Here's the first specs for the new Amiga from Amiga Inc.

[HammerD]

meega wrote:

drHirudo wrote:

meega wrote:
Only 1GB RAM? Not enough these days.

Cool, the "Slam and trash it" team is already here!

My AmigaOne works great with 256 MB, sometimes when compiling stuff with best opimisation I run out of memory, but that's very rare. On the other hand my A4000 works great with 18 MB RAM, and it's enough these days for classic Amiging.

Shall we work down the rest of the spec to see why a lot of (possibly most) people would regard this as an under-equipped machine for the modern era?

Yes, the "classic" Amiga worked very well with its resources, but every single one really needed expansion to do "serious" work. Only 1 (ONE) slot for only 1 (ONE) gigabyte is not enough to compete in the 21st century.

In my opinion.

Have you ever actually used OS4? I am running it on 256MB of RAM and it is totally fine and I really even have no desire to upgrade that, even to 512MB.  For AmigaOS4 1GB is certainly MORE THAN enough.  With sound, SATA, and ethernet on-board, you still have two free PCI slots remaining (assuming one is taken up by graphics).  So, throw in a TV Tuner, Wireless Card, or any other combination of 2 cards and you are fine for 90+% of the users out there.

This is certainly more expandable than my MicroA1 because I am limited there to a single PCI slot.   Sure I have a cpu socket that is upgradable but there have been no cpu upgrade modules available for sale, so it could have been a soldered on cpu for all it matters.

 

[HammerD]

amigakid wrote:
Wow what great specs for 1997.  Oh wait it's 2007.  My older KDS laptop has better specs.  How about they try to hit the year 2000 in specs then i might think about parting with that money.  Comeon AInc with the costs of stuff so low now why cant you just give us something that is a bit more powerful.  Once again crap from them and hell we'll pay and not recieve it anyways so why not exaggerate the specs to make us feel better.

Ok. You have to understand and realize that this board is for *AMIGA OS4* and not *WINDOWS VISTA*.  OS4 will run quite nicely on this board!  Okay, perhaps you won't be decoding H.264 video in real-time on it but then again that is even hard to do on high-end PC's today.

In the context that this board is targeted for and in the price range where you can sell in quantity, this machine fits the bill quite nicely.

Remember it was the lower cost Amigas that sold in the highest volumes and that is what we really need right now: MORE USERS!

Besides, there will be a high end board announced next week according to Amiga Inc.'s press release.

So if you don't like the low end board then purchase the high end one....this is like A1200 vs. A4000  

[HammerD]

jiffydos wrote:
At risk of appearing to be a whiner, I certainly feel that this equipment is far under my expectations for what even the newest low-end amiga would be.

A MPC8349E at 400Mhz is not what I had in mind when they said a new system was coming out... and certainly not one that had provisioning for only 1 memory slot.

I was hoping to see something more like the MPC8641D at 1.5Ghz and up to 2GB of RAM (or, at least 2 slots).

I guess I was dreaming.

OK I have to say it again, the purpose of this machine is to fill the A500/A1200 space of the market.  Low cost, lower specs, higher volume (hopefully).  Don't get fooled by the MHz myth here.  Amiga OS4 is NOT bloated like Windows or other OS's (to a lesser extent MacOS or Linux).  It is small, lean and can run quite nicely in far less than 256MB of ram and on a slower processor.  Don't forget the memory is DDR2 and I'm sure the memory controller will absolutely smoke the AmigaOne's.  1 GIG is a MOUNTAIN of ram for OS4 and I can only see a very small percentage of people actually using that much.  I am very happy with only 256 MB of ram in my MicroA1.

And those people who NEED more will be able to BUY more, in the higher end machine that hopefully will be announced next week if the tea leaves are correct

 

[HammerD]

And your point is?

[HammerD]

meega wrote:
Only 1GB RAM? Not enough these days.

And just what OS do you plan to run on the new hardware that would make 1GB not enough?

I am quite happily running OS4 in 256 megabytes of RAM since 2 years now.  Not because I don't love ram: don't get me wrong, all my PC's have 1+ GB of ram and my main PC (running Vista) has 2GB.

If I felt that I would benefit from more ram for my MicroA1 I would have bought it a long time ago.  But really, guys, you just don't NEED it.  OS4 is fine on 256MB.  

[HammerD]

Argus wrote:
$489???  And I presume by the conspicuous non-mention you need to buy your own RAM, HD, DVD and, most importantly, OS (cause no mention of OEM version).  That makes this six year old spec more on the order of $800...insanity....

I believe it is said in the press release that it will ship as a finished system sans monitor only.  That would mean it would include a hard drive, memory, graphics card, case, mouse, keyboard, power cable, OS4 CDROM, etc etc.

Basically hook up your monitor plug in the system to your Hydro and you are good-to-go.

[HammerD]

koaftder wrote:
With these specs, I might as well go dumpster diving and pull out a 1GHz thunderbird for free and install windows 95. That sucker would fly, and I'd get the memory protection and a descent web browser unlike what doesn't exist on AOS4, and all for free.

500 dollars for a 400MHz machine, no thanks. For 100 dollars more I can get a mac mini, which would freaking blow it out of the water.

Then why are you even here?  OS4 has minimal hardware requirements so it makes sense to offer a minimal configuration with a low cost (we are talking complete system here (minus monitor) for less than $500 bucks).  I seem to recall that is about the same price as the A1200 was.  

You have to compare this machine in the context of previous Amiga computers and clones like the Pegasos.

It is not really fair to compare it with computers from billion dollar companies like Apple and Dell/HP/Acer, etc...who run Microsoft Windows or MacOS X.

OS4 was developed on a shoe-string budget and actually turned out to be quite a nice stable product.  I really am thankful for that and I hope the legal issues can be worked out and we can all move forward and enjoy the new hardware later this summer.

[HammerD]

Minuous wrote:
400MHz is an insult, there are mobile phones these days that are clocked faster.

I certainly won't be wasting my money on this crap.

An insult to who? Not everyone can afford a $1000+ USD machine.  This is the LOW END MACHINE...that will have low power requirements, probably can run totally fanless, etc.

If you want more power then you should be looking to next week to the HIGH END MACHINE. Geez.

[HammerD]

xc8Bronx wrote:
I think that there is one solution to these #$%^&**(*&&!!!!!

BOYCOTT!!!!!!

This will make them go into bankruptcy !! :madashell:  :madashell:

No it won't, it will just ensure we get NO future Amiga.  Look, the problems between Hyperion and Amiga Inc. are just that.  BETWEEN THEM.  All the users want is available hardware to run OS4.  It looks like Amiga Inc. is flexing their rights and going ahead and satisfying what people have wanted for years: new amiga hardware.

Let the companies battle it out in the legal space.  Really there is nothing we can do about it.

[HammerD]

hooligan wrote:

HammerD wrote:

An insult to who? Not everyone can afford a $1000+ USD machine.  This is the LOW END MACHINE...that will have low power requirements, probably can run totally fanless, etc.

Exactly! Not everyone can afford to put $500 into a mobo  which doesnt let you do most of the stuff needed daily, and requires components which cant be even bought at your local store anymore. But all this is irrelevant as we all know the era stopped here and it wont be continuing.

You are speculating here as no one has actually seen this hardware running, so you don't know what it can or cannot do based on specs alone.  But AmigaOS4 - being a small and efficient OS, SHOULD run most tasks quite nicely.

If you aren't happy with the performance then buy the high end machine.  I don't see the problem here.

[HammerD]

DrBombcrater wrote:

Point is that you don't NEED a super fast CPU to run AmigaOS

This argument keeps getting rolled out to defend slow hardware, and it's very true - a 400MHz processor with no L2 cache and a 64-bit bus is fine for running OS4.

But, you know, most people like to do something other than boot the OS and stare at a pretty desktop. And many applications most certainly do need more power than that. Much more.

Will it have enough power to play DVDs? If so, will it take 100% CPU time and leave the system unable to multitask? Somebody earlier in this thread mentioned using a TV card. Is a 400MHz CPU enough to decode the output from a DVB-T or DVB-S card? I don't know, but I wouldn't bet my bank account on it.

What about emulators like UAE? Or tasks like OCR scanning?

Using not just a 400MHz processor, but a crippled 400MHz processor relegates this thing to the status of a very basic dev box. The 'quirky' specs don't help - 2 gigabit ethernet ports, but no IDE and only 1 memory slot?

And I say again your point is? If you need more power buy the high-end machine.