What's happened in 5 years?

[Gojirax]

I know I can scour the forums and the rest of the web to get the answers to this question, and I have done some considerable reading. I know now what the A1 is, and it appears OS4 is only for sale with the purchase of an A1 system.

Amiga Inc. appear to have shriveled up and gone dormant, but are for some reason not dead.

I used to follow the Amiga feverishly. I even spent thousands of dollars in 1997 to fly to St. Louis to meet Petro Tschenko and Jim SomethingfromGateway. I was the president of the Vancouver Amiga Users Group in Washington State and owned one of almost every model of Amiga. But times got hard and I had to sell them all.

If you're bored and can summarize the last 5 years I would greatly appreciate it.

What companies have left the Amiga?

What companies have come to the Amiga?

What companies are still with the Amiga?

Does anybody still have a grand plan or a dream they are pursuing? (I see someone's making an ECS Amiga on a single chip, but not officially for any real reason yet.)

What kind of Amigas are people using today? Is there anything being done for 68k Amigas or is it all PPC/A1/Elbox etc?

How big is MorphOS?

When I was reading about OS4 and the A1 yesterday I couldn't help but think there's a market out there for it, but not at it's current price.

I work in the healthcare industry and one of the biggest concerns is getting people logged out of a workstation and getting someone else logged into it with the least amount of time wasted. (Shared workstations among many doctors or nurses etc.)

Thin client (Diskless network booting) workstations are being researched for this purpose. They would be safe from virus's because they wouldn't have a hard drive. They would be safe from Spyware for this same reason.

The down side is that you don't have a hard drive so everything you run would be from a Citrix session.

Is there a Citrix client or interface that could be ported to the AmigaOS4 fairly easily? I see that things made for Linux are fairly simple to port.

The A1 could be a perfect "Thin Client" since it can warm boot in 10 seconds, and it would give you the power of having your browser and possibly some other small applications locally. With a local hard drive that wasn't succeptible to Virus and Spyware you could cache a lot of things to speed up your experience.

Anyway, I know this thread goes in a lot of directions, and I'm sorry for that, it's just been a long time.

Thanks,
Jack

[amigakit]

Welcome back!

[zipper]

Nothing...
I ordered CSPPC NG/CVPPC NG in '99 before P5 went bankrupt. Nothing useable has been produced ever since - as I didn't like the Peg idea. I could wait for OS4+hw four years - that was enough! So 2 years now happyish on PC, and Amikit +AForever handle most of my Amigan needs - and of course A4000PPC when retromania strikes.

[tonyvdb]

The Amiga One is really the only improvment over past moddles sold but as with all the other runs they only did one production run and now there are no plans to continue.

The A 1200 and the A4000 seem to be the machines in the most demand and use these days. The power pc in the Amiga hasent seen any recent development (other then roumers) and eccelorators are not beeing made for the Amiga platform either so if you want one you get to pay through the nose for a used one.

The only real development in the past two years or so is Amiga Forever software for the PC. It alows for emulation of an Amiga on your PC and it works quite well but dosent support much in the way of Amiga Hardware and takes some fiddiling to run programs like games.

[lempkee]

hello jack, it's been a while since we all heard from you and i must say its cool to know you're still around.

As for what happened the last 5 years... i'd like to think a lot has happened, everything from Morphos , AROS , Amithlon and OS4 and there is a lot of sidetracking and to mention a few things....

Elbox has gone Coldfire and seems to ignore the PPC market for now (with their sharkppc not comming) and MorphOS seems to have stagnated though they made a huge leap from 2000 to 2003 and as late as last year they put out Morphos for the classic line (in a complete package).

The mediator's are still selling like hotcakes, god knows why but one must admit it is a nice kit of hardware.

There is also a AROS branch for 68k called AFA os or something and seems to be updated frequently (just replace components with the ones you use in os3.9 currently and all should be set (with new features etc).

The Genesi/morphos guys have got 2 motherboard designs (pegasos 1 + 2) and a third one which seems to be a set top box or something...(i am sure someone with more knowledge will fill you in on it).

Amiga OS4 has 3 motherboard designs out, the A1SE , A1XE and the µa1c but with several new designs in the pipeline like the PowerVixxen (which is made by one of the guys behind the µa1c) and that board is a ppc card for the classic range (ie A1200) , do some search for more info about specs etc but i can also mention that this board will also run standalone (ie without an classic attached) and the board is supposedly going to be cheap...  Other hw alternatives comming is the Troika projects and theese are priced for people with less cash and it should be affordable but also seems the specs will be pretty low.... (but time will tell).

The AmigaOne range has a option to use 1.7GHZ cpu's now which is a milestone (IMO) though the first demo of theese cpu's will be shown in early june at a show (in the USA..)..

I'd also like to think that the 68k market has stalled pretty much to a grind halt though i also must admit that i stopped supporting it back in 2004 and therefor not following it that much (ie i might have missed major stuff).


Another nice thing is that forums keeps growing and people are returning to AMIGA , some choose UAE and some choose AROS , MorphOS or OS4.

hope that filled atleast a few gaps and hopefully others will fill you in on everything i didnt etc :-).

cheers

[Piru]

About current situation

All the currently existing AmigaONE models are based on chipsets with serious problems. The new designs are promising to fix the issues, but none of the new designs have actually materialized yet. The dates have slipped, as usual (this is nothing extraordinary though).

Various 3rd parties are promising to bring their own designs to run OS4, while it is unclear if they are actually going to get license to run it. Due to some unfortunate contract reasons Amiga Inc is holding the keys here, and they seem to be totally uninterested about anything other than their AmigaNowhere(TM). The parties seem reluctant to comment the licensing situation.

So in short, for now the only "new" system available is Pegasos II, running MorphOS.

MorphOS development continues as before, the latest larger updates being 3D driver update and free MorphOS 1.4.5 for PowerUP.

[Gojirax]

Thanks for the prompt and detailed replies!

I see there are still a fair number of Amiga users that stick around if only to complain about the lack of anything being done for their beloved platform. I appreciate their input as well, as it paints a complete picture of the situation.

One of the reasons I'm looking into the Amiga market again is because there has been a massive shift in the way technology is used in the last 4 years. Microsoft and Intel boxes had at one point become the only real solution to people's need to be connected and live in the world of technology.

With the advent of cell phones that can play MP3's and movies and games, and the rise in power of the iPod, the power of Palm devices, digital cameras and the like, there's as big a market for mobile computing as there is for desktop computing. I think this is what Jim Whatshisname saw back in 1997.

Some will say "But mobile devices aren't computers!"

I would reply with "And I don't take my desktop PC with me in the car, or camping, or to my office etc."

We will soon see Palm sized devices with the power of a full sized desktop with a projection screen, a kickstand and a projected infra-red keyboard that you can set on a table or desk and use it like a desktop PC. You will be able to surf the internet, listen to music, take pictures, record movies, talk on the phone and send Email from a computer the size of a palm pilot.

When you get home, you dock it and it becomes your regular desktop PC.

When you get into your car it will provide you with GPS functions, map functions and it will get XM radio reception as well.

You will be able to sync your MP3 collection with it and listen in the car or at work. You will be able to get On-Demand pay-per-view on the road during long trips.

Microsoft doesn't own this yet, and with their focus on subscription based large scale software they aren't in a position to own it. It's up for grabs.

It would be nice to see someone come up with a small device that ran fast and had all the basic functions that are already in one form or another available to Amiga hardware. But that's just my dreamer side talking.

[Fats]

Gojirax wrote:

One of the reasons I'm looking into the Amiga market again is because there has been a massive shift in the way technology is used in the last 4 years. Microsoft and Intel boxes had at one point become the only real solution to people's need to be connected and live in the world of technology.

Exqueeze me :-D. I'm already 'live' for more then ten years: first on HPUX workstations at the university, then on linux boxes at home (with an old SUN SparcStation 20 as firewall).

greets,
Staf.
 

[Gojirax]

I should have phrased that more carefully.

I meant "The cash wielding Masses"

Joe iPod for instance.

[morduk]

Been away from the Amiga market for sometime.  Was thinking of up grading my 4000T.  After reading this string, it Appears there is no clear path to follow so I will sit pat.

[tonyvdb]

morduk wrote:
Been away from the Amiga market for sometime.  Was thinking of up grading my 4000T.

Morduk, Dont think that there is nothing that you can do with your A4000T AmigaKit has lots of things you can do to upgrade your system. There are many things you can do with a A4000T like getting a Video Toaster Flyer system (farly inexspencive on ebay for the cards and software). An eccelorator/PPC is also a good choice but can cost around $500-700US.
OS 3.9 is a really good investment and gives your Amiga a much nicer GUI and many other features.

[DaBest]

As for me, in the last 5 years, my A4000 died due to a leaky battery on the motherboard. My son gave me his A3000 anad I was running on that until I got a A4000 motherboard and my A4000 is back up and running.
weeeeeeeeeee :-D  :-D  :crazy:  :lol:  :lol:

I sure miss those WORLD OF COMODORE SHOW :boohoo:  :boohoo: