What Amiga Inc. and Hyperion NEED TO DO (IMHO)

[Amiga_Nut]

My 0.02$ worth..

The Amiga OS has always run on certain reference hardware unlike Macs and PCs which are quite variable in their makeup of components, this is where it's strength comes from and it's major advantage IMO. Just like PC games need a LOT more power to achieve the same results as an xbox360 OS4 on a standard hardware platform with optimisation will outperform anything on similar spec of PC/Mac.

What we really need is a company with some forward thinking, like it or lump it but a spiritual successor to the A1000 is OS4+PS3 (picked this machine as it was the first machine out to compare with the PC/Mac/ST at the time and hence show people what really was the best and most powerful way to do it) Think about how powerful the sum total of the hardware is in the PS3, imagine a fully bespoke and optimized version of OS4 running on there, custom chips a plenty, different CPU to the competition, plays games better than any Mac and almost any PC money can buy and yet has already got a Linux distro on it which proves it can do anything a normal PC can if you add a mouse and keyboard.

Whether you like Sony or not is not really the issue, the point is there will never be new hardware manufactured for a real new Amiga you could buy in a shop. Given that Microsoft would never allow this on its 360 hardware and Wii is a pile of crap as far as its capabilities go that leaves just one console which already happens to have an OS aswell as being a kick-ass hardware console.

The Amiga was king because it was nicer to use than Windows 1/2/3 or classic Mac OS ONTOP of the fact it had hardware that could give the megadrive a run for its money in the games arena 3 years before the megadrive was even released. This is the combination that made the Amiga special, lovely OS + Kickass games + incredible multimedia powers that PC/Mac of the time (1985) couldn't even get close to let alone beat :-)

[sir_inferno]

rbsfou wrote:

All these systems have copy lockouts of some sort, so piracy probably isn't a concern.

 :lol:

[sir_inferno]

Amiga_Nut wrote:

The Amiga OS has always run on certain reference hardware unlike Macs and PCs which are quite variable in their makeup of components, this is where it's strength comes from and it's major advantage IMO.

it was its strength when both systems were of equal cost/pc's were more expensive...amiga OS can "mod" it's usage of the x86/x64 processor all it wants, but it'll still have to be available for "normal" computers for it to have any chance of success

[sir_inferno]

lavo wrote:
Who is left that is going to pirate OS 4 anyway??  The pirates have their hands full in cracking Vista and DRM........  :-D

dude i'm sure some old skool ppl would do it just for nostalgia's sake..."awww, amiga's back for a short time, lets publish another crack...and lets put some trippy mod music in too"

indeed the fact that a lot of cracks still have mod music in them is probably a remanant from amiga cracking...

[Amiga_Nut]

sir_inferno wrote:

lavo wrote:
Who is left that is going to pirate OS 4 anyway??  The pirates have their hands full in cracking Vista and DRM........  :-D

dude i'm sure some old skool ppl would do it just for nostalgia's sake..."awww, amiga's back for a short time, lets publish another crack...and lets put some trippy mod music in too"

indeed the fact that a lot of cracks still have mod music in them is probably a remanant from amiga cracking...

Wouldn't it be fantastic if you booted a hooky version of XP Installer and the Melon Dezign bouncing bunny intro came up :lol:

[CannonFodder]

lavo wrote:
Who is left that is going to pirate OS 4 anyway??  The pirates have their hands full in cracking Vista and DRM........  :-D

I'm 100% certain that at least one retired cracker might come out of retirement to crack OS4's "dongle protection". ;-)

[sir_inferno]

Amiga_Nut wrote:

sir_inferno wrote:

lavo wrote:
Who is left that is going to pirate OS 4 anyway??  The pirates have their hands full in cracking Vista and DRM........  :-D

dude i'm sure some old skool ppl would do it just for nostalgia's sake..."awww, amiga's back for a short time, lets publish another crack...and lets put some trippy mod music in too"

indeed the fact that a lot of cracks still have mod music in them is probably a remanant from amiga cracking...

Wouldn't it be fantastic if you booted a hooky version of XP Installer and the Melon Dezign bouncing bunny intro came up :lol:

i've found a few old groups i thought had long gone with no-cd cracks...

[rbsfou]

Waccoon wrote:

If the rights to the software do not belong to Amiga Inc., how will they, or the Amiga community, benefit from ports to game consoles?

Helps them "Grow the brand" like, and i'm sure they'll work the books to take a portion of the proceeds

Why would any consoles use OS4 when they have their own OSes?  Why do you need OS4 to run old Amiga games?

Because it'd be a cool thing to do i guess...It might just provide the stimulus for getting game compatibility sorted in a unified way for OS4 on PPC processors...

The point is that you're asking that software that employs UNIX standards should be ported to a non-UNIX OS.  That either takes a LOT of work, or you basicly have to make an entire UNIX layer run on top of AmigaOS, which is anything but efficient.

I think AmigaOS can do without an XWindow Server and all that other crap, so long as it has its own tools.

Quite a lot of C stuff is written in a platform-neutral way, the libraries and headers are what need to be ported - we do after all have an OpenSSH port (not that i've tried it mind - maybe it doesn't depend on ixemul.library). These tools (plus a JVM) would provide some incentive for the geeks to get back on board. I'd at least want a VNC client / server.

How?  Switching architectures is not an easy thing if you design an OS the way you describe.  You have to plan for CPU abstraction ahead of time, not tack it on at the last minute.  Once you introduce Altivec/VMX, even emulation is pretty much impossible, let alone practical.

My point was that hyperion have done all the work on PPC so far, and i read in some interview that there seems to be some kind of plan for "OS 5" (whatever that turns out to be, probably vaporware) to run on x86 - hence the "later" bit...

Back on to laptops - why doesn't someone buy up the remaining stock of iBooks (assuming there is any!) seeing as apple decided to switch, and fit them with glowing boing-ball lids and some unique hardware to get them to run OS4? I'd rather use my existing machine of course, but i'd still be tempted by such a thing...