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According to the article, 1500 pounds and you can have one.

Would come cheaper to buy common x86 HW and program OS yourself. But some nutcases are willing to pay 100 dollars for tap water bottle so nothing new to feel "special".

I would certainly pay extra for something that's not x86. Being an assembly programmer, x86 asm makes me cringe just thinking about it.

How so? What is exactly so bad about x86 assembler?

http://www.csd.uwo.ca/~mburrel/stuff/ppc-asm.html

"The PowerPC has 32 general purpose registers, each either 32 bits or 64 bits in size (depending on which chip you're using). It should be of note that 32-bit PowerPC and 64-bit PowerPC really have the same instruction set, and 32-bit code will run natively unmodified on a 64-bit chip. 32-bit code is 64-bit code."

win = ++general_purpose_registers;

The 80s are calling and they want their assumption the more registers the better back.


First off, most x86 designs are out-of-order making the number of registers exposed to the programmer irrelevant. Second, the X86_64 doubles the number of general purpose registers anyways. So you get basically the same number of registers exposed to the programmer than in most modern RISC processors.

In the end, the only benefit of having a few more registers is that it may delay when you have to deal with the stack, which you have to use too in a RISC machine since register spills are bound to happen.

If you're so afraid of dealing with the stack, maybe you should not be programming at the assembly level to begin with.

Now for real, what is so awful about X86, or at least X86_64 from people who actually program in assembly in both (RISC and CISC).

Edited 2010-06-23 09:07 UTC

Uh? AFAIK nobody had such assumption ever, it's the classical trade-of of size vs speed, let's just say that the x86 chose badly (x86-64 is better).



Not true, 1) if your code wants to use more variable than there are registers exposed, those hidden register don't help, you have to spill to the cache..
2) even heard about Intel's Atom? I heard it's quite popular in NetBooks, and it's in-order..




"Basically the same" as in 16 vs 32??
That said, I agree that the difference in performance is much, much lower..



It sucks because the lack of regularity, lack of registers and stupid choice like little endianness makes it more difficult to program in assembly than it should be..

Fixed 32-bit length instructions, makes determining code boundaries dead simple. x86's variable length instructions may be better for code density but since you're talking modern systems density no longer matters. Also, 32 general purpose registers means that custom ABIs can be used that keep necessary data in registers at all times, completely removing the memory latency (3 clock CAS latency is huge for an address bus that's already 1/3 CPU clock, and I've seen memory sticks, even new ones, that are even much higher than that, in the 5+ latency range).

Additionally, the instruction set itself, aside from being a clean 4 byte width, is clean and, dare I say, beautiful. Yes, that's a bias, but it's my bias, and you were asking why _I_ would pay extra for ppc over x86.

Besides, it's a little bit of geek nostalgia to have something that's different from everyone else like existed before x86 took over everything.

Exactly ? Too hard to say ... All ? Many things due too inheritance from the past, starting with a cheap design (no vision of the future). There is also the way the memory is address. For me the instruction set is a mess, a bunch of extensions added as is.

But we are off-topic.

Are we speaking i386 vs 68k or vs PPC?

I was asking for actual quantitative statements, not qualitative opinions from people who obviously haven't coded that much assembler (if ever).

Don't ask me, back then I got my first Amiga the guy I meet have had two for very long, it was Igge of Noice. He where writing some demos in assembler (trash'm one version of asm one) on the Amiga but got a 3 or 486 and started writing on that one. And obviously he liked it better and he where probably a much bigger nerd and knowledgeable than 95% of the current crop of Amiga users (5% reserved for people into the demo scene ...)

It was my impression he liked assembler on the 386 better to (his amigas where 500s..)

And with PPC wasn't the saying it was hard to code assembler for it?

The funniest part is that CISC machines (like the i386 and MC68K) have such "complex" instructions in order to make the life of the assembly programmer easier.

Where the predominant wisdom for RISC machines was that the complexity was going to be transferred to the compiler.

Which makes it a hoot to hear the arguments by people who haven't programmed any major piece of code in assembler to croon about how great RISC designs are for bare metal programming. Alas, one thing is for certain in this field... those with the least amount of direct experience (or knowledge) tend to be the ones with the strongest opinions.

Oh, well...

Complexity of what?

It is common misunderstanding what making things easier for compilers, it will somehow complicate things for programmers. This is not true. Assembly programmers benefit from it MORE.



Ok. So these who say what RISC is simpler to program in asm you classify as uneducated guess.
I have a lot of assembly experience (10+ years of 100% assembly).
I'm familiar with Z80, AVR, x86, 68K, ARM, MIPS, SPARC, CELL.
And I can say what RISC designs are MUCH simpler to code in ASM then CISC.
Simple and straightforward uniform 3/4-operand instruction set is a key.
68k is close, but it is 2-operand. x86 with it's idiotisms like dedicated registers for specific instruction is nowhere as near.
I need to memorize less things with RISC and instructions do not have awkward restrictions because of brain-damaged instruction encoding.

There is an old but still good article on RISC-CISC debate
http://www.realworldtech.com/page.cfm?ArticleID=RWT021300000000&p=1

Good value in comparison to what? A Cray? If I do remember correctly, the Amigas that were actually worth owning (>A3000) were terribly expensive in comparison to PCs and were in about the same league as Macs. Of course they did have lots more bells and whistles than the PCs of the time, but those didn't come cheap. Peripherals were also expensive. This at least in the Americas. In Europe the gap wasn't that big, but there still was a difference.

Considering I know people who had HDDs and bigger RAM expansions and ran BBSes and so on on their Amiga500s I may have to say that you're wrong.

And lots of people though their floppy only machines was more than "worth having."

sed s/nuveau/nouveau/g < article?

I agree with increasing the popularity of lisp-like languages to counter the tide of object-orientation.

Didn't know haskell is so automatically parallelisable -- had played with it and I know about the strictness of functional-ness : so much that they had to pretty much invent the convoluted monads to encapsulate IO. No wonder they decided to put in so much effort.

Now, if you want a programming geek's dream computer, it had better come with coreboot + openfirmware + super-multicore + <insert self.likes> + ...

This intrigues me -- if super-multicore + haskell imply the possibility of real time ray tracing graphics, then it also means, with opencl and whatnot, GPU-intensive gaming without lag. Look, ma! 100 fps max settings resident evil! The virus has wrinkles!

I would love to see general purpose chips get to the point that they can replace GPUs. I was really hoping that Intel's Larrabbee would not fail. Just imagine - a world without graphics drivers (all software rendering)! This would make Linux and other alternative operating systems (such as AmigaOS) much more viable for gaming.

Actually, it's GPUs that are becoming general purpose programmable chips :-)

True, but GPUs are still immensely complicated beasts that are incredibly hard to program. Something like Larrabee would be infinitely easier. I imagine that Linux could have a fast, working, open source driver for Larrabbee in months using Gallium + LLVMpipe. All the components would already be there. Most of the new code would be memory management.

Intel didn't managed to get anything real from Larrabee in several years with all it's billion$ and a team of star-developers working on it. I think you're overly optimistic =)

As far as I know, Intel had problems with the hardware, which really doesn't surprise me for such a weird design (non-cache coherent and ARM would have made more sense). I'm pretty sure that if they could get the hardware to work, the software side would be relatively easy (it just would take a while to get it really optimized). It would just be software rendering, which already exists.

They are announced HPC "Knights Ferry" part at International Supercomputing Conference. They intended to ship devkits in 2q 2010. So hardware should be fine.

Yes, but how much are those going to cost? I don't the problem was actually producing the hardware, but producing it at a reasonable cost to be used as a GPU in computers (~$100).

No.

Not even close.

You can even stay in the Commodore family, and there's multiple older examples - C16/Plus-4, C64, VIC-20. (Or, the Atari 8-bit family, if you consider that the Amiga developed from the Atari 8-bits.)

Uh... no? It had custom chips, yes, but it was far from the first. Gobs of home computers had custom chips for sound and video. Ataris, Commodore VIC and 64, MSX boxes, Tandys, etc etc.

*edit*

woops, bhtooefr beat me to it

Edited 2010-06-23 00:12 UTC

Just have to add a edit on your post .....
COMMODORE and BAD MANAGEMENT
killed Amiga ..... :-)
Not doom and soundblaster ....................

And that makes a difference how exactly?

It means it was not on its technical qualities Amiga failed to make it to this day as a major platform ..

Well, kinda it was .. I assume? With both better audio and more RAM and later AAA/Hombre atleast there would had been a path forward.

Or not at all technical flaws thanks to poor management?

Amiga started really good, but went south gradually due to crappy management and marketing.

And technically the A1200 should have had a better graphics chipset and a '030 processor plus atleast 16 meg (chip)-ram. And of course a better audiosystem ..

And even though I have those complaints on some technical advancements missing, I ask why do you think people still remember Amiga ? If not in part for its technical qualities ? Were not all flat earthers ... ! :-D

Why would people marvel over it more than 15-20 years after it went out of production if it still didnt have something that current systems miss ? And this is true for the Commodore 8 bits as well ..

However. Its classics for me. Nextgen Amiga is either NatAmi or AROS for me .. I will never afford 1500 quid for x1000 .. And if NatAmi never happens, and my classic Amigas break.. Then WinUAE it is for the remaining nostalgia ...

Edited 2010-06-23 06:55 UTC

WinUAE is most likely the best Amiga there ever will be, sad but true. Compared to all the modern wannabes atleast it can run the old software ..

Regarding C64 and Amiga vs everything else I think three reasons people liked them where:
1) Simple as consoles
2) Price
3) No need to upgrade or worry about specs because everyone else had the same machine.

The Wii got more or less 10 year old specs soon, people still enjoy it, a computer of similar complexity could still be used to browse the web somewhat, would have had plenty of hacks and people could still be playing the last 10 years of games on it.

You missed totally the point here... And perhaps all new Amiga platforms have their Just In Time Emulators JIT to run serious software that does not require calls to ancient Amiga Chipset Paula, Agnus and Denise. This means all serious graphic programs such as Image-FX, DTP Pagestream, WordProcessor Final Writer, and so on.



I quote you again because if you intend for old software, nothing else than old Amiga games, you are again off-topic.

No one buys new Amigas for Toy games. For those there are infact WinUAE and if you like new 3D games there are Console Game Machines like Wii, PS3 and XBox that fit perfectly your choice.



Again are you talking about games. Amiga is born as a games machine but gave its best during its history as an all-purpose computer too with plenty of good software.

A Wii machine could least 10 years allowing me to run good games for 10 years, but only Amiga gives me user a full 10 years whole experience of a free (intended as liberty) lightweight OS I can control all be myself and that responds immediately at a touch of the mouse without loosing time doing unwanted things or waiting for screen refresh, or swap memory to be active as still does Windows XP or 7.

Amiga is the choice for a great experience enjoying computing as fun.

No matter the price We Amigans will spend to experience that freedom.

If I want to play games I will buy a Wii machine.

If I want to run games for free I will download WinUAE (but remember that games are still intellectual properties, so you need to buy them all if you want to run and play them, or you will be considered a pirate)

If I want to run old Amiga software Again WinUAE could be the solution, but it runs only OLD software, and only Motorola 680X0 code. And we want to run new AmigaOS 4.X PPC and new Amiga programs.

And in the end there is no matter in choosing anything than Amiga.

Only Amiga is the solution if anyone wants to enjoying the fun of real liberty computing.

That is why I will always choose an Amiga.

Edited 2010-06-23 15:49 UTC

Not really, by the time of its demise... the Amiga was a stagnant platform with little in the way of technological value proposition. Which is why it went the way of the dodo.

You're trying to turn this into an either/or proposition, which seems to me a rather arbitrary framing of the debate. Commodore's bad management was probably one of the reasons why Amiga ended up being a stagnant platform, and thus saying it was "technically superior" by the time of its demise is a bit of denial. It was very well a manner of the two: bad management and outdated technology which killed amiga.

Well, it is a free statement you said, with no clue about the situation of Amiga in 1992-1996.

Amiga has its best 2 years after the demise of Commodore. And also in the same time there were well developed stunning Amiga hardware solutions from third party manufacturer.

It was of that period the creation of the centralized Aminet repository in Internet, the creation of the PPC based acceleration cards from Phase 5 (Now bPlan), the implenting of new graphic boards with their standard drivers that are still nowadays the core of AmigaOS graphic subsystem (Picasso96), that were so advanced that only in this period (2010) are "losing the pass" and need to be updated to a new subsystem.

Of the same period was the creation of AHI audio subsystem that is still valid today in 2010 (but must be upgraded to consider 3D sourround sound), and there was created also the first commercial low cost professional non linear video editing boards such as german expansion boards PAR (Personal Animation Recorder) and VLab Motion (At that time these solutions was priced just a fraction of expensive PC solutions like AVID).

http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/vlabmotion

http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/par

In that time there were created superb Web Browsers like AWeb, IBrowse, and Voyager, that could rival and surpass any Internet Explorer and any Netscape.
I can testimony it. I used these programs.

Think for example the fact that IBrowse in 1999 introduced for the first time on the market the "Tabbed Browsing" (that was experimented by "BookLink Technologies" InternetWorks in 1994)...

Think this fact. Ibrowse introduced "tabs" in surfing the web one year before Opera introduced same concept in 2000.

Amiga was a very forge of new solutions from 1992 to 1996, even if the hardware was aligned to those of standard PCs.
And then in three years (a very big amount of time in Computer Technology) from 1996 to 1999 the Amiga hardware begun to be considered obsolete due to the fact that there were no more development of new computers and new hardware and the PCs become very powerful and cheap due to the real advance of the global market in Computers.

But consider then that it was necessary three full years from 1996 to 1999 for Amiga to "lost its pass" with PC solutions, and this is due mainly to the fact that there were no real new Amiga hardware in sight and no manufacturer to produce new Amigas since 1992.

It was really a big amount of time to Amiga to loose almost the vaste mass of its market and its support developers and third party manufacturers. this is a proof of vitality, and strong resistence, not a proof of obsolescence.

The market was "forced" to leave the Amiga, because there were no new Amigas even while there it was still a strong request for Amiga hardware.

Unfortunately, without Commodore at its back (and no any other serious manufacturer firm to keep the platform on the market), then Amiga begin to starve, and the PC world begin to starting their rampage to multimedia, with the soundblasters 8 bit (and then 16bit) and the first 3D graphic acceleration cards (then integrated directly into main GPU expansion cards). And their cost begin to lower.

The remaining things to say about all this whole facts are just matter of history.



Well, just consider this fact...

AGA Amiga Chipset must have had equipped A 3000 instead of A 4000, and A 4000 should have being equipped with AAA chipset that provided chunky pixel graphic modes just like PCs, and had facilities such as hardware decompression for modes like MPEG2...

Then you will see that there was no matter about Amiga hardware obsolecence. AAA had put Amiga again ahead of any PC solution of the same age, but also now you can complain Commodore mangament and make lots of new considerations about how people in charge at CBM performed their management... (Sic!)

That was not producing outadated hardware. There it seems that the real intent was really to VOLUNTUARILY DELETE all projects related to advanced technology and keep the status "as it was", without advancing.

And if this is not a direct fault from Commodore management, I don't know how to consider it either...

There is no excuses. They killed their own firm!

Simply the projects were canceled... the A 3000 was declassed to ECS, while A 4000 was declassed to AGA. And this fact makes you wonder why.

It is a matter of facts that that Mehdi Ali vide-director of Commodore was considered a "project killer" from all people Commodore development teams, and sure we could not trust a person who spended his weekends outside USA territories, to not be considered a regular citizen and so avoid taxes.

Fact was that Irving Gould as CEO of Commodore got a salary of 1 million dollars year in 1989/1992 (consider the value of dollar of that age) when commodore has a situation of only 10 millions dollars as active assets (no debts/credits, just assets from active renevues from Amiga sells).

Gould pretended to dirige the entire Commodore International from his villa in Bahamas Islands and twice a week, the managment of Commodore was forced to keep briefings meetings in Bahamas by flying from USA to Bahamas using the Commodore Corporate Jet. This fact lead a major expenses for the firm that were diverted from any possible development of new computers.

Absurd!

And in the end the demise of Commodore was very strange, because instead of reorganize and refund the firm (it happened 3 times before during Commodore History) the owners decided to go to voluntary dismiss under US bankruptcy chapter 13. Why?

There were strong suspects that this magician trick of dismission was done to avoid that US Treasure Department to indagate that real budgets in Commodore were "inflated".

Irving Gould declared he had invested in Commodore (Amiga projects, general expenses and purchasing of spere equipments and expensive new CPU prototypes) more than real, when instead all the main development of new projects in Commodore was stopped by Mehdi Ali under Irving Gould orders, and so Gould could got all the difference between the effective expenses and those declared to US Treasury as his own secret tax-free blackmail funds.

So now you can made yourself a different idea of what was Commodore and Amiga situation in that times.

Edited 2010-06-24 10:07 UTC

Ive had a personal conspiracy theory that Amiga was NOT "supposed" to go on as a major platform .. And again reading about Irving Gould' and Mehdi Ali's antics my suspicions strengthens ..

And considering the final Amiga Incs antics, ("led" by Bill McEwen) this could lead even further the theory. McEwen was probably just going to sit on Amiga Inc assets to keep sure it never came back ..

So I again say, Amiga died due to lack of a owner who could drive the platform to its fullest .. And it would not have died on its technological merit if it had an owner who could manufacture new units ..

I think with some updates A1200s or compatibles would sell to this day ! Atleast to the main targets of Amiga , being demo artists , programming artists and such. "The scene" ..

I know I would buy atleast another one if the price was right .. !
I bought a NewOldStock A1200 last December actually. But the aging of the boards means I really will not invest in used or old stored hardware much longer .. WE NEED new CLASSIC hardware ! I hope NatAmi fulfills this need ... :-)

Edited 2010-06-24 23:45 UTC

Nope there is not a conspiracy, but just the suspects that Irving Gould declared inflated budgets to US Treasury, stating that he is spending enormous amounts of dollars in research and development for Commodore, while in real he was cutting out all the development and collecting all the extra money that was not spended (we are talking of various millions dollars in "eighties" and "nineties" value of dollar) as blackmail tax-free funds all for himself.

Regarding Bill Mc. Ewen, maybe you are unaware that one of the major inverstors of Amiga Inc. was Pennti Kouri, one of the owners of NOKIA (!!!), and one of the richest men in the world.

Seems that Bill Mc. Ewen had had teach to Kouri the same trick that used Irving Gould, and the duo of gentlemen performed again the same magician trick of Gould, by inflating the assets budgets of Amiga Inc. and performed again the same trick with US Treasury.

But this time there was no Commodore Development Research Facilities budgets to hide the money...

So they just declared they were spending millions trying to revitalize Amiga platform (that is a very known brand worldwide and a perfect scapegoat to hide all hiddden money manuevering), and they "raked off" all extra money they can divert from the budgets of a never existing New Amiga development.

The joke ended some years ago when Kouri discovered he had cancer, and so Amiga Inc. and Bill Mc. Ewen ran out of money. Then Kouri died in 2009 and the golden spring had stopped adding money... So Bill Mc. Ewen was forced to accept the extra-judicial agreement with Hyperion and gave away the Amiga and AmigaOS brand name to Hyperion.

Now we will see if Hyperion will be able to revitalize the Amiga brand and the Amiga platform, but it is a matter of waiting for any little step in advancing evolving again Amiga that was stopped for the first time in 1992 with the demise of Commodore, and then since 1999 when Bill Mc Ewen purchased Amiga assets from Gateway.

Do you think how many years we lost?

Amiga lost almost 10 years since Bill Mc. Ewen founded Amiga Inc. Firm! Since 1999 he just presented on the market only strange unuseful products like AmigaDE/Amiga Anywhere, a multi-purpose environment that must had rivalled with Java and that was based on cooperative multitasking based Tao/Elate/Intent Operating System!

Absurd!

He never tried to develop further the existing Amiga OS, and tried to enchant and trick the Amiga community promising that Amiga Anywhere will be the future of Amiga.

He also made ridiculous public declarations stating that AmigaOS 5.0 based on a mix of AmigaAnywhere and AmigaOS 4.0 had had being better than MacOS X. This fact made entire computer community laughing of Amiga.

Just think the fact that BME was forced to produce something real (AmigaONE machines and AmigaOS 4.0) just in 2001 as response to bPlan who produced Pegasos machines and MorphOS team who launched MorphOS Operating System.

If BME and Amiga Inc. hadn't launched AmigaONE machines (made for real by Eyetech) and AmigaOS 4 (made for real by Hyperion), then all Amiga community had migrated to MorphOS and the jokes of Mr. Mc. Ewen and Mr. Pennti Kouri had had lost their precious Amiga toy as cover for their money tricks.

But Amiga has a Lucky star that protects her, and Hyperion made just a good product with AmigaOS 4.X, revitalizing again Amiga name and protecting Amiga from Bill Mc. Ewen even going in trial in US Courts.

And now there is again a chance for Amiga, because there are two manufacturers producing hardware (Italian firm ACube, and English firm A-EON) and Hyperion slowly but steady developing the OS, and adding step to step the features it needs fo fill the gap with so called "modern" OSes like Windows, MacOS X, and Linux.

Edited 2010-06-25 09:39 UTC

I was going to EDIT my reply but the edit window expired before I could post it so here goes in a new post .... !

First of all, I agree a lot !

Again:
COMMODORE and its BAD MANAGEMENT was a big reason Amiga died..

Doom and Soundblaster might have been a factor for some though.

I could add that my first computer after my A500 was a PC with Doom and Soundblaster in 1995 :-D :-D

I might also add that this computer was returned after a few months because it had a hardware conflict between an unknown something and the Soundblaster ... :-P

Causing soundeffects to quit working in Doom. T'was a NIGHTMARE i tell ya !!

Amiga may have died as a major platform with Commodore ca 1994 but its fire has smoldered even to this day !

But Amiga was not really 100% killed .. But that smolder will go out for good if stuff like NatAmi and X1000 has no permanent supply.

Id make a Apple-like business model for Amiga if I was Hyperion / A-Eon. Meaning to make a whole-istic business model for their platform .. An ecosystem.. Of course at an EXTREMELY smaller scale..

I suggest they even team up with the NatAmi and MiniMig teams to get these two systems into a small retail distribution. Or maybe the makers of SAM boards could do that .

Maybe even attach themselves to the Commodore 8-bit crowd. Were talking hobbyist and niches here, target your product well !

On a sidenote a future "Commodore" could make a electronics project kit C64 for example .. A lot of us geeks are missing spare parts for our old C64s these days, and a solder your own kit would probably be a hit with solder-hobbyists .. People who are not experts but loved their old machines, and 20-25 years later want one again (only to try buying used machines that are failures too often).

About the X1000 - I only hope this machine is out before the world financial systems collapse AGAIN .....

If they end up pushing the deadline past the end of 2010, I cant say I like it ..

Well well , hope for the best ..

Im basically enthusiastic about this comp.. But It will be too much money for me..

I would rather have a NatAmi in the form of a smaller A1000...

Amiga X1000 won't do any difference whatsoever.

A new geek platform with a new geek OS for cheap and with steadily progress may have had a future, but there's so many platforms available for doing that already, such as any phone for instance ..

ECS didn't added much, look at this instead:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Ranger_Chipset

Then came AGA and updated things a bit, but your PCs graphics cards where still better, the Amiga 1200 got 2 MB RAM but kept the same audio. Look at this instead:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Hombre_chipset

I assume Jay Miner & co could have kept it going. Commodore not so much ..

Check out the NatAmi project though :-)

Supposed to become a step after AGA (SuperAGA w/3d functions).

When / If it ever reaches production.

www.natami.net

Its a FPGA based project. Webpage says the rest.

At this time we need 10-15 steps after AGA though ...

Sure, but we classic fans dont expect to take over the world anymore .. At least I dont .. I just want something to replace my A500 / A1200s when they break .. And this something preferrably being as compatible as possible with the old games ..

Commodore after Jack Tramiel was pretty much utterly retarded ... Atleast the management had no clue .. They "had diamonds in their cupboard but wanted silver" .. My own saying .. :-) By that I mean they wanted to go after "serious" business markets and not the markets their products were diamonds in ..

It is a custom machine built in comparatively small quantities by small companies. What do you people expect? a $500 machine? Give me a break.

Stop acting all surprise. OF COURSE it is going to cost.

The nanonote cost 99 euro. It's built by a small team/company to I assume.

Amiga would have a much better chance at crappy cheap hardware for 200 euro than trying-to-be-something-and-fail-ridiculously-hardware at 2000 euro.

It's not even their invention, who knows if it will bring anything useful to the table.

Old AmigaOS and software where small and didn't demanded much, something like the nanonote but with 128 MB ram or so would still have had plenty of hardware for the AmigaOS.

Just compare the Pegasos to the AmigaOne. Everyone who bought the latter must have been utterly retarded.

How could people know the first AmigaOnes from Eyetech would be so bugged ? And that Amiga Inc would fail them !? Besides the failing chips was as far as I know due to a flawed reference board from some Asian manufacturerer (?) Luckily I didnt buy any of them .. I hope Trevor Dickinson is more lucky with his hardware partner, (who seems to be A LOT more reliable .. )

Edited 2010-06-23 09:10 UTC

Bugged and bugged.

MorphOS was already there. The hardware to.
The Pegasos wouldn't get AmigaOS, just that, just let the alternative die so we don't end up with two branches.
The Pegasos was cheaper.
B-plan/Genesi was infinity + 1 better than any company which have ever owned Amiga, don't know about the Amiga Tech people though, we lost them fast .. ;D. Eyetech may have been good people, what do I know, way to much hardware and high prices anyway, and still same shitty old Amiga-whatever-company behind it all.

Pegasos + MorphOS was good, sure the A\Box or whatever might had ended up better, or the maybe the AmigaMMC + QNX Neutrino based OS. But to base a new one on Linux or keep on updating the same old piece of shit (AmigaOS 3.5 and 3.9 are jokes to, though I haven't used them.)

Sad for Genesi to not get it flying even higher.

<quote>And that Amiga Inc would fail them !?</quote>Well duh, isn't that obvious? Bla bla AmigaDE.. hurray .. Windows CE-products! ..

Just to correct your erroneous statement but Pegasos runs all Amiga-Like Operating Systems. It runs also AmigaOS.

I knew it because I own a Peggy II. ;-)



No, Linux no, please... I don't want that Shi**y Geek-Only Operating System.

It is not friendly at all.

You must achieve a Computer Science Degree to learn how to full using it, or the alternative is to stay stuck with its basic features without any possibility of digging it and discovering all its power.

Studying for a Computer Science Degree to learn how to use an Operating System in its deep it is sorta like a nightmare!

That is why Amiga is perfect. It does not require a Computer Science Degree to be mastered by any user.

Linux is not an OS suitable for any people and for anyday use.

AmigaOS is good. MorphOS is good. AROS is good.

Also I hope that soon we will see a version of MorphOS running from its Q-Box even if this means to deprecate the Amiga A-Box.

At least the A-Box could run in sort of sandbox, or the Amiga API could be just run under complete emulation, so that Q-Box could reveal all its power!

Edited 2010-06-23 16:05 UTC

I hope you see the irony in what you are saying...


That's true of any OS. You can't use all the features of Windows without programming. Same with Mac OS. Same with Linux. I hope you realize that what a normal user could accomplish with Linux is still more than what they could do with Amiga OS/AROS/MorphOS (simply because they are not as popular or well supported; that's not any fault of those OSs).


Really? I am a person. I use it everyday. And I don't have a computer science degree.


I agree. They are great operating systems. But something is wrong when you advocate Amiga/derivatives as something for everyone yet dismiss Linux as something you need a degree in computer science to use...

Of course it should be read as:
I know AmigaOS but not Linux, I don't want to have to learn something new, I like my old machine.

Switching systems isn't an easy task if you want to know how to use them. If surfing the web is all you care for then it's fine.

(Though back in the 68k days on the Amiga that wasn't so easy since it neither had a network interface, drivers for it or a built-in tcp/ip-stack ..)

Learn to read, I said "the Pegasos wouldn't get AmigaOS", back in the days Amiga Inc. decided that they wouldn't release it for the Pegasos and only for the AmigaOne. Even by then considering people had bought into Pegasos and MorphOS existed it should had been abandoned by the users. Just another time Amiga Inc. screwed things up. With _ONE_ platform atleast it would have had more users, no risk of betting on the wrong horse and a direction into the future.

I know it's available _NOW_, but that must be much more thanks to Hyperion winning over Amiga Inc. than anything else. Amiga as company suck, we would have been much better without it.I own an original pegasos with the DMA flaw but I have never ever used it.Which was my point ... As long as Gateway-Amiga was let to focus on the AmigaMCC and base a completely new OS on QNX Neutrino where wheren't doomed and could have had a future. But then Gateway decided that Linux was a better idea and well, then it didn't got intersting at all.. Add Tao-groups Elate and the whole fiasco of selling SDKs for that to develop games for what never became an AmigaDE but rather a bunch of Windows CE-games ...

I don't see many web-surfers coding assembler on the Amiga either but ..

For most people "using a computer" = "start the web-browser", and they could do that in Linux to .. But yeah, I wasn't saying Linux-based "AmigaOS" was a good idea, though my sentence may have been short / the rest / idea got lost while writing.I think it's mostly because you're used to it .. I know a guy who more or less couldn't do shit on the Amiga, had it for his son. Many ideas such as just copy in fonts, new datatypes, get support for new filesystems, monitors or printers by just clicking/dragging their icon is very intuitive though.

Not thanks to modern Amiga Inc though .. ;D
I don't know about AROS but long-term I think it will be the best option, because it may be the only one with a future. Though I would much rather have seen a new cool hobbiest OS like Syllable with maybe the AROS-developers and the guy behind SkyOS and all the people over at the Haiku-camp. Then we could actually have a decent alternative to Windows, Linux and OS X, and enough developers and size.Well, if all the Amigans who bought into the AmigaOne just to get Linux and then have to wait for what? A year? Two? Before they actually got their OS (because it did run Linux only at first didn't it? Or was there a beta? Don't remember, I think the beta came much later.) and instead had bought Pegasoses Genesi would had made more money, development on MorphOS could had been more focused and MorphOS would have had more software. Can't really see what was gained from getting AmigaOS4 up to the same level as MorphOS. Sure "it's the real deal" but as far as I saw things MorphOS _WAS_ AmigaOS as far as anything mattered. It could still run the old software and was modern.

Exactly, at that price it's as dead as always.

And for people who believe the chips are amazing or cost a lot to produce or whatever. They aren't and they obviously don't. They are nowhere near worth the additional 1000 £ ...


Now if they had made it unique in some other way but kept price low, as in 300 dollars or maybe up to 4-500 with power adapter then they might have had something.

Only the biggest of biggest idiots will buy this machine. (Or someone with more money and curiosity than care for the brand.)

Trolling must lead to a fulfilling life... Only explanation I can reason up for the amount of trolls online.

Eh, there's a sucker born every minute and there seems to be quite a lot of suckers for Amiga.

I am getting real !

Amiga for me is not in competition with PCs Macs.
But an alternative without MS inside, a hobbyist niche targeted platform. We'd be poor if we only had these high profile platforms like PC and MAC. And Linux as Raffaele says is a monolithic system as well.

And X1000 gives us a higher-end home for the OS4 and beyond. We've had to settle for A LOT less for all these years since Commodore failed.

If only this X1000 platform and XMOS could mean better CLASSIC chipset emulation .. :-) A new "Amiga" isnt perfect before it has perfect integration of the good old apps and games for me ....

And you care of these thingies? Please stay on topic.



Seems strange that you made assumptions about motherboard prototypes and a 32 bit OS running on a 64 bit machine just thanks to the fact it was barely adapted to X-1000 to test it could run on it.

And if you are barely trying to make some humor then you could just make teletubbies laugh "again" "again".



OK, now you prove you are totally disinformed about AmigaOS.

Video now is vector and accelerated and based upon Cairo libraries. For the multiple core, we have just starting running on a multiple core for the first time, as a single core OS. let us made it step by step.

Did you read the things other people said before making any assumption?

I just said that at CBM they had AGA long before since, but they had not used it until they came up with A4000.

Mr. Dave Haynie, one of the engineers in charge at development teams at Commodore, the man who designed 32bit autoconfiguring (plug and play) bus Zorro III for Amiga, that gave Amiga the possibility to mount 32 bit expansion cards far before Windows95 and PCI bus, is one of the few owners of a full functioning AGA Amiga 3000 (there are existing only 3 to 6 machines of AGA A3000).

Yes. AGA was ready far before 1992 but the project for Amiga 3000 AGA was canceled and Amiga3000 was declassed to Enhanced Chip Set.

Here is the photo of AA 3000. It is full functioning:

http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=23

It could even mount a DSP chip, for high quality sound, or digitizing, or even connecting directly Amiga to phone lines as an hardware modem, but this feature was never implemented.

Now you can see with your eyes that at Commodore could launch update machines, but insted they preferred to declass them or cancel other advanced products).



So did Amiga. I had Amiga graphic adapter card and it costed barely the same as my father PC Vesa graphic Card with 2 megabyte of graphic RAM and mounted on his 486 DX2 66MHz...

In the first times of the nineties, Amiga was still a cheap machine compared to PCs, but sure hardware expansion cards were very expensive on any platform in those times.

The real boom of low cost and really high performance PCs was started in 1999 circa. It is a matter of facts.

But the vaste majority of Amiga users were using Amiga just for play games, so they have no any intention of upgrade their machines.
They used Amiga as a console.

We cant't blame these people for this fact.

Only core users and those who had discovered Amiga was a perfect all-purposse machine had upgraded it. And we were a minority in comparison to full 7 millions of Amiga users worldwide.

I think that real Amiga users were around of 500.000.



And why you used it at 640x480x8???




In 1993 people weren't using TV's anymore because they were forced to buy graphic cards and VGA monitors as imposed by the PC market.

In 2010 people got again using their computer connetcted to TVs because the TV sets are now LCD or Plasma based and capable of handling high refresh rates on bigger screens, and people who use new generation Amigas have discovered with pleasure that they can use even their big plasma/LCD connected to Amiga. So what?



These screen modes were hybrid ones, and were required complex multisync monitors such as Amiga A1940, A1942 or Nec Multisync to show it.

http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=854

http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=854

These screenmodes were intended to avoid eye strain for those video professionals who used to design their video productions with low flicker on TV productions in DBL (Double)PAL and DBL (Double)NTSC before to porting it on normal PAL and NTSC.

Obviously they can't use VGA modes that were not compatible with TV modes to create and then show their video productions, so in order to make their work easier there were created these strange screen modes.

So don't jump to conclusions and saying that DBLPAL and DBLNTSC were unuseful screenmodes and the proof that Amigas were loosing their pass with PCs.

These screenmodes were created having in mind a precise intent.

And this intent was to create transitional screen modes for professionals who want to see their job on a decent refresh rate with no eye strain before to porting it to normal PAL and NTSC.

Does it makes sense for you now?



It is not Irving Gould or replacing Irving Gould with other people.

But if the CEO of an industry prefer far better to fraud millions in taxes, insted of taking profit from the products that he produces, then his firm is nothing than doomed to starve and then die.



Who said that? It seems to me that it is just you stating gratuitously these words.

Calm down pal.

You are extending other people words beyond their normal meanings, and this is unfair.

Edited 2010-06-25 08:44 UTC

Amiga DIED (somewhat) because COMMODORE LET IT DIE due to crap management. The Amiga community has kept the platform somewhat alive to THIS DAY, because they loved what it was and could be.

Time however killed it as a mainstream platform, I admit that, and what is left is trying to claw back a little of what we had and what is still not filled by other platforms.

Retro computing is one niche ..

And everybody should be happy to get alternatives to MS and Apple et al..

Edited 2010-06-27 02:10 UTC

Yes. I remember that in the first time GVP cards run EGS standard, but it was just like a framebuffer. And only GVP used EGS. I had seen a GVP IV24 in action and that board used that standard (Now I have one GVP IV 24 of my own in my little museum of computers) but despite the fact that EGS was quite just a framebuffer, the IV24 was a real big bang video studio on a single expansion board. It was a very hit at its times. Only Amiga makes it possible.

http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/impactvision24



You are stuck with ancient days of Amiga. Be content with your memories and leave us evolve in peace by walking step by step.



I remember using 640x480x8 just only when testing VGA for the first times when I connected my Amiga1200 to VGA screen with the little adapter that was sold by Commodore with A4000 and with Commodore Monitors...

http://amiga.resource.cx/exp/rgb2vga

But sure using that resolution with A1200 was unuseful and a pain in the ass. Don't tell me you were stuck with it, because you could not afford more than an unexpanded A1200?

Then I you have all my comprehension because you really played all your cards with an unuseful ugly graphic screen res.

Edited 2010-06-25 21:41 UTC