How about creating a Open AMIGA Consortium?

[biggun]

Hello,

In the Amiga community there are still several driving forces
that are interested in developing and advancing the Amiga.

For example in the area of the Classic Amiga I see:
* The developers of the MiniMig
  Minimig is a great solution for A500 replacement.
* The Clone-A
  I think the Clone-A will be a A500 replacement as well.
* The Natami
  Natami as AGA successor. Focus of the NATAMI is AMIGA compatible as an A4000, but with more performance and enhancement like truecoler, 3D etc. And the Natami offer a CPU upgrade path.
* Elbox Dragon
  The Dragon is valuable CPU upgrade path (Coldfire).
  If the Dragon would be standalone with AGA included this would be a even nicer device.


I think that there is a lot of potential for these developers to cooperate.
The Natami team for example could lent AGA know-how to Elbox . Another very good idea would be to agree on a common enhancement standard.

I think it would be clever if the leading Amiga designers and developers would combine their brains and agree on a common chipset for the future Amiga.

For example: The Natami will include a "Pamela" (SuperPaula) Audio chip with more channels and more enhanced features.
The same audio enhancements could be loaded into the Minimig . This would allow to have a common Amiga nativa audio design. So applications using the new audio features could run good on all comming Amiga HW designs.


The key for success of the PC was that there was a open design. Any PC manufacturer could build a "compatible" PC.
I believe that it would be very clever to do the same now for the AMIGA.

Together we could create and specify a next generation classic AMIGA platform. I think its good that there are several people still interested in developing AMIGAs.
It would be a big advantage for the community if these designs help each other and guarantee that enhancements are compatibility to each other.

What is your opinion to this?

Does it make sense to create a AMIGA HW Consortium?
It think we should put the best brains together!

[Piru]

Elbox opening anything up? Forget it.

Coldfire as a CPU upgrade path hasn't proven to be very valuable so far.

Other than that, sure co-operation is always nice thing to have. Not sure if it requires any "consortiom" however. Perhaps some loose setting with common single forum, irc channels etc?

Regarding compatibility: There already are several competing different solutions, each with slightly different approach. This gives them different bugs and slightly different behaviour. One thing that could be provided would be some sort of "acid test" to try to reveal bugs in the implementations. Then it would be easier to pinpoint and fix these bugs. There should probably be multiple tests, at least: cpu, blitter, copper, audio, cia (timers).

I'd think the priority should be in fixing the OCS implementation first, before trying to introduce ECS or AGA, or future extensions.

[djbase]

Didn't we had something like in the past without any success?

[Minuous]

Yes, the ICOA (Industry Council Open Amiga).

[bloodline]

Minuous wrote:
Yes, the ICOA (Industry Council Open Amiga).

Yes and I tried to put together an "OpenAMiGA" spec, back in 2003-2004... with the idea of delivering a base specification of compatibility between the AmigaOS clones... no one was very interested and the idea fizzled out.

[biggun]

Yes and I tried to put together an "OpenAMiGA" spec, back in 2003-2004... with the idea of delivering a base specification of compatibility between the AmigaOS clones... no one was very interested and the idea fizzled out.

The idea is still good and the situation did change now.


In 2003 there was no new working classic HW available, was it?

This has changed.
There is the MiniMig, and Natami is working too.
We have AGA and even much more powerful now.


Today its not talking only but we can give parties something.
I believe its a big WIN for Elbox to join
as they could for example get AGA from it.


Cheers

[djbase]

Wasn't the Phoenix Consortium something similar too?

[kreciu]

For me the IDEA is good. All people who do somethink for Amiga  (and us ) should have ONE plan for development.

There is no need for "duplicates" especially when couple people is working on particular think for years...

After a while we have situations like Spider vs. Poseidon. And WHO IS LOOSER... WE ARE. Some one is angry with someone... no COOPERATION. (put here also Amiga Inc. vs. Hyperion or ... )

Divisions are destructive.

Cooperation should also include the people who work on software. e.g. Please tell me why for Amiga we need 2 or free Web browsers? If authors of this browsers would work together... I would have functional web browser for A600/2mb (sure that I'm jocking... we don't need web browser for A600 for sure, but who know what good programing can do ).

Divisions are destructive.

 :-(

Ps. And yes I know there are different people and different characters.

[Hans_]

biggun wrote:

Yes and I tried to put together an "OpenAMiGA" spec, back in 2003-2004... with the idea of delivering a base specification of compatibility between the AmigaOS clones... no one was very interested and the idea fizzled out.

The idea is still good and the situation did change now.


In 2003 there was no new working classic HW available, was it?

This has changed.
There is the MiniMig, and Natami is working too.
We have AGA and even much more powerful now.

IIRC, Bloodline's idea was a common spec for classic and NG Amiga OSes, not just 68k Amigas. Having a common set of libraries would make writing software that works on all systems much easier.

If Bloodline is talking about the attempt that I remember, most feedback was negative, suggesting that the standard was pretty arbitrary (or something like that), unnecessary, etc.

Hans

[Hattig]

It would be good to keep future FPGA Amigas following a common specification path, yes.

I think previous efforts failed because they were all talk and no action.

[bloodline]

Hans_ wrote:

biggun wrote:

Yes and I tried to put together an "OpenAMiGA" spec, back in 2003-2004... with the idea of delivering a base specification of compatibility between the AmigaOS clones... no one was very interested and the idea fizzled out.

The idea is still good and the situation did change now.


In 2003 there was no new working classic HW available, was it?

This has changed.
There is the MiniMig, and Natami is working too.
We have AGA and even much more powerful now.

IIRC, Bloodline's idea was a common spec for classic and NG Amiga OSes, not just 68k Amigas. Having a common set of libraries would make writing software that works on all systems much easier.

If Bloodline is talking about the attempt that I remember, most feedback was negative, suggesting that the standard was pretty arbitrary (or something like that), unnecessary, etc.

Hans

Yup, the very same.

I still have all the specs somewhere... things like exec.library 39.x... MUI 3.8... AHI x.x (something)... cgfx.library x.x (again something)... the idea that all systems would deliver API's compatible with that minimum spec...

I still think it's a good idea... :-)

-Edit- Thinking about it, it was less of a spec and more of an Audit of the commonality of the available Amiga clone systems...

[AJCopland]

I like the sound of the idea. Dunno how practical it would be.

[persia]

I don't thing NatAmi or Clone-A will be open source.  Thy appear to be in competition with on another.  Also the fols at KMOS still have an excusive lease on the name Amiga, at least in computer usage, they certain don't have control over Spanish speaking love lives...

[A6000]

Could the community agree on an alternative name for all amiga clones which everyone will know, or come to know means, amiga compatible?
We also need a reverse engineered operating system.
Then we can forget amiga inc.

[bloodline]

A6000 wrote:
Could the community agree on an alternative name for all amiga clones which everyone will know, or come to know means, amiga compatible?

What's wrong with MiniMig, NetAmi and CloneA?

We also need a reverse engineered operating system.

We already have one... AROS...

Then we can forget amiga inc.

We already can. I already do.