Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: runequester on April 08, 2011, 12:27:08 AM
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The complaint levelled against OS 4 was always that the hardware was too expensive for what it did, and that the only reason people were clinging to it was the name.
The complaint levelled against CUSA is that the hardware is too expensive for what it does, and that the only reason people are clinging to it is the name.
Everything thats wrong is right again?
The world is backwards?
EDIT: In order to facilitate discussion:
Does the name matter?
What makes a machine amiga?
Is anything post CBM amiga?
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The complaint levelled against OS 4 was always that the hardware was too expensive for what it did, and that the only reason people were clinging to it was the name.
The complaint levelled against CUSA is that the hardware is too expensive for what it does, and that the only reason people are clinging to it is the name.
Everything thats wrong is right again?
The world is backwards?
EDIT: In order to facilitate discussion:
Does the name matter?
What makes a machine amiga?
Is anything post CBM amiga?
Silly boy! Of course it isn't.
At least WE never pretended it was.
(http://www.morphos-team.net/splash_intro.jpg)
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EDIT: In order to facilitate discussion:
Does the name matter?
What makes a machine amiga?
Is anything post CBM amiga?
Does the name matter? = YES...
What makes a machine amiga? = The custom chipsets...
Is anything post CBM amiga? = Only the Escom/Amiga Technologies stuff...
Everything else no matter how good it is, is after all just some form of Amiga emulator... :)
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I won't pretend to be the ultimate arbiter of what makes an Amiga an Amiga (if you want my personal opinion, I've helpfully written it down, (http://amiga.org/forums/blog.php?b=271)) but I know what doesn't make an Amiga: PC clone hardware running Linux.
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I won't pretend to be the ultimate arbiter of what makes an Amiga an Amiga (if you want my personal opinion, I've helpfully written it down, (http://amiga.org/forums/blog.php?b=271)) but I know what doesn't make an Amiga: PC clone hardware running Linux.
So this doesn't count?
http://www.softhut.com/cgi-bin/test/Web_store/web_store.cgi?page=catalog/hardware/amiga/developerbundle.html&cart_id=8052394_12649
And this doesn't count?
http://www.amiga.com/shop/
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well, I guess thats where the question comes in: Was it just the name all along?
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well, I guess thats where the question comes in: Was it just the name all along?
From current events, you'd think so.
But if that was the case there wouldn't be so much friction between AOS4 and MorphOS camps.
Some say the heart of the system was in the chips.
Personally, I think it was in the software.
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So this doesn't count?
http://www.softhut.com/cgi-bin/test/Web_store/web_store.cgi?page=catalog/hardware/amiga/developerbundle.html&cart_id=8052394_12649
And this doesn't count?
http://www.amiga.com/shop/
No.
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No.
But they've got Amiga badges. And they're authorized by the IP holder.
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But they've got Amiga badges. And they're authorized by the IP holder.
And that's some mighty fancy Commodore drag they're in, sure. But they're not Amigas.
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But they've got Amiga badges. And they're authorized by the IP holder.
Im inclined to agree with you that the software is what makes it so.
It seems that these days, the name is what counts. I guess thats how the world works now
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Im inclined to agree with you that the software is what makes it so.
It seems that these days, the name is what counts. I guess thats how the world works now
Its gotta be, otherwise a Mac is a PC.
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Its gotta be, otherwise a Mac is a PC.
On the flipside, a powerPC mac can be a PC by running linux :)
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So my two A1200s and old mac quadra 910 running linux are also PCs then.
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What linux do you run on your 1200's btw?
I know there's a 68K Debian.
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What linux do you run on your 1200's btw?
I know there's a 68K Debian.
For the life of me, I can't imagine an old 68K computer running Ubuntu 10.10 (which is on both my PC and My PPC mac).
So I do see your point runequester.
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In my humble opinion it really doesnt matter. For me, AROS is just as much part of the amiga experience as is my amithlon box, as is my a1200. I dont believe theyre as "Amiga" (capital "A") as the machines designed in the 80's and early 90's (nor do I think MOS or OS4.x are), but so long as it looks, behaves and walks like Im a duck, Im happy to call it a duck. Ironically, despite my acceptance of all amiga flavors, the one thing I see myself being reluctant to accept as "amiga" are the machines being produced by C-USA, not because I dislike them (Im not fond, but that doesnt play any part in my opinion), but because it appears they'll share nothing with the ancestory the name derives from.
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In my humble opinion it really doesnt matter. For me, AROS is just as much part of the amiga experience as is my amithlon box, as is my a1200. I dont believe theyre as "Amiga" (capital "A") as the machines designed in the 80's and early 90's (nor do I think MOS or OS4.x are), but so long as it looks, behaves and walks like Im a duck, Im happy to call it a duck. Ironically, despite my acceptance of all amiga flavors, the one thing I see myself being reluctant to accept as "amiga" are the machines being produced by C-USA, not because I dislike them (Im not fond, but that doesnt play any part in my opinion), but because it appears they'll share nothing with the ancestory the name derives from.
That's GREAT! I love the duck analogy. If it quacks, its a duck, huh?
As should be obvious, my choice of "Amigas" isn't even an Amiga.
Even so, I still feel like I've got a stake in this.
Why don't we all wait to judge the C=USA Amigas till we see how they quack?
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They've more or less told us how they'll quack. It'll rhyme with "ununboo"
Dammy over on Moobunny keeps insisting it'll be something entirely different.
I find it very hard to believe, but Im willing to be surprised.
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They've more or less told us how they'll quack. It'll rhyme with "ununboo"
Dammy over on Moobunny keeps insisting it'll be something entirely different.
I find it very hard to believe, but Im willing to be surprised.
Frankly, that wouldn't bother me that much. Probably a better solution than AmigaXL (on top of QNX) was.
Is Hyperion's OS that much better? Would you feel better with an X86 version of AOS4 or a new version of Amithlon?
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Its gotta be, otherwise a Mac is a PC.
Of course a Mac is a PC...
And a Mac running OSX is a BSD PC with a purtier GUI...
(Ok, MACH if you're a purist, or more directly a descendant of OpenStep.. ;-)
And they are definitely not MacOS based machines anymore...
It does get tricky...
If you took a PC, put it in an Amiga case, rigged it to boot Windows and then go straight into WinUAE, hiding Windows altogether..
You know most people using it would think it's an Amiga...
Yeah, some purists might notice scrolling issues, but WinUAE is that good.. It'd fool most people....
At that point, is that PC an Amiga?
Does it pass the Amiga Touring Test?
And if most people can't tell, does it matter?
So, if it doesn't matter really, why do I think an Amiga has to be 68K based??? Am I just that much of an Amiga fanboy/biggot???
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Probably..
68k 4EVER!!!!! :roflmao:
desiv
p.s. The preceeding e-mail might have had a point when it was started, but it entered Joycian irrelevance fairly early on.. Go about your business.
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Of course a Mac is a PC...
And a Mac running OSX is a BSD PC with a purtier GUI...
(Ok, MACH if you're a purist, or more directly a descendant of OpenStep.. ;-)
And they are definitely not MacOS based machines anymore...
It does get tricky...
If you took a PC, put it in an Amiga case, rigged it to boot Windows and then go straight into WinUAE, hiding Windows altogether..
You know most people using it would think it's an Amiga...
Yeah, some purists might notice scrolling issues, but WinUAE is that good.. It'd fool most people....
At that point, is that PC an Amiga?
Does it pass the Amiga Touring Test?
And if most people can't tell, does it matter?
So, if it doesn't matter really, why do I think an Amiga has to be 68K based??? Am I just that much of an Amiga fanboy/biggot???
...
Probably..
68k 4EVER!!!!! :roflmao:
desiv
p.s. The preceeding e-mail might have had a point when it was started, but it entered Joycian irrelevance fairly early on.. Go about your business.
Don't sweat it. I'm not here to negate your prejudices. But frankly, I'm satisfied with non-68K based solutions because they work very well.
So, to paraphrase something someone else just posted, if it walks like a duck its a duck.
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Frankly, that wouldn't bother me that much. Probably a better solution than AmigaXL (on top of QNX) was.
Is Hyperion's OS that much better? Would you feel better with an X86 version of AOS4 or a new version of Amithlon?
Iguess Im not in a hurry for it to all be "remade". Keep classic classic. For everything else, there's linux
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Iguess Im not in a hurry for it to all be "remade". Keep classic classic. For everything else, there's linux
Then you're closer to buying a C=USA product than I am.
'Cause I would rather use MorphOS than either AOS3.x or Linux.
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Then you're closer to buying a C=USA product than I am.
'Cause I would rather use MorphOS than either AOS3.x or Linux.
Nah. I got a 300 dollar PC that does everything I want from a day to day computer. I'll use that until it breaks, then get whatever is the same price class at that time.
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Nah. I got a 300 dollar PC that does everything I want from a day to day computer. I'll use that until it breaks, then get whatever is the same price class at that time.
That's amusing. I'm posting this from an Athlon 64 5000+ based system that's mutated over the last several years to the state its in now. Not a single part is less than 2 years old (including the 9600GSO video card) and I think its got about $300 currently invested in it (and it would still outrun a C64x).
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That's amusing. I'm posting this from an Athlon 64 5000+ based system that's mutated over the last several years to the state its in now. Not a single part is less than 2 years old (including the 9600GSO video card) and I think its got about $300 currently invested in it (and it would still outrun a C64x).
I thought of building my own, but I didn't want to go through the hassle of having everything shipped individually and paying for shipping 8 times. So I went to fry's electronics and grabbed the cheapest system they had :)
Wiped vista from it, installed linux and voila. (though I later swapped ubuntu for kubuntu)
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What makes a machine amiga?
Playing Slamtilt Pinball and rendering logos in Aladdin are Amiga enough :rtfm:
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What makes a machine amiga?
Playing Slamtilt Pinball and rendering logos in Aladdin are Amiga enough :rtfm:
Slamtilt is righteous
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What linux do you run on your 1200's btw?
I know there's a 68K Debian.
My own Gentoo.
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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...
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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...
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Had Amiga survived it would have likely followed the Mac route, first to PPC retaining a classic environment for a time until software caught up and then moving to X86 with a Rosetta layer that would eventually be abandoned as software caught up. Unfortunately it didn't and so you have the Coelacanth OS you have today....
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Not joking. The 1000 was cool as hell, and the 500 made it affordable. ground-breaking. 3000 was cool, but sorry Mac IIfx came out before it (widly expensive though) and so did the Atari TT030. Lots of cool stuff came out in 1990. So I credit the Amiga as the BEST 16-bit machine out there.
SO I don't understand your logic with the 060 faster at emulating a machine hardware similar to an slow processor. I can 'emulate' a 68000 Mac faster on my 68000 Atari ST since the processor is the same and faster... so... odd comparison.
Look the Amiga started too expensive bust was superior to the market in 1995. The Mac had a better GUI, sorry it does. The Atari ST was cheaper. Then 500 came out and kicked it's butt and changed everything. The Mac obviously won out, and I think the Mac II is a better system than the Amiga over-all though. I have a IIfx that is a similar idea with custom chips in the idea of a workstation and is just way better in a bunch of ways.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm in love with my Amiga. I love all the retros like the lovely birds they are. I respect and love everything that makes them unique. I also love the Speccy for similar reasons.
Oh and expanding the systems, hell of lot of fun. I'm AMAZED!!! AMAZED!!! Again, AMAZED on how expanable these Amigas are! I'm impressed on how much you can expand even today. It's incredible! They are so well built and so thought out. But then I'm a Jay Minor fan (Atari 800 rocks!)
Look, PCs sucked back then (and still do) so the 68K machines were a million times better.
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.
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That may be, but the Amiga OS has nothing special over OSX or Linux in a technicle stancec. Everything the Amiga did was just so far ahead in 1985 to 1990. But other stuff caught up. I only argue what IS the Amiga, is the breaking of boundaries. Other than that a new one is a PC with an alternative OS.
I'm not flaming, I just want to place the original Amiga in the pedestal it deserves. It was ground breaking, but now days things are just different. I feel the same way about the Atari folks who run TOS 4ish on at PC-like clone with a 68060 or whatever. To me (only me perhaps) it's just a shadow of the beast (to use a pun.)
OCS was awesome compared to 16-colours in a shifter. It was more clever than the B&W Mac or anything else for that matter.
ECS, not so much so it seams, and AGA, unfortunately seems more catch-up. A shame, I think Amiga could have won.
-Cheers!
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.
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Very likely. Too bad it didn't. I think I'd prefer running one. Seems very clever people were designing this amazing system.
Rest in Peace Jay.
Had Amiga survived it would have likely followed the Mac route, first to PPC retaining a classic environment for a time until software caught up and then moving to X86 with a Rosetta layer that would eventually be abandoned as software caught up. Unfortunately it didn't and so you have the Coelacanth OS you have today....
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You know, the only thing I wish the Amiga did in the beginning that I do like about the Atari ST; I like the idea you can use a timer to get your code synced up vs under-clocking the processor to make everything sync up. But, later systems seemed to solve that real well with faster CPUS better than ATari people did. A lot of asm stuff didn't run on later systems without dropping the clock to 8Mhz.
Frankly I love the 68000. Assembler is just so much fun on them.
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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.
Not at all. The Amiga is the Amiga is the Amiga, and if another computer had borrowed components that wouldn't have diluted it one bit. But the chipset derives its value from being so beautifully integrated one component to the other as well as from raw capability, and if another machine had borrowed, say, just the blitter, it wouldn't have been as useful in isolation. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Frankly I love the 68000. Assembler is just so much fun on them.
Hear, hear! I've never encountered a CPU that hits such a nice balance between friendliness and power.
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Had Amiga survived it would have likely followed the Mac route,
At the point that Commodore went under the Amiga's days were numbed, hombre was not an Amiga and no other projects had survived. AAA was always going to be too expensive compared to the competition and it was going to be the last chipset with any backward compatibility.
It didn't make sense to waste money on AA+ either, the way the market was changing they wouldn't have made a profit.
By 1990 they'd missed the boat, it just took a while for the market to collapse.
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On the flipside, a powerPC mac can be a PC by running linux :)
Or Windows NT ;)
If it doesn't have a Paula chip on the motherboard it is nothing more than an AmigaOS compatible as far as I am concerned, and if it doesn't even run an AmigaOS it is even less worthy of my attention.
I don't do anything other than run OCS/ECS/AGA period applications/games anyway and in these cases AOS 3.5-4.2 or MorphOS has no advantage for me than running WinUAE and my ADFs on my super cheap readily available ludicrously powerful X86-64 machines anyway.
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Or Windows NT ;)
If it doesn't have a Paula chip on the motherboard it is nothing more than an AmigaOS compatible as far as I am concerned,
I always see you define an Amiga by something with "Paula", it always seems odd that it's just this chip that makes an Amiga for you?!
The AAA chipset did not have Paula, and most Amigans agree it shouldn't have been in AA either, as it was old-hat by the 90s.
It was just a sound-processor, why choose that chip as the ultimate definition of "it's an Amiga"? If Commodore did release AAA amigas would you have said they're not Amigas then, due to lack of Paula?
What about the other chips, was A600 not Amiga 'cos of no Gary? Was A1200/4000 not Amiga due to no Agnus?
I don't this Paula or the system's sound capabilities were the main attraction/impressive feature for most people.
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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.
The "custom chips" worked as co processors. The sound and graphics chips worked independently of the CPU. It allowed the Amiga to do things with 7 and 14 mhz CPU's that could not be done as well on CPU's that ran at much higher clock speeds on other platforms. The chips were analogous to modern GPU's, but in 1985. Coupled with an OS that had a tiny footprint, but pre-emptive multi-tasking from day one, this resulted in a unique feel of being in control of the machine and doing what you wanted it to when you wanted it to.
Amiga is not just the chips or just the OS or just the software: its the way the whole package of chips, OS and software gelled together to create a unique and superior user experience.
I have an XP machine, a Vista machine, a Win7 machine and an Ubuntu machine and none of them can recreate that feel.
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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.
Custom chips are designed by a company for a specific product, the alternative is "off the shelf", where a company buys in chips designed by another company.
The Amiga's chipset was custom designed for the Amiga, it's CPU was an off-the-shelf part made by Motorolla for general sale.
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Custom chips are designed by a company for a specific product, the alternative is "off the shelf", where a company buys in chips designed by another company.
Yeah, basically custom just means you can't buy a computer from someone else that has the same chip in it.
The Amiga's custom chips were a good design, but not all custom chips are.
Basically if commodore had moved to another platform then some people would move and others wouldn't. If commodore could have produced something ground breaking then it would have drawn people from other platforms as well.
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What 16bit Amiga?
Both Atari ST and Amiga were marketed as 16-bit systems in 80s.
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From current events, you'd think so.
But if that was the case there wouldn't be so much friction between AOS4 and MorphOS camps.
Okay, think about this for a minute.
OS4+MOS=friction
OS4+AROS=friction
OS4+Real Amiga (68K)=friction
Where is the friction between MOS and AROS and 68K? See where the divisive factor is?
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Both Atari ST and Amiga were marketed as 16-bit systems in 80s.
ST stood for "Sixteen Thirty-two". But also Atari marketed the Jaguar as a 64-bit system, so it was just their nature to stretch the truth a bit. :D
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Wasn't the jaguar actually two 32bit chips.
I bought one years after they came out. Thought they were awful
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Wasn't the jaguar actually two 32bit chips.
I bought one years after they came out. Thought they were awful
They had some sort of convoluted scheme to make it "add up" to 64 bits. Apparently also made it really hard to code for
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bit like the saturn
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Sort of. The Saturn's bigger problem was that the whole thing was ungodly complex (two main CPUs and half a dozen supporting chips/CPUs contending for various subsets of nearly a dozen different memory areas!) I gather this is because it basically came out of Sega corporate mashing up a follow-up attempt for the 32x onto an existing CD console project and making them throw in 3D acceleration at the last minute...gah!
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Also Saturn has only six games when it was released and cost $100 more than PS.
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The complaint levelled against OS 4 was always that the hardware was too expensive for what it did, and that the only reason people were clinging to it was the name.
The complaint levelled against CUSA is that the hardware is too expensive for what it does, and that the only reason people are clinging to it is the name.
Everything thats wrong is right again?
The world is backwards?
EDIT: In order to facilitate discussion:
Does the name matter?
What makes a machine amiga?
Is anything post CBM amiga?
For me it was the small elegant OS that booted quickly, got out of my way, was easy to tweak without a lot of knowledge and kept evolving more capabilities while not consuming massive quantities of RAM, processor, etc.
Now I know I'll be crucified but the custom chips were revolutionary but can now be emulated faster on the cheapest and slowest of todays modern hardware platforms. They are irrelevant in todays world and have been replaced by custom sound and graphics chips that are much faster. Dave Haynie convinced me of this back in the early 90s when he'd talk online with the community.
So for me Amiga IS the OS. AmigaOS. Now if someone makes and OS that is just as elegant and modernizes it - I AM SO ALL OVER IT. It should run on a standard readily available diverse hardware platform though. (Read 'evil PC clone') I'd license multiple copies just to support the cause and I might even buy a pre-built computers running it.
None of the systems coming out that are PCs and only running Linux or Android(Linux) are Commodore or Amiga. I think the retro Commodore machines are simply a neat little retro-flashback. Much like the people who put miniITX into the real old C64 cases to run a C64 emulator. That's all - it's not really a 64. The Amiga branded devices running Android aren't an Amiga either - without the OS or similar OS.
However, yes the Commodore brand name is just that - a brand name. They made - CPM machines, DOS machines/Windows, Unix machines, custom 8-bit Microsoft Basic OS machines and yes our favorite AmigaOS machines. I didn't see anyone arguing that the Commodore name was anything other than a brand name back then. If Atari had bought the Amiga, it would still have been just as ground breaking.
The Amiga name is something different. Look at the transition that Mac made from Classic OS to OS X and PowerPC to Intel. Would you argue that modern Macs aren't Macs? Most normal people wouldn't, Franko?(Just kidding), because they retained their unique OS through the transition. I would argue that the AmigaOS, if ported to Intel x86 and modernized would then allow anyone to call that computer an Amiga. Especially, if they are cool and add backwards compatibility through emulation - just like Apple did for older software on OS X.
I will never forget the innovation and experience that the custom chips when coupled with AmigaOS brought to the world for the first time - EVER. They were simply 15 years ahead of their time. However, today - the custom chips have been surpassed by other models of co-processing and it's the OS that really retains the identity that can carry forward today and into the future.
Today, I still don't see an OS that really feels like AmigaOS to me. I still think there is potential for that user experience to exist and that the market is never closed to a competitor that offers a unique user experience. I use Linux(SuSe, Unbuntu), Andoroid(Linux), Windows 7 and even sometimes Mac OS X. None of them offer the same user experience as the old AmigaOS, there is still something special there even if it must evolve significantly to incorporate modern OS technologies.
Would someone Open Source the existing AmigaOS code already so someone can get busy porting it to AMD?
-Nyle
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Custom chips are designed by a company for a specific product, the alternative is "off the shelf", where a company buys in chips designed by another company.
The Amiga's chipset was custom designed for the Amiga, it's CPU was an off-the-shelf part made by Motorolla for general sale.
That is kind of what I am getting at though. Like psxphill said, some custom chips are good, and some are not.
There is no value to users in having a chip custom. Being the only system running the chip does not increase the performance of that system. The 'Custom-ness' of the 'custom' chipset did not improve the Amiga in any way. It was the 'coprocessor-ness' of the 'custom' chipset that made the Amiga shine.
This misunderstanding of why the Amiga chipsets where good lead many Amiga fans down a self destructive path. They start obsessing on having the system 'custom' for custom's sake because they have come to believe that custom = good and cots = bad.
With all other things being equal, cots > custom. The only time that custom is a better choice is when it brings something to the table that out weighs the cost benefit (for manufacture as well as further R&D) of using cots parts. The fact that the Amiga had a 68k showed that Amiga understood this.
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I always thought the whole 'custom chips' thing on the Amiga was strange anyway. The Amiga was unique for the co-processor design. It's a great idea that worked real well for Jay's other system Atari 8-bit. The opposite for the Mac and Atari ST. That being a CPU and not much else.
That being said, this is why I have a hard time with the idea that a PC with some Amiga-like OS on it seems like an alternative OS and not an Amiga. I guess it's all lost in ambiguity since most machines these days are not 'systems' but collections of similar parts with some OS on it. I guess that's where it gets hard to classify. That's even true for consoles.
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All computers have to perform the same tasks and all computers use 'custom' chips (unless they're based on SOCs which is about as 'custom' as you get).
Yeah, Amigas worked well when they were current. Today's computers work even better. What worked well in the '90's isn't necessary these days.
So what's left except the OS?
I like MorphOS and AOS4 'cause they're compact, efficient, and boot quick. Very Amiga-like.
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Saturn:
SH2 cpu
SH2 cpu
SH1 cdrom, cart, math coproc
VDP1 sprite/ background
VDP2 sprite / play field ?
68000 ?
Yamaha Sound Synthesiser
8 total?
During the playing of Dark Saviour it slowed
They were able to make it do things toward the end that were not originally advertised.
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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!
Or you could say, selling a 111Euro incomplete, feature lacking and slightly unstable take on what Amiga OS could be with MUI on old out dated second hand macs hardware systems, then NO!
Just saying :)
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Does the name matter?
YES, proof of how strong the brand is just becuase CommodoreOS was named Workbench 5 it got a lot more of intrest and since its change its name I've not seen as much discussion on the matter.
What makes a machine amiga?
Well to me it certainly not just the Brand name, it different things to different people, but the most important thing to me is that it must be still fun to use and the 'amiga' community is part of it.
Is anything post CBM amiga?
The only real Amiga is the prototype Amiga Lorriane, after that it was a Commodore Amiga, then Escom Amiga, Gateway Amiga, Amino Amiga, C=USA Amiga, IContains Amiga, Hyperion Amiga, each one had their own vision of what the Amiga should be, becuase Commodore Amiga was the one that launch Amiga and the only successful Amiga and the one we all know, a large part of the community will only every see them as Amiga. I think had a Commodore Amiga with HP Risk and the other stuff they where going to bring had been relased there would be no question that it was an Amiga, had the AmigaMCC came out I think a lot of people would of felt that was Amiga, if AmigaDE/Anywhere took off that might of been considered Amiga, but at the end of the day I think for me whats made me stay is more the community than any one product, AmigaN's and the Amiga ride/story is just too fun to get off now and I'm glad I'm still here, because if it was just about Multimedia, Multitasking and pushing the OS forward I think we should of all been talking about BeOS by now.
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Use what you like, lol. I used my SAM today. Had fun. Fiddled around with the mini and Morph a bit, good times.
Loaded my server/UAE box to add FILE_ID.diz files to the entire Aminet archive for the BBS that's hosted on said SAM, networked via SAMBA from SAM to the UAE/WinXP slipstream box.
All good times. The Amiga community was always a bunch of semantic weirdos, nice to see nothing has changed.
:lol:
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Had Amiga survived it would have likely followed the Mac route, first to PPC retaining a classic environment for a time until software caught up and then moving to X86 with a Rosetta layer that would eventually be abandoned as software caught up. Unfortunately it didn't and so you have the Coelacanth OS you have today....
That's always been the way I'd have expected things to go. Compare to the Mac world, which is the only real analogue: Do you consider OSX on Intel to be 'Mac' in the same way that the classic 68k Macs were?
I'd say 'yes', but I think the big difference is that the transition was always there. PPC Mac OS still ran 68k code. Eventually the 68k compatibility went, but the platform had moved on. Now we're on x86 and the PPC compatibility days are numbered. There's old Mac software I simply can't run any more, but my x86 Macs are just as much Macs as my old PPC or 68k ones.
The problem Amiga has is that the gap was too long and the Amiga-ness got lost somewhere along the lines. AmigaPPC never really took off. PPC cards for the classics weren't tremendously popular at the time and the newer PPC-only 'Amigas' had no backwards compatibility, there was nothing to tie them to what people already considered 'Amiga'
As for me, it's only an Amiga if I can boot it off my Lemmings floppy. If Natami can do that, it's an Amiga in my book!
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My 2 cents (400 cents if you factor in inflation).
Does the name matter? The name really doesn't have value because it is way to diluted in the market place. An Amiga means so much to so many.
What makes a machine amiga? For me, my Amiga 3000 is an Amiga since it was engineered and built by cbm and my Peg II is an Amiga because I agree with Persia, if the Commodore didn't go belly up, they most likely would have went to PPC similar to AOS 4 or MOS and dumped the custom chip route. So Peg II and MOS is the best modern for me.
Is anything post CBM amiga? Sure, the name is destroyed by usage, I have an Amiga branded pen, that must be an Amiga :)...
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Interestingly I don't think of the Machines that we now call Macintosh as the same machines from the past. I thought MacOS 1 through to 9 were utter crap, with hardware that was crippled and expensive.
For me the current Macs are consumer branded NeXTstep machines, and I love them :)
In reality Commodore would only have survived if it had become a Multimedia Card maker for PCs... It would be like Nvidia now :)
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Saturn:
They were able to make it do things toward the end that were not originally advertised.
Oh, true, it's just that it took a lot of getting used to for them to really exploit it, since it was so complex. It really is a pretty solid piece of hardware for the time, especially where 2D gaming is concerned.
Interestingly I don't think of the Machines that we now call Macintosh as the same machines from the past. I thought MacOS 1 through to 9 were utter crap, with hardware that was crippled and expensive.
Not so! System 7 was by far the best of the Mac OSes and (while it's not very well-suited for power-user tasks) it has the nicest interface of any OS I've yet encountered. New MacOS is just BSD with a pretty skin on it.
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Not so! System 7 was by far the best of the Mac OSes and (while it's not very well-suited for power-user tasks) it has the nicest interface of any OS I've yet encountered. New MacOS is just BSD with a pretty skin on it.
I used System 7 through 8.something and enjoyed it a lot. Definitely what made me like Apple after Amiga. Had to abandon it tho, once I got heavily into gaming. Wintendo was where it was at after that :(
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Not so! System 7 was by far the best of the Mac OSes and (while it's not very well-suited for power-user tasks) it has the nicest interface of any OS I've yet encountered. New MacOS is just BSD with a pretty skin on it.
Well I'd say UI wise System 7 had about the same merits as the current iPhone. By the time it was called 9 it had gathered some entropy and was less stable than OS X. While NeXTSTEP had a great GUI, they screwed most of the unique features of both MacOS and NeXTSTEP on the way or slowly degraded them into nonexistence. Today Mac OS is really friendly to Windows users and tolerable for Unix hackers, but isn't as homogenous, as it was before.
However in 1994 the Mac was very very expensive, the OS was slow and had no multitasking and no great games. I couldn't justify buying one any more than people can justify an X1000 today.
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Personally, I think OSX is a big improvement over earlier Mac OS'.
But then most of my recent experience has been Wintel based.
Of course with RIM pushing QNX based systems we may see a resurgence of micro-kernel based OS'. That approach has always offered distinct advantages. OS9 and RTOS (for DVI players) were micro-kernal based as is MorphOS.
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Personally, I think OSX is a big improvement over earlier Mac OS'.
But then most of my recent experience has been Wintel based.
Of course with RIM pushing QNX based systems we may see a resurgence of micro-kernel based OS'. That approach has always offered distinct advantages. OS9 and RTOS (for DVI players) were micro-kernal based as is MorphOS.
Did you know, MacOSX is based on the Mach microkernel? Wikipedia it ;)
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They had some sort of convoluted scheme to make it "add up" to 64 bits. Apparently also made it really hard to code for
The graphics chip was 64bit, using bits to describe a systems power is about as meaningless as quoting it's clock speed.
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Not so! System 7 was by far the best of the Mac OSes and (while it's not very well-suited for power-user tasks) it has the nicest interface of any OS I've yet encountered. New MacOS is just BSD with a pretty skin on it.
Agreed! System 7 is probably my favourite user interface ever! (Sorry Workbench :D) System 8 and 9 were not quite as good looking, and OS X is pretty tasteless, even though I run it today. I wish I could skin it like System 7, but ShapeShifter does not work anymore.. :/
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Bigger problem with System 8/9 is that they're absolute behemoths compared to 7, and yet they got installed on basically anything post-1996 whether it had the oomph to run them or not. It's like running OS3.9 on a stock 1200.
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@AmigaNG
"Or you could say, selling a 111Euro incomplete, feature lacking and slightly unstable take on what Amiga OS could be with MUI on old out dated second hand macs hardware systems, then NO!"
Hmmm, my MorphOS box is pretty stable. And for incomplete, what are you referring to exactly?.*The last time i heard about os4 it didn't had usb 2.0 yet.
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Did you know, MacOSX is based on the Mach microkernel? Wikipedia it ;)
No I hadn't heard that. Thanks. I wasn't aware that there were BSD implementations that used a micro-kernal.
That makes me appreciate Apple's OS all the more.
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@AmigaNG
"Or you could say, selling a 111Euro incomplete, feature lacking and slightly unstable take on what Amiga OS could be with MUI on old out dated second hand macs hardware systems, then NO!"
Hmmm, my MorphOS box is pretty stable. And for incomplete, what are you referring to exactly?.*The last time i heard about os4 it didn't had usb 2.0 yet.
Actually, my Powermac has proven more stable than my Windows boxes running MorphOS. And we certainly have a more complete OS then AOS4.
But I'd take either before trying to resort to AOS3.X for day to day use.
NG systems aren't just an alternative, they're capable/modern enough to rely on for daily use.
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In my opinion the only Amiga's are the A1000, A500/+, A600, A1200, A2000, A2500, A3000, A3000T, A4000, A4000T and CD32 and even though its not branded as such, the CDTV. (Did i miss any models?) Basically anything produced by Commodore and Escom/Amiga inc that has the Amiga chipset and runs Workbench/AmigaOS.
The Sam440, AmigaONE and rest of the over priced and under powered PPC rubbish is NOT and never will be considered as an Amiga in my opinion.
MorphOS is very Amiga like but they never called it AmigaOS or Workbench because it isn't and at least it runs on relatively cheap G4 PPC hardware like G4 Macs.
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Silly boy! Of course it isn't.
At least WE never pretended it was.
(http://www.morphos-team.net/splash_intro.jpg)
Hi,
Went to look for morph os for an Amiga 1200 decked out with a DCE ppc card and noticed that the only thing morph os supports is MAC machines. If I liked MACS or wanted a MAC I would of bought one. Now I will listen to the fan boys that it is running an Amiga OS, it isn't an Amiga OS if it in no way supports some sort of Amiga system.
All Morph OS is, is another OS for a MAC computer, by their standards since they quit programming for an Amiga machine.
smerf
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In my opinion the only Amiga's are the A1000, A500/+, A600, A1200, A2000, A2500, A3000, A3000T, A4000, A4000T and CD32 and even though its not branded as such, the CDTV. (Did i miss any models?)
I guess the A1500 if you want to be really obscure :)
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@AmigaNG
"Or you could say, selling a 111Euro incomplete, feature lacking and slightly unstable take on what Amiga OS could be with MUI on old out dated second hand macs hardware systems, then NO!"
Hmmm, my MorphOS box is pretty stable. And for incomplete, what are you referring to exactly?.*The last time i heard about os4 it didn't had usb 2.0 yet.
Actually, my Powermac has proven more stable than my Windows boxes running MorphOS. And we certainly have a more complete OS then AOS4.
Well compare to modern platform we are all behind the times and to be honest I only wrote that to wind up takemehomegrandma as his comments where only designed to wind up OS4 users
"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!"
Just returning the favor. :)
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Absolutely behind the times. No SMP, OpenGL isn't fully supported, Flash support sucks.
But if you're going to try to use an Amiga like system for modern computing, then NG OS' are light years past legacy systems in performance.
You can't convince me that a legacy Amiga can be upgraded to the point where it becomes a viable platform for modern computing. All three NG OS' are capable of performing at least adequately.
And I don't care what is and what is not a legitimate 'Amiga'.
I'd use an NG system or emulation rather than suffer with the poor performance that is inherent with legacy hardware.
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Absolutely behind the times. No SMP, OpenGL isn't fully supported, Flash support sucks.
I thought you were talking about my iPhone 3G there :) **Hurry up Apple!!! I want a new phone ;) **
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My contract is up in a couple months, come on Apple where's iPhone 5?!?!?!?!?
I thought you were talking about my iPhone 3G there :) **Hurry up Apple!!! I want a new phone ;) **
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All this talk of features I'd like to have (and mobile devices) has me looking at RIM's new tablet.