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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: barney on May 28, 2009, 05:50:52 AM
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Hello, I have a questions about this AmigaOne system that came out several years back. Is this system 100% Amiga compatible? What exactly is this Amiga One system and how does it differ from a regular Amiga? Thanks. Are they ever going to make the Amiga One again?
Barney
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Originally, AmigaOne was the name of a project for new Amiga hardware, managed by Eyetech and designed by the German company Escena GmbH. The AmigaOne motherboard was to be available in two models, the AmigaOne-1200 and the AmigaOne-4000. It was to have connectors for an optionally attached Amiga A1200 or an A4000 respectively, in order to use the old custom chips of an Amiga. This AmigaOne project was cancelled in 2001, mostly due to the inability to find or design a suitable northbridge chip.
After the Escena design was abandoned, Eyetech sought an alternative solution. The result was that in 2002 they decided to use the Teron CX PowerPC evaluation motherboard for a product named "AmigaOnepointfive" which eventually became the AmigaOne SE. Later, the AmigaOne XE was based on the Teron PX motherboard, followed by the Micro-A1 (also known as ยต-A1), based on the Teron Mini. The Teron is based on IBM's PowerPC Open Platform specification, and uses the U-Boot firmware.
The main difference between the ATX-format AmigaOne SE and XE was that the AmigaOne SE had a soldered-on 600 MHz PowerPC 750CXe processor, whereas the AmigaOne XE used a CPU board attached to a MegArray connector on the motherboard. While the MegArray connector is physically similar to the Apple Power Mac G4 CPU daughtercard connector, it is not electrically compatible. There were G3 and G4 options with a maximum clock frequency of 800 MHz and 933 MHz. The G4 module originally used a Freescale 7451 processor which was later changed to a Freescale 7455, both without level 3 cache. The G4 CPU runs hotter and requires a better heatsink than that supplied on some machines. Consequently, the G4 is often supplied underclocked to run at 800 MHz. The last Teron motherboard used by Eyetech was the Teron Mini, series of motherboards, which were somewhat similar to the Teron PX but made in a Mini-ITX formfactor and with some additions, such as onboard graphics, and a better 750GX CPU. The Micro-A1 was announced in two configurations, under the Micro-A1 I (Industrial) and Micro-A1 C (Consumer) labels. Only the C configuration was produced.
When the AmigaOne boards first became available, OS4 was not ready: they were supplied with various Linux distributions. From April 2004 onwards, boards were shipped with a "developer prerelease" version of OS4.
The full version of OS4 was launched in early 2007 for AmigaOne computers only, with the "Classic PPC" version being released in December 2007. AmigaOS 4.1 for AmigaOne has been released on September 2008.
MAI Logic Inc. went bankrupt, and consequently the supply of a major part for the Eyetech AmigaOnes dried up. Eyetech Group Ltd stopped the production of the MicroA1 due to a lack of bridge chips and supply issues of processors from IBM. In late 2006, Eyetech Group sold its entire remaining stock to Leaman Computing Ltd.
Because the AmigaOne boards were produced in a relatively small quantity (perhaps 1500 or so of all models combined) and are no longer being manufactured, they are now difficult to obtain.
However, the Amiga lives on. The SAM440 mainboard (complete with PPC CPU) is a new board that runs Amiga OS 4.1.
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Does this Amiga OS 4.1 run legacy Amiga software? Is there any modern software made for this OS? I guess I am wondering whether it is worth even owning a machine like this?
Barney
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Does this Amiga OS 4.1 run legacy Amiga software? Is there any modern software made for this OS? I guess I am wondering whether it is worth even owning a machine like this?
For running old games and programs use a PC with WinUAE or buy Amiga Forever from Cloanto with all the classical games from Amiga 500 and 1200. The second option is to buy Sam/OS4 but the old games and programs won't all work with Sam because of speed problems, the CPU 68000 vs PPC and the screen size 640x480 versus current sizes.
Another problem with UAE emulations is the CPU speed with many games from the A500 run too fast, the only solution is to run UAE in PC or MAC very slow. Good luck.
A better option if you only want play the old games with Amiga hardware is to buy a MiniMig. See the ACube web site:
http://www.acube-systems.biz/index.php?page=hardware&pid=3
Hope this helps.
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Does this Amiga OS 4.1 run legacy Amiga software? Is there any modern software made for this OS? I guess I am wondering whether it is worth even owning a machine like this?
Barney
os4depot.net hosts ATM 2328 archives of OS4 related software, nearly all of them are ports of open source software.
Varthall
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That plus the compatibility of a pretty large number of <=OS3.x programs means there's still plenty to do on the new PPC Amigas.
Try taking my AmigaOne out of my hands. You'll fail. :) Specially now we have OWB as such a good browser, and with Flash (Gnash) support coming soon...
Question is, now that consoles are so good, is it worth even owning a machine like a Windows PC? But let's not get started in that debate now. :)
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Does this Amiga OS 4.1 run legacy Amiga software? Is there any modern software made for this OS? I guess I am wondering whether it is worth even owning a machine like this?
Barney
If you want a NextGen-Amiga I would suggest to get a Sam440 instead of an A1.
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I am still a little fuzzy on what the Amiga One is all about. Is it %100 compatible will all legacy software? From what I gather, it is almost completely different than all the old time Amigas. It appears to me that having an Amiga One is no different than having a computer running Linux. What I don't understand is that if Amiga is such a dead company with little to no software is being made, exactly why would one want with an Amiga one? Over all I am saying, what is the big attraction to the Amiga One. What is it primaryily used for? Why would sombody pay $1,500 for for one of these computers?
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The A1 is like a normal PC-Mainboard just with a PowerPC instead of a X86 and it runs OS4. It has nothing to do with an orig. Amiga nor can run all legacy software without emulation. It was the only computer that was able to run OS4.
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I am still a little fuzzy on what the Amiga One is all about. Is it %100 compatible will all legacy software? From what I gather, it is almost completely different than all the old time Amigas. It appears to me that having an Amiga One is no different than having a computer running Linux. What I don't understand is that if Amiga is such a dead company with little to no software is being made, exactly why would one want with an Amiga one? Over all I am saying, what is the big attraction to the Amiga One. What is it primaryily used for? Why would sombody pay $1,500 for for one of these computers?
The sort of people that bought A1's and Peg's were those that felt PowerPC represented the future direction of the platform, wanted support for commodity PC hardware etc.
Contrary to what some think, most OS friendly m68k software for the classic machines runs fine under OS4 on the A1 or MOS on the Peg. It also runs a hell of a lot faster, too.
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I'll second Karlos here - Any software which is "system friendly," i.e., doesn't directly access the old hardware, should work fine on an A1, Sam440 or Pegasos. A lot of the software I use day-to-day is written for the classic, but runs just fine on my A1 under OS4.1, and quite a bit faster than the 060 could, too!
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The only real problem will be games and demos.
Though even some demos will run under 0s4.
But in answer to your question, from a money point of view, it does not make sense.
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Does anybody know the differences between the Sam440 and the Amiga ONe.? What are the differences and which one is better? Also, can These two computers run windows based software at all? Is there some kind of emulator that allows you to run windows software? Also, do various compainies make software for the Amiga OS4 platform such as "word processing software", internet browsers, games, utilities, etc? Thanks.
Barney
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Does anybody know the differences between the Sam440 and the Amiga ONe.? What are the differences and which one is better? Also, can These two computers run windows based software at all? Is there some kind of emulator that allows you to run windows software? Also, do various compainies make software for the Amiga OS4 platform such as "word processing software", internet browsers, games, utilities, etc? Thanks.
Barney
Neither run windows based software and if they did it would be under some form of x86 emulation that would be far slower than the cheapest new PC you could find.
The Sam440 uses a System on a Chip implementation of the PowerPC which reduces the need for external components. The AmigaOne uses either a G3 or G4 PowerPC.