So were the Morph OS folks wrong all along?

[kolla]

What linux do you run on your 1200's btw?
I know there's a 68K Debian.

My own Gentoo.

[XDelusion]

Unless you work with the media related aspects of the Amiga, such as graphics, animation, programming, musick, etc. Then you will probably be more likely to say that Amiga consists of the software.

Once you begin creating things on the Amiga, and compare that experience with creation on another kind of Computer, you'll feel the difference instantly! Also UAE can not pull off OctaMED Sound Studio correctly, and it sounds like it never will. Again, hardware is where it is at, though...


I love the idea of taking the Software side of Amiga and bringing it to modern, more powerful hardware to take advantage of those aspects of Amiga that did not rely upon the custom chip set to execute.

In short, Amiga is the sum of it's parts. MorphOS is a parcel of those parts, as is OS 4. Provide them with the Custom Chips, and they become a full fledged Amiga, with them chips, they remain a brilliant shadow of what was.

On that note, wouldn't it be cool if we could buy the Amiga Chipset on a PCI card to install into our towers...

[takemehomegrandma]

Does the name matter?

If you are to sell to the general consumer mass market "a gaming device in a joystick that connects directly to your TV, bundled with a collection of the most popular and well known Amiga games there was", then YES!

If you are going to sell to a bunch of ~200 tech nerds "an insanely overpriced piece of unproven HW with 2007 level performance and features nobody really needs, wants and even knows what it is for, bundled with an incomplete, feature lacking and rather unstable take on what Amiga OS was about", then NO!

The Amiga name could mean a world of difference for a commercial success of Jens Schönfeld's "Clone-A". But it won't mean a thing for the Frieden brothers "OS4" (there is neither a market nor a need for that "product", and no brand name can change that).

What makes a machine amiga?

Ben Hermans saying so?

Is anything post CBM amiga?

No not really, no...

Those who aren't Amiga retro fans has either left or moved on to MorphOS, AROS or OS4.

But I see there are coming a lot of new, exciting Amiga products now? "Amiga, Inc. is introducing a new family of consumer electronics to include cell phones, Android tablets, laptop computers, all-in-one PCs, televisions, 3D televisions, and PCTVs (televisions with built in computers)."

Could be interesting, depending on what it is. Nobody really needs Rouge's idea of what an Amiga is or should be (with .so objects and all) in order to think that an Amiga product could be interesting. It doesn't have to be about tech at that kind of detailed level (consumers couldn't care less about s:user-startup, ram-disks and assigns, but the user interface is very important, so are available apps and level of usability), but more about brand values. If Amiga can come up with Amiga branded Android 3.0 products that matches the broad masses of consumers' view of "what was Amiga about", then they can have a potential hit. If anyone still remembers the Amiga brand, that is. I have a feeling that the Commodore brand is much stronger rooted...

[EvilGuy]

But they've got Amiga badges. And they're authorized by the IP holder.

Pfft, as if that matters. Amiga is only ever an A1000, 256k RAM and kickstart on floppy.

[Khephren]

I dunno, when I was younger, the Amiga was all about the custom chips. As a classic user now, it's all about bypassing them  Even the Demo scene rarely uses hardware tricks anymore.

To me now, it's more about the OS, and what I want to run. So An Amiga to me is an AmigaOS that functions in the way I expect, runs my Amiga software, and is the primary OS. Not a glove puppet running under another OS. The number of times I've had windows make UAE stutter, crash, or pop a windows anivirus window is untrue.

[thedocbwarren]

You know what, that's sad.  Coming from the Atari perspective, what makes these machine so much to love is what they are.  To me ( a new Amiga owner) I believe you are not an Amiga unless it's a classic system.  I've written assembler on 68K for years on old ST systems and frankly the 68060 or PPC systems running something that can run the software is an emulator.

I beleive these machines have their place in history.  The Amiga is the greatest 16-bit machine ever made.  32-bit, well, debatable.  The custom chips is what makes these system the cat's meow.  They beat the odds, and blasted limits.  That's the Amiga.  MorphOS is nothing more than an alternative OS.  I can run it on my Mac G4.  That not an Amiga make.

[kolla]

I've written assembler on 68K for years on old ST systems and frankly the 68060 or PPC systems running something that can run the software is an emulator.

Hm, what? The 68060 is a 68k.

The Amiga is the greatest 16-bit machine ever made.

What 16bit Amiga?

[RepoOne]

Although I haven't been into Amiga for very long, I feel that what makes an Amiga an Amiga is the OS, the software, and to an extent, the custom chips.

I am of the opinion that it doesn't matter if custom chips are real or emulated, as long as they are present in some (perhaps virtual) form.

The OS needs a few features for me to consider it "Amiga", such as screen dragging and the ability to run 68k software. If something can run apps for the classic Amigas seamlessly, I am willing to call that thing an Amiga. If one can code 68k programs that bang the hardware on it and run them successfully, that, to me, is Amiga.

I don't care if it is PowerPC, x86, ARM, or anything else. If it can run classic Amiga apps and pretend to be 68k, that works for me.

However, an emulator running in an operating system doesn't really seem like Amiga to me. It needs to be seamless. Amithlon was a good example of this, I would consider it Amiga.

But then again, I'm new to the Amiga, so I don't really know that much.

[thedocbwarren]

Hm, what? The 68060 is a 68k.

What 16bit Amiga?

It is, true, but I guess to clarify, modded boxes with new graphics cars and gutted machines are not (in my opinion) Amigas, Ataris, etc.

Um, 16-bit Amiga as is 1000, 500, 600.  Those are ground breaking.  1000 was the created 68000-based system ever.  500 changed it again.

I'd argue high-end, Apple is better (maybe when you talk price for performance I suppose.)  I'd argue Atari has some power past the orginal 520/1040s somewhat.  But who cares.

[mechy]

It is, true, but I guess to clarify, modded boxes with new graphics cars and gutted machines are not (in my opinion) Amigas, Ataris, etc.

Um, 16-bit Amiga as is 1000, 500, 600.  Those are ground breaking.  1000 was the created 68000-based system ever.  500 changed it again.

I'd argue high-end, Apple is better (maybe when you talk price for performance I suppose.)  I'd argue Atari has some power past the original 520/1040s somewhat.  But who cares.

Are you joking? the 1000 was groundbreaking, the 500 was not much different than the 1000( rom and a little more ram in some cases),the 600 was crap(sorry guys,but looking at when it came out, what its intentions were and lack of expandability etc).. the A3000 was groundbreaking. The 3000 was the first machine to be fully 32bit everything, Zorro3 etc.life was starting to get good with the 3000.68000 was ok initially but 030+ was way better. A3000/4000 were intended to be expanded, that's why they had a proper 32bit bus.gfx cards don't disable the custom chips or anything i would say its more a extension in some ways.Back in the day some of us used the amiga for everything daily,and a gfx card helped with alot of apps and such. Not everyone just plays games all the time.
Besides,expanding the hardware with addons was all part of the fun!

I'm not sure what apple you are talking about,but the 060 amiga could emulate a 040 apple faster than a real apple of the day could.

[commodorejohn]

It is, true, but I guess to clarify, modded boxes with new graphics cars and gutted machines are not (in my opinion) Amigas, Ataris, etc.

I dunno...while I kind of agree that taking an Amiga and changing out everything save the OS is kind of missing the point, the Zorro bus standard(s) are just as remarkable as the rest of the machine - the Amiga had a reliable, sane auto-configuring expansion bus ten years before the other platforms adopted PCI, and you've got to respect that.

[Iggy]

I can't think of a single hardware feature of the original Amigas I would retain outside of the OS.
Everything used to build NG based systems today is so much more capable that arguing for custom chipsets is pointless.
Everything evolves. Well almost everything. The Amiga chipset barely changed as the models progressed. What started out as a remarkable symphony of a very capable processor and well matched chipset became a mess with processors many times more capable and a chipset that was only slightly better than the first model.

[Belial6]

So, riddle me this.  What is so 'custom' about the 'custom' chipsets.  It seems to me that they were more 'proprietary' than anything else.  It seems that the only reason that they were called 'custom' was because the were not general purpose cpus, but chips designed around their task.

If that is the reason for them being called 'custom', then every PC in my house has 'custom' chipsets made by nVidia, Intel, or AMD.

[RepoOne]

I think that in considering "what is Amiga", we should consider where Commodore would have gone with the Amiga brand if they were still around today. Odds are, they would not have stayed with the custom chipsets all the way to 2011, but would still have retained compatibility with them. 68k would probably have been abandoned, and new Amigas would probably run on PowerPC or common x86 hardware.

[commodorejohn]

So, riddle me this.  What is so 'custom' about the 'custom' chipsets.  It seems to me that they were more 'proprietary' than anything else.  It seems that the only reason that they were called 'custom' was because the were not general purpose cpus, but chips designed around their task.

If that is the reason for them being called 'custom', then every PC in my house has 'custom' chipsets made by nVidia, Intel, or AMD.

They're "custom" because they're specific to the Amiga system architecture. Outside of the CPU and a couple support chips like the CIAs, the Amiga chips are components of a tightly-integrated whole, found in no other computer or console architecture. Intel and other generic PC chipsets aren't like that at all - they're simply prefab conglomerations of what's come to be standard PC hardware, with occasional minor differences from each other.

I think that in considering "what is Amiga", we should consider where Commodore would have gone with the Amiga brand if they were still around today.

I think we should not. Whether you're all about custom chipsets or all about the software, Commodore quite evidently had no idea what the hell they wanted to do with the Amiga, let alone what Amiga users wanted.

[Belial6]

So, if Commodore had licensed them out to be graphics chips on other systems, the Amiga wouldn't have been as good?  It sounds like you value the Amiga more for what it didn't do than what it did.