Amiga & AROS Archive

"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.

Two interesting newsbits from the Amiga Forever camp. First, they got Amiga Forever running on the OLPC, and secondly, they also got it running on the Eee PC. The next version of Amiga Forever will support both these platforms. The release is scheduled for somewhere in 2008.

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.

Ars has published part 5 of their history of the Amiga. "By July 1985, Commodore had everything going for it. The Amiga computer had been demonstrated in public to rave reviews, and everyone was excited at the potential of this great technology. That's when the problems started."

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."

"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."

The AROS Show interviews AROS developer Robert Norris about the development of the new web browser for AROS. The name of the web browser is also revealed for the first time. "The browser will be called 'Traveller'. I had already thought of this as a potential name before asking for ideas, and when a couple of people suggested it too I knew it was good."

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.

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."

AROS developer Neil Cafferkey has released the first beta version of AROS' new installer/partitioner tool, and The AROS Show takes a look at it. "So there are some bugs, but compared to how it used to be to try and install AROS natively this was a breeze! It is awesome to finally have a native version running. I have been running the hosted version of AROS for years now."

The Amiga world is an interesting one to follow. As an outsider, it is almost impossible to fully understand all the processes at work over there. The various companies, the individuals, the developers, The Three Men And A Cow who own an AmigaOne - they are not making it any easier. The past few weeks have seen quite a few news items regarding the Amiga platform. Did they help in creating a clearer picture of where the Amiga stands?

AmiKit 1.4.0 has been released. AmiKit is a free compilation of more than 300 Amiga programs. It runs under emulation on your Windows system (Linux install guide included). The new version has been graphically improved, is faster and supports dual core CPUs and Vista. For AmiKit to work, you do need Amiga ROMs and the AmigaOS, which can be obtained via AmigaForever, for instance.

At OSNews, we have kept you updated about the Amiga hardware announced by ACK controls. Supposedly ready for shipping in May, we are now in the second half of September, and still no hardware. Interestingly, nor ACK Controls, nor Amiga, Inc., will be present at the upcoming Amiga show Pianeta Amiga - leading to the inevitable conclusion that like so many other announcements in the Amiga world, this one was yet another big puff of air. All hope is not lost, though: ACube Systems has announced the SAM440ep, a PowerPC board, of which industrial versions are already available (according to ACube). The consumer version is supposedly ready to ship starting 22nd September 2007, and interestingly, Hyperion will be present at the ACube booth at Pianeta Amiga. Finally, new Amiga hardware? Seeing is believing, many will say.

The third installment of Ars' series on the history of the Amiga begins with the third prototype and covers the rest of Amiga's history as an independent company. "Modern chips are designed using high-powered workstations that run very expensive chip simulation software. However, the fledgling Amiga company could not afford such luxuries. It would instead build, by hand, giant replicas of the silicon circuitry on honeycomb-like plastic sheets known as breadboards."