Amiga & AROS Archive

Amiga Inc have posted the list of changes for AmigaOS 4. The main point is that the Exec kernel, which is currently in 68k assembler, is being rewritten in C with major enhancements. Update: The Register is also covering the latest news regarding AmigaOS4 and other Amiga related products.

The annual AmiWest show was held last weekend in Sacramento, USA. As with many important Amiga shows held in the US, UGN provided Amigans live webcam and audio coverage of this event. Most interesting was the live coverage of Bill McEwen's Saturday evening banquet speech (MP3). Update: Please use the following mirrors for the mp3 instead: USA, France, Norway and UK. Update 2: Sendo has published an Amiga related press release, confirming that their Z100 mobile phone will ship with Amiga software.

CEO of Amiga Inc, Bill McEwen today unleashed his monthly executive update upon the Amiga Community. Many things were talked about but by far the most outstanding and obvious was Amiga Incs stride to know how many people will be ordering the AmigaOne/AmigaOS4 bundle.

The software-only company Amiga Inc. has published a marketing document outlining how it will sell AmigaOS4, which will run on third party POP-based (PowerPC Open Platform) hardware. Now, however, the open hardware seems to become artificially closed.

OSNews reader Paul Cardwell writes: "Jarno van der Linden, one of the brilliant minds behind Amiga DE, has taken time to be interviewed by the GetBoinged! crew." Update: You can also read a new interview (includes AmigaDE/SDK screenshots) of the CTO of Amiga, Fleecy Moss, at TempleOfTech.

In a Suite101 editorial John Chandler writes about Eyetech's upcoming AmigaOne PPC motherboard and that these will be open to alternative operating systems other than AmigaOS4 as well. The hardware design and availability should be as open and non-exclusive as possible. Hopefully many alternative OS developers/supporters will view the PowerPC Amiga platform as a safe heaven out of reach of current OS monopolies.

OSNews reader Rodney, writes: "The Amiga Coldfire project announced a radical move to create a 100% compatible classic Amiga that shall take advantage of modern technologies such as PCI, AGP and of course the Coldfire CPU. It is thought the project will first create a Coldfire accelerator card for the A1200, which will then aid the developers in creating a standalone motherboard which should than be ready for the general community. There has been a non-technical FAQ posted @ Amiga.org and a mailing list created. To avoid confusion, this has nothing to do with the AmigaOne from Eyetech and is not made to run the new operating system AmigaOS4, but as a replacement for OLD Amiga’s and to run the OS3x series of AmigaOS. In other words, a hobbyist’s machine!" Update: Fred Horvat wrote: "There's a similar project under way for the Atari computer platform."

Metrowerks is shipping a new set of tools which enables application and content development for Tao Group's intent, a high performance, portable media platform. These tools don't come cheap. However an intent/AmigaDE Software Development Kit costs only 100 dollars is already enough to get you started. And if you want to use powerful dynamic graphic scaling capabilities, you need to sign a SDA with Amiga. Then your software will be able to scale properly from handheld to STB/Desktop resolutions. On TechTV Amiga already demonstrated the technologies' flexibility and performance.

I have watched the progress of the "new Amiga" (OS and hardware) over the past couple of years. Given the past history of Amiga, I am happy to see that the company has been taken over by true fans of the Amiga OS, who have a workable vision. In general, I think you came up with a good overall strategy:

In a live interactive streaming audio/ICQ interview, by UGN at the AmigaExpo in Baltimore, Hyperion released even more interesting details regarding the development of AmigaOS4. Some highlights:

In Amiga's latest executive update, Amiga Inc's CEO concentrates on the development of the AmigaOS4 desktop operating system. Initially the new PPC based AmigaOS is being targeted at Eyetech's new AmigaOne ATX motherboard (an A1200/PCI bridge will become available later on, which will allow AGA chipset compatibility, but this is not needed if you don`t want it), bplan's new multi-processor supporting PEGASOS microATX motherboard, Elbox' new G3/G4 Accelerator cards and even old Cyberstorm/Blizzard PPC accelerators for classic Amigas. Merlancia Industries, with legend Amiga hardware designer Dave Haynie as their CTO are even developing new PPC laptops. New PPC native versions of popular Amiga software including MUI and IBrowse are under development, as announced in this executive update.

The GNU SmallEiffel compiler has been ported to the Intent/AmigaDE operating environment. Also worth checking out is this transcript of Bill McEwen's AmigaDE demonstration for TechTV. You will get a good idea of what this technology is capable of, regardless of it being only a tip of the iceberg of what the AmigaDE developer community is working on.

Earlier this month some Australian Amiga User groups represented Amiga at Comdex, the biggest Australian IT show. They demonstrated AmigaDE software running binary identical at full speed across various devices, as well as introducing people to the new AmigaOS XL package. Many developers and users were amazed of what the AmigaDE can do, read the full show report here. Tomorrow Amiga Inc's CEO Bill McEwen will demonstrate Amiga products on TechTV's 'Screen Savers'. Also there will be many interesting demonstrations and seminars at the upcoming AmigaExpo, to be held later this month.

A special release of the intent Application Development Kit for Windows and Linux is included on the cover CD of the current issue of digital magazine. Intent is the core technology used in the AmigaDE and is also the standard programming and the platform independent content environment chosen by the Open Contents Platform Association (OCPA) for digital consumer devices. Consumer Electronic Giants including Hitachi, Sony, Kyocera, PSION, Nokia, NEC, Motorola, Grundig, JVC, Fujitsu, Sharp, Epson, Intel, Pioneer, Metrowerks, Sega, Bandai and Capcom are supporting the platform. A full new release of the AmigaDE Software Development Kit will become available for general developers later this year. Software developed for intent works with the AmigaDE platform as well.