Takers - One Woman's Opinion of the Amiga Mini

[Digiman]

Well Cloanto also put zero money into new Amiga hardware or OS development/application projects after pimping their inferior compilation of the FREE WinUAE emulator. C=USA are one of  many such scum as you can see.

I also owned a 1986 PAL A1000...1989 A2000 with 8mb.....1st launch £399 A1200 on release day....1994 A4000+CD32.

Here are 2 simple rules....

1. If it has no Paula chip it is no Amiga.
2. If it can't execute Defender of the Crown natively without any emulator it is not an Amiga system/Amiga OS.

[Digiman]

What's really funny is my £500 PC has better sound and 3D graphics capability than their Amiga Mini :roflmao:

Will they rebadge a $400 24" LCD AIO and call it iAmiga next??

[Digiman]

Obviously closer to my own sentiment, except I'm no longer that fixated on the name.


[/I]


You don't seriously think a modern Amiga would contain a Paula chip do you? That's as unlikely as a new 68K processor.
While I admire the persistence of the Natami team and really like the replay board, neither of these projects is going to take the place of a modern computer.
An new Amiga, at least in my mind, would be better built on something similar to what's going into today's gaming consoles (with,ob viously more memory and expansion).

But then again, there we go with the opinions.

One thing I think most of us agree on, it wouldn't be a PC.

No my whole point is an OS4+PPC based hardware+UAE computer is no more "Amiga" than my AMD PC+Amithlon+OS3.9+UAE setup. Ditto AROS config.

The last REAL Amiga model was CD32 by CBM in 93...it's easy to surmise  that all by saying "has a Paula chip"

Amiga NG title is meaningless and misleading as that overpriced bunch are not Amigas.....just OS4 compatible boxes IMO, and they're made by people who didn't do any hardware and/or OS R&D for either the A1000/2000/3000 or A1200/4000.

[Digiman]

x86 beats PPC hands down for performance, but it's not the only one that does.  Frankly, the endian issue makes x86 and ARM unattractive for running the old software.  Where will new software come from?

I'm watching the Apollo core (formerly N68070) from the NatAmi team.  Its opcode fusion feature will allow old software to gain new performance without recompiling at all.

X86 is the only cheap AND incredibly powerful CPU now. Everything else is either a toy in performance or grossly overpriced alternative really.

What we need is either a port of OS4 to x86 64 and 32bit flavour with multithreading and multiprocessing Kernal. Or Amithlon+++ with the same.

On top of that MANY improvements for modern OS demands.

What is NOT required is support for a million gpu/audio/motherboard combos. Pick a locked hardware reference for one high end x86 setup and one medium spec desktop and ditto for laptop. Stick them in a bespoke case. Works well for Apple because you sell it on no virus/windows rot(registry bloat)/responsiveness etc

[Digiman]

I can understand why people like ppc I suppose, since many legacy apps can be run on it if they are system friendly. Unfortunatly, most amiga games and many apps were never written to be system friendly, so that leaves very few apps that don't require an emulator.

Unfortunately, fpga could be a solution for amiga future but can't really be a solution because os3.x is closed source. Maybe aros 68k will change that.

People can complain about cusa using linux but...

Its got smp, tons of applications, and is much more technically advanced. I don't know the legalities of why they can't advance that idea further and create a workbench like file structure and gui, but apparently they can not do that or risk legal actions, which is a shame. This idea once proposed as annubis. (linux underneath an amiga like os file structure and gui) Me, I think thats a fantastic solution for this whole debacle.

Then you could have an amiga like os on an amiga branded pc that ran all legacy apps beautifully and seamlessly. The amiga look and feel would be preserved, but what if you added a new piece of hardware? (Almost anything these days has linux drivers) It would just work. period. Can't do that on aros, morphos or os4 (and you never will be able to. NEVER)

So maybe COS as much as it was mocked here was just a first step in the right direction. If they finished the job (and were legally allowed to) I think everyone who likes amiga would be incredibly happy with the results.

I don't know what will happen, but its fun watching.
As the boing ball turns...

C= OS isn't even the bare minimum for generic PC motherboard +Linux distro.

I have posted a screenshot of the correct way to mod Linux for Amiga users twice before. C=USA are slackers.

1 Case looks arse (and an off the shelf HTPC case too).
2 OS GUI looks arse (std xubuntu looks better loool)
3 OS is not ideal for purpose (Linux is for tinkerers and the apps are inferior to Win/OSX even if they have an alt).
4 Won't even play 2008/9 Crysis at HD rez with that slow GPU, maybe 2005 Battlefield 2.

Anyway at the very least I would expect an option to purchase a dual boot Windows and Amithlon/OS3.9 setup.

[Digiman]

And the award for "not reading the sentence fully and thus missing the point hilariously" goes to...Middleman!


...wha...? Are you even reading what you're writing? God knows I love old-ass PCs, but seriously, holding up ISA, with its jumper configurations and interrupt conflicts, as an example!? PCI is more like it, but let's take a moment and note that the Amiga had an autoconfiguring expansion bus a decade before PCI came out. And what the hell can't you upgrade in an Amiga? The one irreplacable bottleneck is the actual bus itself, and that's no less true on any PC you care to show me.

But between A1000 and A4000 they made no improvement to the machines A/V until 1991. Improvements like more colours on screen in 320x200, more blitter bandwidth, HAM8. All could have been done before A500+. Sound was never improved, even dual Paula config would have been welcome in AGA.

Commodore failed to realise they were fighting two fronts. Mac+PC for £2000+ and £150 SNES+SEGA and finally. More money was lost to console sales than 486PC Doom £1000 setups, and by 1988/9 there were non x86 computers/consoles with 256 colours vs the A500 using 2.5 year old A1000 chipset for 5 years was a joke! (and a pig ugly case)

(ECS extras were a waste of time for 95% of us and potential buyers)

[Digiman]

(Oh, also, saying the TG16 had 256 colors is a bit of a stretch - it had 16 palettes of 16 colors, not a true 256-color mode.)

Ahh no I was thinking 1987 Acorn Archimedes (256/4096 colours) and the SAM coupe(ZX Spectrum compatible with 256/256 SNES style mode). Unreleased include Commodore 65 and Konix console chipsets. Even if they just made EHB a bit faster it would have helped IMO

@The comment about OS4 x86 via PPC emulator/PPC Amithlon is the short term solution. A full rewrite in pure X86 is needed after (free upgrade). But hell the fastest i7 mb+cpu setup is peanuts compared to SAM 460 mb+cpu.

Is OS4 good enough? Can't say as I never had £1000+ to waste on a slow CPU+mb :roflmao: