a silver security thread with microtext. When computers do THAT, then it might be time to impose restrictions.
I don't know what field(s) my colleague is specialised in, but judging by the handle "WomensHealth" I would wager it's gynaecology/obstetrics.
Are you suggesting (s)he should first get into neurology before entering the IT industry?
(BTW, what do "pre-meds" and engineers have in common in the USA? Do pre-meds (I assume this simply means pre-clinical medical students) study maths or physics there? Which undergrad engineers study biochemistry, cell biology or othermedical/biological subjects?)