Amiga & AROS Archive

A History of the Amiga, Part 7: Game on!

Ars Technica's Jeremy Reimer has published the 7th instalment in their series on the history of the Amiga platform. Part 7 deals solely with gaming on the Amiga, detailing various classic Amiga games that in one way or the other pushed the envelope. "The Amiga started out its life as a dedicated games machine, and even though it grew into a full computer very quickly, it never lost its gaming side. The machine's 4096-color palette, stereo sampled sound, and graphics acceleration chips made it a perfect gaming platform, and it didn't take long for game companies to start taking advantage of this power."

New AROS Distribution Announced

VmwAROS started in november 2007, as a pre-installed AROS environment for VMware, but starting with the new version 0.7, published today, it has turned into a complete distribution called VmwAROS LIVE!. From now on, it will be available in two flavours: pre-installed in a virtual machine, and as a live-CD. New users will be able to boot their computers straight into a enhanced AROS environment, with DHCP network support and preliminary web browser. A complete list of new features is available at this site. VmwAROS VM beta 0.7 can be downloaded from here. VmwAROS LIVE! 0.7 can be downloaded from here.

A History of the Amiga: Stopping the Bleeding

Ars has published part VI in their series of articles on the history of the Amiga. "When a corporation is bleeding money, often the only way to save it is to drastically lower fixed expenses by firing staff. Commodore had lost over USD 300 million between September 1985 and March 1986, and over USD 21 million in March alone. Commodore's new CEO, Thomas Rattigan, was determined to stop the bleeding."

WinAROS 01-2008 Released

"A new version of WinAROS is available. The virtual Harddisk is contains two partitions. A 20MB Partition with Fast File System (FFS), that contains only the Boot Files. And a 480MB Partition with Smart File System (SFS) that contains a fresh AROS setup. WinAros comes with a Windows typical setup program, that creates shortcuts on the desktop and in the start menu. It also comes with an uninstaller." WinAROS is a virtualised AROS installation executable which you can install and run on Windows.

AmigaOS Emulation Under Linux

"There are two major players in the Amiga emulation arena, UAE and E-UAE and two major players in the pre-configured Workbench arena, AIAB and AmiSYS. If I was to give a preference as to which two of those four one should use I would need to be honest and say E-UAE and AmiSYS make for a better Amiga/Workbench experience. That said, all four could very easily be interchanged." More here.

The Pegasos Book: New v2.3 Full Release; VmwAROS 0.5 Released

The Pegasos book is a free multilanguage ebook dedicated to the Pegasos computer from Genesi/bplan. It is a 223 pages PDF document, splitted in 4 volumes, which contains information about the Pegasos I and II PowerPC computer and all its main supported operating systems. The latest version (V2.3) can now be freely downloaded both in English or in French. Partial older versions are also available in Spanish, German, Portuguese and Italian language. Elsewhere, VmwAROS is a pre-configured AROS environment for VMware. New beta 0.5 improves reliability, networking, development and gaming, with more software and bugfixes.

Amiga OS4.0 Classic Released

Amiga OS4.0 for Classic Amigas is now available. "ACube Systems Srl is pleased to to announce the immediate availability of the awaited AmigaOS 4.0 for Amiga 1200, 3000(T) or 4000(T) with a PowerPC CPU, developed by Hyperion Entertainment VOF. It is now possible to benefit of all the features of this new AmigaOS release, an operating system famous for its efficiency and small footprint. AmigaOS 4.0, thanks to its power and optimization, succeeds in using at the maximum even systems running at 160Mhz, allowing the multimedia performances and the usability everyone expects from AmigaOS."

AROS Ported to 64Bit

A new AROS status update has been published. The biggest news: "Michal Schulz has made the miracle, and a whole new chapter in AROS history begins. Starting from today, you can grab the 64 bit native flavour of AROS from our website. This new version is obviously more advanced than the usual one, and has limited memory protection and GRUB loading modules. A initial wall for 4 GB of RAM will be removed as soon as proper MMU handling is done. In order to run the 64 bit native version of AROS a 64-bit x86 processor like AMD Athlon 64s or latest Intel Core2s is needed."

AmigaOS 4.0 for Classic Amiga Goes Gold

"Hyperion Entertainment is pleased to announce that AmigaOS 4.0 for PowerPC equipped Amiga 1200/3000/4000’s has gone gold and should be available for sale around 30 November depending on location. Further information can be found here. Prospective customers are once more encouraged to verify the (regularly updated) compatibility list prior to purchase. AmigaOS 4.0 for classic Amiga’s will be distributed worldwide by Acube Systems."

Dave Morse, Amiga Computer Co-Founder, Passed Away

Dave Morse (1943-2007), Amiga Computer co-founder, died on Saturday, November 2nd. In 1982, he left Tonka Toys (where he was Vice-President of Marketing) and became the Chief Executive Officer at Hi Toro, Inc., which he co-founded and which morphed later that year into Amiga, Inc. and led through the development of the Lorraine Project (a codename inspired by Dave's wife Lorraine) - ultimately, the Amiga 1000 Computer. Our take: We want to wish all the strength in the world to his family and friends, and I personally would like to thank him for creating a truly visionary computing platform. Forget Apple, forget Microsoft, forget Linux: the Amiga was the real revolutionary device.

A History of the Amiga, Part 4: Enter Commodore

Ars Technica has published part four in their series on the history of the Amiga, starting with Amiga being bought by Commodore. "One hugely positive benefit about being owned by a large computer company was that the Amiga team no longer (for the moment, anyway) had to worry about money. The team was moved 10 miles to a spacious, rented facility in Los Gatos, California. They could afford to hire more engineers, and the software development team went from having 10 people sharing a single Sage workstation to everyone having their own SUN on their desk."

Classic AmigaOS 4.0 To Ship on November 30th

AmigaOS 4.0 for classic Amigas will go on sale November 30th (yes, this year). From the AmigaWorld.net news page: "On November 30 AmigaOS4 will ship for Classic Amigas. Hyperion Entertainment VOF made the announcement at the AmiWest banquet. The following will be included in the package: CD-ROM with AmigaOS4, one floppy disk to boot your Amiga (no pre-installed OS will be needed), and a manual."