Someone spell it out for me, A1 questions

[Gojirax]

Hi,

I'm returning to the Amiga scene after a few years, and I've read a little about the A1, but I don't have a LOT of time to surf the web lately like I used to.

What is the purpose of the A1? Is it in ANY way related to the classic Amiga?

Who is developing it?

What software/hardware does it already support?

Is it just a Power PC Linux box, or will it run Classic Amiga OS's? (3.1, 3.5, 3.9?) or is it just slated to run 4.0? (Or only a specific flavor of Linux? Will it run Red Hat etc?)

What kind of hardware expansions are supported on it?

If it's just a fairly standard PPC board, why doesn't it run something faster than a 900mhz G4?

Thanks in advance for your time,
Jack

[Gojirax]

Thanks for the great input folks!

I'm surfing as we speak to find more answers for myself. I've read some articles on Intuitionbase and even read through the OS4 Pre-release install instructions.

I found the section on compatibility. Very nice. As a PC user, I only buy name brand expansions anyway. (IE: ATI or Creative Labs.) I can't stand to waste time with unknown hardware, so the fact that the A1 supports Creative Labs (Audigy in particular) and ATI Radeon cards is a HUGE plus for me heheh.

Yeah, I guess that question about "Regular PPC boards" wasn't well thought out heh.  :-D

[Gojirax]

Well, I'm working on picking up an A1200 to soup up for my fix of "Classic" Amiga fun. (Plus I have a CD32 and A500 in the closet still.)

I'm mostly interested in the "NG" system that the largest community of classic Amiga users/developers are moving to.

Heck, if they all moved to Macs, I'd move with em.

As far as the A1 was concerned, I wanted something close to an Amiga that didn't require Windows to use.

90% of what is done on my PC's by my kids and myself is either playing games on NeoPets or Cartoon Network (So Flash and Java are a must.) or writing music with Cakewalk. (I used to use ProTools on the Mac until I lost my copy.)

So if I can surf, do Email, play online games and write music... then 90% of my Computing needs are met. (The other 10% would be playing Blizzard games like Diablo2 and Warcraft III.

I've bookmarked the sites that have been linked in this thread with info about PegasOS and A1. (Didn't MorphOS start out on Classis Amiga?)

Thanks again, great info here!
Jack

[Gojirax]

I still have my copy of Octamed Sound Studio 1.1 and love it. It's a great tracker with all the MIDI support I need. (I suck at Midi, so I just use it to plug my keyboard into and input music that way.)

I checked out the Protracker II site and that looks like a really nice piece of work so far. I already have two fast PC's (To play Everquest you have to have top end MS-PC's) and I already get my modest fix of Diablo II and Warcraft III.)

The biggest bummer would be a lack of Java/Flash support.

I thought Opera was getting ported to almost every platform/CPU flavor? What happened to that?

What about Firefox?

Oh well, it doesn't matter that much heh, I'm mostly concerned about getting OFF the Microsoft platform before they introduce their subscription based Operating System on or around 2007 (Yeah, you won't own software anymore, you just lease it and download patches etc.) So there's plenty of time for someone to port the Web goodies heheh.

P.S.
@Ascii - I was an Amiga evangelist for years, so I can appreciate your passion for Pegasos.

I've learned as much from this thread as I have from the 5 or 6 hours I've spent scouring the web in search of answers.

Thanks a ton guys,
Jack