Amiga flavors.

[recidivist]

 I saw the mention of the Vixen for $299 which would be probably the best to be expected for a 1200 upgrade. I would prefer a socket so as to allow a faster chip later.

 Again if someone would /could release Amiga OS  for the IMac G3/4/5  we Amigans would gladly pay $99 for that.

  Propietary hardware locks in your customers but also limits your market.

[BoingBoing]

recidivist wrote:
 I saw the mention of the Vixen for $299 which would be probably the best to be expected for a 1200 upgrade.

I (and I bet, a lot of people) would pay gladly this amount of money to have a board that can go in the trapdoor and turn a 1200 into a modern machine.
 :-)

[CroCrew]

Great information again!

xeron wrote:
Adam of ACK controls has stated that he is working on at least two new boards with the aim of running OS4.

The first of which is the PowerVixxen LT. This is an accelerator for towerised Amiga 1200 computers. It attaches to the trapdoor slot, and provides a PPC processor, mobility radeon graphics, and maybe some other goodies like USB and ethernet. This board has a lower end PPC CPU soldered on and will allow OS4 to run, while giving programs access to the original chipset for maximum compatibility.

The second board is the PowerVixxen TL, which is a standalone motherboard like the A1. It is said that it will have a CPU socket into which you can put an AmigaOne compatible CPU card (which Adam is also producing). This board is supposed to have a lot of expandability, and not so many features built into the board. I don't know too much of the specifics for this board, but apparently it has a faster memory bus and things which will make it run rings around existing AmigaOne boards.

Whether they actually are going to arrive or not is a subject of extremely heated debate... personally I don't know, but I'm optimistic. Possibly more optimistic than I should be, but then I reeeeally like OS4 and i'm hoping SOME sort of solution to the hardware problem happens.

[mihcael]

For more info on your x86 amiga options look here.. x86 Amiga - Amithlon / AROS

Whilst amithlon can't be bought or downloaded, (it can be obtained by other means) provides better compatibility then aros and is continually being updated to work with newer hardware!

AROS is free and it's open source!!! anyone can contribute!
visit http://www.aros.org/ for more info!

[CroCrew]

If it can't be downloaded or bought then who is working on Amithlon? How do you get the OS or updates?

mihcael wrote:
For more info on your x86 amiga options look here.. x86 Amiga - Amithlon / AROS

Whilst amithlon can't be bought or downloaded, (it can be obtained by other means) provides better compatibility then aros and is continually being updated to work with newer hardware!

AROS is free and it's open source!!! anyone can contribute!
visit http://www.aros.org/ for more info!

[xeron]

@CroCrew
The Amithlon story is a pretty sad one. I might have some facts wrong, because I was never particularily interested in Amithlon, but basically I think it happened like this:

Bernd Meyer started creating an emulator for AmigaOS3.x that ran on top of a minimal linux kernel, which to the end-user would appear like you were running 68K AmigaOS directly on an x86 to all intents and purposes. The system allowed you to run both 68k and x86 native code, and has x86 native drivers for some gfx and sound cards.

As I understand it, he teamed up with Harald Frank who contributed some code to the project. It was sold commercially by Haage & Partner. At this point Bernd was under the impression that H&P had licensed AmigaOS from Amiga, Inc. and everything was hunky dorey.

It turned out that Amiga, Inc. didn't agree and tried to force H&P to stop selling the product. H&P didn't agree, and Harald also thought everything was legit. Bernd didn't want to sell an unlicensed product and it caused a big falling out and the product eventually was cancelled.

There have been continued updates from other people, but mostly the Amithlon project is seen to be dead by most people in Amigaland.

The story is no doubt more complex than this, and I'd suggest a google search for amithlon.

[krize]

If you bought it when it got released or bought second hand...

[mihcael]

CroCrew wrote:
If it can't be downloaded or bought then who is working on Amithlon? How do you get the OS or updates?

who's working on it... More info!
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/amithlonopen/

updates and stuff...
http://www.hd-zone.com/amithlon/amithlon.htm#Kernels

[bloodline]

AJCopland wrote:
@pierre
Why all the negativity about the Power architecture? It's available to developers (Mac, Pegasos etc), it's made by a couple of different manufacturers (Freescale, IBM) and whilst the currently available versions aren't quite as capable as the very latest Intel Core 2 Duo / Xeon series there are updates in the pipeline.

Besides which it's still a good clean and solid architecture to develop for which is why it's gone into all 3 of the next generation consoles.

The Power architecture has only been used in the next gen consoles because IBM have been contracted to make the CPUs for them. IBM don't have to worry about patent issues with the Power since they own it. If they owned a MIPS licence the CPU's would have been built around that. Unless someone is prepared to pump the sort of money into the PPC as AMD and Intel pump into their chips it's going to remain far behind the tech curve.

[AJCopland]

That's a rather simplistic view of it.

IBM wouldn't have been picked to make the chips unless the companies picking them knew that they'd get the Power architecture. They also wouldn't have simply had the Power one foisted upon them without a say in the matter.

All three of them chose to use IBM because of the Power architecture. MIPS is a fairly nice architecture, I've coded for the version of MIPS32 used in the PSP and PS2.

Just occurred to me i should point out that im not talking out of my bum, i work for a games company on PSP, PS2, PS3, XBOX, XBOX360, Wii and PC. I've written everything from assembler on the PSP to C++ OOP on the PC with a wide and crazy ark through software development inbetween :-D

Also the Power architecture is being actively developed to the tune of billions of dollars a year by IBM. Do you ever see them switching to licencing an architecture from Intel/AMD? :crazy:
The are versions of Power used everywhere in embedded stuff, and when it comes to the higher end there's still stuff thats implemented in the Power5 which hasn't filtered down into the lower end yet.

Ah bollocks to it, CPU architecture as a reason to love or loathe a platform is a religious argument. Sorry if i've ranted a bit.

Andy

[SamuraiCrow]

Actually IBM makes big iron machines using AMD processors as well as Power/PPC.

I have also programmed in MIPS assembly and it definitely is much better than Intel for intuitivity.  Power/PPC a little less so but still good.  I hope the x86 archetecture sits and rots.  x86_64 (AMD64) is better but still not as good as the others.

It's a shame that SGI dropped MIPS in favor of Itanium but at least there's still game systems for MIPS as well.