“Miffy” has reviewed Eyetech’s AmigaONE Power System which is based on the A1G4-XE motherboard at the AmigaWorld.net community portal. Also NeRP recently wrote an AmigaOne article illustrated with pictures of the motherboard.
Please note that these earlybird systems come with Linux and UAE installed. (You can also install MacOSX via MacOnLinux) AmigaOS4 will be sent to customers free of charge as soon the AmigaOne version is completed.
These current systems are mainly targeted at the current Amiga community, developers and tech geeks. A cheaper Mini-ITX (170mm/170mm) version is already nearing completion. Systems based on this cheaper board (in combination with AmigaOS4 in ROM) should also be targeted at a larger (A500/A1200 type entry level) general homecomputer market.
It makes me wonder if one of my early thoughts about the AmigaOne were right – that the best way to market it was as a geek station. Or anything but an Amiga….
I must admit that the idea of a computer that doesn’t require enough fans to power a wind tunnel does appeal to me though… but sadly for what you get (800Mhz G4 based system) for your money means that I just can’t justify getting one… maybe another time.
On a side note, I bet that it would sell quite well as a small buissness server…. cheep to run (ppc’s drink a lot less electricity than an equivilent x86) aparently stable and well built. With a quality OS that is ready for just that task.
I so much wanted to hate this system, being a Classic Amiga owner this A1 after all the dust settled just seemed like such a let down… but I can see so many other things that it could be used for that would make it a potential commercial success far exceeding anything it would be if it were solely aimed at the Amiga community. Damn you Eyetech, I’m beginning to like the idea of it!!!
“A swanky video card in the AGP port”, let’s be a little bit more non-specific, could we?
What is the comparison system? Oh, a high end dev station used at work. Now that is helpful.
Okay…so now he is doing a quick review of Debians package management system….wow, it works!
Now let’s do some database transaction processing. Oh, it does good, but we can’t give you numbers, cause that’s confidential. But really, it was good!
Then we played some games, the gaming experience was smooth. What kinda frame rates? That would actually be quantifiable data.
The “reviewer” mentions that reams of drivel have been written about AOS4, which is true, and the same is true for the Amiga in general, and he has accomplished nothing but increasing that quantity.
The “reviewer” mentions that reams of drivel have been written about AOS4, which is true, and the same is true for the Amiga in general, and he has accomplished nothing but increasing that quantity.
then grab your wallet and buy the bloody commercial solution that is apparently superior or would that actuallt require moving out of your parents basement, get a job and actually be responsible for something once in your misserable and pathetic little life.
Submitt stories from Kuro5hin? I might as well post the latest issue of the North Korean Daily times relating to the “great leaders” attitude to the west.
what the hell do you think is going to run on the server which these applications will need to interact with? think about that sunshine before making such stupid remarks.
it says they live with their mum and dad. When they get out into the big band world I beat they won’t be able to afford broadband let alone dial up on a wage from KFC as the garbage changer and table cleaner.
i’m with kelson on this one. its not close to a review, its a fan writing a bias opinion. they liked it before they ran it.
“Create a few databases and tables in MySQL and and everything seems quick. This is going to be partly due to the performance of the 133 rated FSB, the good quality HD that Eyetech fit and the G4 itself”
ooh yes, sooo quick, its all down to that rocking 133mhz memory FSB! and the 7.2k rpm IDE drive you can buy in any corner pc shop.
rock on!
“its fast”
“its confidential”
no numbers no nothing, no meat, no potatoes.
“I am actually comparing it with x86 and POWER4 systems used in the commercial sector”
I’m laughing so hard here its not funny. i’m gonna loose a kidney. i think i’ll stop reading here. yes.. a 800mhz g4 vs dual core power4. rock on brother ‘miffy’. gimme some of what your smoking!
400mhz less than the highest speed G4 apple shipped and they couldnt keep up, but our friend ‘miffy’ thinks you can compare the two!
i think miffy needs to go to ‘reviewer’ school and learn what a review really is.
“I am actually comparing it with x86 and POWER4 systems used in the commercial sector”
I’m laughing so hard here its not funny. i’m gonna loose a kidney. i think i’ll stop reading here. yes.. a 800mhz g4 vs dual core power4. rock on brother ‘miffy’. gimme some of what your smoking!
400mhz less than the highest speed G4 apple shipped and they couldnt keep up, but our friend ‘miffy’ thinks you can compare the two!
i think miffy needs to go to ‘reviewer’ school and learn what a review really is.
True. Personally, I can’t see the original “reviewer” paying $16,000 for a Power4 workstation just so he can compare it to an Amiga.
If you ask any true Amiga fan, they’ll tell you that this (AmigaOne) is nothing more than a bastardised version of the original.
There is only one Amiga and it had its time and place, we have moved on, things have changed. I am sure as a hobby thing, it may be nice, however, I hope the AmigaOne people realise that they aren’t going to make boot loads of money. It is too much of a niche product.
Strange, it would seem most of you people don’t want to give the new Amiga a chance.
The costs are such because they cannot produce millions of the things, and to think OSnews was supposed to be full of intelligent people, nevermind I’ll go back to my fav start up page now, amigaworld.net.
“I’m laughing so hard here its not funny. i’m gonna loose a kidney. i think i’ll stop reading here. yes.. a 800mhz g4 vs dual core power4. rock on brother ‘miffy’. gimme some of what your smoking!”
I never said it compared well, or poorly. I threw it in the deep end and it worked just fine.
“There is only one Amiga and it had its time and place, we have moved on, things have changed. I am sure as a hobby thing, it may be nice, however, I hope the AmigaOne people realise that they aren’t going to make boot loads of money. It is too much of a niche product.”
Right, neither the AmigaONE or the Pegasos have anything in common with the old Amiga hardware. We all know this but sooner or later we had to do the complete step forward to go to PowerPC architecture, the same way Apple did many years back (The on the otherhand did it just in time). The old hardware (Amiga) was supperior on it’s days, set many architectual and innovative standards such as CustomChips, Real Multitasking and many more but 10 years ago things came to an halt and everything started to suck. With the nowadays solutions going completely to PowerPC the entire Amiga sector gets a chance of re-animation again and the prices aren’t that high either compared if you buy an used old Amiga computer. What matters are the roots you have, what matters is you belive in something and what matters is that you can help your old plattform to come back. And if everything fails you can still use the PowerPC plattform as a cheap linux host or router or whatever. It’s not that the hardware is tied to any specific OS.
The Amiga was never a geeks toy but the old replaced marketing at Commodore made a bunch of stupid mistakes and decisions and much of the shit we need to thank the ‘Little Brown Man’ (aka Mehdi Ali). I think if the marketing didn’t sucked that much then we would still have a nice operating company these days with many more innovations such as the AAA chipset used in the A3K+ and many more.
I really suggest many people to look at ‘The DeathBedVigil’ movie from Dave Haynie to get a better understanding of the things behind the scene of commodore. It’s on the one side a depressive movie but on the otherhand shows a lot of stuff that people only heard through rumours and speculations.
The Amiga is FAR from dead it only moved to a new plattform and there is also finally competition with Genesi vs. AmigaINC and so on. Competition is required to re-animate the market and we see a lot of people comming back after they heard about native PowerPC hardware (able to run Linux, AmigaOS/MorphOS or AROS on it) and many more.
If you want to read the kind of review you are after, then Toms Hardware is what you are looking for. If you are looking for a friendly insight into the A1 and how it copes, then that review was for you.
If you had thought the review was in any way serious then you must have missed the stand on case test, you must have missed the bit where it has the BAFs rating ( Blind Amiga Fanatic ).
It is biased, that is why I called it a BAFs rating.
Get over yourself, not everything has to be a scientific thesis to be worthy of your attention.
Curious how people seem to hate you just because you happen to like running a machine that’s not a high-end PC (they’re not just noisy, they also run very hot) and isn’t running their favourite OS.
Sad really. OTOH, maybe they’ll buy this bloody awful PC off me so’s I can make room for a real computer
Costs are of course prohibitive, but then if costs came into it many people would never buy a Macintosh.
The machine is an acceptable linux box, the styling that Eyetech do off the shelf adds class as do their selection of hardware that if you followed the link to Eyetech you can find out more about it.
When you judge the machine, for what it is ( an upgradeable G4/800 system ) and put the cost to one side, when running Debian at least, you come to the conclusion that it is good kit.
Hence the whole “left hand side” bit in the review.
I realise that on OSNEWs there is a hardcore that does not like to read anything positive about anything other than Linux/x86 distributions ( or high end systems way beyond the reach of the IA32 ) and will slam anything and anyone who sayes anything that contravenes their world view.
I would not claim that this could be a serious replacement for the peak throughput of our work systems but as a sandbox development system it is more than capable ( and far more attractive 😉 ) of doing the job.
I also wanted to demystify Linux a bit for the Amiga people who seem to slam it an awful lot – hence the “fluffy” nature of the review.
If I wanted to write a serious comparison, it would not involve systems from work ( because the performance figures there are nobodies business but theirs ) but a collection of other hardware that I and friends could pull together. Still Im sure you would find some reason to sneer.
I happen to work remote desktopped into Power4 based systems and have done for quite a while, hence what I am comparing the experience to. I would not swap my user account on that for the world.
If you don’t like the review, no one forced your nose to the monitor 😉
“There is only one Amiga and it had its time and place, we have moved on, things have changed. I am sure as a hobby thing, it may be nice, however, I hope the AmigaOne people realise that they aren’t going to make boot loads of money. It is too much of a niche product.”
Right, neither the AmigaONE or the Pegasos have anything in common with the old Amiga hardware. We all know this but sooner or later we had to do the complete step forward to go to PowerPC architecture, the same way Apple did many years back (The on the otherhand did it just in time). The old hardware (Amiga) was supperior on it’s days, set many architectual and innovative standards such as CustomChips, Real Multitasking and many more but 10 years ago things came to an halt and everything started to suck. With the nowadays solutions going completely to PowerPC the entire Amiga sector gets a chance of re-animation again and the prices aren’t that high either compared if you buy an used old Amiga computer. What matters are the roots you have, what matters is you belive in something and what matters is that you can help your old plattform to come back. And if everything fails you can still use the PowerPC plattform as a cheap linux host or router or whatever. It’s not that the hardware is tied to any specific OS.
True. Personally, I would love to see a complete move away from the x86 base. That is what feeds the monster, aka, Microsoft. If there is a completely new platform with a different operating system then things will start to look better.
A platform based around the PowerPC would be a great move in terms of providing choice in the market place. OpenBoot would fix the problems that plague the PC world which has ACPI/APM/PnP/something-else. Then there are the CPU vendors, sure, we have Motorola and IBM, however, there has never been anything stopping some one from selling PowerPC motherboards and CPU’s. I’ve contacted IBM before and the only condition of purchasing PowerPC components is that they have to be in large quanties, in other words, the type an OEM vendor would buy, aka, 10,000 plus units a month.
The Amiga is FAR from dead it only moved to a new platform and there is also finally competition with Genesi vs. AmigaINC and so on. Competition is required to re-animate the market and we see a lot of people comming back after they heard about native PowerPC hardware (able to run Linux, AmigaOS/MorphOS or AROS on it) and many more.
True, however, what would be nice is getting enough vendors to turn the PowerPC into an x86 market but more standardised. The ability to source MBs and processors so that even small PC businesses can produce computers.
As for Apple, if it were me, I would be license the Apple Firmware to vendors and in return the vendors pay royalties per unit shipped, say, $10 per unit. Lets also say Apple provides an OEM version of their whole kit (which is bundled with their consumer Macs), there would be a great number of vendors to drive down price. Apple itself would benefit by moving out of he PC hardware business to concerntrate on their iPod, software and music service.
Ultimately the PC industry is going through the same phase and it will be interesting to see if HP is going to be here in 10 years time. We have Dell ripping into HP, IBM is holding its own buy using its name to carve out new business opportunities, so what is the future?
Regarding my comment of Amiga being a niche, Amiga will never die just like there are loyal Atari and Acorn fans, however, as I said, it will be a niche, not because it is inferior but because of a number of factors outside the control of the AmigaOne marketing department.
If you’re fed up of the “tripe” written about the Amiga, then why did you read the review? Oh yeah that’s right, so you could pick holes in it and generally abuse anybody who enjoys using an alternative system.
No one said it was a highly-independent review with thousands of technical details. It’s a review by a fan of Amiga computers, who has just got a brand new Amiga… of course it’s going to be biased you moron.
So if you don’t like it, why don’t you write a better review? Oh no, that’s right, you would rather belittle the efforts of others rather than adding anything constructive to this thread.
Besides which, I don’t think you really know who “Miffy” is – so insinuating that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about may be slightly unwise. It could come back and bite you in the ass sometime soon; you’ll probably end up looking more stupid than you already do.
Back on-topic…
This is more power than Amiga users have ever had – let’s hope OS4 comes along pretty soon, because the hardware is looking very neat! 🙂
This is more power than Amiga users have ever had – let’s hope OS4 comes along pretty soon, because the hardware is looking very neat! :-)”
Actually, that isn’t so. An Amithlon setup running on any current off-the-shelf PC hardware is a good deal more “powerful”. You will have to wait for a 970 or 980 based Amiga before you can start claiming the hardware is competitive.
The Amiga is climbing out of the pit, but it has some climbing to do yet.
As far as I know, a fair review should underline the advantages *and* the drawbacks…
Here I can only see advantages: everything is nice, no problem (I believe there must be good points… but there have to be some bad points also: I don’t believe the AOne is the perfect computer)
It seems every owner of alternative stuff is pro-AOne, pro-Pegasos, pro-Linux, pro-Mac, etc…
Please send a board to Eugenia so that we can finally see a FAIR review underlining both good and bad points (just like she did with the Pegasos Genesi kindly sent her) !
That is because in order to shell out for the kit, you have to be “pro” in the first place.
There are plenty of implied disadvantages in there, for example the cost/performance ratio whilst not explicitly mentioned is highlighted.
Other than that, I have no problems with it. Some are desperate for AOS4 on it but I am happy at the moment with Debian. But for many thats a serious disadvantage.
I never set out for it to be an impartial review, and I say again that is why the rating is from a Blind Amiga Fanatic.
What you see is my review of how the system applies to me and my needs – I attempt no empathy with other users and state that clearly – at the time of review.
I am a satisfied customer – is there so much harm in that?
If you go onto Amazon and other sites that allow user comments/feedback/reviews you will see that they tell it from their perspective. Hell even on tucows people are allowed to give 100% ratings.
It is not a “serious” review, maybe I should put a big disclaimer at the top for people that just don’t get it by the end that this is not intended to be a rival to Toms Hardware.
I never asked for this review to be on OSNEWs, I submitted it to AmigaWorld.net that allows personal reviews. If I had submitted it to OSNEWS I would probably deserve some of your criticism.
It is neither an academic paper or a Computer Shopper article.
I’m wondering if there is one person that likes AmigaOne or MorphOS or the Mac,… and is enough open-minded to admit the problems related to its plateform (in adition to the good points).
(For example you should have talked about the ArticiaS and/or VIA southbridge,…)
“(For example you should have talked about the ArticiaS and/or VIA southbridge,…)”
You are fully right there are a bunch of performance issues inside the ArticiaS (which was claimed by others) which leads into performance issues between transfering information on the bus. The reason why the Pegasos system moves away from this Northbridge and uses the Marvell Northbridge really soon. The VIA problem between IDE0 and IDE1 are not related to the ArticiaS and is an own thing to talk about. But please tell me one hardware which is free from problems. All you can do is to be more carefully with the next generation of Hardware you create.
IMO this was an excellent *Amiga user* perspective review of an AmigaOne system. It emphasizes that the system is powerful enough to give the user a pleasant Linux/UAE experience.
To the Amiga enthusiast, knowing how efficient, responsive and fast AmigaOS is in comparison this means to them that AmigaOS4 will likely fly with these same specifications. The average Amiga user doesn’t care too much about Linux, but for various applications and uses (Mozilla, OpenOffice, MacOnLinux, etc) offers an excellent addition until equivalent software becomes available for AmigaOS4 and beyond.
@ Leo
> and is enough open-minded to admit the problems related
> to its plateform (in adition to the good points).
> (For example you should have talked about the ArticiaS
> and/or VIA southbridge,…)
Of course also the negatives are heavily discussed at Amiga forums. For example the latest revision ArtisiaS chips used in AmigaOne systems do not show any known problems. Regarding the Southbridge there are known problems and well documented bugs (used in AmigaOne, Pegasos and millions of PCs). These issues are however solved through drivers.
If you have any such questions then note that at AmigaWorld such questions are often answered by people in the know. For example here’s a recent quote from Ben Hermans with regard to your question:
“We’re testing a patch for the U-Boot / Linux Kernel which takes care of all USB related issues and IDE to IDE DMA transfers which now work 100% reliable.
(Thanks to Adam and Mai Labs for their efforts.)
This was accomplished by tinkering with the VIA 686B settings, nothing else, conclusively proving that the issues are related to that Southbridge and not to the Articia S.
All IRQ’ are routed through the VIA 686B and most if not all issues appear to be related to unserviced interrupts.”
Mai’s latest revision Northbridges (only commercially seen in AmigaOne systems thus far) are of excellent quality and new chipsets are nearly finished:
Once Depeche Mode (DM) was really hip. A long time ago. Just like Amiga.
DM had some problems, including a suicide attempt. Just like Amiga.
These days, DM has split up. Just like Amiga.
David Gahan’s new solo project sucks. Just like Amiga Inc.
Only a necrophiliac is into old dead things like Amiga. It is a sick use of time and energy to reanimate some old machine just so you can dump a load of new code on it.
The smelly greed gollums that run Amiga killed the only thing that had any promise (Amithlon).
Please let us not hear about Amiga anymore. It makes some people lose kidneys and others lose their lunches. It’s not news, the company is run by ego maniacs, and the product has been vaporware for over 2 years.
Amithlon doesn’t come with a 10 year-old version of the OS. it comes with a 3-year old version of the OS.
Amiga, Inc doesn’t have the rights to OS 3.5/3.9, hence why their efforts are an evolution of OS 3.1. OS 3.5 and 3.9 were done by Hagge and Partner, and Amiga, Inc doesn’t have the rights to those OS’s.
AmigaOS4 is a port of AmigaOS3.9 to PPC with lots of additional enhancements.
Currently H&P, the company originally managing the AmigaOS4 project is now also planning to support AmigaOS4 with software. IMO it’s impressive what the AmigaOS4 development team under Hyperion has accomplished.
There are thousands of people who want to see this project succeed. Of course the original Amiga was truly revolutionary due to its hardware, but since the early nineties there was a clear trend of moving more and more towards powerful 3rd party graphics and sound solutions, including within the Amiga market itself! With hundreds of millions being spent annually on new chipsets it’s not feasible for the Amiga to be revolutionary on the hardware front again and we better just ‘join the ride’ with powerful firms like IBM and ATi instead.
Please note that these earlybird systems come with Linux and UAE installed. (You can also install MacOSX via MacOnLinux) AmigaOS4 will be sent to customers free of charge as soon the AmigaOne version is completed.
These current systems are mainly targeted at the current Amiga community, developers and tech geeks. A cheaper Mini-ITX (170mm/170mm) version is already nearing completion. Systems based on this cheaper board (in combination with AmigaOS4 in ROM) should also be targeted at a larger (A500/A1200 type entry level) general homecomputer market.
,,It’s all so quiet”. There’s no comments on A1? 🙂
It makes me wonder if one of my early thoughts about the AmigaOne were right – that the best way to market it was as a geek station. Or anything but an Amiga….
I must admit that the idea of a computer that doesn’t require enough fans to power a wind tunnel does appeal to me though… but sadly for what you get (800Mhz G4 based system) for your money means that I just can’t justify getting one… maybe another time.
On a side note, I bet that it would sell quite well as a small buissness server…. cheep to run (ppc’s drink a lot less electricity than an equivilent x86) aparently stable and well built. With a quality OS that is ready for just that task.
I so much wanted to hate this system, being a Classic Amiga owner this A1 after all the dust settled just seemed like such a let down… but I can see so many other things that it could be used for that would make it a potential commercial success far exceeding anything it would be if it were solely aimed at the Amiga community. Damn you Eyetech, I’m beginning to like the idea of it!!!
This is tripe masquerading as a review.
“A swanky video card in the AGP port”, let’s be a little bit more non-specific, could we?
What is the comparison system? Oh, a high end dev station used at work. Now that is helpful.
Okay…so now he is doing a quick review of Debians package management system….wow, it works!
Now let’s do some database transaction processing. Oh, it does good, but we can’t give you numbers, cause that’s confidential. But really, it was good!
Then we played some games, the gaming experience was smooth. What kinda frame rates? That would actually be quantifiable data.
The “reviewer” mentions that reams of drivel have been written about AOS4, which is true, and the same is true for the Amiga in general, and he has accomplished nothing but increasing that quantity.
– Kelson
The “reviewer” mentions that reams of drivel have been written about AOS4, which is true, and the same is true for the Amiga in general, and he has accomplished nothing but increasing that quantity.
…and neither did you
Famous CooCaChoo quotes. My favorite OSNews poster. Don’t let those ATTBI trolls keep you down man!
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=3718#107138
then grab your wallet and buy the bloody commercial solution that is apparently superior or would that actuallt require moving out of your parents basement, get a job and actually be responsible for something once in your misserable and pathetic little life.
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=4242#132108
Submitt stories from Kuro5hin? I might as well post the latest issue of the North Korean Daily times relating to the “great leaders” attitude to the west.
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=3568#100464
The reason why a large number of people don’t realise is because the majority of people are moronic simpletons.
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=3984
As for Word, are you joking? are you really that stupid?
Why are you such a clueless moron.
Please, someone buy this lady a clue
where have you been? hiding under a rock?
By another clue lady (jeepers, two clue orders within one post, must be a record).
I really couldn’t believe someone would be as stupid Ana O´Neemus unless they were a troll.
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=4258#132898
I can’t believe people actually believe that Rotor is a full implementation of .NET. Are people here THAT stupid?
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=3718&offset=45&rows=60#10…
Blame the idiot who made the first post and some how tried to relate it to X.
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=3833#113181
Nothing is worse than a company b*astardising a great design for the yuppy generation who have more dollars than sense or style.
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=3727#107900
what the hell do you think is going to run on the server which these applications will need to interact with? think about that sunshine before making such stupid remarks.
Confronted with his wrongness:
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=3487#98039
Oh, your[sic] such a guru. A genius amongst the unwashed masses, how could I ever question such wisdom
http://www.osnews.com/moderation.php?news_id=4225#131574
it says they live with their mum and dad. When they get out into the big band world I beat they won’t be able to afford broadband let alone dial up on a wage from KFC as the garbage changer and table cleaner.
i’m with kelson on this one. its not close to a review, its a fan writing a bias opinion. they liked it before they ran it.
“Create a few databases and tables in MySQL and and everything seems quick. This is going to be partly due to the performance of the 133 rated FSB, the good quality HD that Eyetech fit and the G4 itself”
ooh yes, sooo quick, its all down to that rocking 133mhz memory FSB! and the 7.2k rpm IDE drive you can buy in any corner pc shop.
rock on!
“its fast”
“its confidential”
no numbers no nothing, no meat, no potatoes.
“I am actually comparing it with x86 and POWER4 systems used in the commercial sector”
I’m laughing so hard here its not funny. i’m gonna loose a kidney. i think i’ll stop reading here. yes.. a 800mhz g4 vs dual core power4. rock on brother ‘miffy’. gimme some of what your smoking!
400mhz less than the highest speed G4 apple shipped and they couldnt keep up, but our friend ‘miffy’ thinks you can compare the two!
i think miffy needs to go to ‘reviewer’ school and learn what a review really is.
“I am actually comparing it with x86 and POWER4 systems used in the commercial sector”
I’m laughing so hard here its not funny. i’m gonna loose a kidney. i think i’ll stop reading here. yes.. a 800mhz g4 vs dual core power4. rock on brother ‘miffy’. gimme some of what your smoking!
400mhz less than the highest speed G4 apple shipped and they couldnt keep up, but our friend ‘miffy’ thinks you can compare the two!
i think miffy needs to go to ‘reviewer’ school and learn what a review really is.
True. Personally, I can’t see the original “reviewer” paying $16,000 for a Power4 workstation just so he can compare it to an Amiga.
If you ask any true Amiga fan, they’ll tell you that this (AmigaOne) is nothing more than a bastardised version of the original.
There is only one Amiga and it had its time and place, we have moved on, things have changed. I am sure as a hobby thing, it may be nice, however, I hope the AmigaOne people realise that they aren’t going to make boot loads of money. It is too much of a niche product.
RE: trashcan (IP: —.client.attbi.com)
Grow up.
Strange, it would seem most of you people don’t want to give the new Amiga a chance.
The costs are such because they cannot produce millions of the things, and to think OSnews was supposed to be full of intelligent people, nevermind I’ll go back to my fav start up page now, amigaworld.net.
I have to say if you had *read* the review I clearly stated why I could not provide actualy statistics ( work ), where the systems were from ( work ).
It is meant to be an insight for hobbyist friends, not a pro review. Act accordingly in your followups.
“I’m laughing so hard here its not funny. i’m gonna loose a kidney. i think i’ll stop reading here. yes.. a 800mhz g4 vs dual core power4. rock on brother ‘miffy’. gimme some of what your smoking!”
I never said it compared well, or poorly. I threw it in the deep end and it worked just fine.
“There is only one Amiga and it had its time and place, we have moved on, things have changed. I am sure as a hobby thing, it may be nice, however, I hope the AmigaOne people realise that they aren’t going to make boot loads of money. It is too much of a niche product.”
Right, neither the AmigaONE or the Pegasos have anything in common with the old Amiga hardware. We all know this but sooner or later we had to do the complete step forward to go to PowerPC architecture, the same way Apple did many years back (The on the otherhand did it just in time). The old hardware (Amiga) was supperior on it’s days, set many architectual and innovative standards such as CustomChips, Real Multitasking and many more but 10 years ago things came to an halt and everything started to suck. With the nowadays solutions going completely to PowerPC the entire Amiga sector gets a chance of re-animation again and the prices aren’t that high either compared if you buy an used old Amiga computer. What matters are the roots you have, what matters is you belive in something and what matters is that you can help your old plattform to come back. And if everything fails you can still use the PowerPC plattform as a cheap linux host or router or whatever. It’s not that the hardware is tied to any specific OS.
The Amiga was never a geeks toy but the old replaced marketing at Commodore made a bunch of stupid mistakes and decisions and much of the shit we need to thank the ‘Little Brown Man’ (aka Mehdi Ali). I think if the marketing didn’t sucked that much then we would still have a nice operating company these days with many more innovations such as the AAA chipset used in the A3K+ and many more.
I really suggest many people to look at ‘The DeathBedVigil’ movie from Dave Haynie to get a better understanding of the things behind the scene of commodore. It’s on the one side a depressive movie but on the otherhand shows a lot of stuff that people only heard through rumours and speculations.
The Amiga is FAR from dead it only moved to a new plattform and there is also finally competition with Genesi vs. AmigaINC and so on. Competition is required to re-animate the market and we see a lot of people comming back after they heard about native PowerPC hardware (able to run Linux, AmigaOS/MorphOS or AROS on it) and many more.
“This is tripe masquerading as a review”
And that is tripe masquerading as a followup 🙂
Wow, constructive eh?
If you want to read the kind of review you are after, then Toms Hardware is what you are looking for. If you are looking for a friendly insight into the A1 and how it copes, then that review was for you.
If you had thought the review was in any way serious then you must have missed the stand on case test, you must have missed the bit where it has the BAFs rating ( Blind Amiga Fanatic ).
It is biased, that is why I called it a BAFs rating.
Get over yourself, not everything has to be a scientific thesis to be worthy of your attention.
Curious how people seem to hate you just because you happen to like running a machine that’s not a high-end PC (they’re not just noisy, they also run very hot) and isn’t running their favourite OS.
Sad really. OTOH, maybe they’ll buy this bloody awful PC off me so’s I can make room for a real computer
Costs are of course prohibitive, but then if costs came into it many people would never buy a Macintosh.
The machine is an acceptable linux box, the styling that Eyetech do off the shelf adds class as do their selection of hardware that if you followed the link to Eyetech you can find out more about it.
When you judge the machine, for what it is ( an upgradeable G4/800 system ) and put the cost to one side, when running Debian at least, you come to the conclusion that it is good kit.
Hence the whole “left hand side” bit in the review.
I realise that on OSNEWs there is a hardcore that does not like to read anything positive about anything other than Linux/x86 distributions ( or high end systems way beyond the reach of the IA32 ) and will slam anything and anyone who sayes anything that contravenes their world view.
I would not claim that this could be a serious replacement for the peak throughput of our work systems but as a sandbox development system it is more than capable ( and far more attractive 😉 ) of doing the job.
I also wanted to demystify Linux a bit for the Amiga people who seem to slam it an awful lot – hence the “fluffy” nature of the review.
If I wanted to write a serious comparison, it would not involve systems from work ( because the performance figures there are nobodies business but theirs ) but a collection of other hardware that I and friends could pull together. Still Im sure you would find some reason to sneer.
I happen to work remote desktopped into Power4 based systems and have done for quite a while, hence what I am comparing the experience to. I would not swap my user account on that for the world.
If you don’t like the review, no one forced your nose to the monitor 😉
“There is only one Amiga and it had its time and place, we have moved on, things have changed. I am sure as a hobby thing, it may be nice, however, I hope the AmigaOne people realise that they aren’t going to make boot loads of money. It is too much of a niche product.”
Right, neither the AmigaONE or the Pegasos have anything in common with the old Amiga hardware. We all know this but sooner or later we had to do the complete step forward to go to PowerPC architecture, the same way Apple did many years back (The on the otherhand did it just in time). The old hardware (Amiga) was supperior on it’s days, set many architectual and innovative standards such as CustomChips, Real Multitasking and many more but 10 years ago things came to an halt and everything started to suck. With the nowadays solutions going completely to PowerPC the entire Amiga sector gets a chance of re-animation again and the prices aren’t that high either compared if you buy an used old Amiga computer. What matters are the roots you have, what matters is you belive in something and what matters is that you can help your old plattform to come back. And if everything fails you can still use the PowerPC plattform as a cheap linux host or router or whatever. It’s not that the hardware is tied to any specific OS.
True. Personally, I would love to see a complete move away from the x86 base. That is what feeds the monster, aka, Microsoft. If there is a completely new platform with a different operating system then things will start to look better.
A platform based around the PowerPC would be a great move in terms of providing choice in the market place. OpenBoot would fix the problems that plague the PC world which has ACPI/APM/PnP/something-else. Then there are the CPU vendors, sure, we have Motorola and IBM, however, there has never been anything stopping some one from selling PowerPC motherboards and CPU’s. I’ve contacted IBM before and the only condition of purchasing PowerPC components is that they have to be in large quanties, in other words, the type an OEM vendor would buy, aka, 10,000 plus units a month.
The Amiga is FAR from dead it only moved to a new platform and there is also finally competition with Genesi vs. AmigaINC and so on. Competition is required to re-animate the market and we see a lot of people comming back after they heard about native PowerPC hardware (able to run Linux, AmigaOS/MorphOS or AROS on it) and many more.
True, however, what would be nice is getting enough vendors to turn the PowerPC into an x86 market but more standardised. The ability to source MBs and processors so that even small PC businesses can produce computers.
As for Apple, if it were me, I would be license the Apple Firmware to vendors and in return the vendors pay royalties per unit shipped, say, $10 per unit. Lets also say Apple provides an OEM version of their whole kit (which is bundled with their consumer Macs), there would be a great number of vendors to drive down price. Apple itself would benefit by moving out of he PC hardware business to concerntrate on their iPod, software and music service.
Ultimately the PC industry is going through the same phase and it will be interesting to see if HP is going to be here in 10 years time. We have Dell ripping into HP, IBM is holding its own buy using its name to carve out new business opportunities, so what is the future?
Regarding my comment of Amiga being a niche, Amiga will never die just like there are loyal Atari and Acorn fans, however, as I said, it will be a niche, not because it is inferior but because of a number of factors outside the control of the AmigaOne marketing department.
i am sick of amiga, its not going to go anywhere
You must have known that before you click on the topic to read more surely?
@Koehler
If you’re fed up of the “tripe” written about the Amiga, then why did you read the review? Oh yeah that’s right, so you could pick holes in it and generally abuse anybody who enjoys using an alternative system.
No one said it was a highly-independent review with thousands of technical details. It’s a review by a fan of Amiga computers, who has just got a brand new Amiga… of course it’s going to be biased you moron.
So if you don’t like it, why don’t you write a better review? Oh no, that’s right, you would rather belittle the efforts of others rather than adding anything constructive to this thread.
Besides which, I don’t think you really know who “Miffy” is – so insinuating that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about may be slightly unwise. It could come back and bite you in the ass sometime soon; you’ll probably end up looking more stupid than you already do.
Back on-topic…
This is more power than Amiga users have ever had – let’s hope OS4 comes along pretty soon, because the hardware is looking very neat! 🙂
/ian/
Talking of looking stupid…
that comment was aimed at kelson – don’t know where I got koehler from! DOH! 🙂
/ian/
“Back on-topic…
This is more power than Amiga users have ever had – let’s hope OS4 comes along pretty soon, because the hardware is looking very neat! :-)”
Actually, that isn’t so. An Amithlon setup running on any current off-the-shelf PC hardware is a good deal more “powerful”. You will have to wait for a 970 or 980 based Amiga before you can start claiming the hardware is competitive.
The Amiga is climbing out of the pit, but it has some climbing to do yet.
Amithlon, great product, unfortunately doomed before it was given a chance to be a success due to legal wranglings.
As far as I know, a fair review should underline the advantages *and* the drawbacks…
Here I can only see advantages: everything is nice, no problem
(I believe there must be good points… but there have to be some bad points also: I don’t believe the AOne is the perfect computer)
It seems every owner of alternative stuff is pro-AOne, pro-Pegasos, pro-Linux, pro-Mac, etc…
Please send a board to Eugenia so that we can finally see a FAIR review underlining both good and bad points (just like she did with the Pegasos Genesi kindly sent her) !
Leo.
Leo
That is because in order to shell out for the kit, you have to be “pro” in the first place.
There are plenty of implied disadvantages in there, for example the cost/performance ratio whilst not explicitly mentioned is highlighted.
Other than that, I have no problems with it. Some are desperate for AOS4 on it but I am happy at the moment with Debian. But for many thats a serious disadvantage.
I never set out for it to be an impartial review, and I say again that is why the rating is from a Blind Amiga Fanatic.
What you see is my review of how the system applies to me and my needs – I attempt no empathy with other users and state that clearly – at the time of review.
I am a satisfied customer – is there so much harm in that?
If you go onto Amazon and other sites that allow user comments/feedback/reviews you will see that they tell it from their perspective. Hell even on tucows people are allowed to give 100% ratings.
It is not a “serious” review, maybe I should put a big disclaimer at the top for people that just don’t get it by the end that this is not intended to be a rival to Toms Hardware.
I never asked for this review to be on OSNEWs, I submitted it to AmigaWorld.net that allows personal reviews. If I had submitted it to OSNEWS I would probably deserve some of your criticism.
It is neither an academic paper or a Computer Shopper article.
I’m wondering if there is one person that likes AmigaOne or MorphOS or the Mac,… and is enough open-minded to admit the problems related to its plateform (in adition to the good points).
(For example you should have talked about the ArticiaS and/or VIA southbridge,…)
“(For example you should have talked about the ArticiaS and/or VIA southbridge,…)”
You are fully right there are a bunch of performance issues inside the ArticiaS (which was claimed by others) which leads into performance issues between transfering information on the bus. The reason why the Pegasos system moves away from this Northbridge and uses the Marvell Northbridge really soon. The VIA problem between IDE0 and IDE1 are not related to the ArticiaS and is an own thing to talk about. But please tell me one hardware which is free from problems. All you can do is to be more carefully with the next generation of Hardware you create.
Leo, please post your own technical analysis and expose of the “problems” in ArticiaS in the A1 and the “flaws” in the Pegasos.
IMO this was an excellent *Amiga user* perspective review of an AmigaOne system. It emphasizes that the system is powerful enough to give the user a pleasant Linux/UAE experience.
To the Amiga enthusiast, knowing how efficient, responsive and fast AmigaOS is in comparison this means to them that AmigaOS4 will likely fly with these same specifications. The average Amiga user doesn’t care too much about Linux, but for various applications and uses (Mozilla, OpenOffice, MacOnLinux, etc) offers an excellent addition until equivalent software becomes available for AmigaOS4 and beyond.
@ Leo
> and is enough open-minded to admit the problems related
> to its plateform (in adition to the good points).
> (For example you should have talked about the ArticiaS
> and/or VIA southbridge,…)
Of course also the negatives are heavily discussed at Amiga forums. For example the latest revision ArtisiaS chips used in AmigaOne systems do not show any known problems. Regarding the Southbridge there are known problems and well documented bugs (used in AmigaOne, Pegasos and millions of PCs). These issues are however solved through drivers.
If you have any such questions then note that at AmigaWorld such questions are often answered by people in the know. For example here’s a recent quote from Ben Hermans with regard to your question:
“We’re testing a patch for the U-Boot / Linux Kernel which takes care of all USB related issues and IDE to IDE DMA transfers which now work 100% reliable.
(Thanks to Adam and Mai Labs for their efforts.)
This was accomplished by tinkering with the VIA 686B settings, nothing else, conclusively proving that the issues are related to that Southbridge and not to the Articia S.
All IRQ’ are routed through the VIA 686B and most if not all issues appear to be related to unserviced interrupts.”
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?forum=13&topic_id…
Mai’s latest revision Northbridges (only commercially seen in AmigaOne systems thus far) are of excellent quality and new chipsets are nearly finished:
http://www.mai.com/products/articia%20sa.htm
http://www.mai.com/products/articia%20p.htm
>For example the latest revision ArtisiaS chips used in
>AmigaOne systems do not show any known problems
That is not true for all AmigaOne systems with the new
Linux patch.
@Anonymous
I did not encounter any problems, hence I did not write about any.
If you have incontravertable evidence please supply it otherwise it is yet another brick in the FUD campaign against ArticiaS.
Once Depeche Mode (DM) was really hip. A long time ago. Just like Amiga.
DM had some problems, including a suicide attempt. Just like Amiga.
These days, DM has split up. Just like Amiga.
David Gahan’s new solo project sucks. Just like Amiga Inc.
Only a necrophiliac is into old dead things like Amiga. It is a sick use of time and energy to reanimate some old machine just so you can dump a load of new code on it.
The smelly greed gollums that run Amiga killed the only thing that had any promise (Amithlon).
Please let us not hear about Amiga anymore. It makes some people lose kidneys and others lose their lunches. It’s not news, the company is run by ego maniacs, and the product has been vaporware for over 2 years.
It’s time to let go and move on.
> The smelly greed gollums that run Amiga killed the only
> thing that had any promise (Amithlon).
All you want is an Amiga 3.x emulator?
No thanks.
I, for one, don’t want to live with a 10 year-old version
of the OS.
Amithlon doesn’t come with a 10 year-old version of the OS. it comes with a 3-year old version of the OS.
Amiga, Inc doesn’t have the rights to OS 3.5/3.9, hence why their efforts are an evolution of OS 3.1. OS 3.5 and 3.9 were done by Hagge and Partner, and Amiga, Inc doesn’t have the rights to those OS’s.
AmigaOS4 is a port of AmigaOS3.9 to PPC with lots of additional enhancements.
Currently H&P, the company originally managing the AmigaOS4 project is now also planning to support AmigaOS4 with software. IMO it’s impressive what the AmigaOS4 development team under Hyperion has accomplished.
There are thousands of people who want to see this project succeed. Of course the original Amiga was truly revolutionary due to its hardware, but since the early nineties there was a clear trend of moving more and more towards powerful 3rd party graphics and sound solutions, including within the Amiga market itself! With hundreds of millions being spent annually on new chipsets it’s not feasible for the Amiga to be revolutionary on the hardware front again and we better just ‘join the ride’ with powerful firms like IBM and ATi instead.