New classic boards

[stopthegop]

Guess what. Modern PCs have all kinds of hardware to offload tasks that the Amiga custom chips take care of. PCs have had 2D blitters for ages now and even 3D accelerators have been standard for years. Sound cards with DSPs that can do what Paula does and a whole lot more have been around for ages as well (though they haven't exactly become standard issue in large part because mixing a few audio channels together takes a trivial amount of processor time on a modern PC).

The difference is that these DMA co-processors were central elements in the design of the Amiga since its inception.  The Amiga was designed around this concept.  The PC was originally designed (and sold as) a drab tool for "business", its numbing green and black screen only reinforcing the point.  All of the multimedia razzle-dazzle of "fast" PCs today comes from contrived bolted-on sub-systems that, impressive as some of them might be, were antithesis to the original design and intention of the x86 PC.  The Amiga was a truly integrated system.  PC makers love to abuse the word "innovate" to describe whatever they happen to be selling at the moment.  I've never heard anyone who knows the definition of "innovate" use it to describe their PC.  Mostly I hear profanity when people talk about their computers.        

many of the things that made the hardware special have long since been replicated on boring old x86 PC hardware.

Key word "boring".  The Amiga was (and is) a revolutionary machine.  I fail to see the point in spending a lot of money on a "modern" PC.  New PCs are just next year's trash.    

If your CPU is seriously pegged at 100% half the time it's probably because your PC is stuffed to the gills with spyware.

Why is it that only "fast" PCs are afflicted by this problem?  I use my Amiga online everyday.  It is just as fast now as the day I bought it.  I do an occasional disk defrag and it runs fine.  Why is so much time and effort needed with PCs to "remove spyware"?   Why is "spyware" on my PC in the first place?  Isn't Windows "secure"?  

[songoku]

MskoDestny wrote:
Guess what. Modern PCs have all kinds of hardware to offload tasks that the Amiga custom chips take care of. PCs have had 2D blitters for ages now and even 3D accelerators have been standard for years. Sound cards with DSPs that can do what Paula does and a whole lot more have been around for ages as well (though they haven't exactly become standard issue in large part because mixing a few audio channels together takes a trivial amount of processor time on a modern PC).

Oh, I know modern hardware has all the abilities of our old beloved Amigas.  In fact, I recently put in a 128MB ATI Radeon card to do just that:  free up some of my CPU's processing power.  In fact, it's not the IBM-compatible platform (the Amiga, Apple, Sinclair, Osborne, etc are all PCs... personal computers) I have a problem with; I've never had a problem with Intel chips or AMD, or Cyrix.  It's Mr. Bill that grinds my gears. Specifically, its memory management issue.  

Which is why I'd be happy with just the look and feel for my old favorite.  If I can't get AmiKit to work, I may have to  break out VB or VC again and write my own GUI shell.  I'm using Aston at the moment and like it, but it's not quite what I'm after.  I have Suse Pro 10.1 as well, and I like it, but somehow I always wind up back with Losedows XP.  I used to be stronger-willed than this.   ;-)

If your CPU is seriously pegged at 100% half the time it's probably because your PC is stuffed to the gills with spyware.

That is quite possibly true.  I've run all the spyware software I have and they've come up empty or report cookies.  And I don;'t trust site-specific software (like, for instance, spywaredoctor) that require payment for their products.  Any program can always report you have SOME spyware and leave others.  Call it paranoia but I'm somewhat fond of my little green slips of paper with Andy Jackson on them.  Want to keep them around.  And there are other removal programs I've found out that actually ARE spyware.  But then, that could be propoganda too.  

Is it any wonder I got into nuclear engineering?  The computer business can be insane.  :-D  Speaking of other fields, QNX is good, solid, and a basis for AmigaXL.  Which I have.  Hmmmm.... ideas abound.  Time to download QNX6.2 :-D

[MskoDestny]

stopthegop wrote:
The difference is that these DMA co-processors were central elements in the design of the Amiga since its inception.  The Amiga was designed around this concept.  The PC was originally designed (and sold as) a drab tool for "business", its numbing green and black screen only reinforcing the point.  All of the multimedia razzle-dazzle of "fast" PCs today comes from contrived bolted-on sub-systems that, impressive as some of them might be, were antithesis to the original design and intention of the x86 PC.  The Amiga was a truly integrated system.

From a geek coolness factor the fact that the Amiga was designed with all these great things in mind is great, but from the perspective of my computer being a useful tool I don't give a crap. This is why I own an Amiga (cause I like cool geeky toys), but don't use one if I'm trying to get anything done.

PC makers love to abuse the word "innovate" to describe whatever they happen to be selling at the moment.  I've never heard anyone who knows the definition of "innovate" use it to describe their PC.

I don't know if I'd call the major computer manufacturers innovative at least not from a technological perspective. However, the companies that make the components (the CPUs, the GPUs, etc.) certainly are innovative.

Key word "boring".  The Amiga was (and is) a revolutionary machine.  I fail to see the point in spending a lot of money on a "modern" PC.  New PCs are just next year's trash.

To most people an Amiga is an over decade old piece of trash. Just because a piece of hardware was innovative in its day doesn't mean it is worthwhile for everyday use.

Why is it that only "fast" PCs are afflicted by this problem?  I use my Amiga online everyday.  It is just as fast now as the day I bought it.  I do an occasional disk defrag and it runs fine.  Why is so much time and effort needed with PCs to "remove spyware"?   Why is "spyware" on my PC in the first place?  Isn't Windows "secure"?  

More secure than Amiga OS, that's for sure. There's no spyware for the Amiga because no one uses it anymore and when it was reasonably popular the Internet wasn't and fast Internet connections weren't available to the public. There are certainly OSes that could claim they would have fewer problems with viruses and other malware if they had the same marketshare as Windows, but Amiga OS is not one of them.

[AmiKit]

songoku wrote:
Here's the thing.  Replace it with the speed and power of modern hardware.  That being said, the easiest way would be with an emulated system; but not with WinUAE. I've tried it, and I'll admit it doesn't do much for me.  I found AmiKit the other day and since I've got a free week or so, am trying to install it.  I get to the point of "Please choose your ROM source" and it won't get any further.  I have AmigaForever, an Amiga XL CD and AmigaOS 3.9 (whch is admittedly at home, not much help to me here on campus).  I pop in the XL CD, it loads the ROM file and then goes no further.  I get a "RAM:XL/Workbench3.9/C/Execute: Command not found" error followed by my absolute favorite of prompts, "1>"  :-P

To be honest I have no idea what's wrong. The OSXL CD works here. There might be a problem with your CD-ROM not working correctly. The AmigaOS archive is extracted from OSXL CD to RAM: first and according to error message nothing has been extracted to RAM:

songoku wrote:
Any ideas how to get past that?  I've completely uninstalled AmiKit (including wiping the directory) and am planning on re-installing AF6 on C:\  instead of my boot drive F:\.  I also tried the "AF installed" button and got nada.  So I suspect the program's looking on C:\ for it.

Well, AF6 is not supported in default AmiKit installation. Only latest AF2005/2006 are supported.

To install AmiKit using AF6 please follow this thread.

steve30 wrote:
I don't think MiniMig is really a replacement for Amigas though. It is a good project, but some of us might prefer to use proper amigas.

Humm... therefore emulation and evolved clones such as clone-A and Minimig are... improper... :evil:

I disagree. Eventually all "proper" Amigas will cease to work for one simple reason, all chips eventually fail AND nobody manufactures replacements anymore.

I think it is VERY important to support developments which uses new technology.