The fabled Amiga X1000 has been spotted in the wild, in the homeliest of places–Station X, a.k.a Bletchley Park. “The AmigaOne X1000 is a custom dual core PowerPC board with plenty of modern ports and I/O interfaces. It runs AmigaOS 4, and is supported by Hyperion, a partner in the project. The most interesting bit, though, is the use of an 500Mhz XCore co-processor, which the X1000’s hardware designer describes as a descendant of the transputer – once the great hope of British silicon.” With thanks to Jason McGint, ‘Richard’ and Pascal Papara for submissions.
Custom hardware is at the heart of what makes an Amiga an Amiga and the X1000 is highly anticipated, even with a frankly breath-taking price “north of £1500”. The initial release of Amiga OS 4 for the machine will not make use of the 64-bit mode nor the second core, but this is expected to be fixed in following software updates.
New AROS Release Brings Improved 2D/3D Hardware Support, USB-Booting
In a news post on the 17th, AROS has added Intel GMA950 support by the work of Michal Schulz. The open-source Nvidia driver Nuveau has been ported, providing broad 2D support and selected 3D support:
Krzysztof “Deadwood” Smiechowicz has gone really far with his Gallium3D port to AROS: he has now integrated 2D and 3D accelerated functions in a single driver called Nuveau, which supports 2D acceleration for almost all GeForce GPUs starting from the ancient GeForce 2 cards until the recent GTX 200 series. 3D functions, however, are available only to GeForce FX (5×00), cards and upwards. Some models and GPUs might not be supported yet.
Support for installing onto, and booting from USB devices has been added which is a big leap forward for allowing users to test the OS easily, especially on netbooks without an optical drive.
Neil Cafferkey has vastly improved our support to FAT partitions, and also made AROS installable on USB pendrives (and bootable from them). This means that regular nightly builds, but also Icaros Destop version 1.2.2 can now be installed on netbooks and other USB-bootable systems using a memory stick instead of a DVD. Paolo Besser has written a complete how-to in PDF format, and placed it on the Icaros website.
New AROS Distribution, “Broadway”
Speaking of AROS and Icaros, Pascal Papara reports to us:
I’m the guy who did the german answer to the Imica (dedicated AROS-machine), now I want to give AROS a new face with my own distribution called Broadway. I released an early Snaphot of Version 0.0.2R6. You can try it under Virtualbox but it is preconfigured to run perfectly on AresOne and Imica-systems. For some info you can see http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=5482 or www.aros-broadway.de There is also coming new “commercial” software like AMC = Amiga Media Center. See the showroom on the Broadway-page. PS: After getting the most done in the x86-Version I will start with AROS64 and PPC-Versions
All in all, good movement in the Amiga community. If there’s any Amiga users or those suitably in the know in the audience that could explain how the X-core processor works and what it means for Amiga, I’d appreciate it, thanks. To my limited understanding, it seems like an FPGA? (like the C=One)
…and it’s a sad comment about the state of alternative operating systems in 2010 when a new Amiga makes my heart palpitate, only if it’s because we all know how this is going to end.
Nonetheless, I want one.
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..
Are you joking? How is little-endian a stupid choice? Admittedly, the way numbers are written in many human languages is big-endian, but for computers, little-endian is simply technically superior.
Personally, I think programming in assembly with little-endian architectures is easier. For example:
mov [eax], 5
mov ebx, [eax]
mov cx, [eax]
ebx and cx will both be 5. This makes many things simpler.
All of this is not that important, but the world would be better off if we settled on one endianness. Little-endian has small technical advantages, and big-endian has cultural advantages that only apply to certain languages. Therefore, little-endian would be the logical choice.
Given that IP, and most network protocols built on IP, is big endian, a little endian dominance is quite stupid, IMHO.
Yes, and given that Windows is the most popular operating system, it makes very little sense to use a Mac or Linux.
Seriously though, maybe IP using big-endian is quite stupid, given that the majority of computers are little-endian.
(However, the network is a place where endianness matters much less. I don’t see IP using big-endian as a major problem, as long as little-endian machines are aware of that.)
I don’t see where is your demonstation about the endianness and the hypothetic strength of the little endian model. For me loading a value that is swapped compared to how it is stored is not natural. And not logical.
Else, I am pleased to see this new computer, and the new Sam460 as well. New PowerPC products is automatically good news for me.
It’s not the greatest example, but it demonstrates that the bytes of equal significance are stored at the same offset, regardless of the size of the integer. Personally, I think this is very logical. If an something gets bigger, I think it makes more sense to add onto the end, rather than shift everything over in order to add at the beginning.
I agree. I would rather see an alternative architecture that is big-endian, than see no alternative architecture at all. I don’t think x86 is quite as bad as people make it out to be, but I would love to see more competition.
No, I’m not joking.
You gave yourself the answer below why big endian is better: it makes analysing memory dump much easier, and yes, human matters, otherwise why would we use HTML/XML protocols instead of binary?
I’m not English, yet I use it to program, to communicate on the Internet, etc. The human language which matter for computer is English, not Arabic..
No: some algorithms are better in little endian, some other algorithms are better in big endian, there’s no big benefit in any way..
Most of the stuff you’re talking about is taken care of directly by almost any competent assembler.
Again, do some of you have actual experience in programming at the assembly level or are we just going to hear the same qualitative arguments repeated ad infinitum?
Sure a good assembler may help but I don’t think that register’s allocation is handled by an assembler, otherwise I’d call it a compiler.
And little endian make ‘memory dump’ analysis more difficult each time you need to do it (unless you have a tool of course), not only when programming in assembly..
As for the rest, I’ve never said that x86 weaknesses are new..
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.
I disagree here: I think that ARM Thumb2 is an improvement (MIPS has the same thing): 16/32 bit RISC ISA give nearly the same code density as x86 but are still much simpler compared to CISC brain dead very long instructions..
Aren’t PPC from AFTER x86 took over? ..
And AMD64 has been around for what now? Close to 10 years?
In 1994, when ppc was first introduced in macs, x86 was only prevalent on the desktop, not anywhere else. Now it’s common in the server market, replacing SPARC and POWER, and Itanium. So PPC is from a time before x86 took over everything. The AMD64 spec is from 2000, but the first processor wasn’t released until 2003.
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
I would like to add my own nod to the huge amount of work Pavel Fedin has done in rebuilding the whole AROS gfx subsystem! Making it more compatible and cleaning up all the nasty hacks that have been there for the past 10 years
The XMOS XCore included in the X1000 is a programmable co-processor, not a FPGA. FPGAs are integrated circuits designed to be configured using a hardware description language. That way, it is possible to make them behave like a wide array of hardware configurations: From simple logic gate arrays to an entire System On a Chip.
For example, the hardware provided by the OpenGraphics project (OGD1) is pretty much an FPGA kit that happens to work like a graphics card. This is very useful while working on hardware design, since it’s possible to make “hardware” changes without actually having to build a new hardware piece.
The XCore, on the other hand, is a programmable processing unit like any other. This means you can run code on it to make it perform a whole variety of tasks, but it isn’t intended to “model” a hardware design.
It seems to have some interesting properties that could make it interesting for the geek audience: Deterministic execution and integrated IO ports makes it ideal for things like DSP (digital signal processing) and probably media processing in general.
To me, it’s just a wink to the Amiga fanbase, and a tribute to the original A1000, which included some sweet custom chips back in its time
Edit: Fixed bugs
Edited 2010-06-22 15:39 UTC
This machine might be interesting, save for the ridiculous price tag… GBP1500 or more for a relatively low spec machine, what are they thinking?
The Amiga was successful because it was good value.
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.”
The Amiga was the first computer to introduce custom chips for graphics and sound. All the other computers followed.
Now that every computer has custom chips for graphics and sound, the Amiga must lead the way once more: it must ditch the concept of custom chips and provide a multicore solution like the X1000!!!!
A multicore solution with 256 or 1024 or 4096 cores, coupled with a language that is automatically parallelizable like Haskell, could be the programmer geek’s ultimate dream!
Not only that, but it could lead the way to real time ray tracing graphics…
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).
Reasonable? $100 is a cost of 1 dinner in a good place.
Mainstream GPU is $200+
This is HPC part and I can’t believe it will cost lower than $1500 TESLA.
Well, regarding AmigaONE X-1000 there are unfortunately a quantitiy of additional costs…
It will made available by A_EON who will offer the user with these features:
A 500 GB Hard Disk, 2GB DDR2 RAM, ATI PCI-e Graphic Card, custom Case and Amiga Custom keyboard…
Now HD, Graphic Card and RAM will be tested before the item will be sold to be sure that these will work flawlessly with AmigaONE X-1000.
Lets made some calculations:
A 500 GB Hard disk costs nowadays from 60 to 90 Euro depending from the country you purchase it.
2 GB DDR2 RAM modules cost around 70 to 90 Euro.
ATI graphic Card PCI-e of good quality is about 120 euro.
Custom case complete with Amiga logo (and mainly the one choones by A_EON that could carry more than eight 3,5 HDDs devices) as all luxury cases costs around 140 to 200 Euro.
Amiga custom keyboard with all Amiga keys costs just as like as a good logitech Keyboard, 40 to 60 Euro…
So there is almost 400/500 euro of things that contribute to rise the price of AmigaONE X-1000, so the motherboard alone should be really priced around 1000 euro only (despite of the fact it is sure an expensive price, this is aligned to many Amiga products that are a very hobbyist niche market.
Remember that first AmigaONE from Eyetech was priced at 800 euro in 2001 when Euro valued almost 1/3 more than today, and it featured only an 800 MHZ G4 CPU)…
Unfortunately it seems that the motherboard of AmigaONE X-1000 will be not sold alone, but complete of all these facilities, to be sure that the user will suffer not machine hang-ups and then make complaints about the computer, plus it must be added the Case and the keyboard that sure are not sold at a bonus price.
What a shame… If I had could choose to get a X1000 motherboard alone, even priced at 1000 euro, I had had purchased one.
Edited 2010-06-26 16:52 UTC
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
I always had kind of a thing for the Amiga and the Sega Gen/MD.
When i was like… 4, 5… My father bought a Spectrum 48k to do his accounting. Needles to say my bro soon started playing games on the thing. I have vivid memories of the afternoons spent at the living room in my old house, my brother and their friends playing a ton of (pirated) games and Iron Maiden playing on the stereo.
Little did i know my parents would move in the summer of 89. When we settled in our new home, both me and my bro soon began making new friends. My front neighbor had a Sega Megadrive/Genesis. Damn, was i up for some shock and awe. In retrospect, i believe my brother was just as stunned as i was the first time we saw Sonic the Hedgehog, Revenge of Shinobi, and Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker (yes, yes.. i know! But back in the day he was bigger than Jesus). 256 Colors, 16 bit Stereo Sound. It was like we jumped from the Playstation era straight to the PS3.
Latter that year I started playing with PCs. My aunt got me a second hand IBM/PS2 286. A beast of a machine:
– 20Mb HD
,
– 1Mb Ram
,
– VGA or Graphics,
– No sound board though
I was quite happy playing games on the thing. Then I met this rich kid in 92/93. His parents had an Amiga 2000.
And once again I was up for a shock. The games for the thing where sick! And the sound?! I never knew computers could sound like that! (this was before the SoundBlaster became mainstream). We played Moonstone, Premier, and a bunch of other game which the name i don’t recall.
I so wanted to trade my old clunky IBM for an Amiga. Seeing the gaming magazines and looking at screenshots of the latest Amiga games, the awesome looking interface, the fancy drawings that you could do on the thing. It fueled a fire.
Then, as the years went by, the Amiga… started lagging behind. People often say that Windows killed the Amiga. We “older” gents know different: Sound Blaster + Doom killed the Amiga.
Then the 3Dfx came along. The Windows powered PC has been the industry standard ever since. In all those years, the most fun I ever had with my PC was running BEOS 5, in the time Linux was a beast (I couldn’t even do MP3 playback without sound drops back then) and Windows was brain dead.
Now this comes along. It’s an expensive machine, and i’m really not the kind of guy that can afford to spend 1500+ € on a machine (f–king economy!). But I’m seriously tempted!!
But the PPC + XMOS is a thing of beauty and it baffles the mind how in the name of god doesn’t the PC have something like this!
It’s basically a reprogrammable chip. It can, for instance, be programed to decode the XBOX 360 function calls, thus enabling the development of a functional emulator running at native speeds under the Amiga. It allows you to make a program in C that tells the chip how to handle data, in any way shape or form you want it to.
The possibilities are endless and it’s something truly revolutionary. I wouldn’t be surprised if the PC has something similar by 2020.
This, in combination with the OS4 lack of memory protection (It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!) and direct access to the bare metal can enable the development of some wicked sick applications.
In a time when:
– The PC marked is getting stalled and many say the days of the home computer are numbered;
– Nothing truly revolutionary has happened on the PC for far to long;
– The OS landscape is limited to the big 3 and 2 of those 3 share the same fundamental design;
– Everybody uses Intel, even Apple;
– Programming languages are moving farther and farther away from the bare metal thus taking power away from the programmer…
I, for one, welcome this new Amiga with open arms. It’s been far too long.
Let’s have some fun now! I need it come with some of that sweet trippy Guru Medication!
Edit: Syntax Error. ;p
Edited 2010-06-22 20:38 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 … ! 😀
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
You’re still a retard.
So please tell me about the huge amounts of Amiga software which can’t be run in a classic environment and is worth using which make it worth using an expensive piece of shit hardware + old-as-fuck-os-with-duct-taped-heyicanbemodernto and lose the ability to run more or less all games but also a whole freaking lot of demos and such I assume? I didn’t had a graphics accelerator in my Amiga so I don’t know how many plays well with such things.
More or less no-one at all buys new Amigas, regardless of usage, if you haven’t noticed …
Yeah? So what? What made the Amiga popular? You want to argue that easy to copy, run, plenty of games, no upgradeability, powerful hardware and low price wasn’t the reasons? The reasons was that sooo many Amiga 500 users hanged around in their floppy-booted workbench and ran “serious software” such as final writer? Go fuck yourself.
The “good software” was good 15-20 years ago, “oh, Amigas are great for video editing, I bought this new Amiga X1000 so I can run Scala! It’s amazing! Much better than video editing in Windows!”, yeah, great software …
Everything usable we already had on the classics, only more demanding stuff I can think of would be for cases like playing videos and surfing the web, but with your console logic you can just aswell say “do that on a PC!”, and well, with UAE that would be fucking easy, and be better than on the Amiga-whatever-version. It also doesn’t cost you shit. And you can still run Image FX, Final writer and so on …
Seriously, get a better PC .. Except for videos and surfing I can’t see how something in the 1 GHz, 1GB ram range can’t do most “serious software” better than an Amiga would. For videos and surfing you may want to have something better, hurray for flash ..
Personally I must have got my Amiga 500+ around 1992 since that’s when it was still around …, I bought the Amiga 1200 with 68030 late, probably around 1996? I think it was on its last legs around 1999?
Only the biggest fanboys would had stayed with the same system for 10 years, say 2002-2004+ for the Amiga 1200/4000, and by then heavily invested in 68k accelerators, PPC accelerators, graphic cards, .. So not really same old machine running along, but somewhat.
You do understand “we amigans” is rather “we, 1/1000 of the amigans”?
Oh no, a pirate!
Guess I have to burn my what? 500+ floppies then? Pull out the qoob sx and throw my flashcarts ..
Oh well, better save up some money so I can go out by some of the best Amiga games!
You know, I do know that … I doubt there’s much new Amiga programs worth mentioning / needed which are PPC except video and browser, but feel free to fill me in … I assume that maybe that wookiechat or whatever it’s called may be PPC, though IRC would run on 68k to ..
Yeah, everyone who have ever thought they had any fun, liberty or did real computing in Windows, OS X, Linux or whatever must be wrong.
The reason I would choose an Amiga would be if it offered the same feel as far as software, hardware and hackability went, but for the later to kick off it must sell well in decent numbers to get any support from people who actually care. And some of the simplicity may have had to go thanks to protected memory and what not.
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
@all
DISCLAIMER:
Remember that those suspects about Bill Mc. Ewen and Pennti Kouri and the fact they diverted assets from taxes are just suspicions and innuendo buzz.
These facts could be real or not, or just rumors launched by trolls.
There is no proof about it. Just rumors.
In any country people are innocent until proven otherwise. So take my words as just as they were, and that is “gossip” that I heard.
I just reported in public here on OS News some facts I heard from various conversations that took place during past Amiga fairs and events, and so it is just rumors that I listen from other people and reported here as a curious suspect about the whole matter.
I take no responsibility at all for reporting buzz from other people who had spoken in private conversations that happened in open space and in free air, during fairs and computer meetings, where unrelated people like me had just the chance of listen it all.
Edited 2010-06-25 10:03 UTC
What you wrote actually sums up some of what I have heard as well.. And may very well be facts..
For sure Tramiel should never have been squeezed out of Commodore though.. Amiga History would likely have been different then … There would have been no Atari ST atleast to compete .. 🙂
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 😀 😀
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 … 😛
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.
http://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 ..
“north of £1500”?? My interest just went south.
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.
@ Kroc Camen
From my humble point of view Xena is a co-processor aimed at dealing with big quantities of I/O streaming data and make some digital processing on it.
It could be used to leave free the main PPC processor and so the CPu will be aimed directly at dealing with OS and software, while the data stream passes directly in DMA…
Xena is limited in programmability, not just as like as FPGA, but a sort of it, so you can write emulation for other chips (like ancient Amiga Chipset ECS or AGA, for those who desire emulation, or even decode VoIP streaming on the fly)…
Xena has a dedicated Xorro Slot, that is a PCI slot modified to be used for high I/O data streaming on multiple channels, and you can use it to connect with other Xena chips and create a cloud of processors for distributed computing.
It is just the fanatasy of the users and the developers that could make use of this new chip, the same way the ancient Amiga inspired developers to gear the ancient Chipest at its maximum and created incredible things such as for example Newtek Dynamic Hi-Res, that made available 4096 colors in High resolution 640×512, or like Oktalyzer, a sound software that combined the stereo 2 channels 4 voices 8 bit features of Paula Amiga Audio Chip to make it became 2 channels 2 voices but raised to 14 bit!!!
Fanatsy is your limit.
With Amiga computing is fun again!
I think the new X1000 will offer something new for those of us with open minds and an interest in computers for computers sake to try something new. I think like the original Amiga chip set it will take a while for people to create cool software with the X1000. On price, yes it is a little bit on the high side but any smart person knows low scale production costs more.
To start with it will be Amiga fans only but over time when cool new applications appear more will take another look and then hopefully the price may be a bit more affordable.
As for those who say it is dead before it starts, lets just wait and see shall we.
> 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.
Yeah I dropped $900 for a 32 meg harddrive for my Amiga 500.
$350 for the drive itsself
And the rest for the external enclosure and hang-on-the-side FastTrack HD controller.
$900 for 32 megs !!!!
We are spoiled now-a-days 😉
@Amiga lovers: you really should get real
It’s 2010 and Amiga isn’t ahead and hasn’t been since 15 years. Picasso 96 had nothing revolutionnary in 96. Oh well, having retargetable Graphics standard was quite revolutionnary… on the Amiga. AHI came long after other OS had retargatable audio and had to wait maybe a full decade before allowing two apps to play sound simultaneously: how ahead was that ?!
I could go on and on…
– Amiga (hardware) was ahead in 1985. Ok in 1990. And old from 1992 to date.
– AmigaOS was great in 1985 (but wasn’t the first multitasking OS), still ahead in 1990, was starting to lose advance in 1992-95 (yes: Windows had retargetable graphics with Win3.1 already, long before P96 appeared…), and became totally out with XP/MacOSX/Linux. Of course, it’s still lightweight, generally (unless you play with it a little) more responsive than the three big OS. But that doesn’t make it ahead… It lacks a lot of modern things.
Welcome to 2010. Nintendo just announced the 3DS, Microsoft announced Kinect, Apple just released iPhone 4 and the iPad. And, well, Amiga demoed the same old OS on some simple PowerPC board (yeah: noticed that the XMOS chip was *missing* from the board that was running AmigaOS ?), with slow graphics like Vesa, no 3D acceleration, and of course no resource-tracking, still 32bit, not able to handle the multiple cores,…
That may be good from an “Amigan” point of view (yes: new hardware shows up,…) but from outside this tiny community this is really laughable… Amiga has a long way to go before people start looking at it with a different vision than this one…
Oh, and btw it will take months (years ?) before this board can be fully used by AmigaOS… Seeing months before the release it still cannot run 2D accelerated stuff you will have to wait before using the multiple cores and 3D
And I won’t talk about this XMOS stuff that makes it so much better 
So: what’s the point ?
Edited 2010-06-24 22:01 UTC
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.
– Amiga died because it took them 7 (!!!) years to come with a major upgrade to the chipset which was already outdated when released (AGA): even the sound was still 8bit…
– Amiga died because their userinterface still came with 2 colors icons, 2:1 ratio for most widgets,… Come on! In 1993 people weren’t using TVs anymore with their computers, and most (PC/Macs) came with graphics adaptaters capable of displaying 800 x 600 x thousand colors at acceptable speed. The Amiga workbench was unusable in 640x480x8bit… Not talking about the flicker-free DBLPAL/DBLNTSC modes.
– Amiga died because they couldn’t keep on improving (look at what Apple did with the iPhone since the first version…). Replacing Irvin with some better men wouldn’t have changed anything with such weak products.
I understand Amigans don’t plan on taking over the world. But then they should consider stop thinking their computer is ruling this world… Cause that what it sounds.
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
>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…
You don’t get it: graphics boards *were standard* and every application were running and taking advantage of it. by that time, CGX/Picasso didn’t exist, and Amiga barely had *ten* apps using proprietary solutions (EGS),… like Photogenics,… And most other applications didn’t work with these boards. Most didn’t even have a passthrough for displaying Amiga resolution on a VGA monitor.
No, Amiga was already outdated: live with it
Why I did use 640x480x8bit instead of 640x200x2bit ?
Because it was more confortable ? Because a window or two was enough to fill the whole screen in 640×200 ? Come on… It was available but this mode was so slow it was unusable.
Having a chipset on some development boards is different than having a fully working one… And at an affordable price.
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