More official screenshots from Hyperion are
now available at the AmigaWorld.net
community portal. These shots demonstrate the debugging capabilities under
AmigaOS 4. Two programs are involved in this: The Grim Reaper and gdb. Also
the 17th Q&A Session
with Amiga CTO Fleecy Moss is now available.
GDB is very nice and btw a great looking website. Where can people get an AmigaONE computer?
This policy of releasing ‘Q&A sessions’ and ‘official screenshots’ is wearing really thin. Admittedly I don’t give a hoot about Amiga past or present, but is there actually any substance to any of this? ie. anything you can get your hands on?
> Where can people get an AmigaONE computer?
A list of dealers can be found here:
http://www.eyetech.co.uk/amigaone/dealers.php
Do note however that the currently sold “Earlybird” AmigaOne boards/computers only come supplied with Linux. And that AmigaOS4 is still under development.
The current motherboards use G3/G4 PPC processors and soon there will be a cheaper Mini-ITX version of the AmigaOne available.
> Admittedly I don’t give a hoot about Amiga past or
> present
Then why not just skip relating articles?
> but is there actually any substance to any of this?
AmigaOS4 is still being developed but is coming along very nicely. Recently AmigaOS4 has been demonstrated at special AmigaOS4 events in Slovenia, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, Austria, US Westcoast (Sacramento), US Eastcoast (New York), Sweden, Italy, France and Denmark.
Personally I have been to Switzerland to report on one of these events. You can read it here:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/features/index.php?op=r&cat_id=1&rev_…
I am also planning to attend another AmigaOS4 demonstration / presentation in Rotterdam later this year for my home country, the Netherlands (4/5th of October). Probably AmigaOS4 will be available by then for a Cyberstorm PPC release. The AmigaOne version expected to be released around the end of this year.
<<This policy of releasing ‘Q&A sessions’ and ‘official screenshots’ is wearing really thin. Admittedly I don’t give a hoot about Amiga past or present, but is there actually any substance to any of this? ie. anything you can get your hands on?>>
To the amiga enthusiasts, it is actually something of substance. You must understand that many of them went years and years with no official updates, living on the shareware and freeware community to keep their machines up to date, while watching their beloved machine being kept in a state of limbo as the intellectual property kept changing hands.
This is a good move by Hyperion and Amiga Inc, as they know that they Amiga community really needs a lot of assurance that things are progressing.
Sure, they are taking longer than most would have liked, but these updates let them know that things are progressing.
I personally think that it is a good idea. I also like the sceenshots. Their UI is certainly improving.
OS3.5 was mostly bugfixes to OS3.1. I hear OS3.9 actually had some really good improvements, but the liberating effect of going all PPC on OS4 is what really excites us.
I *love* the terminology of “Grim Reaper” and believe it to be a worthy successor to the “Guru Meditation” of yore!
Great stuff! Seeing this — especially the StackTrace — shows great DEVELOPERS promise for AmigaOS4.
I for one would be more inclined to develop on a new platform if debug support and documentation are present — this is definitely sufficient debug support, now lets hope they get the documentation right too.
Very exciting stuff!
Actually the Guru’s still there.
They only show up when there are serious crashes thought.
Shameless cut and paste from a comment by one of the developers.
In OS 4, there’s three things:
– The red/orange blinking box (aka Guru Meditation)
– A plain requester stating that program X has crashed
– The Grim Reaper window.
The blinking box is still caused by Alert(), and is usually only used for desasters like a corrupted memory list and such.
The plain requester comes up when a program has crashed. It has a row of buttons like “Kill”, “Reboot”, and “More…”. The latter will bring up the Grim Reaper window.
@foo, who said:
“This policy of releasing ‘Q&A sessions’ and ‘official screenshots’ is wearing really thin. Admittedly I don’t give a hoot about Amiga past or present, but is there actually any substance to any of this? ie. anything you can get your hands on?”
Commodore went under 1994. Since then, little or nothing emerged. Tiny news about released programs, new shareware or sometimes something big, like a released port of a commercial game that has been available for PC the last 5-7 years are thought of as great news.
Now, they are showing screenshots, touring the world and showing off something that the users can put their hands on. I think this official way of releasing information is a great way – as you say, there’s not many who can put their hands on OS4 at this moment. There’s only the developers and the closed list of OS4 beta testers.
Despite what you think, there are still people out there that has nothing but Amigas.. and there are people that do not have a windows machine running.. This kind of news have tremendous value to alot of people. I’m amongst those people.
Why are “official AOS4 screenshots” not on the official AOS4 website, namely http://os.amiga.com ?
http://os.amiga.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=1805&highlight=
They will probably be added later on. But good you posted that link here. 😉 People can read much interesting informations about AmigaOS4 there. 😎
I might work for the competition, but I’m not above being a decent guy ya know.
Of course you never did get back to me on doing a head-to-head comparison between our two solutions, seeing which ones stack up and which ones don’t.
Uh, Amiga people, the RAM DISK crash long font looks like crap. Why isn’t it using an anti-aliased font?
http://amigaworld.net/images/features/grim2.png
“Uh, Amiga people, the RAM DISK crash long font looks like crap. Why isn’t it using an anti-aliased font?”
Maybe the owner of the computer didn’t think it was of Earth-shattering importance.
Personally, as I have poor eyesight, I will be switching off anti-aliasing for all the small sizes. It just looks blurry to me.
What is really needed is not anti-aliasing but 600 dpi screen displays. Compared to printers, screens are really out of date.
> Sure, they are taking longer than most would have
> liked, but these updates let them know that things
> are progressing.
Ah well, we had updates on the progress of the Walker, of the Aox, of the QNX relationship, on the MCC, on the Linux relationship…
Sorry, just being disenchanted beyond belief.
@Solar:
Actually these (and all the other) screenshots are a *proof* that there is more than just some talking about AmigaOS 4.
This was not the case for all the things you mentioned.
Actually, I might interject something here:
The Walker did make it to late development. In fact, the company I work for owns a running Walker. See pictures here:
http://www.amiga-news.de/archiv02/aachen_bildbericht/000027.shtml (interior shot, to show the motherboard)
And here:
http://amiga.org/modules/myalbum/photo.php?lid=1189
A few months more, and it likely would have shipped. But it’s ancient history now. I still love the way that thing looked tho.
Neat, didn’t know that there where working models of it.
Oh and I might as well add that the chance of Hyperion going
bust like Escom* in the next few months, is IMHO kind of slim.
*The company that was planning to make the Walker.
But the chance of AInc going bust are as good, and if AInc goes bust, there goes Hyperion’s contract for AOS4. The Walker, like AOS4, was also licensed out to third parties, from the case design to the motherboard to the OS itself, all 3rd party work. Escom went under, all of their work was for nothing (and many did not get paid for it either).
That’s how it is. Noone gets payed and there are only losers in the end. Only lawyers and sollicitors get (well) paid to clean up the mess of a company that closes the door for ever.
The legal system was created by lawyers, what else do you expect? Sad but true.
“… and if AInc goes bust, there goes Hyperion’s contract for AOS4.”
Actually, no.
Actually yes. That is the law. A contract between two parties is nullified if one of the parties is liquidated, and all joint assets are then availible for liquidation. Sad but true. Of course Hyperion can claim damages, and petition the courts to keep the OS, but that will take time, and it is a good possibility that another party would step forward with more money to buy the OS from them, lock stock and barrel.
That is US Bankrupcy law, and Amiga, Inc is a US corporation, so US laws are in effect. Hate to burst yor bubble sir, but that is the honest truth.
Of course it’s the truth, but with a twist, no.
AFAIK OS4 is not an “asset” as such to A.Inc as A.Inc have sold it to Hyperion.
There’s a “buy back clause” that makes A.Inc the first
company to be offered to buy the rights to OS4 when Hyperion decides to sell it thought.
And I guess that that would propably be conciderd
an asset.