Is emulation based x86 machines in Amiga cases really a no no? or......

[Daedalus]

@commodorejohn

Is that sarcasm? Any "normal" users could not tell the difference between Tiger on a PPC and Tiger on an Intel Mac, apart from the fact that PPC apps ran a bit slower due to Rosetta. Apple executed the switch excellently, and if the resources were available, OS4 & MOS would do well to follow the same path.

[Thorham]

if i where a rich venture capitalist..

1) i would buy Commodore and CBM assosiated brands and patents, Amiga inc, Hyperion, and those dudes making the A1x1000? and anyone else involved, i would then reFORM Commodore Business Machines as it was, i would then go to West chester and kick out QVC and take back Commodore HQ..

2) acquire key personel involved in development of the original amiga chipset and set down a roadmap to developing a new amiga product line. .

3) A new Amiga would have a full chipset that is fully backwards compatible with older hardware, based upon the AGA chipset, (or very minimal emulation) the new chipset will not only what we expect out of diplay hardware of today but incorporate full blown GPU that supports the very latest open GL standards, the main cpu will be either COLDFIRE or PPC (probabily the latter) and multicore, also a 68k cpu for backwards compitibilty and also serve as an instruction set for the powerpc when the amiga is first switched on (copied to ppc l1/l2 cache) have 2 gb chip ram and 2gb fast have wifi/ethernet and usb3.0 connectivity, Bluray rom drive and other expandibility. the whole thing designed to run with discreet fanless cooling except for big box versions... and run 0S 4

4) the Amiga released in 3 versions a) a500/a1200 style wedge.. b) small tower workstation, c) big box tower/desktop with mass Zorro 4 connectivity (or pci express).. all with same base capabilities, the wedge version has bdrom drive inplace of floppy and connects to any tv via dvi or hdmi

the thing is there is a big hole in the personal computer market for a machine like this and windows boxes do not fill this void.. infact most people ditching them in favor of laptops to get on face book these days and an x86 emulation machine no one would buy, thats why amiga needs to go back to its roots..

on the "new" amiga platform games could be coded in 3 ways, a) opengl compiled for easy porting from and to console platforms, b) amiga api (warp3d) amiga unique api, or c) CTM close to metal like the original amiga line the would unlock the full potential of the amiga chipset and as they are all the same it would be ultimatley the way games are coded, the games market would boom again (im fed up of call of duty fps shooter clones) wheres the proper amiga games we all loved? could be remade

not only that, the amiga could bring back HOMEBREW programming (amos), DTV and 3d CGI imaging and movie SFX, i would like to see lightwave 10 on the new amiga.. sound and music generation and all the other things that started out on AMIGA... ultimatley tho i think the games market would save the AMIGA, consoles are for casual gamers only (i hardly play on my ps3, no decent games) pc has only crap ports of the same console games and game shops no longer stock pc games now because of this..

That would only cause you to loose a lot of money, because the Amiga market is just too small. Most people don't care and just want a computer for everyday, bog standard computing needs. Then there are the high end gamers with high end machines. These guys already have what they need.

[bloodline]

I do. Mac hasn't been Mac since the Intel switch.

And thank goodness for that! Macs were junk before the NeXTStep replacement and move to intel.

[Dazxy2001]

My two cents.... when reading comments about PPC such as SAM not being Amiga etc I do recall reading an article in Amiga Format or CUAmiga, cant remember exactly which one, but do remember all the hype about the PPC expansions and how it would revolutionise the machine and help to push it on into the future and even back then it had been mentioned that down the road at some point the 68k would be dropped and the legacy software being run via some form of emulation, which is essentially what has happened.
x86 running UAE... well Amithlon and Amiga XL was an interesting concept, but having used it, I have to be honest I didnt really like it too much... UAE on Windoze, I wasnt too big a fan of that either... the speed increase was awesome and the ability to have a high resolution workbench with out the high expenditure that goes with it was great, but it just doesnt feel right.
I have Aros running on an Acer Aspire and I love it, it feels like workbench, its fast and its native, the OS itself seems to get knocked on some forums which I think is kind of unfair as the guys involved have done a great job

[TheDaddy]

Why would that be true? Neither are Amigas.
Sorry, 'custom chips' and Amiga go hand in hand. Amiga hardware: OCS/ECS/AGA+680x0. Basically the hardware from back in the day: A500/A600/A1000/A1200/A2000/A3000/A4000 (and some I  missed) are Amigas.

Not in my view. A SAM with OS4 is an Amiga.
Not necessarily, a lot of computers have custom chipsets but they are not called Amigas.
And it's not 1985 anymore.

[TheDaddy]

My last sentence kinda covers it I thought (ie., from a stance of legality, license, etc.) , but basically what Im saying is a Sam is Amiga OS4 hardware, but not an Amiga. It's all semantics though as I said, I really couldnt care less.
Just the other side of the coin from the often heard, "its not amiga if its not the official continuiation of the sources" arguement. If it works one way (software), then it works the other too (hardware).

It runs OS4 then it's an Amiga, sorry it doesn't matter how you paint it.
And you seem to care enough though...

[dammy]

It runs OS4 then it's an AmigaOne, sorry it doesn't matter how you paint it.
And you seem to care enough though...

Fixed it for you.

[lsmart]

And thank goodness for that! Macs were junk before the NeXTStep replacement and move to intel.

Actually I think that the iMac G3 - the first Mac that you could buy with OS X preinstalled was the best Mac they ever released. The technology was about two years old, but it was the finest CRT, a great all in one design with parts that really belonged together - much like todays iPad.
But - better than today - during that period Apple felt that it really needed 3rd party devellopers and open source software. So there was support for X11, Java, Flash and true standards. They even considered backward compatability to older Mac OSs as relevant. OK the box was sloooow, but it sucked less.
If you look at the circuit board of a PPC Mac and compare it to an Intel Mac that followed it, you will notice that the boards are less orderly and neat. You really can see the difference between standard industry layout and Apples custom secret sauce from the beginning of the century.

[TheDaddy]

Fixed it for you.

Really? Fixed it for you? Na, na na na na!

Grow up spammy!

My SAM with OS4 is MORE Amiga than any of your master's crap!

There fixed it for you.

[zylesea]

Is the proposed price point of the ones Commodore USA were planning to build the actual problem, which was effectively maybe 4x the cost of the x86 components.

Put it this way, would you buy a reasonably priced A1200 look alike computer running on an i7 or an i5/Llano based A600 look alike computer?

And if this is something some people would consider what is a reasonable price point do you think for this sort of thing

I'm not saying it's good or bad I am asking if you took away the excessive price tags for the proposed Amiga/c64x i7 machines would they then become something you would consider, even as a novelty, to get your WinUAE kicks on for example?

Just had pasta (DeCecco Orecchiette Aglio&Olio) for my evening meal, but wouldn't mind about some Börek.

[commodorejohn]

Is that sarcasm? Any "normal" users could not tell the difference  between Tiger on a PPC and Tiger on an Intel Mac, apart from the fact  that PPC apps ran a bit slower due to Rosetta. Apple executed the switch  excellently, and if the resources were available, OS4 & MOS would  do well to follow the same path.

Okay, I suppose I was muddling things up a little bit there. My ire is for OSX as much as for the Intel switch, I kind of perceive them as the same thing since both happened after I was no longer using a Mac regularly.

And thank goodness for that! Macs were junk before the NeXTStep replacement and move to intel.

Even if that's true (and I disagree, I got along quite happily on classic Mac OS for years before I moved to PCs,) at least they were their own junk, and not just BSD with a non-X desktop environment.

[Thorham]

Not in my view. A SAM with OS4 is an Amiga.

I find that quite insulting to what Amiga really is

And it's not 1985 anymore.

Indeed!

It runs OS4 then it's an Amiga, sorry it doesn't matter how you paint it.

So, a SAM emulator running on a peecee will magically transform that peecee into an Amiga?

[fishy_fiz]

It runs OS4 then it's an Amiga, sorry it doesn't matter how you paint it.
And you seem to care enough though...

No, if it runs OS4 then it runs OS4, still not technically an Amiga.
My Amithlon box runs AmigaOS, is that an Amiga? (and no its not entirely emulation, only the 68k side)

Legally, technically, license wise,etc. there's been no Amiga's since 68k machines went out of production.
Find me any sort of legal proof that disputes this and I'll happily concede, but you wont (cant).
And no, I really dont care. As Ive said 3 times now, Im simply discussing semantics. Im more interested in that then the actual topic.

Hyperion dont own the Amiga brand, nor do Acube or A-EON, ergo cant produce Amigas. As much as it pains me to say it only A.Inc (perhaps now C-USA, depending on what happened there) can produce computers that are Amigas. Will I buy them, or even support them? Absolutely not, but that changes nothing.

As I said before, if people want to play the "it's official 'cos its the legal successor using the original sources" game then its nothing but hypocricy to try to claim a Sam is an Amiga. Cant have it both ways. It's a vehicle for OS4, nothing more regardless of how you try to paint it.

These days the thing that dictates an amigan is what they do with thier machines, be it a classic user, an emulation user, a mos user, aros user, or an os4 user.

[Amiga_Nut]

My Amiga case with a PPC board is NOT false advertising.
It's an Amiga in an Amiga case (what makes an Amiga case is highly debatable anyway) running a real, proper Amiga Operating system.
Not some wannabe Linux based OS.
A LADA with a BMW body is still a LADA.

No, it's an OS4 compatible, OS4 being some software some Germans THINK is what is Amiga and need UAE to run Rocket Ranger.

How the fek is that Amiga? I can run classic software Amithlon on X86 hardware just as fast as on MOS or OS4 so that's full of fail.

If all you want is an OS4 computer cool, me I want either an Amiga or something that doesn't cost £1200+ for the "pleasure" of running what Hyperion wants me to think is Amiga

edit: I did NOT see the post above before writing my comment. What is plainly clear is had Amithlon been developed further we would have no need for the OS4 MOS pretenders

Amiga has a Paula chip and loads Cinemaware floppy disk originals with realtime access FACT. Anything else is emulation sorry if that offends people.

[Amiga_Nut]

Okay, I suppose I was muddling things up a little bit there. My ire is for OSX as much as for the Intel switch, I kind of perceive them as the same thing since both happened after I was no longer using a Mac regularly.


Even if that's true (and I disagree, I got along quite happily on classic Mac OS for years before I moved to PCs,) at least they were their own junk, and not just BSD with a non-X desktop environment.

NEXT OS for office environment is better than Windows 7/OS X or Linux. I am sorry that people feel the need to forget the past but as an ITIL qualified Service manager for 15 years you can take that as fact.

OSX does NOT include all features of NEXT OS even today sadly.

[commodorejohn]

I never said anything against NeXT, just that it isn't Mac.