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Amiga Operating Systems Software

Ars Technica Reviews AmigaOS 4.0 405

Posted by timothy from the it-isn't-free-though dept.
Amiga Lover writes "While tales of the troubles behind the Amiga's ownership abound over the last 10 years, work has been going on in the background for newer releases of the operating system that powered some of the most desirable computers from the 1980s. You can now buy brand new Amiga motherboards, and the operating system is very close to a final release. Jeremy Reimer from arstechnica reviews the current developer preview of AmigaOS 4.0, going over this new small and fast OS in thorough arstechnica style."
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Ars Technica Reviews AmigaOS 4.0 More

Ars Technica Reviews AmigaOS 4.0

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  • Modern OS? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:23AM (#11408232)
    Does it have true multitasking and memory protection? It surely looks like a great modern OS, but is it more than just a toy?

    • Re:Modern OS? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rdc_uk ( 792215 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:24AM (#11408246)
      Amiga OS had both those in 1985, IIRC.
      • Multitasking yes. Memory protection, no.

      • Re:Modern OS? (Score:5, Informative)

        by Gadzinka ( 256729 ) <rrw@hell.pl> on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:36AM (#11408399) Journal
        [removed question about true multitasking and memory protection]

        Amiga OS had both those in 1985, IIRC.

        No, you don't remember it correctly. Amiga OS had true, preemptive multitasking in 1985, but it doesn't have memory protection to this day. Nor does it have virtual memory, or makes any other use of MMU present in every modern processor.

        Yes, you could install Enforcer notifying you about writes to system memory, or VMM permitting swapping to disk in case the real memory is exhausted. But both these programs weren't part of system and lost of programs crashed when they were present and running. I remember having exceptions list in VMM longer than... certain body parts of pr0n stars ;)

        Other than that, Amiga OS was quite remarkable piece of software at that time with certain solutions still not duplicated in today's operating systems.

        Robert

        • Re:Modern OS? (Score:3, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Amiga OS had true, preemptive multitasking in 1985, but it doesn't have memory protection to this day. Nor does it have virtual memory, or makes any other use of MMU present in every modern processor.

          AmigaOS 4.0 includes functionality for virtual memory, paging, etc. Memory protection is optional for OS4 native applications, but will be a feature in a forthcoming version I'm sure, once enough software has been ported/created natively.

          And as the review said, AmigaOS actually made computing fun and enjoyab

        • Re:Modern OS? (Score:5, Interesting)

          by DG ( 989 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @02:22PM (#11410410) Homepage Journal
          One of my favourite demos with my old Amiga 2000 back in 1989 or so was to have a C program compiling on the Bridgeboard, a Pascal program compiling in a shell window, and then drag down the Workbench screen about halfway to reveal F/A-18 Interceptor running behind. I'd then play the game (with no slowdown) while the compilers kept churning away.

          For its time, it was an amazing bit of hardware.

          I always liked AmigaDOS because it combined the best features of UNIX (in the shell, and with AREXX scripting) and MacOS's GUI features.

          Nowadays, the GUI on Linux has gotten to the point where it is far superior than anything the Amiga ever had. A modern RedHat/Fedora box really is the spiritual successor to the Amiga.

          The only thing I miss (two things actually):

          1) Every Amiga application worth its salt has an AREXX port, because it was trivial to implement. That meant you could script EVERYTHING, including moving data back and forth between applications. It was awesome; you could batch-process every single application on the box.

          2) The speech synth chip. This was awsome in Netrek, because you could play the team chat window through it and turn it into a radio - get all the team communications without having to take your eyes off the galaxy map. :)

          DG

          • Re:Modern OS? (Score:3, Informative)

            by schon ( 31600 )
            2) The speech synth chip.

            There was no speech synth chip.

            The speech synthesis in 1.1 through 2.04 was done in software, via a license from another company.

            The license ran out by the time AmigaOS 3.0 was released, so the A4000 and A1200 never had native speech synthesis (although you could just copy it from a 2.04 or 2.1 release.)

        • Re:Modern OS? (Score:3, Informative)

          by amigabill ( 146897 )
          > Nor does it have virtual memory, or makes any other use of MMU present in every modern processor.

          AmigaOS 4 DOES have virtual memory built-in. This can exist without memory protection features, which are not present in the form that Slashdot readers would recognize it. There is some limited memory protection of kernel-space, but nothing in user-space.

          There HAS been use of the MMU in the past. Mostly development stuff, debuggers and whatnot. The old VMM virtual memory tool you mentioned, which added VM

    • Re:Modern OS? (Score:5, Informative)

      by amigabill ( 146897 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:33AM (#11408362)
      AmigaOS has had preemptive multitasking since day 1 back in the 1980's.

      Memory protection is another matter, it's not there as Linux users would expect it to be, no. It's a highly desired feature of course, but implementing it properly is an issue as it conflicts with some fundamental aspects of AmigaOS arcitecture. We want it, and it will likely happen someday, but current priorities fundamentally revolve around getting the OS ported to PowerPC native and getting it to run on new PowerPC motherboards, porting the 680x0 assembly to C, involving a great deal of "classic Amiga hardware" dependencies, as none of that hardware is present on new motherboards.

      Once the fundamental porting is done then it will be time to look at rearchitecting things to allow memory protection, multiple users (it's currently a single-user OS so no user or group file or directory protection concepts). I don't know what all the project managment has in mind for adding such features, but users and developers do want them.

    • The Amiga had true pre-emptive multitasking in 1987. Back when the Mac had cooperative and Windows was still at 2.x.

      I still remember in college, in the early '90s, showing my Mac/Windows using friends that *yes*, you could format a floppy disk and do something else at the same time.

  • Please, no "Amiga is Dead" stuff... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by amigabill ( 146897 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:24AM (#11408241)
    I always hate seeing Amiga come up on Slashdot. To all you guys, no, it's not dead. It's small and not popular. AmigaOS is to Linux what Linux is to Windows. Remember how many Windows users out there think you're crazy for using Linux and truely believe there is nothing to use Linux for except for server stuff before you post your "Amiga is dead" stuff, as you will be exactly correct as all those ignorant Windows users are in their comments about Linux and Linux users.

    Thank you for your respect. And to the article poster, we're not welcome here, please don't bother Slashdot again...

    • Re:Please, no "Amiga is Dead" stuff... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Lisandro ( 799651 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:28AM (#11408314)
      I'm not trolling here, but Linux is useful. What are the real world modern uses for an Amiga machine? I recall they were used a lot on TV stations for titeling, but that was a while ago.

      I always respected the Amiga a lot, and i still think it should have done better than it did, specially considering how advanced was in it's time. But other than the geek factor, what's the big deal over a new AmigaOS?

      • Re:Please, no "Amiga is Dead" stuff... (Score:5, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:48AM (#11408526)
        What are the real world modern uses for an Amiga machine?

        Our office has used one every day for years to prop open an annoying fire door.

      • Re:Please, no "Amiga is Dead" stuff... (Score:5, Informative)

        by amigabill ( 146897 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @12:43PM (#11409141)
        My own uses for AmigaOS:

        email
        web browsing
        word processor
        read PDF docs
        software development
        file managment (including PC folders via samba as Windows explorer sucks rotten eggs)
        games

        Wow, that sounds a lot like what some people might use Linux for, doesn't it?

        It's a matter of choice. Why should my choice be wrong for me, yet your non-Windows choice is right for you?
        • It's not, don't get me wrong. If you have an Amiga lying arround, of course, more power to you :) I would set my C64 as a router if i could!

          But the chores you mentioned are general, common uses for compueters nowadays, and kit reviewed in the article sells for $700. This is what i meant by saying "what does it offer that Linux doesnt?". It's great if you have an Amiga lying arround - and has a lot of geek factor to it. Yet i can't justify spending that amount for a new system.
      • I recall they were used a lot on TV stations for titeling, but that was a while ago.

        I still see TV Commercials that had their titles done with an Amiga.

        We used to use it in high school and I'd recognize the tell tale signs anywhere.

        Pro Video Post 3000 and a Genlock are still in use in some production environments today.

        LK

      • Re:Please, no "Amiga is Dead" stuff... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Halo1 ( 136547 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @12:48PM (#11409205)
        I'm not trolling here, but Linux is useful

        ...

        But other than the geek factor, what's the big deal over a new AmigaOS?

        Couldn't you have said the same thing about Linux 10 years ago? Who says it will never be useful in the future? (at least if stays owned more than 1 day by the same company)
      • What are the real world modern uses for an Amiga machine?
        Back in 1992 in remember seeing amigas in a steel rolling mill giving status displays of each bit of the process, as well as access to a database of previous info - with everything nicely colour coded so you could see what was going on from a few paces away. Despite the place being full of drifting iron-oxide dust and fairly hot, I believe they are still in use.
    • But honestly, what use does Amiga have now that Linux (or Mac OS X or Windows for that matter) can't do - and in most ways better?

      I'd enjoy having a world with more OS diversification, but what point does Amiga serve anymore? I'm glad it's not dead, I just want to know what it's used for these days.

      I remember the days where, in my opinion, it's only uses came down to a couple applications: Video Toaster and Scala. But now? Both of those are pretty obsolete.

      I'm not going to say "Amiga is Dead," and I don'
    • It's small and not popular. AmigaOS is to Linux what Linux is to Windows.

      So ahh... in other words... Amiga is dead?
    • is this a new Amiga in name only? Or is it somehow compatible with all the old software from the 80's? Or.. what's the connection with this new Amiga and the classic Amigas?
      • No, Yes, It's come full circle & the same guy(s) run it. Of course, this is all in the article...

      • is this a new Amiga in name only? Or is it somehow compatible with all the old software from the 80's? Or.. what's the connection with this new Amiga and the classic Amigas?

        Naaw, this appears to have picked up alot of the legacy stuff from the original Amiga (as has been discussed here)...as well as much of what became lameness as it became outdated. Still no protected memory (which I find outlandish -- this is why I found MacOS pre 10 so useless). I think this was left out so that it would run legacy

    • We get it. But Netcraft... man, Netcraft confirms it.
      Maybe you want a chat with them?
    • 1) Virus proof - at least in the modern sense - x86 xploits will not work..
      2) Huge library of legacy free/cheap small-memory demand programs, at least by modern standards. Same could be said for CBM64, but AmigaOS apps are actually useful..
      3) Lots of code written for the RISC chip of its day, the 68K, the chip that should by rights be in every PC today..
      4) Great graphics 4 time=good apps
      5) Guaranteed gooey nostalgic warm feeling when you use it, as opposed to fear/lothing/desparation when using Gates-evil-e
    • No, AmigaOS is to Linux what BeOS was to Windows. Note the "was." Amiga was the coolest thing in the world, a decade-and-a-half ago. Is there anything cool about the new Amiga? Anything it does better than a $1000 PC? No, I didn't think so. Oh, and you're always welcome here, just don't mind the occasional laughter and derisive snorts.
    • Its resting....

      I'm very very sorry - but i just couldn't help myself...

    • I can assure you if a computer has the ability to input, process, and output foo (be it in the form of graphics, printed paper, or a stream of 1s and 0s) - someone will use if for something useful.

      I had an Amiga back in the day; this is when the shiny new IBM PC-XT was the big thing, and clones were just starting to come out. I was happily typing away in AmigaWord, or playing Artic Fox (an early EA game title), or running DOS applications on an IBM PC emulator, on a machine with a graphical interface that

  • Too pricey (Score:5, Informative)

    by denjin ( 115496 ) <denjin AT myway DOT com> on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:24AM (#11408247) Homepage
    While I loved my Amiga in the day, I can't justify spending $1375 for a G3-800 system basd on the new Micro systems.

    This is from softhut, but I don't want to direct link since it is slow anyway:

    AMIGA ONE PRECONFIGURED SYSTEMS

    Micro A1 System:
    First True Luggable / LAN Boy Amiga System !!

    See Case Images
    Micro A1-C Motherboard with OS4
    750fx G3 Processor @ 800MHz
    Built-In Sound
    80GB 7200RPM Hard Drive
    DVD/CDRW Combo Drive
    2 USB Ports, 10/100 Ethernet
    Keyboard and Mouse
    ------ $ 1375.00

    All completely installed, tested and ready to run
    • Yup. Interestingly enough, there's another PPC system out there for $1375 - the new iMac:

      1.6ghz G5
      512mb RAM
      80gb SATA drive
      DVD/CDRW drive
      Keyboard, mouse, 10/100, etc,
      Oh - and an integrated monitor, TOSlink out, etc, etc.

      Its funny, in a sad way, that they've been able to beat Apple at the expensive proprietary hardware game...

  • Vaporware (Score:2, Redundant)

    by jeffkjo1 ( 663413 )
    the operating system is very close to a final release.

    While a new Amiga OS is just as intriguing to me as the next guy, this operating system has been vaporware for quite some time now, and I question when it will actually arrive.
    This Amiga OS began winning Wired's Vaporware award back in 1999. [wired.com]
  • Am I reading this correctly? 500 euros for a motherboard?

    But its probably a really really good motherboard?
    • Am I reading this correctly? 500 euros for a motherboard?

      But its probably a really really good motherboard?

      They are charging that much to match how pricey the Amiga was in the 80s. You have to adjust for inflation, you know.
    • But its probably a really really good motherboard?

      Yeah, for an 800MHz G3

      • But its probably a really really good motherboard?

        Yeah, for an 800MHz G3

        The people who were bitching about the price / preformance ratio of the Mac Mini are going to have a heart attack when they read this!

    • Consider the size of the market. They manufacture a few hundred boards at a time. Do you know how hard it is to get components like the Northbridge chip in such small quantities? Most vendors completely ignore such small purchase requests, severely limiting the choice, and thus the lack of competition lets the willing vendors take advantage... Over a few years a couple thousand have been made and sold, and the dealers (A good friend of mine is such a dealer of AmigaOne boards) can't get enough for the custo
  • It will be interesting to see if the combination of Amiga, various Unix/Linux distro's and possibly a hacked OSX could actually bring down the cost of the motherboards into something accessible for more mainstream hobbyists / uses. The cost of such small runs is probably a big deal when it comes to What Is Holding Back Amiga Now.

    I know i would love to play with a Yellowdog Linux media server running on some ultra quiet G4 rig, but the cost of kits are too prohibitive when I know that the same can be done
    • Since YDL will probably run on a Mac mini, you've now got your chance for only $500 (if you insist on a new machine).
      That said, yeah, it'd be cool to have an OS X-capable motherboard.

    • I don't think it's going to happen. Almost everyone with PowerPCs in the non-embedded world (i.e. PC in the old sense) these days gets them from two places: Apple or in servers. Since that's unlikely to change in the near future, unless MS decides to port Windows to PPC, which is about as me being declared King of England.

      It would be interesting, but so would a lot of more probable things. If you want an ultra-quiet, inexpensive G4, those now exist [apple.com].

      • IBM are pushing the PowerPC architecture in south-east Asia at the moment. If they can get the volume up enough then I have no doubt that cheap PowerPC systems will start appearing on eBay imported from Hong Kong (or wherever).

  • UI Responsiveness (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mirko ( 198274 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:30AM (#11408342) Journal
    Running the OS and all its apps completely in memory provides a very different user experience than one is used to from modern operating systems. Switching applications is instantaneous, as is switching screens (providing you are running separate screens at the same monitor resolution, otherwise you have to wait for your monitor to resync).

    Scrolling is about as fast as on my 2.4GHz P4 PC. While the PC clearly blows away the AmigaOne on pure CPU performance (for example, unarchiving files, or ripping to MP3), for general use they "feel" about the same. The A1 feels much faster than my 733MHz Pentium 3 running XP, and makes my poor 500MHz G3 iBook running OS X feel like a pig stuck in molasses.

    The author obviously never tried RiscOS : on my 33MHz RiscPC (bought in Dec94), there's still nothing that can match its responsiveness... except a 202MHz Strong-ARM RiscPC.

    You just don't have time to even think about taking an espresso when you double-click a directory folder.

    But yes, that's right : RiSCOS is cooperatively multitasking, hence the quick interaction.
    • Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't cooperative multitasking the root of all multitasking evil? One bad app that doesn't relinquish control in a timely manner then things start getting sluggish/frozen.

      • Re:UI Responsiveness (Score:2, Interesting)

        by mirko ( 198274 )
        Yes it is... on a bloated syste, but under RiscOS, apps were sufficiently well written so that they would not crash that often.
        And as the machine can just reboot in less than 5 seconds, I am fine, thanks :)

        My advice is that you visit this site [habett.org] which a friend has 100% made on his RiscOS machine (might be an Iyonix [iyonix.com], that Xscale based RiscPC...) you'll then see how useful this machine can be to a creative mind (did I mention how its ergonomical features just made it even more straightforward for anybody to ac
      • but isn't cooperative multitasking the root of all multitasking evil

        I've never considered cooperative multitasking to be a multitasking operating system at all... it's a multitasking API built into the operating system.

        A true multitasking operating system has to be preemptive.

        And to try out a metaphor, cooperative multitasking is like having 4-way stop signs at every intersection... it works as long as every driver follows the rules, but even then is far from optimal as regards throughput...
      • RISC OS does it quite well. In the unlikely event something goes wrong, you can interrupt a bad application and kill it. While pre-emptive multi-tasking is less likely to look you out of your system, it also causes quite a serious performance hit. Cooperative multi-tasking also seems to handle certain things better, for example re-drawing window contents.

        However, the main disadvantage with cooperative multi-tasking is that it won't work with multiple CPUs.
    • The author obviously never tried RiscOS : on my 33MHz RiscPC (bought in Dec94), there's still nothing that can match its responsiveness... except a 202MHz Strong-ARM RiscPC.

      Back in days of yore I was a real Acorn fanboy, and recently I inherited a RiscPC from a friend.

      It's true, they're incredibly fast and smooth and responsive and... and I can't find anything useful to do with it. That 33MHz processor simply doesn't have enough power to do anything that involves number-crunching. If you install Linux o

    • In 1994 there was no operating system which touched Amiga OS for responsiveness.

      Not only was AmigaOS a pre-emptive multitasking OS, but it was a real time pre-emptive multitasking OS.

      This means that applications and processes did not simply time share, but that high priority processes which were ready to run are guaranteed to get the CPU within a fixed period of time (measured in ms) provided they were the highest priority task which was ready to run.

      On Amiga OS, you assigned the mouse and keyboard IO a

  • I loved the amiga (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 91degrees ( 207121 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:33AM (#11408369) Journal
    But this isn't what the Amiga was.

    The Amiga was a great games machine, with cool custom chips taking the load off the generally-not-too-great CPU, a highly consistent architecture, and an adequate, quirky OS which was good where it mattered for the applications it was used for.

    Custom hardware was not something that was seen in commodity PCs at the time. Neither were good quality graphics and sound. It wasn't a better machine. In many ways it was inferior. It was a very different machine, and that's why it suceeded where it did.

    AmigaOS 4.0 is simply another OS. Perhaps it's a very nice OS. BeOS was as well. But a nice OS doesn't make it better.

    • Re:I loved the amiga (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Feanturi ( 99866 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:53AM (#11408578)
      The Amiga was a great games machine, with cool custom chips taking the load off

      Which makes it kind of ironic that it was games that ultimately led me to leave the Amiga in favor of the PC. There were all these cool games I was seeing at my friends' houses, that I couldn't play. It sucked to switch, but the gamer in me just had to.

    • Amiga was revolutionary. It smoked everything. (Score:5, Informative)

      by guidryp ( 702488 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @01:02PM (#11409352)
      In 1985 the A1000 blew everything out of the water. I still have my A1000 in a box somewhere. One of the coolest PCs ever built the entire team signed the inside cover (including Jays dog).

      Processor:
      An 286 was state of the art and the 68000 compared more than favorably.

      Graphics:
      Heck EGA was just recently introduced, Macs were monocrhome. Amiga had extraordinary high colour capability (up to 4096 colours IIRC) and custom co-processor to accellerate 2d operations

      Sound:
      A basic PC beeped. The first soundblaster was still 2 years away. The amiga had multichannel digiatal waveform sound with co-processor support.

      OS:
      PC had Dos or Windows 1.0 (steaming pile of dung).
      The amiga had a small efficient GUI OS with true pre-emptive multitasking...

      The Amiga was a revolution of HW and software. What killed it was stagnation. It remained relatively unchanged for years allowing competition to catch and surpass some of its basic specs.

      Personally I moved on when Win95/OS2 VGA/ 486/ Soundblaster finally made PCs tolerable.

    • Re:I loved the amiga (Score:3, Interesting)

      by rs79 ( 71822 )
      The Amiga was a great games machine.

      It ran games? Oh yeah there was that Wolftank von Moneybucks guy. And it made Schwab famous for doing in a weekend what Pixer took weeks to do. Got an updated mpg, Leo? Only Loren believes you destroyed all the copies...

      What made the Amiga cool from my perspective (I still have A1000 serial #7) was, in an era of Windows 2.1 and an essentially unprogrammable Mac (Pascal? Hahahahaha) it let you have Bash, UUCP, a rational C compiler and a liner ("sergments are for worms"

  • Gah. ROM. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by imag0 ( 605684 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:39AM (#11408425) Homepage
    from TFA... ...Many people have asked whether or not they can install OS4 on their Macintosh, since both use PowerPC hardware. The answer is no, as OS4 requires a custom ROM embedded on all AmigaOne motherboards in order to boot. This was done under agreement between Eyetech and Hyperion, in order to cut down on piracy and to reduce the number of hardware combinations that Hyperion needed to test and support...

    I was pretty interested until I got to that "custom boot rom". Hell, guys, even Apple tossed that requirement when they went to NewWorld.

    Severely limits the usefulness of the hardware and software in my eyes. Guess I'm not the target audience then.

    • Re:Gah. ROM. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by FullCircle ( 643323 )
      That boot ROM is solely used to lock the OS to licensed hardware.

      Otherwise the Pegasus board or any Mac could potentially run this OS.

      Stupid move #4875674 from Amiga.

      • Re:Gah. ROM. (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Tony Hoyle ( 11698 )
        Yes I think they just killed their chances right there.

        The ability to give this a try on a Mac would have been cool, however I'm not going to pay $1,300 for a custom board just because I'm a bit nostalgic.

    • Re:Gah. ROM. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by amigabill ( 146897 )
      Managment has in the past discussed the possibility uf a USB widget to hold the "custom ROM" part, which would make it possible to run on machines without it soldred to the motherboard, yet still retain that same level of piracy protection, whatever it's actually worth.

      This would make it possible to keep the managers happy and the OS functional on Macs or Pegasos2 or whatever. Neither Apple nor Genesi of course want to get into the licensing of the custom USB widget and ship the AmigaOS CD with their card.

      • Re:Gah. ROM. (Score:3, Funny)

        by Squid ( 3420 )
        It'll be just like the 80s again. I can see it now, the animated boot screen with wavy lines that says
        "4M1G4 0S 4.0
        kr4CK3D 8Y BLU3ZM0B1L3
        J3FF i5 A h0M0"

        A dongle, huh? Methinks someone in charge of the current Amiga doesn't remember 1989 very well. Dongles back then meant "it might take almost TWO whole days for the kracked (yes, with the k, cuz they all thought it was k00l) version to start making the rounds." Or better yet, "I BOUGHT the damn thing and I still downloaded the kracked version because I lost

  • Business Amiga (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JollyTX ( 103289 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @11:45AM (#11408485)

    It always amazes me to think that

    1) The Amiga, though marketed as a gaming machine or play-with-graphics machine, had an operating system so capable and Unix-like

    and

    2) That business never realized the huge potential of a multitasking, windowing, command-line integrated OS to run spreadsheets and wordprocessors on instead of the clunky program launcher that was MS-DOS.

    • Re:Business Amiga (Score:3, Interesting)

      by podperson ( 592944 )
      Business Amiga was crippled by the inability of the Amiga to drive a high res display you would want to look at for more than five minutes. The most useful display mode for word-processing had 2:1 aspect ratio pixels, making it unsuitable for graphics. Some programs would adjust the proportions of images and text, others would simply display tall thin text and images.

      Business Amiga was also crippled by the utter lack of useful business software (e.g. the most frequently recommended Word Processor, "Excelle
  • ... do the Amiga folks even bother developing their own hardware? Wouldn't it be much simpler to use an existing platform, say (if you want a PowerPC), the Mac?
  • ...Ford announces you will now be able to order a Model-T in colors other than black.
  • "Instead of cd .. to go up one directory, the command is cd /."
  • Bavck to the days when there were 30 different OS's and 30 different hardware architectures all of them competing in a grim Darwinian wrestling match unto Death. Well Amiga and others perished in Circus Maximus; they got the thumbs down and a dagger in spine. Face down in the blood and dust and it never did, does or will matter how great they were.

    We toast the fallen, All Hail Amiga!

  • This would have been relevant in 1994 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tsangc ( 177574 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @12:03PM (#11408704)
    This would have kept the Amiga minimally relevant in 1994, but not in 2005. There were really two real markets for the Amiga in 1994, the time of Commodore's demise: Creative professionals and hackers/nerds/hobbyists.

    The Amiga's greatest challenge in 1994 was really CPU power and system architecture. It was tied to the 68K series processor and the custom chips which made it powerful in 1985. If these PowerPC based systems and OS came out ten years ago, it would have saved the machine, at least to be a niche player.

    The Amiga's primary advantage over other machines for creative users like videographers, artists and the like was the fact it was NTSC synchronized for adding titles, and for driving devices like the VideoToaster. That assumed a world view where the computer stayed as outside of the signal path, modifying analog video somewhere between source and recorder VTRs.

    The world changed very quickly--and the desktop video world instantly picked up on nonlinear editing. Suddenly everything, given enough power and bandwidth, was INSIDE the machine. Certainly NewTek responded with the ToasterFlyer, but this was still a rehash of using the Amiga between playback and record devices. By 1997, even the cheapest desktop PCI NLE board was processing effects in the digital domain: The Amiga couldn't keep up, tied to the 68K series alone and was doomed in the video market.

    The OS was very much suited to media applications: It was lightweight, quick and supported multiple resolutions plus had a lot of built in file formats like ANIM, 8SVX, IFF ILBM etc. But with enough CPU power and memory, this becomes a non issue: Through the brute force of a Pentium with a PCI video bus, and I don't care how bad the OS is, it's still going to be more powerful than an overheating 040 with bandwidth limited Amiga custom chips or a late model VL bus VGA chip slaved off on the Zorro II bus.

    The hobbyist market was also lost when Commodore died. A lot of people, myself included, had piles of fun learning about how the Amiga worked. But when CBM went bankrupt and it's later owners died as well, most of us turned elsewhere or plain well gave up on "playing" with computers. Many turned to Linux, BSD, BeOS and the like.

    There is no real market for this device, at least not a serious one.

    In the end, this will be a curiosity, primarily like the cool Jeri Ellsworth C-One board. Most people buying it will be the truly hardcore. Few hobbyists will be interested, as the casual computer enthusiast will be turned off by it's high price and low feature count.

  • Neo-Retro-Computing (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MROD ( 101561 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @12:08PM (#11408749) Homepage
    Well, it's very interesting about how the Amiga has managed to continue on in the back waters of computing for the last few years. However, it's not the only one!

    Thos of you who remember the Sinclair QL (ie. people such as Linus Torvalds and some of the early AmigaDOS authors who worked at Metacomco) might like to know that some people are continuing the development of both the hardware and the operating system..

    eg. Q40 [q40.de] and their latest Q60 motherboard designed to fit in a PC case.

    What's old is new again!

  • Too little, too late (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Mr. Cancelled ( 572486 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @12:10PM (#11408766)
    I and others have posted about the problems before... There's nothing new here.

    OS4's now years behind schedule.

    You've been able to buy motherboards for awhile. In fact those that purchased early were promised the OS and a T-Shirt if I recall. As of now, nothing's shipped other than a beta release of the OS for these early adopters. In fact, just the OS4 motherboard and a G3 CPU is more expensive than an entire Mac Mini system, and is inferior in about every way.

    Any hype they've managed to build for the new Amiga has long since faded away, as have their missed dealines. Anyone remember the "Amiga Anywhere" promo blitz? Partnerships with Microsoft... Going to put an amiga on every machine, etc. Never happened.

    I am a former Amiga user, and was really interested in the new Amiga when it was first announced (3 years ago? Memory's kinda faded, as has the Amigas allure). I've long since wrote them off though...

    As I pointed out the other day [slashdot.org], the Mac Mini would make an excellent Amiga OS4 box, but Amiga won't license the OS to run on non-Amiga hardware, so you're either stuck paying way too much for an underpowered machine, or you move on to a "real OS", and write off the Amiga as a dead-end, as most of the computing world has already done. Why Amiga, who need as many users as they can get these days, refuse to license their OS for other PPC hardware is beyond me.

    Their excuse is to prevent piracy, which was a problem for Amiga in its heyday, but come on... Paranoia is no excuse for a bad business plan. And really, what is there to pirate? I don't see a ton of companies getting ready to shove Amiga warez down our throat. There's probably what? 2 dozen titles at the most currently shipping for Amiga?? That's probably about one title per user when you get right down to it.

    In short, I think we'll see a BeOS come-back long before an Amiga come-back.

    • Re:Too little, too late (Score:3, Informative)

      by armb ( 5151 )
      As a couple of Anonymous Cowards have said, the T-shirts have shipped. Maybe when I get home I'll actually try digging my Amiga out of the cupboard and see if it still works (the 1084 monitor does, it's being used with a Playstation). I might even get as far as making a ROM file and playing with UAE [linux.de] sometime, and/or AROS [aros.org].
      But buy a new Amiga? What for?
  • I used to be highly jealous of a friends Amiga, sure almost all the games it had were out on the PC but they all seemed so much more polished ont he Amiga, its built in sound chip sounded a lot better than my shiny new SoundBlaster (replacing my old adlib card), the graphics were better and the thing flew along compared to my 386sx. I can't even remember them declining, it seemed one day you could still buy the Quaver themed computer packs based on a crisps (potato chips to you Americans)character, I kid yo
  • Amiga might have been a great desktop in its day, but from the review it sounds like it is dying (no pun intended) to be an embedded system. It uses low-power processors and has a small light-weight footprint. If they can nail down the stability, they might have a good platform for embedded applications like ATMs, Kiosks, household appliances , etc.

  • AROS (Score:3, Informative)

    by POds ( 241854 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @12:21PM (#11408882) Homepage Journal
    Again it seems like its time to mention AROS [aros.org]. Its Amiga like, it has less features, less applications, it looks bloody similar, but, its open source. I feel if the future of Amiga lovers lies anywhere, it'll be here. It wont happen over night, but it will happen (if there is an amiga future).

  • Amiga was great - back in 1985 (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @12:28PM (#11408964) Homepage
    Its now 20 years on. Theres little point trying to relive the past because its never as good as you remember and thats all this company is trying to do. AmigaOS is vapourware more or less and besides, the good thing about the Amiga was its hardware, the OS was pretty much an irrelevance other than as a boot loader for the apps. Hardware these days is so far beyond the hardware of 1985 its not even funny. Whats the point?
  • The following line from the article caught my eye:

    "Wireless PCI cards using the Prism chipset are supported thanks to an OS4 driver ported over from Linux."

    If they did a direct port of the code, surely that would be a GPL violation? The Linux driver would be under the GPL and therefore they would be forced to either take it out again or license OS4 as GPL.

    Of course if they just used the Linux driver to reverse-engineer the workings of a Prism card, that would be acceptable - but the article sounds like

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Why would they have to license the entire OS under the GPL because the shipped a GPL'd driver with it?

      Oh, they wouldn't. They'd just have to release the code that they added to the driver.

      • As someone already posted.. the microkernel issue might change this, but a monolithic kernel can't just use a GPL'd driver, because the GPL does NOT allow linking with closed source application.

        You are not allowed to use a GPL'd library as part of a closed source application even if you open up your changes to the library.

        You are however allowed to ship GPL'd software together with your closed source OS (like Apple does), as long as all the applications are seperate entities. (Although Apple also releases

  • Amiga PDA (Score:3, Insightful)

    by greywire ( 78262 ) on Wednesday January 19, 2005 @02:18PM (#11410356) Homepage
    It was touched upon in the article, but I think they are really missing the boat on resurecting the Amiga (and have been for years). It would be nearly impossible for Amiga PC's to compete today. They need to go where the AmigaOS, in today's hardware market, could shine: PDA's. With modern Coldfire processors (very fast 68k compatible, low power, embeded cpus) you could easily build a PDA that would run AmigaOS screamingly fast.

    Even better, if they could make a custom graphics chip that could emulate AGA and maybe add some new features, this PDA could double as a great game machine (and you have all the old amiga games to run on it). There's two markets right there.

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