Amiga & AROS Archive

In a discussion on Amiga forum site The Amigans, the Friedens twin brothers (developers of AmigaOS 4.0 exec kernel) revealed that the complete Amiga OS architecture will move ahead to a new design. The new AmigaOS (let's call it AmigaOS 4+1) will include some sort of virtual environment in which old (AmigaOS 4.0) applications will run as separate tasks, in their own address space. MorphOS, an Amiga-like operating system, employs a similar method to allow for compatibility with older Amiga 3.x applications. AmigaWorld of course also discusses the matter.

"When it first arrived, the Amiga was a dream machine, and some have said it was ten years ahead of its time. The second installment of our series on the history of the Amiga picks up with the birth of the company and the appearance of the first Amiga PC."

"Minimig stands for Mini Amiga. Minimig is an FPGA-based re-implementation of the original Amiga 500 hardware. In it's current form, Minimig is a single PCB measuring only 12*12cm which makes it the smallest 'Amiga' ever made and the first new 'Amiga' in almost 14 years! Minimig is available for download as an open-source/open-hardware design under the GNU public license. This page describes the architecture and the inner working of the Minimig. All design files can be downloaded from the download section."

When it first arrived, the Amiga was a dream machine, and some have said it was ten years ahead of its time. The first installment of this multipart history of the Amiga looks at the events that led up to the birth of the company and the PC that bore its name.

WinAROS, which allows you to easily install a virtual copy of AROS to run inside Windows, has seen a new version. "There is a new version of WinArosLight This time it comes with installation and uninstallation programs. The setup program will create a shortcut on the desktop. It has never been easier to try AROS."

Not too long ago, we announced that pigs could fly AmigaOS4 had found hardware to run on. In the weeks following the announcement, the specifications of the two different boards (high and low end) were announced, and ACK Controls, the manufacturer, promised to release the first developer boards mid May. It is now June, and there are no developer boards. No photos, nothing. The community also wonders, has any developer received the developer board from ACK? Believers say that the legal troubles in Amiga land are preventing ACK from releasing the boards, but they forget that ACK has actually promised the boards despite the legal troubles. It seems that they can't fly after all. Update: Adam of ACK Controls said in the linked thread on AmigaWorld: "There will only be a total of five developer systems sent to OS4 developers that will be responsible for drivers, HAL ports. When some of the smoke settles, more information will be released."

The facelift the AROS project had planned is now complete. Most importantly, due to the recent legal troubles concerning Amiga, the project has changed its name from "Amiga Research Operating System" into "AROS Research Operating System". They have also redone their website. There is also development news; the USB UHCI and OHCI support has been completed, and write support for the FAT filesystem has been added, among other things.

ACK Controls has released the specifications of the upcoming high-end Amiga system. As already known, it will use the P.A. Semi PWRficient PA6T-1682M dual core 64 bit CPUs clocked at 2GHz, the ATX form factor, PCI Express slots, and will have a retail price of USD 1498. The machine will supposedly be available this summer.

ACK Controls, the company behind the newly announced Amiga hardware, has held an IRC session where they answered questions and provided more details concerning the upcoming hardware. According to ACK, the promised hardware will arrive with OS4 despite the legal battle going on between Amiga Inc. and Hyperion. On the high-spec machine (USD 1500), they said: "It's faster than anything Apple ever produced on the PowerPC side of things." Which is interesting, to say the least. The transcript containts many more details, and the Amiga community is discussing the matter as well.

The AROS Show has interviewed Nick 'Kalamatee' Andrews. Nick discusses a variety projects he has worked on for AROS during his 10 years with the project and various other topics. "There's a few things I personally could use that I feel would greatly improve the AROS user experience - a decent standards compliant web browser, reworking the existing data types to support streamed data, a decent media player, productivity tools (word processing packages and so on) - let's face it, there's tons of apps we could really benefit from."

As promised, Amiga Inc. has released the specifications of the low end Amiga machine which will be available this summer. It will have the Flex-ATX form factor, with a Freescale PC8349E SoC (400MHz to 667MHz depending on requirements and price target), one DDR2 DIMM slot for a maximum of 1GB of memory, and more. It will cost USD 489. Manufacturing partner and final ship schedule will be following soon. The device is supposed to run AmigaOS 4, but the recent developments may interfere with that.

Amiga, Inc. has terminated the contract with Hyperion and Eyetech on 20th December, and has sued Hyperion for copyright infringement on 26th April. Discussion about this trademark suit can be read on AmigaWorld; maybe the community can clear up what is going on here, because I lost track long ago. Update: A detailed description of the suit has appeared. Amiga Inc. is accusing Hyperion of trademark infringement, but also of breach of the agreement the companies signed among one another. According to Amiga Inc., the agreement said that Hyperion would exercise its 'best efforts' to release AmigaOS 4 by March 1st, 2002. They obviously failed that date (AOS4 was released 24th December 2006), and hence Amiga Inc. says the contract was broken. Exhibits included.

They better check that thermostat down in hell, because, believe it or not, AmigaOS4 has found a computer to run on - a computer which we will actually be able to buy. I kid you not. "After months of designs and negotiations Amiga, Inc. and ACK Software Controls, Inc. are pleased to announce that new hardware is on its way for Amiga users. Initially, two systems will be produced that address two different market needs. The first is a consumer entry design that will offer a complete product with a target price point of USD 500, while the second will be of a power design that would have a target price point of USD 1500. The PowerPC architecture will continue to be the architecture of choice for these new systems. Manufacturing and final price information along with product launch schedules will be following in the next week." Sure they can fly.

AbiWord 2.5.1 has been released for AmigaOS4 using Cygnix. Besides AbiWord's usual word processing features, this package also includes a KHTML-based browser for AmigaOS4. "Additionally, for displaying the online help files the KHTML based browser, 'osb-browser', is included! This browser has following features: standards compliant (x)html rendering engine with CSS support; Javascript support; SSL support."