What would you like to see in a new Amiga?

[downix]

McVenco wrote:

downix wrote:

One of the proposals I put forth awhile back was to cut a deal with a PC motherboard vendor for a custom run of their boards, with the BIOS removed and a custom firmware, such as the Amithlon kernel, embedded in its place.

Congratulations, so you have a 2008 spec computer running a 1994 operating system (or a derivate of it). Sure, it may be fast but you will still have the drawbacks of the ancient stuff. You need to do some serious programming to be able to use all of the modern hardware that can make use of that new system, and I'm not even starting on modern software.

I like the idea, but I have very serious doubts that it can be done - not without major work from lots of people, or it won't be done until 2022 (and then the competition will be 14 years ahead still....)

You don't need to use "all" of the modern hardware, only a subset that will give you the functions needed.  So, we'd be limited to say ATI *or* nVidia cards, but not both, for example.

Focus on getting the core together, to give one spec or a limited SPEC that can be worked from.  Software wise you are quite right, our apps have vanished, save some hangers on like Aladdin and ImageFX.

[theformula]

The style, feel and fun of an old amiga but update to modern standards.

[persia]

And there is the dilemma, you have a 1994 OS running on 1994 hardware.  If you upgrade the hardware you break the OS, if you upgrade the OS you break compatibility.  

Apple made it through this dilemma because it was a living company, CBM, Amiga Inc and Escom are all long dead, had their been a living company directing the development of the Amiga you would have seen a slow development of a PPC Amiga OS with a compatibility solution for 68000 code, software updated to PPC standard, then a radical shift to say a new GUI on top of QNX or Linux, with a compatibility solution back to the old PPC software but not the 68000.  The developers would at each level be updating their code.

Now what you are faced with is that a quantum leap in hardware and software is required, there's nothing gradual about it at the cost of compatibility with all your existing software.  This without a company at the head, without developers and without financial backing and wit only a small fraction of what was a small user community left.  It's an impossible situation.

At todays prices the best bet would be to produce Amiga Classic replicas for the hobby folks.  That's pretty much the Amiga market these days.  But you would need to be careful, the market is small and you run the risk of flooding it.  Produce a limited edition collectors series.  Each machine would be engraved with a plate bearing sequence number, Say Amiga Classic 3000 Collectors Edition #1 of 100.  That *would* sell, though in a classic PPC board on top.  The market would bear several thousand dollars on that.  It's still a small market, maybe a 1000 machines with a thousand dollar profit on the machine is still only a million dollars.