Yesterday, Amiga-fans could participate in an IRC Q/A session with Hyperion Entertainment, the company behind AmigaOS4. You can read several transcripts, both edited as well as unedited, here. The main news is that AmigaOS4 will not be released this year; with the main reason for this being the lack of available hardware (which is being worked on). An update will, however, be released in January.
I asked if the Update #4 would be sold to BlizzardPPC owners, but the “moderators” of the chat session deemed my question unsuitable for the Freiden brothers to answer. :-X
I know OS4 currently runs on the BlizzardPPC as my friend is a betatester/developer for OS4, and i’ve used it on his machine.
Why won’t Hyperion sell this beta version to current BPPC owners? I know they are very short on money, so any income is good for them.
Can someone please give me a straight answer, as to why they won’t *sell* OS4 Update #4 to BlizzardPPC and CyberstormPPC owners?
Preferably someone employed by Hyperion, and not a self-proclaimed “community representative”.
“Why won’t Hyperion sell this beta version to current BPPC owners?”
As Hyperion said in the IRC session a port to Pegosis is possible but someone will have to stimp up the cash to pay for the port.
Mr Nicholas wrote:
>>>
I asked if the Update #4 would be sold to BlizzardPPC owners, but the “moderators” of the chat session deemed my question unsuitable for the Freiden brothers to answer. :-X
I know OS4 currently runs on the BlizzardPPC as my friend is a betatester/developer for OS4, and i’ve used it on his machine.
>>>
Come on pal! If they don’t want to release it soon, why (instead of OS4) don’t you try MorphOS 1.4.5 edition for power-up machines?
Actually it costs none.
It runs on:
Amiga 4000(T) with CyberStormPPC
Amiga 3000 with CyberStormPPC
Amiga 1200 with BlizzardPPC
Grex PCI slots
You can find a try version (limited to 2 hours) here:
http://powerup.morphos-team.net/
Register yourself *for free* and the 2-hours-limit will vanish, allowing you to use it continuously.
Ciao,
Raffaele
@Raffaele
I’ve already paid a small donation to the MOS-Team for the MOS-PUP version.
Unfortunately for me, I have a Mediator and FastATA-MK3 in my 1200T, so can’t use MOS-PUP at the moment.
OS4-PUP supports Mediator and Fast-ATA, so I want to buy it, rather than just pirate it, which is quite easy to do as it’s all over eMule.
Nik (mdma)
When you have one company working on the OS and another (others?) working on generic hardware that it MAY work on, you have a total lack of focus. Amiga is not a PDA. Amiga is not “other hardware”. The AmigaOne is the Amiga and AmigaOS 4 is the OS.
Problem is, neither is currently buyable… not that it would really be WORTH buying, because by the time AmigaOS 4 *IS* released, everyone is have lost interest and gone onto other, better things.
Hence the “legacy” of Amiga continues… cursed forevermore to be utterly irrelevant to anyone but the most dedicated, die-hard fanbois. Even I gave up on Atari when I saw the writing on the wall…
And now I own a Power Mac G4 DA, running MacOS X 10.3.9 and am completely content… until the dreams of which I inspired to attain are within my gasp… hopefully… someday.
I used Amiga computers from 1990 to 1997. Amiga computers were the most advanced desktops back then. The way I see it now, is they lost focus about what was great about it. The sound was better, the graphics were better, the OS was better, the community was better than on PC. Now they are trying to catch up with MacOS/Windows but do not have the ressources for it and don’t understand that people want to use PC hardware. PC hardware is the best/cheaper/has the best avaibility and that’s what people want. But I wonder if Amiga still have it’s place in the today world if it doesn’t kick butt like it used to do.
When Hardware and software are done by 2 or more sources:
Intel + Microsoft + IBM = MS/DOS / MS WIN***
And Microsoft bought DOS from someone else, modified it to MS/DOS.
story or history : IBM wanted DRDOS first but the man behind this OS decided to fly instead of going to the meeting with IBM. So IBM contacted Bill Gates.
Nobody can forsee OS4’s future as nobody could forseen Microsoft’s success.
Amiga OS is the Amiga, the smallest powerfull OS you have on PowerPC with Morphos, I presume.
Some of us are in love with the Amiga, keeping it alive by buying Amiga and Pegasos new or used.
Some write programs and OS4 is like a just discovered ancient world still alive.
Take down your weapons all fools that want to take a life.
Read books and write a web browser instead.
>”Why won’t Hyperion sell this beta version to current
>BPPC owners?”
>As Hyperion said in the IRC session a port to Pegosis is
>possible but someone will have to stimp up the cash to
>pay for the port.
The BPPC (old PowerPC accelerator for the A1200) is a completely different product from the Pegasos (full system for MOS/Linux etc). OS4 currently runs on the BPPC, so it’s not a matter of porting costs.
While selling OS4 beta for the A1200 might get Hyperion some money, they presumably recognise that selling incomplete software isn’t going to get them any good press. They could always give out the beta like for the A1 – the excuse given before has been that Classic owners already have AmigaOS while A1 owners had only been able to use Linux. More importantly though, OS4 is so close to completion that lots of people could get the free beta and never pay for the final version. The only ways around that are to cripple the BPPC version (again, hardly great PR) or release it as OS4 final (generating wider interest when there’s no new hardware available).
Luckily, it seems that the ACK Powervixxen LT (an A1200 PPC accelerator that can also function as a stand-alone computer) has gone into production. If that comes out soon, the OS delay may soon be over…
..but not as interesting as some of the other questions in the question channel. They could’ve answered so many more.
Hyperion already stated in the past that they will release the final version for classic CyberstormPPC and BlizzardPPC. As to why, possibly due to ironing out bugs.
Running AmigaOS4 on classic Amigas has the advantage of being able to access the classic custom chipsets, maybe this requires additional testing. As Hyperion stated in the IRC session, basically the low-level stuff differ.
“QUESTION: Are you spending more time on the OS4 version for the “classic” Amiga now that you are waiting with the final release for new hardware?
EntilZha:
Not really. Except for the real low-level stuff, both versions are basically the same… What we currently do is testing and bugfixing… even final releases contain bugs, so here’s our chance to reduce the number of bugs that will be in the final version (and replace them by new bugs :S )”
I guess another additional reason may be boxing/distribution/PR considerations. AmigaOS4 will be sold as a standalone product for the classic Amigas coming in a good quality box. A1 owners (sold in combination with bare copies of the pre-release) will receive AmigaOS4.0 in a quality big box when released.
“QUESTION: Commodore was quite excellent when it came to documentation. Will you, or anyone else print any documentation for OS4, or will it be digital only?
Rogue:
Good question.
Digital documentation is going to be the major source of information, but we’re looking into things like a printed manual. There most likely *will* be a printed manual for the final release.
EntilZha:
And a “big box””
@ Anonymous
The IRC session took well over one hour. Sure they could have continued for many more hours but personally I think these were a good selection of questions and awnsers.
P.S. I am part of the AW staff, but I was not involved in selecting questions.
>As Hyperion said in the IRC session a port to Pegosis is possible but someone will have to stimp up the cash to pay for the port.
That’s not the problem: someone already offered to pay this cash for them… And was simply ignored.
I paid the $50 prepay for an AmigaONE years ago, and from what I understand, it’s gone…
Ok.
But, I think Hyperion really needs to port AmigaOS to another supported platform.
Pegasos II seems like the best bet. Especially since IBM is behind the ODW.
OSNEWS ran an item a few weeks ago about two new possibilities…
One being a new PPC Upgrade for A1200’s based on the Freescale chip, and the Efrika board from Genesi.
Until those become available, it would make sense to make AmigaOS 4.0 available on another platform.
I can’t believe porting to the PegII would take all that much work. It must be a VERY similar board to the AOne.
But I really don’t know.
I’ve always thought that AmigaOS ought to be ported to the Apple Platform. A Mac Mini with AmigaOS 4.0 would make a nice system, and inexpensive as well.
Projects like this always fail (like BeOS) because people resist success.
Putting AOS 4.0 on the Mac would make it take off like crazy. I have SEVERAL older Macs that can’t run MacOS X, but might like AOS 4.0 fine.
I just got Ubuntu 5.10 PPC and I’m going to put it on one of them today.
Maybe the AROS folks will support the Mac Platform with a native port of AROS.
The peg is using the marvel chipset and Aone MAI chipset.
And they havent portet AOS4 to Efrika but to the powervixen http://safir.amigaos.se/article_ack_eng.html
Well OS4 not coming out was the main, if not unexpected bit of news. The Other main bit was Pre-release 4 coming out in January (of 2006, arf!), Kwel!
I suspect this will be very similar in features to the full release for us lucky(??) A1 owners.