Who owns Amiga Intellectual Property

[odin]

The point is progress and geekiness, young lad ;-). Same reason why someone would buy a Pegasos, the new Acorn RiscOS machine or even a Medusa (or what were the names of those Atari-clones?).

[Karlos]

STUser wrote:
So why not just buy a Linux system with UAE?  If the OS, architecture and everything else is different, what's the point?

Did you ask something similar when the Mac moved from 680x0 to PowerPC? Probably not.

Migrating amiga from 680x0 to PowerPC has proved controvertial to many (many prefer x86), but most agree that a new CPU was a must if the platform was to continue in any meaningful way.

Still talking about the architectural issues, the custom chips, once the platforms strengths are now extremely dated compared to off the shelf hardware. Most serious users have gotten gfx cards, sound cards, PCI expansion busses etc. and so even for many existing 680x0 users, the 'architecture' is not as it once was. The migration to A1 won't be that big a deal.

The OS isn't really that different, either. Sure its' compiled for PowerPC, but it is still an evolution of the existing OS. Dont get me wrong, it does have some very new functionality added and the kernel is completely new. Also 680x0 emulation and other features are obviously a must to support older applications.

However, it will run on classic amigas that have the apprropriate hardware (basically a powerpc accelerator - for now CSPPC or BPPC). It just happens to run even better on the A1 hardware which is considerably more up to date.

If you look at Pegasos platform, you can already see that all this works in principal. It is just as different from the classic amiga architecture as the A1 is and has a PPC native OS with similar 680x0 emulation and OS3.x compatibility.

[STUser]

Did you ask something similar when the Mac moved from 680x0 to PowerPC? Probably not.

No, because the transition was seamless.  All the classic Mac 68K apps worked perfectly on the Mac OS for PowerPC.  I think that's a little different than a completely new platform that keeps the brand and has an emulator for legacy apps.

many prefer x86

x86 is a dead end.  PowerPC (and AMD64) are the chips of the future.

Still talking about the architectural issues, the custom chips, once the platforms strengths are now extremely dated compared to off the shelf hardware. Most serious users have gotten gfx cards, sound cards, PCI expansion busses etc. and so even for many existing 680x0 users, the 'architecture' is not as it once was. The migration to A1 won't be that big a deal/

As long as the OS, look and feel, etc. are preserved as well as a degree of compatibility with the prior Amigas, I'd say it's an Amiga.

Would someone with an A1200 be able to easily migrate to the new Amigas?

Who is manufacturing them?

What is the commercial channel for them (distribution-wise)?

I'm not trying to be obtuse here, I am just trying to figure out how one would go about evaluating and buying one of these mythical beasties.  

Right now, my understanding is that it's not much more than a motherboard you have to fit into your own case.  I think to be successful, it needs to be more than that -- it needs to be an integrated solution with out-of-the-box setup and a strong degree of backward compatibility.

I think there could be success selling Amigas as user-level machines that lack the "Microsoft tax" -- a Macintosh for less, if you will.   :-)

As for my beloved ST, she is dead, dead, dead as a separate platform I am afraid.  :cry:

However, the best ST apps like Calamus and Notator live on as Mac OS X apps -- in fact, Calamus runs in a MultiTOS emulation environment on PCs and Macs.  That's good for me, though there's a lot about the ST I miss on "modern" systems. :-(

[iamaboringperson]

OT:

Does anybody remember a user named 'Funeral' ?

[mahen]

STUser : the Pegasos / AmigaOne have nothing to do with the original Amiga. BUT MorphOS / AmigaOS 4 are AmigaOS compatible (MOS is compatible with 68k, PowerUP, WarpUP & MorphOS executables), as long as you use programs which don't try to access the original amiga hardware directly. That is to say, programs that can use AHI for the sound, a GFX card.

AmigaOS4 or the MorphOS A/Box really work the same way as AmigaOS, with many enhancements of course, and designed to run on up to date & standard hardware.

So, we're still on amiga

On my pegasos (Morphos) I use : amirc, ibrowse, simplemail, amitradercenter, jabberwocky, aminetradio, mplayer, fxpaint, imagefx, mysticview, earth 2140, wipeout2097, mame, golded, ... Some natively MorphOS compiled, some transparently 68k/PUP/WOS emulated. All at a great speed with a great comfort

(however, it's difficult to make a choice now for potential new users, as the Pegasos II is currently being manufactured so not ready yet (pre-order), the pegasos I being sold out, and as there's also AmigaOS4 which looks interesting but not ready either

[Damion]

@STUser

Dude, check out

http://www.morphos.net/

and here

http://www.pegasosppc.com

for a good overview of the Pegasos (but beware
of necessary, yet annoying marketspeak;). It
lacks "the Name", but as somebody very familiar
with AmigaOS, I was literally BLOWN away by
how cool this system is when I tried it at
a computer show earlier this year. It runs
many amiga apps which don't rely on the old
custom chipsets (so no old A500 games, but
morphOS does have UAE) yet is vastly improved
in just about every way...

[CodeSmith]

That's a pretty good overview of the Pegasos and Morphos.  For "the other side of the fence", look at http://os.amiga.com/os4/ - there you will find the feature set and screenshots of AmigaOS 4 (currently in closed beta, rumoured to go into open beta in December sometime).  The AmigaOne is very similar to the Pegasos, some will argue this but for for all intents and purposes they are the same.

[T_Bone]

> it needs to be an integrated solution with out-of-the-box setup and a strong degree of backward compatibility.

How far back exactly? We're talking almost 20 years! Even Windows software doesn't last that long while being able to run on current hardware.

Heck, I've got Exchange Server 2000, which won't even work properly on Windows Server 2003!

[Hammer]

STUser wrote:

Well, the new Amiga branded PPC boards have nothing in common (sp) with the old 68k hardware.

So no backward compatibility with any old Amiga applications?  No common hardware?  A totally new OS?

Motorola never "Athlon’ed" the 68K in the magnitude of the modern X86 processors.  

Isn't this the equivalent of "Amiga" selling a rebranded e-Machines Wintel Box with XP and UAE and calling it an "Amiga"?

What do you Amiga folk think of this?  What keeps you with Amiga if they're making completely incompatible hardware and software?  What makes an Amiga an Amiga?

Refer to the reasons why some pundits buy MacOS X/PowerMac G5(PowerPC 970) instead of using MacOS 8.1 on 68K emulated X86 PC/68K Mac with a slow PPC add-on/on some wana’be Mac clones .

[Hammer]

x86 is a dead end. PowerPC (and AMD64) are the chips of the future.

Note that AMD64 encapsulates X86-64/X86-32/X86-16/IA-32 domain.

[takemehomegrandma]

Has Amiga Inc Intellectuals? Or any property for that matter?

 :-P  :-D

[bloodline]

Gateway Own the IP, Amino (Later called Amiga) Inc. Licenced it.

The Trademarks and brand names are all owned by Amiga Inc.

Most of the Amiga Patents expire in 2003. Their value is limited... The vaule of the TradeMark is quite high still though.

If you wanted to make an Amiga comptatible, the simplest (cheapest) way would be to build either a 68K or PPC machine and run AROS on it.  :-D

[lempkee]

mac 68k to ppc transition almost (IF NOT) killed APPLE , mostly because their 68k stuff didnt work on ppc macs.

you need to do some research before u say stuff like that...

anyway later on they made several ways of getting more and more 68k stuff to work on ppc, its taken them long and infact its not perfect now even..

[lempkee]

the last post was aimed at STUser and so is this one,  since you know so much about mac and how the transition in 95-97 went on...please tell me how they ran 68k stuff on the ppc

oh and how do they do it now?....

[JurassicCamper]

They way understand it is:

Amiga Inc owns the Trademarks and the OS.
Gateway retained the patents as an asset and as a result increases the value of there company.
When the patents expire I imagine Gateway  will write these off in fincancal year losses a devalued asset.
Amiga have a licence to use the patents.

[ajk]

@STUser

OS4 will run most software that runs on modern classic Amigas. A basic A1200 is not a modern classic Amiga, but an A1200 with a fast accelerator and a graphics card is reasonably modern and most software, including games, that works on one of those will also work on OS4.

As long as your system isn't already badly outdated, the transition will be fairly smooth. The OS itself has all that OS3.9 does, with a lot of improvements.

There is UAE of course for old games and stuff, but it will need an update.