Takers - One Woman's Opinion of the Amiga Mini

[OlafS3]

a short demonstration of my distribution:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRDAXbny428

[Yasu]

I compare the speed of development and I think in less than 12 months it will be competitive in all areas (and superior in a couple of areas).

That will be something to look forward to

[Iggy]

Then you should avoid MorphOS too because there is no multicore support. Or am I wrong? :-)

My Mac only has one single core processor.

And I did start putting together the parts for a dedicated AROS system a few weeks ago.
I have a low wattage single core Athlon 64 for that.
I'm just not wasting the processing power of my Phenom X4 on an Amigoid OS.

BTW - What is "gratulate"?

[OlafS3]

I meant "congratulate"

[number6]

Reading from all this though, one thing I cannot fathom is, why all the flames if CUSA does create/sell a PowerPC with AmigaOS inside it? It's not like as if CUSA is getting it for free.they are paying Hyperion for their efforts yes? (to create a port for them)? Wouldn't Hyperion need this sort of extra funding? If I was a developer I know I'd certainly would. Also regarding the IP front if the problem exists primarily with Amiga Inc. and Hyperion's contract as regards to what AmigaOS is..why can't just one company buy out the other and then lease out the AmigaOS x86 IP to CUSA? What is stopping them from doing so (since many companies do this already to resolve IP issues?).

write and make an offer

here's your company contact

Enjoy!

#6

[psxphill]

If AROS is legal (and I'd be willing to bet that Ben Herman's thinks it isn't) then distributing it shouldn't be actionable.

My understanding is that putting AROS on an Amiga branded computer would violate the trademark used by hyperion.
 
In the same way that Apple Computers were limited with doing anything to do with music (even though it would have been perfectly legal for them to do so under any other name).
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Corps_v_Apple_Computer

[haywirepc]

AROS 68k looks like its coming along great. THANK you guys for all your hard work. What will the amiga inc. and amiga forever grave robbers do now?

[OlafS3]

If you mean Cloanto with "Amiga Forever" they have also put in work with their distribution and the special UAE-Version, Updates... they are not only selling Roms. And at least there was a legal way to get the amiga files. But I of course have high hopes that Aros with its different platforms and distributions can revive the scene up to a certain degree. Much more than the other OSs are able to because they stuck to old hardware.

[Methuselas]

a short demonstration of my distribution:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRDAXbny428

Hey, as long as there's development, I'm happy.

[Middleman]

Umm...are those the only relevant Amiga parties out there?

Well I only quoted a few. I know apart from Jerri, Dave (Haynie) was one of them, Hyperion I think, and I think two of the other board makers Genesi and Acube had been contacted also...can't remember the exact details but it was something like that. I believe all the relevant parties were contacted probably just before the December post about the 'Final Challenge'.

Also I'd been backtracking reading some of the ideas and comments from December. I came across this one from Dan Wood back in December which I think makes sense and gives a really compelling reason for AmigaOS now to be ported over to x86:


'Assuming this is serious, this is what I want.



Work with Hyperion to port/update OS4 to modern standards firstly. It must be x86 to be taken seriously in this day and age, run 68k apps in a sandboxed fully compatible, seamless UAE environment (like unity mode, invisible to the user), run PPC apps via a Rosetta-style virtualization. Add memory protection to the OS and run these old apps in a sandboxed environment, new x86 apps can take advantage of MP, make sure it can run AROS apps so we already have a starting point. Basically bring AROS and OS 4 together, but bring it up to date.



Put it in a nice box with the Commodore Amiga name bearing proudly down at you, give it a custom kb with the A keys....



That'll do nicely and stands a chance of being taken seriously outside of our community, of course it can also run Windows/Linux should the user wish to.'


This is his idea obviously, (and a Power7 Amiga would also be nice), but the question remains in the hands of Hyperion et al how they want to go about it and whether they're willing to port AOS over to the x86 platform or work with AROS on developing a version of AOS fit for x86 chips. This is the crux of the matter everyones faced with today (and the past two decades including Commodore). But it can be solved technically. If Hyperion doesn't want any other PC system to be an 'Amiga clone', Hyperion could develop a version of the OS that will recognise some sort of 'dongle' or code on the board. This will make the system uniquely Amiga in a similar style to how OSX recognises proper Macs.

[OlafS3]

The idea is certainly not stupid and of course not impossible but Aros is Opensource and that would require that they are more open than now. F.e. I read today that AROSTCP is a port of AmiTCP. It was ported to MorphOS and the changes were backported to Aros. So both sides benefitted. The question is would they accept such conditions?

And Hyperion would give up its uniqueness to a certain degree (like KDE and Gnome are based to the same foundations/kernel).

And one thing you seem to forget... you must recompile all applications to get X86 versions. Not for every program there is the source. And you need some sort of PPC emulation/layer for old apps.

[Fats]

My understanding is that putting AROS on an Amiga branded computer would violate the trademark used by hyperion.

Exactly, Hyperion did not make a statement about the legality of AROS an sich but on the usage of it by an Amiga trademark licensor to use it as OS on their Amiga branded computers.

greets,
Staf.

[Iggy]

AROS 68k looks like its coming along great. THANK you guys for all your hard work. What will the amiga inc. and amiga forever grave robbers do now?

But Steven, the 68K is far more DEAD then PPC processors.
I thought you weren't in favor of using obsolete product.

[Iggy]

Exactly, Hyperion did not make a statement about the legality of AROS an sich but on the usage of it by an Amiga trademark licensor to use it as OS on their Amiga branded computers.

greets,
Staf.

Again, I don't remember that, just the stipulation that Amiga Inc. could not develop an AmigaOS like product.

[OlafS3]

68k is dead as processor-family but not dead on emulation and for thousands of developers and users.
It is for some still the main platform and it is useful as extension for Aros X86.

[commodorejohn]

Well I'm happy to report that a little birdy told me the new Amiga Mini has been doing great. Sales of both barebones and built systems are doing well....so it means Amiga as a brand name, is coming back into the public conscience in a big way. With more people using Amiga Forever and the like, sales of Amiga-related software would no doubt I believe, bring much needed attention (and cash) to those developers.

I'll grant you that there's apparently one person stupid enough to shell out gobs of cash for something worth half that (wish I knew their name, I've got a bridge I'd like to sell them,) but your "little birdy" says a lot of things. Around this time in the C64x release cycle the "little birdy" was talking about distribution contracts with Wal-Mart that guaranteed tens of thousands of sales. So, uh, I'll believe this when I see it.

Reading from all this though, one thing I cannot fathom is, why all the flames if CUSA does create/sell a PowerPC with AmigaOS inside it?

They're not doing any such thing...not even in the "Barry wildly tossing out potential ideas that will never actually be followed up on" sense...

I mean think about this. When people talk of Apple IIs & Macintoshes compared to Apple MacBooks, most folks understand that Apple IIs & Macintoshes were 'classic' systems i.e. legacy systems and realize that modern Apples run on the latest Intel chips. Yet when folks like myself here talk of legacy Commodores and Amigas and they are put it in the same sentence as USA, Intel and x86 port, everybody gets their feathers a little ruffled. What's the big deal? I don't understand it…

Because here's the thing, the Mac is and always has been a software system, and the hardware is unimportant aside from the most basic sense that it's what the software runs on. That's part of the original Mac Team philosophy. From the original System disk that shipped with the 128k Macintosh all the way up to the last revision of Mac OS 9, that software system was preserved, so that a dual-G4 system running at 1.25GHz is perfectly capable of running software from the 128k days, as long as it's well-behaved software (and it usually is.) Even on OSX, when they moved to BSD internals (something some Mac fans still aren't happy about,) they kept a compatibility layer for it to run classic Mac OS software transparently, in the same user environment. That's respecting a legacy.

The Amiga's design legacy is a bit different - not only the software, but also the hardware is important. Instead of the OS abstracting all of the hardware away, the two are designed to work in concert. That's part of what's so neat about it. Preserving that legacy is harder, since emulating the hardware is trickier - but the "next-gen" Amigoid OSes are trying, at least for well-behaved software (which is unfortunately less common than on the Mac.) They're actually making some effort to keep that legacy alive. CUSA? Isn't. And no, bundling an emulator with a completely unrelated system on completely unrelated hardware doesn't count for squat.