Optimism and the Amiga Community

[jarrody2k]

Hey folks,

After reading the umpteenth flame thread, I've come to understand there are 2 distinct camps in the Amiga community... no, not AmigaOne and Pegasos... optimists and pessimists.

The pessimist label the optimists gullible and fanatical.  The optimists accuse the pessimists of defaming and discouraging the last few efforts to reinvigorate our uncertain platform.  The perennial feuding between the two camps are getting old.

Though, time seems against the optimists.  Coming into the second half of 2006 without a finished operating system or a working 'box' to go with it (some may argue this).  With nearly every fanatic jaded after a decade of bankruptcy and vapourware, positivity in the community is getting lower.

I still think there is room yet for positive thinking, creativity, new strategies and directions for 'Amiga'.

I guess I want to ask, do you think optimism helped the Amiga 'cause'?

Do you think there are still positive outcomes for the Amiga platform?  (In whatever way you may call positive)

Just food for thought.

Cheers,

Jarrod

[bhoggett]

Optimism ian't a problem as long as it's tempered with realism. What has IMHO hurt the Amiga scene in recent years has been an almost fanatical adherence to dogma and idealism while throwing any realism to the wind.

Following certain decisions taken back in 2001, the current situation was practically inevitable - a lot of people could see it coming but were shouted down.

Now it's too late to fix the problem, even if there was enough will to do so - and there isn't. Maybe that's pessimistic, but it also happens to be the cold harsh truth. Sure, maybe some guys with a soldering iron and a spare room to work in will produce some new hardware and maybe they won't but either way it won't reinvigorate the platform. The best they can do is persuade the few hundred people still in the market to cough up again - you're not looking at a concern that will be able to stay in business for more than two or three years. It's a sticky plaster over an open wound that won't heal, that's all.

It's a shame, but I think the die was cast years ago.

[jarrody2k]

Hey Bill,

I have to agree with most of that.  Without resources you can't get far on any engineering effort.  And resources rarely come for free, unless you're open source.  Which I guess puts some fuel behind AROS.

bhoggett wrote:
Sure, maybe some guys with a soldering iron and a spare room to work in will produce some new hardware and maybe they won't but either way it won't reinvigorate the platform.

Though Kudos has to be given to one guy with a soldering iron... Minimig may end up being Amiga's best legacy!  Sure its a vanilla Amiga (or parts thereof).  But the dream of a handheld machine with loads of old classics ready to run doesn't seem too implausible?

What exactly 'Amiga' in this decade is really up to debate.  But its developments like this that are really exciting.  Sure it isn't finished yet, but its surely more feasible than a whole new desktop.

Cheers,

Jarrod

[tonyvdb]

For me the Amiga as we know it is still alive but only as long as users like us keep it alive. Emulation has come a long way but still will not run the amiga hardware. The Amiga One was a nice try but again is not compatable with alot of the old software or hardware and apears to be a short lived creation as there are no plans to continue making them.
Thanks to people like Amigakit we still have support for Amiga and parts are still available. As long as users try to keep there Amiga alive it will continue.

[Manu]

I agree mostley with Bill and jarrody2k
Eventually OS4 hardware comes out, but hardly this year.
I lost interest and I will probably never get my hands
on any hardware that runs OS4. Amiga Inc's silence
tells alot about how interested they are in bringing
in more users to Amiga OS. The embedded "thing" is bullox
to me.I have zero / nada interest in such things.
AROS seems to get better and better so I'll keep my eye
on that and continue using my XP. IMO Amiga will stay hobbyist forever with a very tiny userbase.

Signed,
The Pessimist.

[jarrody2k]

IMO Amiga will stay hobbyist forever with a very tiny userbase.

Signed,
The Pessimist.

It is fair to say that current Amiga technologies don't lend themselves to widescale adoption.  Though minimig still has my vote for most potential.  Apart from a handheld gaming device, it may even be a cheap way to do basic kiosks or displays.

For instance, the trains here still use old Amigas for displays, and for lack of parts they want to upgrade.  Assuming the minimig would be quite cheap to produce (naive assumption: how much are a few fpgas?) they could slap their existing software onto a memory card and not have to upgrade.  I'm not sure of the exact capabilities of the minimig - whether it can do composite out or what inputs it has etc. - but this sounds feasible.

Surely there must a whole bunch of simple display devices that don't need bulky, high-maintenance PCs?

Surely there are still avenues for 'Amiga' to continue in different forms and contribute to our lives.

Cheers,

Jarrod

[bhoggett]

Just to add that my earlier assessment does not include the minimig project. IMHO that belongs in the retro scene and as such has nothing to do with revitalising the Amiga as a platform, even if it may well find a successful niche for itself. This also means it is not a target for the criticisms I expressed earlier.

AROS is the software equivalent of the soldering iron produced hardware project. It won't revitalise the Amiga as a platform simply because its developers are not interested in establishing - never mind expanding - a user base. The only criticism I have of AROS is that it is often presented as an alternative to AmigaOS4 and MorphOS - indeed some make it out to be the only future for Amiga-like operating systems - when the truth is that it is no such thing.

[irishmike]

Well as is my custom, here is my two cents:

First off, For a platform that should have died off completely several years ago, we the user, have kept it alive by being a community of folks who help each other.  This is a wonderful trait and it should remain the mark of an Amiga user.  This sentiment should remain fostered IMO.

I became interested in Amiga back in the early 1990's and actually commenced to saving to buy one.  About the time I was half way to my goal ($1500) Commodore folded and I was left with the choice of buying a PC -- for the money I had saved, Apple II's were too high.

I will try to keep this short, however, I ended up with my first computer which was actually a Tandy 1000 TX.   Graduated to a PC where I ran my BBS, and then around 1994 bought a Macintosh Power PC (PowerMac 7500) stayed on that platform through until I bought a new PIII (self built) PC and ran Windows 2000 and XP... switched to an iMac and used that and upgraded to a Mac Mini last year. Somewhere in there became interested in Amiga again (the idea of OS 4 being developed brought me in) and fast forward to today where I am learning about Amiga with my A1200, about to obtain a second A1200 and plan to run a BBS from one of them -- once I establish cooling to my liking... and I run my current PC (PIII 1GHZ running Linux (Ubuntu 6.06) while I wait until Amiga may be a viable platform.

In the case that Amiga does not make it's comeback, I continue to use my A1200's in a hobbyist fashion (as well as to play the games I missed so much (Sierra Online games).  And for real work, my Mac mini and my Linux box work great.  There is actually very little I can't do on my Linux box.  

Since I am a big believer in open-source, I am watching carefully MorphOS and AROS as well.

I realize that this post was lengthy and I hope it was not boring to those who read it!

My Main point in all this is:  The Amiga Community is a shining example of what all computer users should strive for.   We need to foster the sense of users helping users and as long as we do this and the hardware is available we have our platform and our unique perspective on what the Personal Computer is all about.  This is a good thing and lets not loose it!

[jarrody2k]

tonyvdb wrote:
Thanks to people like Amigakit we still have support for Amiga and parts are still available. As long as users try to keep there Amiga alive it will continue.

Hey tony,

Here's a question then:  Considering user groups, websites (like this) and shops (like AmigaKit) are part of the Amiga community, do you feel that the promises and the pre-releases of new platforms for Amiga has helped to at least keep the community alive?

Cheers,

Jarrod

[jarrody2k]

bhoggett wrote:
Just to add that my earlier assessment does not include the minimig project. IMHO that belongs in the retro scene and as such has nothing to do with revitalising the Amiga as a platform, even if it may well find a successful niche for itself. This also means it is not a target for the criticisms I expressed earlier.

Does Amiga need to exist as a new desktop to live on?

AmigaOS was great for its time.  Perhaps to this day would still be considered very agile and still relevant to the modern desktop.  But as with BeOS we really don't have the resources to compete with Windows (or the more mature Linux solutions) in terms of being a viable and supported desktop alternative.

Minimig may not be an improvement on software, and mainly an efficiency improvement in terms of hardware, but it is a cheap way that Amiga can be deployed in all sorts of gadgets for the modern world.  I'm no electrical engineer, but such a product could have a low cost of manufacture, a tiny footprint and much less potential for component failure than a full-blown modern PC?

Cheap genlock/kiosk displays and a hand-held gaming device are two potent and viable (?) things that could result from the work of minimig.  People can think of more?

I guess my biting question is this:  What makes the 'retro' Minimig less of a continuance of Amiga than AmigaOS/Pegasos?  

Cheers,

Jarrod

[jarrody2k]

irishmike wrote:
First off, For a platform that should have died off completely several years ago, we the user, have kept it alive by being a community of folks who help each other.  This is a wonderful trait and it should remain the mark of an Amiga user.  This sentiment should remain fostered IMO.

So you would say that the benevolence of the Amiga community is the main reason Amiga has stuck around.  Do you think any of the 'newer' developments of AmigaOne and Pegasos have helped to keep things alive?

If these two developments did not exist, do you think the comradery between hobbyists would have been enough anyway?

Cheers,

Jarrod

[irishmike]

@jarrody2k

it seems you misunderstand my post.  There were likely factors other than the community, but the support of user to user is IMO (as stated) that the main factor that has kept Amiga alive for 20+ years is the attitude that no matter what the users were going to keep the platform alive because the users loved it.   So more like -- the company that made this has abandoned the product and so I will seek support from other users and so on.  This is not the *only* factor for sure, but I do feel it is the *main* reason we are here today.  It is just one guy's opinion though :-)

[Gojirax]

Jusr curious, and this might not even be the thread to ask this, but this thread brought the question to mind so I'll ask it here.

If the MiniMig is all the classic Amiga hardware coded into one chip, couldn't that chip be placed into an AmigaOne for applications that absolutely require custom chips? Then you could run system friendly apps with OS4, and old custom chip apps off the MiniMig?

[jarrody2k]

Hi Gojirax,

Gojirax wrote:
If the MiniMig is all the classic Amiga hardware coded into one chip, couldn't that chip be placed into an AmigaOne for applications that absolutely require custom chips?

A MiniMig emulation card would be awesome!  Perhaps even a hybrid with the CatWeasel?  That said, UAE/Amiga Forever as a software development is probably a more flexible (and at this stage more complete) emulation of the Amiga.

But I guess the potential for cycle exact hardware emulation is there!

Cheers,

Jarrod

[jarrody2k]

Hey Mike,

My questions weren't rhetorical by the way.  And I wasn't really boxing your opinion.  Was just posing some hypothetical questions.  I really am trying to understand whether Amiga One/Pegasos have really been positive for the Amiga community.

Sure they don't have the final results yet (and there certainly aren't enough resources to do this sort of thing quickly) but I do wonder if there anything else to take from the new developments?

Cheers,

Jarrod