Is the Amiga architecture still relevant today?

[stefcep2]

This type of question crops up more frequently than you might think.  Why is that?  Personally I don't believe its just nostalgia, and its not due to people lacking information or knowledge.  Conversely, in the PC world, many many people express dissatisfaction in one form or another. All these Amiga user and all these PC users can't all be crazy!!

And I don't think you can just narrow it down as being hardware or operating system issue. Yes thats what computers are essentially but there's something about using Amiga that makes the user experience greater than just a sum of its parts.  There's a feeling of control, responsiveness, accessability, simplicity and elegance that the amiga system gives that modern computers just quite don't have.

[stefcep2]

A new Amiga would make zero contribution to today's technology, it would be for retro enthusiasts like us, no one else.

Depends on what the "new amiga" was hypothetically going to be.

Take for example, Windows 7.  People are raving about it.  Why?  What makes it so much better than Vista that makes them say, yep, this IS better, I enjoy using it more than Vista?  The central theme of Win 7 is simple:  Be more responsive to the user, don't waste their time.  Hence : Win 7 boots faster, it shuts down faster, its UAC isn't as intrusive and annoying, it does away with annoying pop-up notifications, it uses less hardware resources and consequently runs better on lower hardware, it has a simpler shut down menu, it FEELS more responsive because it prioritises user input higher than Vista.  these ideas of simplicity, efficiency, putting the user in control are very Amiga-like.

[stefcep2]

You can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time.

I think you under-estimate the deep level of dissatisfaction amongst users with Vista.  When the daily papers run routine articles on it and routinly describe Vista as "underwhelming", you know its not just some of the people who are not happy.  Some of it wasn't deserved, most of it was.  There's no doubt MS fast-tracked Win 7.  And its clear that whilst new features are not a priority for Win 7, putting the user back in charge of their computer is.  I always felt that i had that with Amiga.

[stefcep2]

What we are talking about is co-processing— essentially using the right tool for the job."

And conceptually thats what the Amiga custom chip design with each chip having its own DMA were all about.  Its what allowed a 7 mhz CPU machine to achieve things higher mhz systems could only dream of.

[stefcep2]

I disagree.

The standard PC today (and Mac, I mention as I am a Mac user primarily) has the CPU, also an extremely powerful (often) GPU, a SATA controller that can transfer data with basically no CPU usage, and (often but less often than the powerful GPU) a sound chip that can play with little CPU usage.  Also an extremely fast bus.

One could say this follows the Amiga model.  Or it just follows what makes sense.  Not sure on that one.

Very Amiga-like, I'd say.

blakespot

SATA uses no CPU time?  In theory and spec sheets maybe.  In practice, i call BS.  The number of times I get "program x is not responding" when there is a SATA drive access is testament to that.  And look at any CPU monitor and watch the spike in CPU usage as you load stuff off your drive.  What's that about then?

So what if the busses are faster?  its all negated by the size of the files that need to be processed.  i can play a 250 k game of puyo puyo on an A500.  Its a 3.5 mb download, archived, for Windows or Linux.  Breakout is 450k on Amiga, 6 mb on Win.  And the amiga version is smoother..

[stefcep2]

Err, no. You might have a point about hardware acceleration if you discount Jay Minor's earlier works: CTIA and ANTIC. But Multitasking has been available for UNIX and GUIs came to the mainstream with Apple (which itself had Multitasking as far back at 1984).

None of which makes any difference to todays computing landscape.

t

Err no.  Apple had some rubbish called co-operative multitasking in 1988, not 1984.

the Amiga was the first affordable computer for the masses that made available pre-emptive multi-tasking in a GUI driven environment.  In 1985.  Given that no-one else had it till 1995, and not as good, I reckon thats pretty damned-impressive.

Having hardware that had graphics and sound chips that could function independently of the CPU at a time when most other computers required the CPU to be involved intimately in every task, including moving the mouse pointer, is the same philosophy used in modern PC architectures.  The amiga had it first, and showed the way

[stefcep2]

I love Amiga. But I'll bet the 6MB ver loads faster on it than the 450K ver does on a powerful Amiga...



blakespot

I'm willing to bet that it doesn't..it is up virtually instantaneously from the time i double click the icon to the start screen on an A1200 68060@40 mhz off a flash card.

[stefcep2]

They were commissioned to do a job. They pushed the boat out because their employers let them get away with it. Eventually, they burned through their cash and had to go cap in hand to various big name companies to desperately save the situation.

They wanted to make the best computer they could. And they succeeded. However, within a handspan of years of their achievement, the PC was technologically superior in every aspect.

Bugfixes are the difference between your product being declared great, or your product being panned as a useless hunk of crap. Revolutions are happening and will continue to happen, but it is evolution that makes it continue.

To say that the Amiga arch is in any way relevant or even to suggest that it influenced todays PCs is at best a hell of a stretch and at worst an out and out falacy.

Leander stop trying to re-write history.

Firstly if the engineers at Commodore were "allowed" to do what they wanted by their employers, then there's a good chance that Amiga might have survived a lot longer.  Commodore Inc, screwed up.  

There were plans in the early 1990's for hardware and software that would have extended Commodore's technological advantage and made your P100 CPU with 16 meg running Win 95 every bit the boat anchor that it was.  No amount of bug-fixes for that set up would have turned it from the horse-drawn carriage that it was, to the modern motor car that the Amiga still was.  But some illegal business practices from MS, stupidity from IBM to let the x86  patent lapse,  plus total business incompetence from Commodore, along with some smart business practices like selling cheap to the business world and subsidizing workers home computer if they ran MS crap, results in inferior technology eventually winning out.  Apple was on its knees for the same reason, and was saved by a portable music player.  

With the current iteration of Windows-yes thats still Vista in our part of the World, MS learned that users also want efficiency and control of their machines, so much so they created a new operating system to do it.  But they had to foist their usual dross onto the public, suffer the backlash, and then react.  

Conceptually, there's a lot of amiga in today's PC hardware and OS architecture. Co-processors, pre-emptive multitasking, fast boot and shut down, prioritising the user input over other tasks. The PC may go about it in a different way but the objectives are the same.

[stefcep2]

This choice allows for a highly modular and highly flexable setup in ways the Amiga simply could not compete with.  It's why the PC arch hasn't really changed all that much in all this time, sure, busses have changed, gotten faster, but the base principles and concepts haven't.

you're doing it again: trying to re-write history.  Just before Commodores collapse, no-one-and I mean no-one- regarded the PC architecture of the day as being modern.  In fact it was seen as down right archaic.  The x86 hardware architecture ended up dominating that way because the patent was allowed to lapse by IBM, who themselves saw no future in the heap of junk that the x86 platform was.  No patent meant every electronics hardware factory in Taiwan could mass produce the same junk for next to nothing, and intel could keep ramping up the mhz on its CPU's to overcome many of the bottle necks that existed throughout the system.  Highly moduler and flexible, in ways the amiga simply couldn't compete?  My backside!!!  Name one thing you couldn't shove in a Zorro slot (since 1985) that let you do everything that an ISA or PCI slot let you have? And it autoconfiged. One will do.

[stefcep2]

Au contraire mon ami...



OS9 onwards had Preemptive multitasking.

Now, if you'd said Amiga was the first to have preemptive multitasking, you'd have been correct.

"MultiFinder was the name of an extension software for the Apple Macintosh, introduced in System Software 5 in 1988 and included with System Software 6. It added the ability to co-operatively multitask between several applications at once – a great improvement over the previous systems, which could only run one application at a time. With the advent of System 7, MultiFinder became a standard integrated part of the operating system. It remained a part of the operating system until Mac OS X."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MultiFinder

right back at ya..

[stefcep2]

The Hombre (if that's what you're referring to) was basically a wholly new architecture and would not be backward-compatible except through software emulation. And in addition to AmigaOS, it was actually planned to run...Windows!!!


Um, I think you have things backwards here. By this time, the Amiga was technologically ancient. I know because I upgraded my old Amiga 500 to a sparkling "new" Amiga 1200. My friend ditched his Amiga 500+ and bought a 486 instead. His PC ran circles around my Amiga, no matter how hard I refused to believe it...

i never knew they planned to run windows, but it wouldn't surprise, as Commodore was stupid enough to build PC's instead.

In what way did the 486 run circles around your amiga?  What were your specs?  An A1200 with an 030 and 4-8 meg would have let you do anything a 486 could and Win 3.1 was laughable running on said 486.  You'd be a masochist to contemplate running Win95 on it.  So i don't see how the 486 was superior.

[stefcep2]

NO U.

Apple survive and thrive now because they offer an end to end computing experience that is seamless - Something that no one else can say they do in the general computing market. They were on their knees because it stubbornly refused to get off the PPC, yes, the iPod has been a runaway success, but be under absolutely no illusion: the move to x86 saved the computer lines.

Apples resurrection occurred with the the cancellation of the Mac clones, and the release of the iPod and the fruity ppc macs.  It took Jobs to make the company realise that they needed a point of difference, and that being a software-only company-which is where apple clones was heading-was not the way to go.   Its a common business principle: do what YOU do, and do it well, don't copy what the competitor is doing.  The move to x86 happened much later when it became clear that mac laptops could not be made with ppc chips of high enough clock speeds to compete with x86.  Windows compatibility was added relatively recently, but no-one buys a Mac to run Windows, but its a bonus If someone really wants it.

Commodore OTOH, dabbled in making PC's, and therefore supporting their direct competitor and entering a crowded market place and giving up their point of difference, the Amiga operating environment.  Thats why it was stupid that they apparantly also considered running Windows on their next-gen hardware at a time when MS was moving towards wiping alternative platforms out: if thats not giving your direct competitor a ringing endorsement i don't know what is.  Stupid is the only way to describe it.

[stefcep2]

My spec was an Amiga 1200 with 4MiB fastram and a 40MHz FPU. That's generous too because most people didnt' have any fastram...

OK so what couldn't you do that the 486 could..

[stefcep2]

It simply couldn't keep up...

Doing what?  Measured how?  Blue screens per minute Vs Guru's per days?

Having had an '030 A1200 and having to use a 486 running 3.11, and believe i knew many, many other in the same situation, I can't which was more enjoyable to use.

There's interesting review in Australian Commodore and Amiga review comparing Workbench 3.1 to Win 95 here? http://www.racevb6.com/acar/

Its the second last 1995 issue, its a nice read.

Comparing a 486 with Win 3.11 is a no contest.
:

[stefcep2]

Well, perhaps the comparison was out of the box. A 486 out of the box is significantly faster than an A1200 out of the box.

Textured 3D games were a lot faster and smoother on a 486 with VGA than a non-RTG amiga, even with an 030 at a faster clockspeed. Just compare Doom on a 25MHz 486 with VGA to a 40MHz 68030 with AGA, let alone a stock 020.

Not that you could actually run Doom at the time, as it hadn't been ported. Try comparing, say, TFX to see the difference. It isn't particularly great on an 060, but works fine on a modest 486.

3D was CPU intensive.  The amiga was never just about the CPU, the PC was mostly about the CPU. The architecture was never designed with chunky graphics in mind.  If it wasn't for Doom, it might not have mattered, for a bit longer any way.  But then again, that 486 ney even Pentium  PC could do what an 68020 with 4 meg and Scala could do at the time.