Why I had to leave

[Hooligan_DCS]

My story goes something like this.

Been an Amiga fan since Jesus's birth. Used it for many years until at one point started using it less and less. But still using it.. waiting for something to happen on Amiga-front.
One day I pointed my browser at some newssite (amiga.org or ann.lu) and saw the Amiga Inc.'s coupon scam.
From that minute I totally lost all motivation to Amiga scene: the scam was so obvious.

There was lots of talk about it on irc and someone pointed me to Pegasos/MorphOS. At first I laughed at it.. being just another scam among the coupon-fraud. And then I saw a possibility to buy a Pegasos for $299.. I was told it's OS was so much Amiga-like I wouldn't believe it, so I ordered.

The first day I used MorphOS, I liked it. I gave my Amiga to my brother.. and I sincerily have to say I haven't missed it. MorphOS does everything I did on Amiga, and lots more.
Whats best, MOS made me to abandon Windows pretty much completely,  plus kept my interest to Amigascene.
So in a way I have left Amiga too as I am not using it, but in a way I have not as I have a similar product at hand, only better, and I am still interested whats going on around Amiga.

[Tomas]

http://www.amiga.com/
seems to be up again now.... It seems to have moved to another server though.

AmigaOS link does not work though..

[leirbag28]

DarkGlobe and everyone who thinks DPaint is and always was the best 2D paint package on Amiga:

DarkGlobe ("occasionally use DPaint as it's still the best animation software around")

 Has anyone here ever heard of Brilliance!?   this is 10 times better and eventually became the new standard..................think of it as Deluxe Paint 7.0

Brilliance has speed, extra features, and a GUI the way it should be done!...............If you had to have only One paint program on the Amiga..........Brilliance was the one to get. I use this and Scala MM 300 quite alot even today.

[JetRacer]

@DarkGlobe: It's the first time I enjoy reading a post that long :-)

As many others my A1200 sit next to my x86 (XP/Redhat). I still use my A1200 regulary, I play games with XP and render 3D with Redhat.

I think AmigaOS4 is worth the wait. The hardware is already out. That was the main problem in the past; hardware was never delivered by a halfdozen entities while we kept patching AOS to our hearts content.

In the near future I'm not worried one bit of AInc's demize. In a sense the snowball is already rolling. Lot's of imprevements will be scheduled for the next OS release. There's still ways of hotting up the G4 with nicer chipsets. Eyetech and Hyperion will (hopefully) not call it a day so easily.

But there's hope; things can still go wrong :-)

[kd7ota]

@leirbag28

Yes! Brilliance I do remember, and thats was one program that my oldest brother always used to his games when he programmed using AMOS.  Wow, that software was surely the best for Amiga.

@Ryu

I did pick up on the MorphOS people who jump on them and say to try out MorphOS. Dunno though, but I will wait for AmigaONE.

[T_Bone]

Ryu wrote:
this might sound like flaim bate but its late in the day....

I find it kinda ironic how all the pegasos users on here suddenly start jumping up and down shouting "try out the wonderfull pegasos" everytime an amiga user decides hes had enough....

anyway as i say its late so im going to bed...

What's wrong with that? They've already decided they're fed up with Amiga. Where's the "Irony"?

[IonDeluxe]

@darkglobe

You are right, at the moment the AmigaOne is an expensive way to run linux compared to a machine that can be built using x86 technology.Compared to the Mac it is actually quite competative, at leat in my part of the world.
However, OS4 is not that far off, and those hyperion guys have been bending over backwards to produce a high quality product.While it may lack some of the "features" other OS's may provide, I find I use less than 10% of them anyway, and like you said, end up re-insatalling many many times over.I would be very surprised and extremely disappointed if this was also the case with OS4.

One thing to note though, is that the AmigaOne systems you can buy from Eyetech come with OS4 for free at this point, supplied when OS4 is released.
Things are moving forward, and a new era for the Amiga is soon to begin.

As much as the pegasos seems to be aquality product, the truth of the matter is that it is not an amiga.Nor is Morphos Amiga, though it is "Amiga like" to many people.It is yet not fully commercial standard product in my opinion either.Despite emotional reasonings, the Pegasos and Morphos machines are a competing product to the AmigaOne and when it is release OS4.
All that aside, the Pegasos and Morphos would have been the successors to the Amiga legacy by default.

That is of course until Amiga Inc. came along and bought Amiga Technologies from Gateway.I think you are a bit harsh on these guys in what they have managed to acomplish. Without them there would be no AmigaOne, and there would be no OS4 even in the state it is atm.OF course this could not have been done without eyetech and hyperion, but it was Amiga Inc. that made this happen.They have done more than any company since commodore with far far less resources.

I think the entire computer industry is heading towards a major time of turbulance where just about anything can happen, with the renewed competiveness of Mac' and the PPC platform in general, the advent of the 970, Linux gainin popularity at an impressive rate with many governments around the world moving towards linux, and businesses too, the dawning of 64 bit technology to the desktop, the entire TCPA/palladium controvesy, mixed with a truckload of consumer dis-satisfaction with the choices they have, and the performance, cost and reliablity of accepted products, not to mention the whole upgrade merry-go-round.Not to mention the attempted resurgance of Amiga, start ups like the pegasos and many other things to lengthly to mention.

Personally, what I have atm will last about another 12 months, by which time things should have sorted themselves out on the Amiga front, I would certainly wait at least a few months after OS4 is released to write off the Amiga.

[Lando]

Similar story here.
I was an Amiga user from 1990 up until 1994 when I started University.  At Uni, we (obviously) used PC packages and although I did try to get by using PCTask (my first programming assignment was written in Turbo Pascal using an A1200 with only a 40MB hard drive and an extra 2MB of Fast RAM running PC Task) it was just way too slow.  In the end I sold the A1200 and bought a 386 PC.

I never gave up on the Amiga though... I would occasionally visit Amiga IRC channels (where people would often call me a sellout and "PC Luser"... which was quite hurtful at the time) and I would run UAE from time to time.

A couple of years after leaving Uni (I think this was around '99) I bought a used A600HD from the local paper with loads of games for nostalgia, and remembered what I'd been missing.  Soon after I got an Eyetech A1200T with 040, CDROM, 32MB RAM etc and so on and so on until the middle of last year I had an A4000T with CSPPC, Mediator, Voodoo5, SB, Ethernet...

Around this time I started to believe all the hype that OS4 was "nearly done" and I trusted AInc (!) to deliver everything they had promised.  So, I joined up for the "I am Amiga club", and sold my A4k on Ebay in readiness for the new Amiga that was just about to be released....

Anyway, 10 months and dozens of broken promises later I finally got a Pegasos and I love it.  It doesn't just live up to my expectations, it surpasses them in every way.  MorphOS is simply fantastic.

As for MOS users jumping in and telling people to look at Pegasos, well why wouldn't they?  If you find something good don't you want to tell people about it?  
If you see a good movie don't you tell your friends "Hey, this movie rocks, you just have to watch it!"? Well, it's the same with Pegasos users...

[Coder]

Hi,

I have to agree there with Lando. While I am still waiting for OS4 I can play with my Pegasos and MorphOS. And yes, it's much more then I had first in my mind about it.

I am sure that OS4 will come. But the waiting is long. It's been a long time ago since I ordered the A1 and also a long time since I have it. I never expected to wait this long. And I think that goes for a lot that have their A1.

I am not here to bring down the Amiga spirit but you got to believe me that the Pegasos/MorphOS is not evil. It's good. Jut being honest here. I got mine here running and if you want just come by and use it and see it for yourself.

For the record, I am not being played or payed to say this. It's just honest Abe here.

Coder

[Kronos]

@IonDeluxe

So by your logic we would need to thank Irving&Mehdi for the A4000,A1200,
CD32, OS3.0 and OS3.1 ?

Cos after, long sidetracking and blocking they finally allowed it to happen ?
More of,they (C=)even paid for the development  :-o

While I don't have a firm viewpoint on Gateway, I just have to say this about Escom:

They did invest in a new production run for A1200/A4000T.

They did develop new HW (o.k. the Walker wasn't that great, but it was).

They did have a firm path for the future (PPC).

They never took prepayments for allready dead product (PPack) or ones that
where still far away from completion (I am yoda).
They did sell enough Amigas to stabilze the market instead of helping a
~90% decline by declareing AOS dead.

What would be without Ainc ?
Would have been possible for Bernie&Harald to get a Cloanto-like-deal ?
Would have been possible for H&P or Hyperion to get a licence for a PPC-port ?
Would have been possible for bPlan to a licence for WB3.1 when they still needed it ?

Looking at Gateway they seem to be all about buisness instead of all about
daydreams, so yes i think some of the above would have been possible.

[DarkGlobe]

LOL Lando, I too used PCTask and turbo pascal for college work, a little before you though, I ran it on an A500...chug.....chug.......chug!

I've seen a few mentions whilst browsing around about a 'coupon scam' and no more Bill McEwan but even after searching on google could not find a break down of the story.

Can someone fill me in or point me to a URL news report or something please?


Also, I think I'd agree with the post above that Escom were probably the best Commodore successors. I still have an official Amiga Escom mouse mat that I got from the branch in Reading.

[Kronos]

@DarkGlobe

Short summary of the "I am Amiga"-lootery-prepaypament-club :

In summer 2002 AIn decided to start some sort of "market-gauge",by handing
out pre-payment-coupons for the A1, to determine the size of the market.

They did NOT inform Eyetech/Hyperion beforehand !!
The money did NOT go to Eyetech/Hyperion.

They did babble about prizes to be given out if the number of sold coupons
would each up to certain numbers (the highest been 50k, talk about a firm grip
onto reality ....).
Everybody was also promised to get an free t-shirt with his/her coupon, both
to be delivered AFAP.

McBill also talked about OS4/A1 being allmost ready (see where we are now ?).

It soon became clear that the turnout was really really low (~400) and that the
combination of prepay and lottery was illegal in most countries  :-o

So they changed the rules and allowed the coupon to be for OS4 only (funny when it
was orginally meant to gauge the A1-market),they extended the deadline 3 or 4
times, promised a monthly newsletter, and turned into a club.

It all turned funny when I started a bet with redrumloa on the number sold coupons
right here on this site (guess who won that :-P ).

Right now the situation is like this:
Eyetech/Hyperion and dealers made it clear that they wouldn't hounor the coupons.
Which would been quite hard since noone yet got an actual coupon (and no t-shirt).

AInc still haven't said an official word on how they want to hounor those coupons
bought by people who allready have bought an A1.
Some AInc-fans are trying to argue that the A1 isn't an A1 until it ships with OS4, but
you won't find that in the orginal announcemt, and never never ry to use that
argument in any other situation as on the coupons  ;-)

The monthly news-letter has been delivered aftersome delay, and mostly seems to
consist of restating the obvious(or allready public known stuff), hardly worth the
money (<- opinion).

[DarkGlobe]

So, you pay for a coupon, which you don't receive.
You can't trade it in for an A1 or OS4 because Ainc did not tell Eyetech/Hyperion about it and more importantly, didn't pass them the money collected.

Those who bought coupons got sick of waiting and bought the A1 from Eyetech at the regular price anyway, and now hate Ainc.

So all this coupon basically gets you is an out of date newsletter every now and then.

So, the theory is, Ainc ran low on funds and cooked up the scheme to rake in a little cash. All sounds quite nasty, I can understand why it seems to have upset a lot of people.

How much were the coupons?

[NeRP]

>1. Constant promises by the idiots at Amiga and >in the Amiga press about new hardware, new OS. A >long time after I had realised, thanks to the >BoXeR, that nothing could be trusted and nothing >should be expected.

I'm not Amiga, Inc, or anybody official.  However given the fact that I have run AmigaOS4 on my CyberStormPPC equipped A3000T and also on my AmigaOneXE G4, I can tell you that the hardware and Operating System are not vapor.  They are very much real, and will be by far the best incarnation of AmigaOS yet to date.

Go here:

http://www3.telus.net/NeRP/OS4_on_A1.png

and you will see your favorite IRC program online and working via OS4 on the AMIGAONE

There are also videos out there showing the alpha version of OS4 booting up.  It *is* real.  If you have any questions, feel free to email me.

[Tomas]

You can't trade it in for an A1 or OS4 because Ainc did not tell Eyetech/Hyperion about it and more importantly, didn't pass them the money collected.

Well AmigaINC still promises that they will make os4 avaliable for free for people with coupon... I wonder where you got this info from? who said they wont get os4 when it has been released?

[DarkGlobe]

I was just summarising the situation as I saw it rather than stating as fact what will happen. Obviously I don't know. I know nothing.

Hopefully they will make good on their promise.