New to Forum - Not to the AMIGA

[Wraith2021]

Hi all.

My first AMIGA i bought was the AMIGA 500.

I remember it well, the day I got it my older brother had bought a few games for it.

Bloodmoney, Shadow Of The Beast, Strider and a pack of 10 games.

I remeber looking at the big shiny Psygnosis box of Shadow Of The Beast, opening it to find 2 floppy disks.

This was the first ever amiga game I played. The A500 was one for the first batch (the ones with the red led).

I was used to the 8 bit Computers, the Commodore 64 and the Spectrum 128K so seeing how fast it loaded seemed almost instant compared to the long loading time of a cassette game on the 8bit machines.

The graphics seemed Photorealistic and the sound when loading Bloodmoney was akin to that of a CD compared to what I was used to.

I remeber that day well. A friend of mine had just bought a new game called Strider for his Setrum 128K and had brought it round to bragg (as this was one of our traditions when any of us had bought a new game we knew the other wanted).

I led him upstairs into the bedroom where the A500 was set up and popped in the Strider game which my brother had bought. Needless to say his jaw dropped (he went home dissapointed that evening).

I spent many nights with my amiga, and my friend eventually got one for his birthday.

We had seen pictures of coloured casings for the A500 in an issue of AMIGA FORMAT (The BIBLE of the time), which were being sold.

We decided to make our own, we went to the local garrage and bought a few cans of car spraypaint, I bought Matt Black, florecent green and florecent red.

we put newspaper down in the back garden, and took the outer casings out for a paint job. I did a mish-mash of spraying the florecent colours all over the top and bottom of the casing, then when there were no beige colour in sight I left the paint to dry for an hour of so, then I came back with the black. The effect I gave it was a black case with streaks of florecent red and green in it.

I was proud of my achievement

I had many days of fun with my A500; then came news in the BIBLE of another AMIGA due for release, but this wasn't like the others, the A500+ (with limited game compatability) or the newly annouced A600 which looked like a small block of cheese; this was the next-gen of the AMIGA, the A1200.

I had mine preordered due for the Christmas release. And like most new Computers had launch problems with the first batch (which mine was part of). They had to recall the first batch due to a faulty built in modulator.

There were compatability issues, and I had the kickstart 1.3  emulator, which helped a bit.

Then after the A1200 came the CD32, which I bought the back which contained Liberation and Microcosm.

Then Commodore went bust. The AMIGA was bought by ESCOM, and the interest in the AMIGA started to die.

There were talk of the PowerAMIGA a mythical machine which was an AMIGA more powerful than the PC, which would emulate the PC, thus taking lead over the PC market yet keeping the AMIGA on top.

This never saw the light of day and I had to resort to moving to the PC.

I still have my A1200 and it gets a fair bit of use from time to time, but I still wish the AMIGA was back.

[SamuraiCrow]

A lot of people feel like you do.  There's talk of the Amiga eventually migrating to the PowerPC Cell processor.

AmigaOS 4.0 prerelease 4 is out for owners of the AmigaOne series of computers and soon to be released as final version as soon as new hardware becomes available.  If you're still on the A1200 you can run AmigaOS 3.9 on it but that will be the last release you will be able to run without a PowerPC-based accelerator card.

But don't feel left out because there may soon be accelerator cards for the A1200 from ACK Software Controls called the PowerVixxen LT that will come bundled with AmigaOS 4.0 and will use an on-board graphics card and sound chip to bring the A1200 back up to an almost semi-modern level of performance.  (At least it will be as good as the A1200 trapdoor slot can handle.  ;-) )

Things are going to either look better soon or else so bad that nobody will be able to stand it.  :-D  Hold on to that PC, however, since it may be a while before we get a decent web browser for the Amiga again.  :roll:

[amigakit]

Welcome to Amiga.org

Good times :-)

[Wraith2021]

Hi SamuraiCrow,

Although the card does look exciting its going in the wrong direction.

This is one of those things that I don't agree with. Everyone is trying to turn the AMIGA into a PC.

Its the kind of "If we can't bring Mohammed to the mountain, we'll bring the mountain to Mohammed" talk that seems a cop-out.

They are all talking about using PPC processors thinking that this will give the same effect that the AMIGA architecture provides, but it won't.

Each part of the AMIGA had its own BUS and could work independently of the core cpu, It had the Blitter Chip which allowed massive ammounts of screen data to be moved around instantly (thats why scrolling txt jerks about on a PC and not on an AMIGA).

It could truly multitask because each part of it had independence over the other parts.

Now just imagine if the same archetecture put with each chip upgraded to be a lot faster, the memory but and cpu bus a lot faster and the ram a lot faster and a lot more of. Then add USB and 3D capabilities.

That is the True PowerAMIGA.

The PPC cell processors are good, but the AMIGA was capable of a lot more.

[Effy]

I don´t think SamuraiCrow meant that we want the Amiga to turn into a pc and certainly not with the PowerVixxen LT that will only run on the A1200. It´s only meant to get the most out of the Amiga design but then with more neat goodies added  :lol:

[Wraith2021]

I didn't mean for it to sound like a dig, that wasn't my intention, it was just an observation.

I agree that the card looks good for the A1200.

It just seems like nobody understands just how Next-Gen the AMIGA was. PC's are still running on a design that hasn't chaged much from the start. The AMIGA was (and still is) a revolutionary design, well ahead of its time.

I would love to see this architecture come back, Jeff Miner was a genious.

[Effy]

Asking what the future will be like for the Amiga is a touchy subject as there are many totally different opinions about this. Some prefer the PPC way with AmigaOne or Pegasos. Others prefer tuning the old classic Amiga´s which is why the PowerVixxen LT was created (and hopefully also will be sold)  :lol:

[mikrucio]

"The PPC cell processors are good, but the AMIGA was capable of a lot more."

Dude are u on drugs?. common we all love the amiga. but the amiga was never or never will be as good as the latest technology which is the cell.( unless os4 gets ported to ps3)

There is no way the amiga could, or even dream of performance like the cell processor. no offence but you dont really know what your on about with that peice of info.

[Wraith2021]

Mikrucio, you misinterpreted the statement. I said that the AMIGA "WAS" capable of a lot more.

Had the original archetecture advanced in speed and capabilities, then yes it would be a lot better than a cell processor, each part of the machine could handle its own tasks without having to process data through the main CPU all the time.

Each chip (the Paula, Agnus, Denese etc.) had its own bus, allowing then to access the memory independently leaving the main CPU to do other tasks. it had a blitter chip, which could move large ammounts of graphical data arround instantly allowing paralax scrolling (which the PC is not capable of even today).

It could truly multitask, and not just 2 things.

Cell processors are the way forward for the PC, but the AMIGA wasn't a PC and never will be.

Although Cell processors are new, the technology behind them is not, even the Cache is taken from AMIGA

Heres a quote
________________________________________________________

Local Store V’s Cache

To go back to the example of an audio processing application, audio is processed in small blocks so to reduce any delay as the human auditory is highly sensitive to this.  If the block of audio, the algorithm used and temporary blocks can fit into an SPE’s local store the block can be processed very, very fast as there are no memory accesses involved during processing and thus nothing to slow it down.  Getting all the data into the cache in a conventional CPU will be difficult if not impossible due to the way caches work.

It is in applications like these that the Cell will perform at its best.  The use of a local store architecture instead of a conventional cache ensures the data blocks can be hundreds or thousands of bytes long and they can all be guaranteed to be in the local store.  This makes the Cell’s management of data fundamentally different from other CPUs.

The Cell has massive potential computing power.  Other processors also have high potential processing capabilities but rarely achieve them.  It is the ability of local stores to hold relatively large blocks of data that may allow Cells to get close to their maximum potential.

Local stores are not a new invention, in the early 1990s the AT&T DSP Commodore were planning on using in a never released Amiga included a “visible cache”.
____________________________________________________

So no, I am not on drugs. Here is the link to article just to proove i did not write it myself.

http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cell/Cell1_v2.html

Now, away from Cell processors to normal ones.

Now we see dual core processors, thats just 2 processors in one. Which they say can truly multitask, but it can only multitask 2 things, then each core has to resort to hyperthreading.

I really don't think I need to go on any further.

All I will say is that although Cell Processors are good, imagine what the AMIGA would be like today had Commodore not gone bust.

Would we be seeing Cell operated AMIGA that would now be 15 or 16yrs old, and even newer faster technology?

[mikrucio]

yes indeed sorry.

Yeah i know how the amiga worked thanks for the heads up tho.

Pc's suck ass. and so do macs.

actually the ps2 is the only machine that can do similar things to that of tha amiga. it has independant busses. that can work without cpu control.

[Wraith2021]

Cell Processors are the way forward, but they are not "NEW", they are just up to date.

Its as if they looked at how the AMIGA worked and designed a fast processor around it.

Strange how they are calling it Next-Gen, when in fact they should be This-Gen, and should have been around since the mid 90's.

Although saying that, the technology has been around in the Cray supercomputers, and they are a bit older than the AMIGA, but they costed millions to buy.