What If It Wasn't PPC

[itix]

I used to ponder what would have happened if Amiga Technologies had not wasted time with the walker, restarting the A1200/A4000, but instead spent that time and money porting AOS to the ARM, with a built in 68k emu... It would have been dog slow at the time... But we would be in a much better position now...

Nowhere. Without full OCS or AGA compatibility it would have been yet another fiasco for Amiga Technologies. It was the custom chips which made Commodore-Amiga successful.

On the other hand Amiga Technologies never had resources to enhance Amiga in any way. They had only one employee: Petro Tschytschenko. Amiga Technologies was always "dead" company with few ideas with even fewer resources.

[itix]

@dammy

For a mobile device, it ECS/AGA compatibility wouldn't have been needed, at least not initially. If they had gotten a base model out and released a decent SDK, we would have many ports as we see to day for OS4/MOS/AROS.

Which companies would have developed software for new Amiga? Companies which didnt have sentimental ties to Amiga dropped it right after collapse of Commodore. For the world Amiga was dead. There is no way tiny Amiga Technologies could have convinced those companies to join in.

Please also note that most games ported to NG Amiga systems are just Linux/SDL ports. Some of them are really cool but this option was not available at that time... Linux, just like Internet, was only starting to shape up.

And not to forget... HP released their OS 3.5 in 1999. That was quite late, wasnt it? Now how long it would have taken to port the OS to another CPU? We have got real life example...

With a jump to the more modern DragonBall MX, EUAE integration would have been option.

DragonBall MX was released when, in 2001 or so? If Amiga would have survided (and sort of florished) from year 1995 to 2001 there would be no need for UAE integration.

Anyway Amiga Technologies/Amiga Inc. was never controlling Amiga and its direction. Petro was only a marionette trying to hang along.

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@the_leander

Nowhere. Without full OCS or AGA compatibility it would have been yet another fiasco for Amiga Technologies. It was the custom chips which made Commodore-Amiga successful.

Tbh I thought it was the fact that you could get the games in just about any playground in the UK that made it such a hit over here... Might be wrong though...

Maybe. But when Amiga Technologies stepped in that industry was already dead.

[itix]

And not to forget... HP released their OS 3.5 in 1999. That was quite late, wasnt it? Now how long it would have taken to port the OS to another CPU? We have got real life example...

We certainly do. It took Dr.Schulz about seven months, doing it part time (full time job, wife with newborn plus two very young children) to port AROS to SAM440, and that was a crap load of stuff being ported or fresh code. Had he been full time at it, I bet he could have done it in less then 12 weeks.

AROS is written portability in mind. OS 3.1 wasnt and according to an interview of Olaf Barthel it seems that it was quite mess:

While I was still doing consulting work for Amiga Technologies GmbH in 1995/1996 I had started to rework the AmigaOS source code to build on a single Amiga (the original code required more than one computer, one of which had to be a Sun/3 workstation).

Andy Finkel had prepared an operating system build for Amiga Technologies, which I tried to get to work on my computer system at home. At that time the R&D effort undertaken by the company was picking up speed (only to be wound down not much later when the parent company, ESCOM, filed for bankruptcy) and I thought that it would be helpful to have a complete working build available for future development work. There was no R&D lead in the company handing out tasks, I picked this job myself.

It took a while to become familiar with the build environment and the tools. My goal was to reduce the number of different compilers and assemblers required to build the operating system. Ideally, you'd just have to say "make" and a couple of hours later you'd have the Kickstart ROM files and the Workbench distribution sitting on your hard disk. In total, it must have taken 1-2 years to bring the build to this level of functionality. I worked on this on and off whenever there was time.

Which again implies that Amiga Technologies was not able to carry Amiga development on. Not at least after collapse of ESCOM.

I also found this gem (dated 07/11/95):

During his key note address held in Los Angeles at the Video Toaster Expo, Petro Tyschtschenko, CEO and President of Amiga Technologies officially announced the Power PC to be the processor used in the future generation of Amiga computers.

 The first POWER AMIGA will be available 1st quarter 1997 and will feature the Power PC 604 RISC CPU. Further models will be available later in the entry-level, as well as in the mid-range.

 The Power Amigas will be backwards compatible with current models and will also feature a new and more powerful chipset.

 "Our pre-emptive multitasking Operating System AmigaOS will be ported to the Power PC platform first. Our goal is to make our OS hardware independent to allow further ports on other platforms", said Petro Tyschtschenko.

 He also added: "We have a clear business plan: We do things consequently, step by step. First, we ramped up the production and set up an organisation to handle the Amiga market and satisfy the demand. Now that we have achieved this successfully, we focus on research & development to bring new and better products on the market. One of the mistakes the former Commodore made, was to do too many things at a time, too many promises and therefore losing focus on important aspects of its business. We have learned from these mistakes and won't repeat them. Commitments and promises are nice but facts are better."

 The developments will also focus on including more features in the AmigaOS, especially regarding network abilities and memory management.

 The development of the native RISC AmigaOS will be made internally at Amiga Technologies. An R&D department is currently being set up in Bensheim with sufficient engineers to meet the announced schedules. Former well known Commodore engineers as well as new competencies will join the team in Bensheim this year.

 This development project will also be involving a dozen companies in close partnership with Amiga Technologies GmbH.

 More good news for all Amiga users: The Power PC technology will not only be available for new Power Amigas. Thanks to a close co-operation between Amiga Technologies and Phase V, a German turbo board manufacturer, a full range of Power PC boards will also be available for the A1200, A3000 and A4000 series.

 This will allow a general migration of the Amiga platform towards Power PC in a short time, also for current models.

ESCOM declared itself insolvent in July 1996. Ten years later Amiga Inc announced AmigaOS 5.0 :-P

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@dammy

They could have easily used AROS code for their own as MOS did. Then there is AFA, there is no reason why the project couldn't have been done by a couple of great coders in a very reasonable time period.

Maybe Amiga Technologies was just badly managed.

Now given the capabilities of portable devices of that time period, why couldn't it have been done in a pretty tight time period?

Who would have done that and who would funded that project?

[itix]

@dammy

AT wouldn't have been involved, it would have been AI since they were the ones authorized a PPC port.

Ah well... But Amino Developments bought Amiga in 1999/2000 which again more or less collapsed in the year 2001.

I couldn't tell you back then who would have had the skill to do it, but there certainly some great talent out in the Amiga community that could have done it. AI had funding back then, they could have easily thrown some of funding from all the millions they burned through on a couple of decent coders to do the port, in house. They had Ray at the time, he could have been their internal project manager or just done a bounty.

I think the results would have been the same as they are now. Amiga in the bin and Amiga developers -- including Ray Akey -- left unpaid.

[itix]

@dammy

I'll disagree as there were probably a good 100,000 amiga users back then. If a quarter bought the new product and AI got $50 before any upgrades, that $1.25M may have kept AI alive and employees, like Gary P, in health insurance.

Ha! Only if a quarter of Amiga users bought new Amiga in 1993...