A new Amiga Classic ?? Discuss!

@Methanoid:

I have them in stock as do other dealers.

The "official" Pegasos website is not offering boards for sale because production capacity is all used up. It doesn't mean you can't buy one, just Genesi aren't in the business of taking preorders. They'll be back available later.

In the meanwhile, pegasos.co.uk, ggsdata.se and a couple of others have systems in stock.

If you're in the USA, Magnetic Systems keep advertising on the front page, how can you miss them?

Neko

@jeffimix:

Expensive circuitry + low production volume = higher prices.

The Amiga-specific flicker fixers and even the cheaper scandoublers are still pricey for both of the above.

Buying one from a shelf (which won't directly connect to Amiga RGB out, or over the Lisa chip) at your local Fry's for an XBox obviously is going to be a bit cheaper - but you'll have to solder yourself up a custom connector and so on.

Neko

[x56h34]

For the sake of nostalgia, it would be cool to be able to run MOS or OS4.0 on classic hardware, through CPU accelerators such as BPPC, CSPPC, and especially SharkPPC (assuming it wasn't vapor), but designing something other than add-ons (e.g. PCI busboards and similar stuff) for existing C= made motherboards, let alone new Amiga systems that have the custom native chipset upgraded to today's standards, would be nothing else than financial suicide for the company or person that attempts it. It probably would be possible in theory, but there's absolutely no reason WHY anyone should invest millions and millions of $$$ to do it.

Pegasos and AOne have been optimised perfectly as far as realistically creating the Amiga feel as much as it is possible at this point in a new piece of hardware, for a reasonable price, and being architecturally different than PeeCees but not to the extreme like the custom chipset of the classics was, so that cost of manufacturing wouldn't be over the top, which is important if we wanna be able to easily use the existing standards in expansion hardware.

[Will-i-am]

Personally I like the idea of screwing around with alternate realities for my classic Amiga. I think taking out boards and trying combinations and such...different cases but the same guts...Think about a hot rod or even a restoration job on a 1955 Willys pickup. You toss in a modern V8, better brakes, better music and tires....it still looks like a Willys, still handles like one, and still qualifies as a Willys. I have a vanilla A2000 that someday soon I'm gonna gut it and rearrange the parts in some kind of crazy ass way, maybe in a wooden chest or even an old classic radio from the '30s....but leave it essentially an A2000 so my daughter can play Jet Set Billy at normal speed, or only slightly accelerated. It's fun, it's creative and the legend lives on!

[Doobrey]

Methanoid wrote:

Q1: How hard would it be to take a PCI design LIKE Mediator/Prometheus and put that in for 2 slots?

Building in the PCI controller wouldn`t be that much work (assuming you can license the Mediator or Prometheus logic), but I doubt you`d end up with a MiniITX board by the time you`ve positioned all the FPGAs and the 2 PCI slots.

[Holley]

Why not put a new AmigaOne into your old A2000 case and have the hotrod, with UAE for playing old games?

There's at least one place that'll build you a new PC into an A1000 case out there ... they also do 'em in Atari 2600s, too ;-)

UAE works for using the old stuff, but Pegasos and A1 are the only feasable new designs, if the other ideas (Walker, boXer, the A1200 on a PCI card) were feasable they would have reached production, all had enough funding to get all the hard work done.  I really wanted one of those PCI jobbies with an 060, too!

[drwho]

Although I do agree that trying to do anything with the "classic" Amiga hardware platform other than live within the "nostalgia" space would be impractical to say the least, I think some of the opinions expressed are a bit harsh.

Unfortunately, it is difficult for me to give my unbiased opinoin since I am a huge fan of the classic platform and I am still making new memories everyday on my two classic systems, but, I will try.

I can understand that some folks might think that these musings about putting old hardware in new configurations are pointless and have no basis in the reality of the off-the-shelf component based PC market of 2004. Although I can see that point, I think there is a much more important message hidden in these types of posts that speak volumes about what kind of people "Amigans" really are.

I think that if it were not for the "what if ..." attitude of people in the Amiga community and the constant influx of creative ideas flowing from Amiga users all the time over the ages, we wouldn't be here right now talking about any of this. We would all be somewhere else, doing something really pointless, like installing Windows XP or something (I think this is where the Atari ST users ended up, poor souls ...) I think there were a lot of folks in the past who have come up with some crazy ideas and been laughed at or told that it was impractical or a waste of time to think that way (Albert Einstein? Jay Minor?), but, they kept with it, and here we are ....

I apologize, I am babbling. My point is that without these kinds of questions, none of us would be here. We would all be using PC's and doing nothing in particular that is important or different or ground-breaking. Maybe the idea of making and old Amiga work in an ITX configuration isn't the most practical example, but, if it sparks an idea in someone else here to do something else wonderful and exciting that benefits the rest of the community, then I say, keep the silly, pointless, impractical ideas comgin!

Just my 2 cents, sorry for the long post.
- Mike

[GreggBz]

The one valuable commodity that Amiga still has is Amiga OS.
There will not be any mass manufactured mass apeal hardware possiblities, as far as I can see. I'm sure Amiga supporters, myself included, would be interested in such "nostalgic" hardware solutions, but really, I don't think many others would be interested.

With the horrendas bloat in todays operating systems, would'nt it be nice to see something sleek simple and intuitive like Amiga OS for the PC? Or, on more portable hardware, such as palmtops and even perhaps the Gameboy advance? Imagine that with expansion solutions etc.. With Amiga's diverse collection of applications and software, a superportable Amiga OS device would be great. That's my idea.
Something the size of a GBA that not only plays games but does everything a classic Amiga would.

[graffias79]

 would'nt it be nice to see something sleek simple and intuitive like Amiga OS for the PC?

Like Aros? :-)

[drwho]

I recently purchased a Toshiba PocketPC and I was thinking how wonderful it would be to even have a version of WinUAE that ran on that platform.
The PocketPC has a 300Mhz processor in it and tons of memory. I don't think there would be any issue at all playing old Amiga games on it.
It would be nice to jump on the subway in the morning, with my PocketPC in my hand playing GODS or R-Type II or Datastorm.

Hmmmm ...

- Mike

[GreggBz]

AROS is a wonderfull effort, but I was thinking a more native port of classic Amiga OS.

As it stands, AROS is a kind of an OS Wrapper for Linux.

A big company interested in Amiga OS technology for their portable devices.. say Palm? thay had a fleeting interest once. That would really expediate development.

[drwho]

Hmmm .....

I wonder what would be involved in a port of WinUAE to the PocketPC or PalmOS platforms? It is an idea with some merit I think.

Thanks,
- Mike

[sir_inferno]

drwho wrote:
Hmmm .....

I wonder what would be involved in a port of WinUAE to the PocketPC or PalmOS platforms? It is an idea with some merit I think.

Thanks,
- Mike

indeed, that would be sweet...

[bloodline]

GreggBz wrote:
AROS is a wonderfull effort, but I was thinking a more native port of classic Amiga OS.

As it stands, AROS is a kind of an OS Wrapper for Linux.

A big company interested in Amiga OS technology for their portable devices.. say Palm? thay had a fleeting interest once. That would really expediate development.

AROS has nothing to do with Linux!!! :roll:

Check out http://www.aros.org and understand what it is...

[Holley]

I guess he was thinking of Amithlon, easy to get confused unless you've read up on them both ;-)

Plenty of people come back after a break from Amigas and see there's a whole bunch of stuff going on - thing is apart from UAE none of them have anything to do with the old A500 shoot 'em ups that most associate with the word 'Amiga'.  It takes alot of trawling around to find out what it's all about, and get your head around the current Amiga-related world which revolves around serious work, internet and 3D games now!

UAE is technically proficient enough to make ANY 68k related hardware project a non-starter (I mean, come on - like OS 3.9 at faster than 060 speeds in software alone isn't enough?), and while it's nice to dream the world /has/ just moved on ... even the (non-emulated) Amiga world!

[macto]

I guess it depends upon your perspective, and I'm not terribly fond of emulators.  There's something distinctly unsatisfying about turning a reasonably fast computer into a pitifully slow one, which is what happens to a PowerPC running UAE.  A number of you are claiming fantastic performance.  I can only assume that is because of optimisations unique to WinUAE.  I have seen worse examples, such as a 1 GHz G4 barely emulating a Macintosh Plus (8 MHz 68000) with Mini vMac.  While most of the emulators I've run into do a great job with video, audio support is disappointing.  Problems range from emulator X not supporting audio, at all, on Unix implementation Y to timing problems distorting the audio.

The other issue is hardware upgrades.  If I want a faster Amiga, I can throw an add-on board into my A2000.  If I want ethernet, presumably I can find something which suits my needs.  If I want faster emulation, I have to buy a new computer.  If I want to add ethernet support in emulation, I have to wait for somebody to add that feature to the emulator.  (While I know how to program, I'm not much of a programmer.)

Needless to say, in my books a hardware Amiga is much more interesting -- even if it is based on the 680x0.  As for PowerPC based Amigas: I will look at the AmigaOne and Pegasos when the opportunity avails itself.  But I want to see one in the flesh.  Most of the descriptions and screenshots are woefully inadequeate.