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weebo
Groupie in Training
Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 63
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 Posted: Fri Aug 06, 2004 1:38 pm Post subject: The Amiga One, whats that all about? |
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I left the Amiga scene and didn't look back in the early 90's. Recently I found emulation etc and decided to relive my A500 days. I then looked on the net to fill in the gaps, what happend to the Amiga etc, and I have found a lot of references to this thing called the 'Amiga One', including a few screenshots of pretty powerful machines running OS 4.
So, what can you tell me about this machine, is it a true Amiga, where did it come from, and is it worth getting one!? |
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xeron
Lemon Amiga Donator
Joined: 16 Jul 2004
Posts: 315
Location: Bristol, UK
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| Posted: Fri Aug 06, 2004 2:27 pm Post subject: Re: The Amiga One, whats that all about? |
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| weebo wrote: |
So, what can you tell me about this machine, is it a true Amiga, where did it come from, and is it worth getting one!? |
Is it a "true" Amiga? Well, that depends on your definition. From a purely hardware perspective, no. Its not a true Amiga. It doesn't have the original custom chipset on board. If anything, its an expensive PC with a PowerPC instead of x86 CPU (although the price will come down, according to some info I can't reveal yet, unfortunately. NDAs suck  ).
The thing that makes them "Amiga", is that they run the same operating system as the old machines, but updated and ported to PowerPC. The new version offers many advantages over old versions, better media players, integrated TCP/IP stack, runs on PowerPC etc. etc.
At the moment, its not very compelling to the average joe in the street. For people like me, who love using AmigaOS, its fantastic, but for someone just looking for a computer, its sadly lacking for now. You can't use iTunes, the browsers are out of date (although there is a team porting Mozilla, and IBrowse 3.0 *is* in steady development which should support modern standards), the office applications are pretty old.
However, the OS is fast, lightweight, scalable, and with work can be useful in lots of embedded applications. Again, NDAs forbid me from giving too many details, but millions of dollars have been invested by serious businessmen. Hopefully, these embedded applications will subsidise the desktop users (which isn't like to be profitable in its own right, but will provide 3rd party developers).
This is probably where a lot of people think its all doomed to failure. They're assuming that the people behind it are just trying to re-launch the Amiga as a desktop platform, and concluding that it would be stupid. And they're right; that would be stupid. The people behind all this have a passion for Amiga, but they're realistic. They have real-world business concerns and have invested a lot of money. They're looking to specific markets where it doesn't matter if you're not running windows, where they can provide complete low-power consumption, multimedia solutions tailed to their own clients, and using this to subsidise the existing Amiga desktop community, who provide a large pool of enthusiastic developers.
Its very early days; AmigaOS 4 isn't finished yet. The only version in the hands of the general public is a "developer pre-release" which provides an SDK so people can start developing software now. Personally, I find OS4 a joy to use. When I first got it (which was before most people, since i'm on the "official" beta testing team), it was like getting my A1200 all over again.
I can run system-friendly Amiga apps from the past, and new apps are being created now.
More information:
IntuitionBase.com
Amigaworld.net
Oh, and to whet your appetite, here is a cool screenshot from a fellow betatester with the latest beta:
Screenshot |
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Akira
Groupie in Training
Joined: 14 Jul 2004
Posts: 74
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| Posted: Fri Aug 06, 2004 4:36 pm Post subject: |
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| The "true Amiga" bit is difficult. I am of the opinion that it isn't. To me the hardrware is an important part of what the Amiga was and this new machine has nothing to do with the old Amigas except for the OS. |
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CK
Newcomer
Joined: 04 Dec 2004
Posts: 3
Location: Donauwörth, Germany
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| Posted: Sun Dec 05, 2004 12:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Akira wrote: | | The "true Amiga" bit is difficult. I am of the opinion that it isn't. To me the hardrware is an important part of what the Amiga was and this new machine has nothing to do with the old Amigas except for the OS. |
To me, the AmigaOne and the Pegasos are absolutely TRUE Amigas. Of course, the hardware has changed and has been upgraded. But so has the hardware of Macintoshs and PCs. Or would you consider a current PowerMacintosh not a true Macintosh just because it has got a PPC processor instead of a 68K processor, PCI and AGP slots instead of old Nubus slots and Radeon graphics cards instead of proprietary chips? You could even consider a PC not a real PC because it doesn't have a 8086 processor, a CGA graphics card, a MFM hard drive and 8-Bit ISA slots.
All these systems (PC, Mac and Amiga) have got one in common: They have been developed with expandability in mind. But no one would have thought about 3000 MHz fast processors, 300 GByte large hard disks and 1 Gbyte of memory being normal back in the 80s. So technologies had to be replaced. And since the computer market is under a lot of economical pressure, standardized hardware had to be adopted by all these systems.
What makes and Amiga an Amiga is its look and feel, its extremely high responsiveness (compared to the nice hour glass you quite often see using Windows even with a 3,4 GHz P4), its ressource parsimony and and its ease of use. The AmigaOne and the Pegasos have all that. My Pegasos computer running "only" at 1 GHz is blazingly fast! It boots in about 4 seconds. I doesn't have any problems displaying 4 or more DivX movies at the same time (not that this makes any sense but it's still cool  ) and it runs all old and new Amiga applications at speeds never dreamed of.
This is what I call a real Amiga!
Best regards
CK
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