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Author Topic: About the Amiga Unix Distro  (Read 20289 times)

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Offline Pentad

Re: About the Amiga Unix Distro
« on: April 08, 2011, 08:41:14 PM »
Quote from: olsen;630193

Sadly, all of this came to an end very quickly when Commodore realized that such a great product must be killed at all cost....
...Truth be told, Amiga Unix is hard to use today. There is no DHCP support, for example and no ssh. And because the kernel was last updated around 1991, you're stuck with plenty of buggy and functionally restricted code, the X11R4 is both old and buggy (it leaks memory), the 'C' compiler is positively ancient and you probably won't find a single configure script that still works. In a way, Amiga Unix is frozen in time like some fly stuck in amber :(


Olsen,

That was a great overview!   I could not agree more with your statement "must be killed at all cost".  It was a great product at a great price so naturally Commodore rushed to destroy it.

I didn't realize that it didn't support DHCP but I assumed SSH was not there.  It is a real shame since it was such a great product.

I would like add to Olsen's great overview:

The documentation was just grand.  It had lots of books, a poster, and was written entirely in AMIX.  They even put that in the beginning of the book to show how powerful it was.

For those that don't remember, getting a real UNIX based workstation was very expensive.  The Amiga 3000 UX was used and sold to many CS students at the time because it was so good for such a low price.

I installed AMIX on my 3000 when I was in college and people were shocked that you could dual boot so easily with such a machine.  It really was quite amazing.  I did not have a network connection so I couldn't put it on the network.

SUN wanted to sell Amiga 3000s as their low-end entry into SUN Workstations which would have really boosted Commodore and the name.  Of course, Commodore made sure the deal fell through.

Atari also put out a UNIX based ST (TT030 Unix) because of the 3000UX.  Though I've never seen the TT030 Unix.

It's hard to think of what could have been...

-P
Linux User (Arch & OpenSUSE TW) - WinUAE via WINE
 

Offline Pentad

Re: About the Amiga Unix Distro
« Reply #1 on: May 12, 2011, 01:22:17 PM »
I thought I would add an interesting story about Amix...

Do you folks remember the brochures for the Amiga 3000UX?  You can view a page here:
http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/adverts/unix/page5.jpg

I tracked down a few of the professors in this advert to ask about the Amiga 3000UX in their programs, the demise of Commodore, and looking back what did they think.

The replies I received were almost all like this:

-The Amiga 3000UX and Amix were amazing compared to to competition in terms of speed, price, and support.  Commodore had that on-site support deal going on during this time

-The students and faculty really loved the machines.  The ability to 'dual boot' was a very a real novelty at the time and offered great flexibility for all involved.

-In the end, it was a disaster for all involved.   Why?   Well, each university made it mandatory for a student to buy this computer (ie parents).  This isn't new or out-of-the-ordinary, however, it puts great pressure on the university to support this computer for the life of the student.

When Commodore killed the Amix platform and then went bankrupt, it caused utter panic for these organizations.  Parents used the argument "Hey you told us we HAD to buy THIS computer for our son/daughter for your program so you better damn well support it."

The guy from Lowell told me that they made it mandatory that each student buy a fully loaded Amiga 3000 UX with 18 meg of ram (16/2).  That was quite an investment by students and parents not too mention the additional price of software and a printer.  I'm trying to remember what he listed for software but I think it was a WP like Excellence! and a few others...I can't remember.

Some students were planning on doing their BA, MA, and PhD so their computer had to last 6-ish years.  When Commodore/Amix died, then you had a mix of students that the university had to support which became a bigger headache.

One of the people in the brochure told me that it became so bad that as students graduated the university offered to buy back their Amiga 3000UX for twice as much as the student paid for it.  That is how desperate they were for replacement parts.

In the end, almost all said that it was a solid platform and performed flawlessly but the sinking of Commodore was a disaster for everyone.

Cheers!
-P
« Last Edit: May 12, 2011, 01:25:27 PM by Pentad »
Linux User (Arch & OpenSUSE TW) - WinUAE via WINE