New Amiga Group formed for london, who's with me?

[chris]

I was a member of an Amiga group in North London years ago, I want to start an new Amiga group for London

ANT is still going.  http://www.amiganorththames.co.uk
If you can get to Enfield I'd suggest joining ANT rather than starting your own group.

[chris]

I had a good look at two Amigas running AmigaOS 4.1, both running the Origyn web browser.

I will make a point of showing you NetSurf next time.

I had a conversation with a programmer who creates utilities using PortablE, based on the earlier language Amiga E. He also edited some Javascript code to enable YouTube videos to be viewed after a recent change by YouTube.

That was Chris H, actually he wrote PortablE.  I'm the other Chris who was there btw.

During my time at the meeting, I noticed that the machines running AmigaOS 4.1 all booted up by displaying a text screen first of all, like with a PC BIOS ROM, unlike classic Amiga Kickstart ROMs or Apple Mac ROMs.

That's U-Boot.  It loads Kickstart off disk which then boots as you'd expect.

I also noticed that there was an X Windows server, as with Linux but not with Android which is based on Linux. I wonder if AmigaOS 4.1 is compatible with Linux up to a point?

It has some POSIX compatbility.  The X Windows server is AmiCygnix, it's quite good for making easy UNIX ports but not very integrated with the native GUI.

I certainly saw a lot during my time there and it was well worth the visit!

Glad you enjoyed yourself!

[chris]

There's no need to qualify 68K Amigas with the term "classic", they are Amigas. The "classic" designation was created by OS4 users to try to muddy the waters and give the impression that the AmigaOne is somehow a continuation of the Amiga.

Actually the "classic" designation came from one of the owners of Amiga - might have been Jim Collas - and is fairly widely used as a term to refer to 68k Amigas.

@AmigaBruno

I didn't say "It's U-Boot" as an excuse, just to advise what you were seeing.  It is a BIOS which initialises the hardware and boots AmigaOS via Kickstart.  It actually does something very similar to what Kickstart does, and is an annoying initial step.  It would be nice to get Kickstart directly into flash and avoid the U-Boot stage, but that doesn't look likely to happen.

[chris]

I plan to be there again. I'm glad to read it's in Greater London, because the Post Office and the address on your website don't agree with this.

Well, it's in Enfield, which is technically Greater London, but the very northern outskirts.

BTW, do you have any plans to eat lots of food at this meeting? If so, I won't have much to eat before arriving. I'll bring enough cash.

No, that was a Christmas special.  There will be the usual tea, crisps, biscuits and probably cake, which are free/included.

[chris]

I hope there will be some Cola as well.

I *think* there usually is.