Hyperion Entertainment is pleased to announce the first official Workbench 3.1 and Kickstart 3.1 updates in over twenty years for Classic Amiga systems. The new versions, which have have been re-built from the original source code, include a number of enhancements and bug fixes and are fully compatible with both real Amiga hardware and Classic Amiga emulation software.
An additional update to address some bugs has already been released as well.
If they were worthwhile fixes then I could see the point, but as their first release didn’t even boot, that doesn’t inspire confidence for their QA
Agreed. The Workbench changes seem to be pretty much a Y2K fix (and at least as far as I’m concerned, I really don’t care if my Amiga thinks it’s 2016 or 1986) and the kickstart change is almost entirely about adding their copyright notice to it. I guess there’s a fix for a bug with the scsi.device on an A600, but that was easily worked around, and not important to the vast majority of Amigas. If it was free, I’d be fine with it, but I don’t see this being worth EUR 20.
But, glad to see some Amiga (or any alternative OS) news on the site!
Edited 2016-10-26 15:44 UTC
I don’t know about anyone else, but I already have custom ‘3.9’ roms in my system.
But agreed, always nice to have some Amiga news on here. I have found some Commodore / Atari news to feed to this site to help keep it all about Operating Systems.
Edit: guess I could point out that FreeMint has a new mailing list and it is somewhat active even.
Instead of releasing some tiny fixes to 3.1. Why don’t they actually release some newer kickstart versions altogether.
Edited 2016-10-26 19:22 UTC
It can never be a free the binary amiga.inc with the asshat McEwen to thank for that. Still milking the old AmigaOS 1.*>3.1 (Haage owns the 3.51>3.3*, or at least the changes as ruled in court) and AmigaOS (not Amiga itself) is free to be developed by either Haage (defunct) or Hyperion as they wish as long as the AmigaOS5 and Amiganaywhere is not infringed as ruled by court decision.
Cloanto are the one’s who hold the rights to the Amiga kickstart ROM and Workbench up to and including 3.1. They have released several updates over the years including new 3x ROM chips for real hardware.
Hyperion just has a license to use these products.
As nice as it is to have updates for our beloved Amiga’s, this is far to little from Hyperion and in a way causes more confusion in the Amiga world.
Hi Sauron – sorry but you are incorrect.
Hyperion has the source code and the licenses to develop and distribute the product.
My understanding on Cloanto is they also have a license to distribute/repackage but have no developers making actual code changes.
The OS3.x rights/licensing is a mess for sure.
You need to check your sources, although you are partially correct.
Cloanto completely owns the rights, Hyperion have a license to develop which they gained from the court outcome with Amiga inc.
I did say the history was messy
Fingers crossed it gets less messy going forward.
Have a good one!
The rights to 3.1 and previous are a lot less messy since Cloanto gathered them beneath one roof. Their 3x version is their answer to bring it closer to 3.5/3.9, that is where it gets really messy. Haage & Partner were the rights holder to 3.5/3.9, no one seems to know where those rights lay now. It’s a shame really as 3.9 was a good attempt to modernize the Amiga Workbench, now it can’t be updated as no one has the rights to it.
This 3.1 update by Hyperion is a danger by making 3.1 just as messy again and splitting it between company’s.
As far as I can tell all Cloanto is doing is bundling and selling their OS3 flavours. That is a good thing as well since their Amiga Forever product is very well done.
However, for OS3 to really move forward and see true updates, bug fixes and enhancements it looks like that torch is now in Hyperion’s hands. They have the developers that have worked on OS3 in the past.
Cheers!
There is a bit of a revival in progress on the “Classic” (680×0-based) Amiga scene. One of the reasons for the Amiga’s demise was Motorola’s end-of-the-line and quite expensive 68060. It was reasonably competitive with Intel chips at the time but was soon eclipsed. Amiga had lost the performance edge.
To me the most exciting part of this revival is the emerging development of a new “Apollo” next-generation 680×0 core currently in FPGA. This is being developed by a brilliant (yes brilliant!) team of designers who have spent years quietly working on a true successor to the 68K lineage. They have chosen the “68080” name and it does make sense.
There is another project in the works (Amiga Reloaded) that is another FPGA-based attempt at updating the Amiga hardware platform. Unfortunately I know less about that one but it also looks promising.
The Apollo 68080 core is being provided on a series of “Vampire” accelerator cards for classic Amiga models. The first version out is the for the Amiga 600. Upcoming versions will cover more of the classic Amiga models. Also coming in the near future is a stand-alone model. These are also ongoing discussions with the Atari community.
With all this new 68K-based hardware coming out Hyperion has appeared to realize there is a potential market for an updated “Classic” Amiga OS 3 distribution. They have taken their first baby-steps with this first update to the 3.1 system.
Some may criticize Hyperion for some historic odd behaviour but I believe we are seeing a more humble and open Hyperion. These have been some recent management changes and hopefully they result in a more logical organization.
Here are some links for more information on the Apollo core and Vampire accelerators:
wiki: http://apollo-accelerators.com/wiki/doku.php
forum: http://www.apollo-core.com/knowledge.php?b=0
What about this line? “Hyperion Entertainment is pleased to announce the first official Workbench 3.1 and Kickstart 3.1 updates in over twenty years for Classic Amiga systems”.
Haage & Partner’s OS 3.5 and 3.9 as well as Cloanto’s 3.X have all been released in the last 20 years and just as official and considerably more substantial. The only justification I can see is that they are not specifically numbered “3.1”, which is a very flimsy excuse.
I can only think it’s a deliberate attempt to mislead media outlets who don’t know any better.
The point is, both 3.5 and 3.9 releases are “dead”. These are no longer supported.
3.1 is the code base that Hyperion has to work with.
Yes their marketing is a little over the top. That can be forgiven if they actually follow through and start providing more updates to 3.1. There is chatter of them pulling in some of the patches from 3.5 and 3.9. There is a lot of messiness involved in that, though.