Not too long ago, we announced that pigs could fly AmigaOS4 had found hardware to run on. In the weeks following the announcement, the specifications of the two different boards (high and low end) were announced, and ACK Controls, the manufacturer, promised to release the first developer boards mid May. It is now June, and there are no developer boards. No photos, nothing. The community also wonders, has any developer received the developer board from ACK? Believers say that the legal troubles in Amiga land are preventing ACK from releasing the boards, but they forget that ACK has actually promised the boards despite the legal troubles. It seems that they can’t fly after all. Update: Adam of ACK Controls said in the linked thread on AmigaWorld: “There will only be a total of five developer systems sent to OS4 developers that will be responsible for drivers, HAL ports. When some of the smoke settles, more information will be released.”
See title…
…we’re talking about an announcement in Amigaland.
You didn’t truly believe it was for real, did you?
…called the PowerVixxen LT that generated some excitement among Amiga circles. It was an accelerator for the Amiga 1200 that would add a Radeon mobility graphics card and CMedia sound chip along with a PowerPC 603e series processor. He said he had a prototype anyway, but nobody ever saw it because he cancelled the demonstration before anybody could see it.
When he first announced it, he said he had Linux running on it and AmigaOS 4 would follow. He has access to the AmigaOS 4 source code as confirmed by the head programmer on the project on AmigaWorld.net .
Some people would have loved just to have Linux running on it until the thing could be ported. But his supplier of the connectors for the A1200 trap-door slot says he never got paid for the work he did machining an ROHS compliant tooling.
ACK announcements can’t be trusted. Amiga, Inc. has a similar track record with orders of the Clone-A chipset which is a modern recreation of the Amiga ECS graphics chips on field-programmable gate arrays. He said to the guy that did the work to expect lots of orders in a specified number of months. He didn’t hear from Amiga since then.
The (canceled) demonstration was for the CPU modules, not the Powervixxen LT. Adam never managed to show any of his announcements working, let alone any photographic evidence that they existed.
In an IRC chat around Xmas 2005 he even lied by saying that the Powervixxen LT was “in production” and only the “docs are being polished up”.
Edited 2007-06-03 23:06
As well as the replacement AmigaOne CPU modules (1.4 and 1.7Ghz IIRC) there was also the PowerVixxen TL (Thunder & Lightning) Helgis was really excited about that one.
Helgis was really excited about that one.
Tell me one thing he wasn’t excited about!
Oh man, i had almost forgot about him. One of a kind…
how lucky we are at osnews. the “drink beer” and “party bananas” smileys can seriously damage your health
Thanks for OSNews for provided decent Amiga news, without bias found in other Amiga sites. I get fed up of the constant excuses of Amiga Inc. Thankfully we have a hope, in the name of AROS.
… would even a true Amiga fanatic actually buy it? We don’t need more legal bullshit.
MorphOS and Genesi is it, and has been since the first release of Pegasos, let Amiga die.
You can’t get your hands on something that does not exist!
Seriously these people have lost all credibility.
Jay Miner is dead, let amiga rest in peace.
How much is that company worth? Can’t be too much really. Wouldn’t it be nice if enough people went together to actually go and buy the darn company, and then just open the whole freakin’ thing up and merge with AROS. Nobody will make any substancial money out of the amiga anymore, let the people who want to tinker tinker, please…
Wouldn’t it be nice if enough people went together to actually go and buy the darn company, and then just open the whole freakin’ thing up and merge with AROS.
Why don’t just develop AROS without spending money on Amiga name?
The Amiga Inc effectively non-existing company.
For “t3h n4m3” silly. 😉
Well, it’s not worth anything, not to mention that either it is seen as a Company not following their promises (from people who knows and follow the news) or by an old 16 bit game machine (from people who remembers it from their childhood)… For other people (and that’s maybe 70% of all), “Amiga” won’t mean anything.
So, what’s left ? An operating system that hasn’t been updated since what… 14 years ?
The only thing that may be worth the buyout is OS4, if they can regain rights for it, which is far from being sure. And OS4 is anyway outdated as well when compared with any current desktop operating system and has little advantage to be used in the embbed industry (it isn’t a real-time OS, it only runs on PPC,…).
So, why not let it rest in peace ? And simply concentrate on other options that do not rely on liars, sharks,… ?
Actually the operating system was updated this year and has gone thru some minor revisions over the past 4 or 5 years. The latest revision totally changed the way that AmigaOS 4 manages memory.
Many people who have used Amigas over the years have a significant investment in software and simply don’t want to trash it and start over. I think they should just buy hardware from Genesi and use MorphOS. It runs AmigaOS4 applications right out of the box and the hardware, although a bit dated since we’re talking about a G4 processor is the only thing around. Genesi is the ONLY company in the last several years that has really come thru with their promises regarding hardware and they’ve committed to making new systems with the latest Power processors as well as ensuring that they will run MorphOS 1.5 and 2.0 when it’s released.
The Amiga was/is a 32-bit machine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga
Interesting how that page mentions “New Amigas”.
I’d love to have one of each, but IMO slapping a sticker on somebody else’s PowerPC solution doesn’t count as Amiga. If the Genesi boards aren’t “Amigas”, how could these be?
Machines of that class are named after the size of the data bus rather than the size of the data registers. A 68000 based Amiga was termed a 16 bit machine by tech press and the userbase. Type “16 bit computing” into google and see how many 68000 based machines crop up under that classification.
The Z80 in a spectrum contains a 16 bit accumulator but I wouldn’t call it a 16 bit computer.
Obviously, using that classification system, later Amigas were true 32 bit machines.
Oh, I see. Thanks for the clarification!
So only the Amiga models with 68020 and later are considered true 32-bit machines?
Yeah. Even then, it’s purely a colloqualism used by the press and users.
When something ships at all in the amiga world that’s news, when it (very, very, occasionally) does happen it’s usually months if not years late.
Something not appearing after 2 weeks is normal in the Amiga world, it’s not news.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkvY4hYQgtA
Why not let it die? Because they LOVE/LIKE Amiga. Just because YOU don’t is absolutely, totally, completely zero reason to want it to die. As long as –someone– wants it to live and they want to work on it, then it has every reason to still live.
A better idea is for you “guys” to stop even looking at posts about Amiga. Just pretend it is dead and ignore the posts and stop posting to them. You aren’t being constructive or helpful or adding to knowledge by your posts.
Edited 2007-06-04 16:14
There is no need to pretend that the Amiga is dead. A platform that hasn’t had any serious update/release/improvement in over a decade can’t be considered alive.
If people have made such an investment in Amiga software/hardware that they are waiting for an update before moving to another platform. It means that they have used such outdated tools that chances are that they are not really competitive in the markeptplace, which means that chances are that they will not be able to afford any new Amiga HW/OS. Since the production target for any possible new Amiga platform is minuscule at bests, chances are that new Amiga products will be priced slightly higher than the competitions. If they can’t affor the cheaper competition, chances that those loyal Amigans can’t afford whatever vapourware they are being told to wait for.
It is really sad, why would anyone take at face value anything that Amiga Inc or whatever it is called now a days is beyond me.
So who cares what you think about it? They like it and that’s all the matters.
Just because some people love it doesn’t make the Amiga any less dead. The companies behind AmigaOS and platform vapourware are taking those poor saps still left in the Amiga camp for the proverbial ride.
For a platform to be alive it needs not only an active userbase, but also an active development and platform bases. Amiga has the former but not the later… there is little to no value proposition for the Amiga over competing platforms. And honestly, as much as I loved my Amiga 4000 years ago, I moved on in order to get things done. What was revolutionary two decades ago is common place now, and a lot of platforms offer more value than Amiga.
But by all means, those who like the platform should keep on using it if it fits their bill. That doesn’t mean that the platform itself is anymore alive.
They should have opensourced the system long ago, or at least port it over a reference PPC platform or x86.
I’m as much Amiga fan as anyone else, or well, I was atleast, I would still like to run something Amiga _LIKE_, however I’m not at all intrested in running good old AmigaOS at this date. That’s why I don’t care about AmigaOS 4.0 or AROS, I don’t want “AmigaOS”, I just want the AmigaOS feeling but in a brand new form.
Amiga on Neutrino could have been it I guess. Haiku aswell. AmigaOS 4.x isn’t.
OK, I think I’ve got it figured out.
All of the promises regarding Amiga this and Amiga that which never come to pass here on this earth, actually pass on to Amiga Heaven, existing, in pristeen state for all the ages of eternity.
And if an Amiga user is good and faithful all his life, then when his days here in this worldly domain are ended, he is rewarded, and ascends to Amiga Heaven to dwell in tranquility and harmony, bathed in Amiga Goodness, forever and ever.
I just wish that they’d set up a newswire to send reviews back to the rest of us.
Edited 2007-06-05 13:42
I wonder…
I can understand that there are great memories about those “old gold times” but… past glory doesn’t make it viable anymore.
Most of current computer users give a nothing about Amiga as trademark. Common PC hardware is powerful enough to not bother with hardcore optimized software anymore. Current PC graphics hardware gone so far ahead Amiga has a value of a prehistoric exhibit only.
And now a company CAN NOT ship anything but can only make next promises?
(again)
>I just want the AmigaOS feeling but in a brand new form.
Ah
Finaly someone else with this vision 
I also do want the same… but unfortunately, none of the existing solution is moving toward this goal (ie: AROS, OS4, MORPHOS). The later one has the needed base for it (a proper kernel, and the old-style OS running on a sandbox) but unfortunately work is still going on the sandbox (old style AmigaOS) rather than on the true new OS…
Finaly someone else with this vision
Count me in =)