Do you consider either the PegososPPCs or AmigaOne to be true Amigas?

[B00tDisk]

From an outside observer's point of view, I say: no.

But with that said...

The custom chips were used because there simply was no common powerful graphics solution at the time.  The tricks and twists and turns they got to make the Amiga capable of what it was were really not that different from what coin-op arcade game manufacturers were doing, in that every time they came up with a new game, they, at the same time, built a custom hardware solution to realize the game.  Heck, the first few Centipede machines from Atari were all hand-built!

But the point is, Hi-Toro/Amiga didn't have a PCI or even a 16-bit ISA bus to put things on; no VGA (forget the "S"!), and so forth.  The thinking at the time was to build a specific solution for a specific problem (in the Amiga's case: How do we get high-end graphics on a desktop computer? (or rather, game console)).

If there had been no "Amiga" then, there would never be an Amiga.  The BeBox was the closest anyone else came to a consumer-level custom hardware + non-x86 OS solution...well, once Apple gave up on their proprietary systems, e.g. NuBus etc.

Ultimately, when confronted with "What is an Amiga", both sides are right.  It IS the OS and it IS the custom hardware.  As much as I hated metal-banging trackloading single-floppy "won't work with anything but a PAL A500+" games, the same custom chips made good things like the Video Toaster, DCTV, countless Genlocks, and so forth possible - but the OS was a huge part of that as well.

Consider this, all you OS only people:

The Video Toaster won major awards at the NAB conference, and was selected as the peripheral of the year at MacWorld the year it was introduced.  The second one is quite hilarious since the "controller" that allowed you to use the VT with the Mac essentially lobotomized the Mac and used it as a dumb terminal for the '030 Amiga underneath!

Likewise, the "hardware all the way" folks who want a new and improved AGA chipset with 80,000,000,000,000,000,000 sprites, copperlists that would reach to the moon, a SuperDuperUltraMegaKiloGigaDenise - and backwards compatibility with OCS - need to understand that had the VT's software been tied specifically to the Amiga's chipset, LW might well have never made such an impact as it did.  Likewise several other 3d packages.

But that's just me - I could be wrong...

[Cymric]

mikeymike wrote:
Hands up who thinks this is a really futile discussion!

Seconded.

People like what they like about the Amiga, and any related offspring, if it does what they want it to do, and nicely, what does it matter?  If you choose to buy any computer, regardless of name, you should be judging it on what you believe are worthwhile merits, not someone else's opinion.

Wise words. To me, none of the modern machines are an Amiga. I got my first one (an A500) in 1987, when I was 13. The feeling of slowly getting to understand how a complex machine works, the awe when 'Defender Of The Crown' showed its graphical and musical brilliance when all we had at that time was chunky C64 graphics and PC-speaker beeps, the jaw-dropping effect at seeing a HAM-mode picture for the very first time in a world where '16 colours' was, like, a *LOT*, typing out BASIC-listings from magazines, copying cracked games and playing them, the nervous yet exciting giggle of seeing a gorgeous woman in a risque pose on your computer screen, the thrill at having your very first hardware-hitting assembly demo run without crashing---*that* is an Amiga to me. Since I will never be in my teens again, and since I know how the system works now, or how to obtain the information if I don't, all the new Amigas are just computers. A bit special because they continue the tradition started in 1985, and because they contain a CPU different from a rather simplistic and outdated 32-bit Intel clone, but nothing more.

My PC still has plenty of undiscovered things I can learn if I want to (OpenGL, language design, network programming, proper use of threads) but it doesn't have the mystery that shrouded my trusty A500. I don't expect it to, and I'm not sure I would want it to, either.

[Lando]

Darth_X wrote:
There is no new system on the market today that compares to the original Amiga system developed in the 1980s.

It could be possible..

I want a complete system where the hardware and the operating system work together. The hardware should be powerful, but energy efficient, and not require a giant tower case with lots of fans and NOISE!!!


The operating system should be responsive, and not freeze up when accessing the hard drive. The audio should play properly with no clicking. You should be able to play video in a window and move that window around while the video continues to play.

The applications should be small/compact, possibly with an IPC(?) system like AREXX, and maybe a component object model system.


When a new system like this comes on the market.. I will buy it :-D

My advice?  Get yourself a Mac and be happy.
 :-D

[Darth_X]

Lando wrote:

My advice?  Get yourself a Mac and be happy.
 :-D

Did I forget to mention *price* ? :-D


I also deliberately did not mention hardware specs. The new G5 Mac is close to what I want.. but not quite exactly what I want...

[redfox]

@Hammer

I recall that the AmigaOne was packaged with the _licensed_ Amiga’s Kickstart ROMs for Linux PPC/UAE setup…

Thanks, for your reply.  I completely forgot about Linux PPC/UAE.

Just out of curiousity, does anyone know how well the DraCo compared to the "classic" Amigas.  Was it a true clone or something similar to the peg and A1.

---------------
redfox

[jahc]

Anything which is branded "Amiga" is an Amiga. Anything that runs AmigaOS is an Amiga compatible.

[meerschaum]

[Fot]

Thanks for the laugh meerschaum. You sound like a rational user... not.

[CodeSmith]

Hey, at least *real* amigas don't look like kitchen appliances...

 :-P

[DaveP]

@Fot

You can identify the ones for whom this is a bit of gang warfare and not a normal experience. They get personal about the general group people that don't agree with them calling them "zealouts" and other silly names as a put down.

To be fair to meerschaum he only writes like this after excess alchohol.

[Fot]

@DaveP.

Yeah, I've noticed that it doesn't take much for some to go into overdrive mode.

[Warface]

meerschaum wrote:
whats a real amiga?... certinly not the WaffleOne with WaffleOS4 with Wafflers.inc backing it up...
[skip]
WaffleOne is a pathetic sham

Such strong words were totally uncalled for. A polite "I think it is not" and "I think it is yes" could be more nice instead.

[Hooligan_DCS]

Pegasos = Not Amiga
AmigaOne = Not Amiga

AmigaOne + OS4 = Amiga

[Cojo]

well,

once os4 runs on my amigaone i might consider it as "amiga", up till now its a unusall linux machine..
cant say anything about the pegasos, never seen it live nor morphos.

[DaveP]

If we can seperate "true Amiga" from the overloaded use of "worthy successor" then it is, unfortunately for some, anything with the brand AMiGA on it.

Some would consider the Amiga600 not to be a true Amiga for the "worthy sucessor" reason, although I quite like the A600.

[Kronos]

First we have to define what makes an "Amiga".

The HW and the games was what brought most of us to the Amiga, plus maybe some
by it's use for video.

Thats all gone, and belongs to A500-A4000T.

What made us stay ? The community ?
Also allmost gone.

What we do have is systems with variying compabilty to the Amiga (UAE,Amithlon,
MorphOS and later even OS4), but none of them comes to close to being an Amiga.

For those you now want to yell "but it has the Name and the "true" OS" :

Hands up, how many of you bought their A500 because of Kick1.2/3 and the C=
badge on it ?

For those who want to yell "but why is a Mac still a Mac" :

Macs were allways bought based on image and the SW, not the HW.
Macs have changed cradually from 68k to PPC running OSX, something that just
didn't happen with the Amiga (a few 1000 PPC or PCI addons by 3rd party don't count).