Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: davide405 on June 11, 2005, 04:25:33 AM
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Y'all (note second person plural) are probably sick and tired of self-important n00bs coming along every few months asking the same old tired questions...
Nevertheless:
In light of recent developements with Apple/Macintosh, specifically Steve Job's declaration that the OS is the soul of Apple:
What made Amiga "Amiga?" Was it hardware, software, OS, or something entirely different?
Now that Apple has gone over to Intel, quashing any hope of further development of the PPC line for desktop computers, what is the point of hoping for further development of "Amiga" hardware? Or is "Amiga" hardware not even relevant to this question.
If Amiga is just another competing OS, what the H*ll is the holdup?
Again, with utmost humility, I recognize these questions have probably been asked before. Please point me to the forum/thread where it was all hashed out.
Thank you (in advance) for gentleness in your replies.
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Wait... I had my copy of "Existentialism for Dummies" around here somewhere.
I think it what made the Amiga an Amiga was/were the qualities and uniqueness of both it's hardware and software. No machine is perfect, but the fact that it was so awe inspiring when it first came out caused alot of us to stop and ponder and be a lot more creative than we might have been otherwise.
The new Amigas aren't "real Amigas" per se (flamebait) but a "re-telling" of the Amiga's design goals on radically different hardware and software.
My two cents...
-G
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I agree totally............An Amiga is definitely the hardware and the software that acted as ONE..............This will never happen again. The AmigaONE is NOT an Amiga.............its more of a Virtual Amiga..nevertheless, OS4 is very very Amiga...........................and I will tell you what...........if Amiga OS was ported to Intel chips.............it would still be ten times better than Windows on intel chips....and I dont mean featurewise..............I mean the way it works and its beautiful integration................if it had to be ported to x86.....I would highly prefer it would be done on AMD processors and NOT intel.
Anyway...........I hope they keep it on PPC or port it to Cell or even better...to Million dollar Super Computer chips.......and do what Sony did.......lose money on the hardware.and recieve the money back through software (and please no stupid comments on how this could never be...cuz it definitely can in the right hands and proper marketing)
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Glitch nails it.
Additionally, I think that the secret ingredient in the impact of the classic Amiga was the accessibility (price point) of the hardware. The "re-telling" is missing this chapter, but perhaps it has to at this point.
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The Mac gradually stopped being a Mac. It started to
stop being a Mac when Apple changed from their own Apple chips to using off the shelf stuff created by others.
Jobs' adoption of BSD unix as Mach as NeXT as Mac OSX (why not just call it Mach OS?) was a silent admission that the Mac OS was fundamentally so flawed that Apple simply didn't have the resources to try to correct it's design flaws while retaining some level of compatibility that wouldn't drag it down to being an even slower OS. You can only have so many workarounds before things slow down. And the Mac's so-called OS was heavy on the cute, while being weak on substance.
So what is The Amiga?
The Amiga is a specific set of unique hardware features accessed by specific adddresses, supported by an OS that was specifically written to exploit the novel Amiga hardware so as to reduce the amount of cycles and code required.
Some of those features include real hardware sprites whose resolution was independent of the sreen bitmap resolution. They also include dual playfields, genlocking, and PAL/NTSC compatibility.
There is a tape of Jeff Schindler admitting that the whole myth of "the Amiga needs to stop being proprietary and use generic chipsets" was a cover story to mask the fact that during the many years of legal wrangling and sales, that the Amiga's custom chip schemas were lost. Someday, when the legal risks fade, that tape will be made public to the Amiga community.
Few people this side of Jeri Ellsworth have the gravitas to reverse engineer the Amiga chipset so as to both extend the capabilities while retaining compatibility (it really only needs a custom MMU to redirect old address accesses to new audio/videographic hardware- something Bill Buck was quietly considering in the VIScorp days.
There's a middle road where basic Amiga features could be implemented in hardware designed to merge with existing AGP and PCI cards. Not that it would be trivially easy-- since AGP and PCI et al haven't got a clue about Amiga design or timings.
Collision detection (video) would be difficult to implement, but they are very handy. We would both have access to certain newer video cards while retaining the features that make the Amiga different from other computers.
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>The new Amigas aren't "real Amigas" per se
Glitch is correct.
And now with this devastating news from Apple, we have an opportunity to rethink the path we've been taking for some years.
Has it gotten us anywhere?
Do we have new Amigas that we can use?
Are they devastatingly advanced? Or even just clever?
Are they impressing people enough to make them consider switching?
Are they even on par with the so-called Macs out there?
Nope. We need to suck up to people like Richard Branson, to get a lot of cash and hire people like Jeri Ellsworth, Joe Torre, Dale Luck, Dave Needle, etc.
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Oh, and I forgot one thing... the "New Amiga Smell®".
:lol:
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Amiga is the experience and the genius that created that experience for each of us. I doubt that any of us will experience anything similar again from a computer or an OS, because nothing will compare to our first encounters with the Amiga and nothing will come along that is such a quantum leap above what we already have like the Amiga was compared to the PC and even the Apple at the time it came out.
I think that computer hardware has far outpaced the software development at this point in time. We need better software that makes our lives easier and more enjoyable, not faster hardware to run what has already been written a little quicker. I would be perfectly happy with an Amiga OS 5 written to a ROM which could be installed in an existing Power Mac Dual 2.7 G5 that had a program available that could control my house appliances, lights, security and other electronics with voice recognition and of course do all the other expected computer tasks.
What I wish would return is all the creative people and energy that was inspired by the Amiga during the first 10 years.
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To me the most important thing about the Amiga is it's community, ie the users.
I have never met a nicer bunch of people than Amiga (or former Amiga) users. I still have very close personal friends from my Amiga days whom I met through running my BBS.
Also the feeling that you had the best machine, no matter what others said, the miggy could do it too and always even better. And I always won the argument! I could drag windows smoothly, I could have high colour pictures, I could play animations etc. etc.
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Email me and I'll send you something that explains exactly what Amiga is and is about. :-)
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You could just post it here...
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naaaa . . . he can't.
Otherwise he would kill all us then. Naaaa . . . i prefer to live ;-)
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It's either Doomy or someone trying to sell you viagra! Wait, is there such thing as military spec viagra? HELLO!!
:lol:
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Ja, it sounds like someone playing funny buggers
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glitch wrote:
Wait, is there such thing as military spec viagra? HELLO!!
Of course. It gives you a ceramic-hard purple top...
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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Ooooooooh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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The Amiga was(and was designed as) a kick ass console, that Commodore decided to include a keyboard and mouse to, that ran cutting edge games for the time. The OS, although very cool, was secondary. When most people think of the Amiga they think of the cool games they played, and dabbling with cool creative graphical and musical software which often hardly touched the OS.
You also have to remember that most Amiga owners never saw a beefed up Amiga, seeing Amigas mostly as A500s, and only got as far as floppies, thus they may not have had that high an impression of the OS. We seem to have forgotten that as we've kept the faith all these years. It was mostly the incredible games and demos people remember that made computing exciting. Computing has not been exciting since. IMHO the appreciation for the OS came much later when the hardware didn't advance, and the PC took over, yet you could surprisingly still do cool stuff on the AmigaOS.
We will never have cutting edge games again as we will never have the cutting edge hardware ever again or for that matter, backing from major games companies. That is unless there is a special deal with Sony or something. I'm still excited though.
The mA1 hardware is adequate, but something like CELL on it will give it the potential to be what the Amiga was before. Kick Ass. A PPC Cell chip even on an mA1, would get the Amiga hardware into the ball park of its competitors, instead of woefully behind. The Cell chip, is a custom component, that reminds one of the Amiga Custom chips. Surely, with all the add-ons in the classic Amiga market someone could figure out a way to pop one on an A1. A stack of mA1s could become a rendering farmer's dream. With the PS3 coming out in 2006, we can't hope to have an A1 equipped with one, sooner than that. But then, I doubt OS4 will be ready by then anyway.
Amiga is very much about its community of braggarts. ;-)
We need something to brag about with religous zeal, and the A1 hardware as it stands now gives us nothing, except to say.... "see how good our OS is even though it runs on out of date hardware". Well, it's gotta be better than running Win95 on a P4.
What the Amiga isn't, is AROS or UAE. It's a combination of Amiga(Tm) hardware and Amiga(Tm) software that makes an Amiga. The Amiga is a computer in the same way a Macintosh is. If AmigaOS was an 'also ran' on PCs it would die immediately, probably through piracy. Ironically, Amiga was practically synonymous with piracy in it's heyday. We need to change that this time around and support the devs, because the Amiga is really just clinging on for dear life right now.
Ok. Going back to my happy place now. (http://64.33.47.100/images/a1000anim.gif)
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Y'all (note second person plural) are probably sick and tired of self-important n00bs coming along every few months asking the same old tired questions...
We need all the n00bs we can get. :-D Ask away.
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@BigBenAussie
I don't agree that Jay Miner only intended the Amiga to be a game console and that Commodore added the keyboard as an afterthought. Jay did say on one occasion something like that he was amazed at what the Amiga community & developers had created with and/or on his Amiga. I don't think he realized the full extent of what he had given us in the very beginning.
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What made Amiga "Amiga?" Was it hardware, software, OS, or something entirely different?
I think it was timing, Amiga stepped into the scene right when people (like me) wanted a bit more than what the 8bit systems had on offer.
Amiga delivered, and then some. With its custom chipset it was able to leap at least a generation and a half ahead, showing us not only what the 16bit era had to offer, but also a glimpse at what the 32bit generation might hold.
I liked that you could just slot in a floppy and the machine would boot the game, no more typing in LOAD"*",8 for a start.
To be honest, most A500 owners probably never spent much time using workbench so I dont count that as a huge factor in forming Amiga impressions, if anything WB1.X was a bit bland. Amiga was all about the eyecandy, at a time when 4bit Gfx were the norm.
For me, I doubt there will ever be that kind of perceived generational leap again. I went from the C64 to the Amiga back when I was 16, quite simply that cant happen again. I'm no longer that impressionalble young person for a start and I dont own a tardis.
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>The Amiga was(and was designed as) a kick ass console, that Commodore decided to
> include a keyboard and mouse to, that ran cutting edge games for the time. The OS,
>although very cool, was secondary.
I'm sorry this is not only incorrect, it has chronology issues. The fact is, the Amiga was always designed to be a comprehensive full-featured system. Both OS, interfaces and keyboard were planned for long before CBM saved Hi-Toro (later Amiga) from Atari's loan game.
The venture capitalists (dentists and doctors) were told they were bankrolling a games console because that's what was hot at the time. But when you flipped the whiteboard, the rest of the diagram was there. the team always had plans that this would be a full featured system.
>We will never have cutting edge games again as we will never have the cutting edge hardware
Negative think will get you everywhere. And win you many friends. ;-)
>The Cell chip, is a custom component, that reminds one of the Amiga Custom chips
Not really. The Amiga needs to get back it's cool features, and they need to be done right.
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What the Amiga isn't, is AROS or UAE.
It is for me... we can't both be right...
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EyeAm wrote:
Email me and I'll send you something that explains exactly what Amiga is and is about. :-)
Let me guess 64-bit exokernel? :lol:
See what happens when ANN is down, this is going to be amusing...
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BigBenAussie wrote:
The Amiga was(and was designed as) a kick ass console, that Commodore decided to include a keyboard and mouse to, that ran cutting edge games for the time. The OS, although very cool, was secondary. When most people think of the Amiga they think of the cool games they played, and dabbling with cool creative graphical and musical software which often hardly touched the OS.
You also have to remember that most Amiga owners never saw a beefed up Amiga, seeing Amigas mostly as A500s, and only got as far as floppies, thus they may not have had that high an impression of the OS. We seem to have forgotten that as we've kept the faith all these years. It was mostly the incredible games and demos people remember that made computing exciting. Computing has not been exciting since.
Agreed, my "Amiga"-test would be a couple of favorite games, DPaint, Protracker and Say. Because thats what everybody remmebers.
IMHO the appreciation for the OS came much later when the hardware didn't advance, and the PC took over, yet you could surprisingly still do cool stuff on the AmigaOS.
MacOS X does it better, so did BeOS.
And with XP there finally is a stable Windows.
Linux-distros and BSD-variants are gratis and free.
We will never have cutting edge games again as we will never have the cutting edge hardware ever again or for that matter, backing from major games companies. That is unless there is a special deal with Sony or something.
Never is a long time.....
But whats needed is cash and nobody seems to be able to bring that home. Not since Petro retired.
Retro is in so why isn´t there an A500 DTV?
And why not do the same with the Amiga brand that Sony did with the Walkman-brand? Where is the Amiga-phone?(Preferably something better than Ngage or Gizmondo, maybe a Samsung)
I'm still excited though.
Whatever for???
The mA1 hardware is adequate,
G3? 800Mhz? Today? To be adequate today atleast a 1Ghz+ G4 is needed not to mention that 256MB Ram is minimum today... Look at Apple, are they selling any G3s today...
but something like CELL on it will give it the potential to be what the Amiga was before. Kick Ass. A PPC Cell chip even on an mA1, would get the Amiga hardware into the ball park of its competitors, instead of woefully behind. The Cell chip, is a custom component, that reminds one of the Amiga Custom chips. Surely, with all the add-ons in the classic Amiga market someone could figure out a way to pop one on an A1. A stack of mA1s could become a rendering farmer's dream. With the PS3 coming out in 2006, we can't hope to have an A1 equipped with one, sooner than that. But then, I doubt OS4 will be ready by then anyway.
Amiga is very much about its community of braggarts. ;-)
We need something to brag about with religous zeal, and the A1 hardware as it stands now gives us nothing, except to say.... "see how good our OS is even though it runs on out of date hardware". Well, it's gotta be better than running Win95 on a P4.
Cell? Maybe...
IF we get several of them!( So what if it´s multicore, so are both Intel, AMD and Freescale CPUs gonna be in the future)
A500(custom chips), Atari Falcon(DSP) and BeBox(multi-cpu) has been the truly cool computers the last years. So what makes a computer cool(in both ways) apparently is offloading the CPU as much as possible.
One crazy idea I have had since I got my first amiga is to turn the idea of custom chips around and use the same processor for both CPU and "custom chips". Maybe thats possible with Cell?
But the way I see it the target is kids. Why are we here?
Because most of use played games and played around with Dpaint when we where between 5-16 years old.
So target the kids, our main enemy is Nintendo with Gameboy DS and the cellphones.
The second target is schools and team up with TI(they are only do worlds best calculator after all.)
So the first product should be "My first Amiga"-educational game console/computer, rugged e-book, rugged tablet, in-car enertainment system, handheld game/pda, and "My first Amiga-phone". Low-end single Cell-cpu or ARM+DSP based.
The important thing is getting the kids hooked on the Amiga-GUI and name.
What the Amiga isn't, is AROS or UAE. It's a combination of Amiga(Tm) hardware and Amiga(Tm) software that makes an Amiga.
Funny one has the goal to imitate Amiga-hardware and the other to imitate the software(OS). It must be the (Tm);-)
The Amiga is a computer in the same way a Macintosh is.
[/url]You mean a 3,6Ghz P4? (http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000740046045/#comments)
If AmigaOS was an 'also ran' on PCs it would die immediately, probably through piracy. Ironically, Amiga was practically synonymous with piracy in it's heyday.
Piracy isn´t what killed Amiga, outdated hardware was.Remmeber Commodore sold hardware not software(ok, Amigavision but what else?). Has piracy killed the pc? Hell no, besides piracy is a sign of success.
We need to change that this time around and support the devs, because the Amiga is really just clinging on for dear life right now.
"We" can´t really finance development of a kick-ass computer, looking at it from realstic p.o.v other sources of income and captial must be found.
(A totally optimist calculation: Say 5000 buyers and 1000€ in profit per board/computer thats five million Euro. Less than the large players marketing budgets..., not to mention that you start with much less to get those first 5000 buyers.)
Ok. Going back to my happy place now. (http://64.33.47.100/images/a1000anim.gif)
Sure, happy is good.
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"'Never' and 'Forever' are neither for men. You'll be returning again and again."
Fritz Leiber
I like to think that the combination of creative energy and hardware/software integration is not unique to any particular time/manufacturer/place.
Thanks to all (past, present, and future) for your responses to this thread.