AMIGA ONE

[DGB]

         
Hi All,
          As an old Amiga user and fan I have been curiously looking at the Amiga One which is now selling in the United States.  I am curious about what the complete list of features are and what cross platform software and OS compatibilities are.  Looking at the picture that Software Hut has of the Motherboard I see what appears to be four PCI slots and an AGP slot.  I see no other slots to accommodate Amiga Zorro cards.  That being the case , other than using a 68XXX processor how is this related to the Amiga?  Also what does OS 4.0 offer?  The complete systems ...  Do they come in a tower and if so what Power Supply do they have and do they come with a keyboard?  It looks as though everything is pretty much standard PC stuff. Does it come with a floppy drive and if so what are it's compatibilities?  Will it read older Amiga Floppies?  I guess what I really need to se is a complete list of all specifications as I know little or nothing of this machine so I can determine if it is worth buying and if so in what configuration.  If there are links available to the manufacturer please include the URL's so I can look there.  Thank you in advance for any time and consideration any one extends in response to my inquiry.

Dave

       

[xeron]

DGB wrote:
As an old Amiga user and fan I have been curiously looking at the Amiga One which is now selling in the United States.  I am curious about what the complete list of features are and what cross platform software and OS compatibilities are.

You can run LinuxPPC on it, and soon you will be able to run the new version of the Amiga's operating system (AmigaOS 4) on it.

Looking at the picture that Software Hut has of the Motherboard I see what appears to be four PCI slots and an AGP slot.  I see no other slots to accommodate Amiga Zorro cards.

Thats right. There are no legacy Zorro slots.

That being the case , other than using a 68XXX processor how is this related to the Amiga?  Also what does OS 4.0 offer?

It doesn't use a 680x0 processor, rather a PowerPC G3 or G4 processor, like the PowerMacs. 680x0 compatibility is provided by an emulation layer. AmigaOS4 is a continuation of the Amiga operating system. It is a PowerPC port of the original code, but it is also greatly improved. The new intuition looks much nicer, and there is support for modern graphics cards (the final shipping version is supposed to support around 180 graphics chipsets). AmigaOS4 also provides support for sound cards, hardware 3D on certain cards, virtual memory, a greatly upgraded kernel, and a new library system. It is the first step on the road to bringing the Amiga into the 21st century.

Does it come with a floppy drive and if so what are it's compatibilities?  Will it read older Amiga Floppies?

It is unfortunately unable to read Amiga floppy disks, due to the leaving behind of the Amiga chipset (which is holding back the Amiga in many ways). However, you will be able to put a Catweasle PCI floppy controller in there to read Amiga disks easily.

There are many links I want to give you, but i'm just about to leave work for the weekend, so i'm sure someone will post links to the OS4 feature set etc.

[that_punk_guy]

The AmigaOne (and Pegasos) have no relation at all to the classic Amiga hardware. There isn't a 68k processor (they're PPC based) and no custom hardware.

AmigaOS4 is the first version of AmigaOS that will run natively on the AmigaOne board. The idea is to leave the old Commodore hardware behind, but that also means compatibility with some programs will be broken.

I think you'll need a Catweasel to read old Amiga floppies on any machine that doesn't have the old custom chipset.

[Seehund]

DGB wrote:
         
I am curious about what the complete list of features are and what cross platform software and OS compatibilities are.

There's a rather comprehensive list of AmigaOS 4 features here.

Cross platform? In brief, you should be able to run all old "systemfriendly" AmigaOS software that's not dependent on Amiga hardware. This is a PowerPC (PPC) OS, but 68k emulation will be built in. I don't remember everything in that feature list now, but I'd be surprised if there wasn't CrossDOS-like functionality (reading different filesystems) included.

Looking at the picture that Software Hut has of the Motherboard I see what appears to be four PCI slots and an AGP slot.  I see no other slots to accommodate Amiga Zorro cards.  That being the case , other than using a 68XXX processor how is this related to the Amiga?

In no way other than that some of these Teron motherboards are also sold under an "AmigaOne" trademark, and that AmigaOS 4 is under development to run on them. BTW, they don't use 68k CPUs.

The complete systems ...  Do they come in a tower and if so what Power Supply do they have and do they come with a keyboard?  It looks as though everything is pretty much standard PC stuff. Does it come with a floppy drive and if so what are it's compatibilities?  Will it read older Amiga Floppies?

Different dealers offer different complete system configs. Everything is standard PC stuff if you feel at home with assembling things yourself.

To read Amiga floppies you'll need something like this.

I guess what I really need to se is a complete list of all specifications as I know little or nothing of this machine so I can determine if it is worth buying and if so in what configuration.  If there are links available to the manufacturer please include the URL's so I can look there.

Sure: http://mai.com/products/teron px.htm
and somewhere at:
http://eyetech.co.uk/amigaone