Motorollin's "Future of the Amiga" thread

[Floid]

The problem is that kiosks with 24/7/365 uptime demand... well, 24/7/365 uptime, which ideally means some way to detect memory leaks and watchdog the thing.

If you're cutting the power every night, you can use anything ROM-based, really.  Or anything that can keep its filesystem writes synchronous/atomic.

Everyone loves the fast boot time and the low resource footprint... but how often does anyone boot anymore, rather than taking a machine out of suspend?  (Admittedly, Vista will probably take five minutes to come out of hibernation even though it's now the default...)

I think this means the real niche is down in the fabled embedded space, namely ubiquitous, practically disposable devices -- pull out something the size of a pack of cards with your presentation preloaded, plug it in, and...

I've just described the iPod.  F***.

[motorollin]

ptek wrote:
The option "emulation" is not the best for multimedia presentation purposes I presume. Only if you're willing to forget about smooth animation,

Have you used UAE on a fast machine recently? :-) AROS would probably give much smoother results, but I'm not sure what kind of video/audio/picture filetype support it has.

--
moto

[chsedge]

hello moto,
what if the booth runs on a network and needs to access data like web pages from intranets or access data from sql servers (or other kinds of dataserver), maybe retrieving files and others.

Or on another point of view. Are Hollywood and Scala killer apps in their fields, are they equal to counterparts on other platforms or they are old and obsolete?
Why would I choose Amiga against any other system?

Keeping in mind that networking will be a key factor in the next year. Many more services and machines will be networked and remotely controlled. How can I control an emulated app?

[JimS]

You forgot the hobbyist market. I don't think there is a chance in heck of *any* alternative machine making any sort of move onto the desktop these days. But there might be a big enough market in the "true believers" and retro fans. Ainc could pay the $$ needed to convert something like the minimig or clone-A to ASIC, and sell it to hobbyists & gamers. Heck, it might make a good little kiosk board itself.

[philipj]

JimS wrote:
You forgot the hobbyist market. I don't think there is a chance in heck of *any* alternative machine making any sort of move onto the desktop these days. But there might be a big enough market in the "true believers" and retro fans. Ainc could pay the $$ needed to convert something like the minimig or clone-A to ASIC, and sell it to hobbyists & gamers. Heck, it might make a good little kiosk board itself.

One thing I thought AI could have done was to work with companies like Elbox and Jens to try and come up with a few products to satisfy us classic fans!

I mean, AI have hardly done very well with the likes of AmigaDE to try and bring Amiga into the future have they? So why focus on that market.

[coldfish]

This may have been one idea 5-10 years ago. Today, the Amiga (in all its flavours) is bluntly, irrelevant.
 
People want a familiar, proven and yes, "boring" system when it comes to computer tech'.  They want it to be simple to set up and easy (and cheap) to maintain.  
While the x86 part of your arguement fits this, the Amiga part doesnt.  Which modern company is going to invest money on an unproven, outdated and obscure platform?

If you want to build a MM kiosk, use any one of the existing imbedded systems on offer, not some Ainc cheapo sourced "Yum-Cha" x86 board running a confusing and overcomplicated combination of Linux and AOS3.x.

In any case, Ainc dont have it in them to make this work.  Just imagine the technical support their clients would receive, the Amiga name would go from being obscure and unknown to derission and disdain.

The only future for the Amiga is to capitalise on the people that use/remember it, though every year that market shrinks further, it's probably way past too late?
ie:
-Branded MP3 players and other cheap electronic gadgets and online retro Amiga store.
-A500 in a joystick, hackable like C64DTV, (though the retro kick may be just about over, too late!)
-Amiga classics CDs (done, but piss-poor!)
-Amiga sponsorship deals with lowkey (ie affordable) sporting events, try kiteboarding or wakeboarding ect.
-OS4 ported to x86 as a free distro, with purchaseable apps.
-OS4 could work as a gateway to an online community site (like Xbox-live) with a richer featureset than non-OS4 access.
-Official Ainc endorsed OS4/WinUAE package, with online pay-per-game/app ADF library.

CBF giving away any more free ideas.

[guru-666]

You want to know what the future of the amiga is?  
Let's take a trip!
(deep breath and keep reading)  

The reason the Amiga was cool to begin with was becasue somebody WANTED to make a bad ass computer.  Jay Miner and Team had a VISION.  Not only did they have this bad ass "vision" thing going on, they had the skill and BALLS to pull it off!  Remember the "lorian" was under way before commodore entered the picture.  It was passion NOT money that go the ball rolling.  

"Ohh the times the are a changing"  

Multimedia is no longer new. The "Brain trust" has moved on.  The tool is now functional. The quantum leap happend right before out eyes! We now take computers for granted. If course we use them....

Checking out he Amiga in '85/86 was like the first time you  heard the beatles, it was a HEAVY TRIP!!
 "YEAH MAN! THAT'S MUSIC, I LOVE IT!!!" (actual quote, your uncle bob)
Looking at the Amiga then we stared dreaming. Wow I could make 3d ray traced images! and music! and STUFF, the STUFF was SOOOO COOOL! And honestly it was unlikly that we could ever become as advanced as we are now.... only in a dream...

"Ohh the times the are a changing"  
(1997)
The guys who made/make morphOS, reversed engenired(sp?) amigaOS (it can be done!), not because there is or WAS a market, but because they wanted to and they COULD (very skilled dudes!). They where the same guys who had fallen in love with the Amiga to start with, guys like me(maybe you) who grew up with this awsome box! (man! we are lucky!)

"Ohh the times the are a changing"
Commodore, Gateway, amiga inc.  Those where just the labes, not the beates, they where produces and money people, real as hell, but they suck the life out of you don't they?

Atlanic records still put out records, they are just not as good as when "Aretha Franklin" does it.  Amiga.inc can (most say won't) produce OS 5, but "Elvis"  has left the building!  It will be like "oasis" or "madonna", o.k. but not the beatles.....

What's left?  US!  If you want the Amiga to evolve, take back the power, do like amithon, AROS, UAE and others and don't make the mistake of depending on Amiga Inc, hyperion or your mom!  remember tha Amiga could have easly been an atari or a sun, so the next amiga does not have to come form amiga.inc.  It may be the nintendo Wii! \

I suggest we go open source!  Power to the people.

I hope to god the Amiga is never reduced to a Cell phone, but would not expect it to beat linux either.  Still I think WE can have a blast with it!  But practicly ther are better solutions...

BTW, Linux is still alive in the MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY: DISNEY, SONY, PDI, PIXAR ILM and DIGIAL DOMAIN, are all serious LINUX users and will be for a while. When if comes to dishing out $$$ for your windows license big/smart companies think twice, all they need are viable options!  Becasue LINUX IS better than windows it may survive, and it proves that open source DOES Work, it's a FACT.

[guru-666]

@chsedge
How can I control an emulated app?

the same way you would if it wher not emulated.

[chsedge]

@guru-666

1.with control I meant some sort of interaction with the emulated app over a network. I'd like to know if there are limitations with uae and an internet connection running in it and talking over the network (nfs,netbios,servers of various kind, ftp). Thanks,Marco.

2.well opensource needs money too remember...
linux is there because some big companies invested a big amount of money in it. The story that opensource/gnu/linux comes out without money from the passion of a big group of developers is false.
unless you want to get an unreliable os

[guru-666]

@chsedge
so nothing can be done.... you might just be right...
now I'm off to use my flyer.... don't realy need a new os do I?

[Dr_Righteous]

Now that I've gone through this entire thread, I've come away with this impression... You're all saying AROS on x86 and/or EFIKA is the future of Amiga.

Gee, I think I've said this a few times already.

[chsedge]

@guru-666:

maybe nothing can be done, maybe not. I don't know, everything is possible, but today we have few chances. I'm not so negative about amiga but one thing is true the hw is less important. so let's stop doing these custom motherboards and start to concentrate on the os itself.

as mr. gates once said: "We're only at the beginning of what we have to do here."

[guru-666]

uhh yeah, I have alwasy felt that anything NOT x86 is a was of time..... Glad to see most people have finaly reached that sanity level.  :horse:

[Fester]

ptek wrote:
Like someone also said here, I'm surprised with the unexplainable attraction "users" have with the bloated Vista! Man, if MS tells them to jump from a bridge, will they also do that ?!

What's the reason to go for Vista?!

Hi ptek,

Are people really attracted to Vista? That's not the feeling in my neck of the woods. We don't care really. Windows XP at work is good enough. Nobody here talks about Vista.

Fester

[JimS]

philipj wrote:
One thing I thought AI could have done was to work with companies like Elbox and Jens to try and come up with a few products to satisfy us classic fans!

That would have been a good plan, to bring in a bit of cash at least to carry on the future directions they have in mind. On the other hand, most of those products probably don't even need Amiga's help to bring to market. AI doesn't appear to have the financial resources, and do they have any tech people with a clue about the classics?

[Fester]

JimS,

Your quote caught my attention: "The dog at my Gerber files".

I saw a machine once at my friend's house that was about 2 feet wide and stood something like 5 to six feet tall. It had "Gerber" as a label and I always wondered if it was a computer. My friend told me it was a Gerber computer, but that's as far as it went. He had it in his basement and it didn't work. It was just a dusty old hunk of metal. Was there ever a Gerber computer?

Couldn't find that machine pictured anywhere...

Fester