+sgrddy Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 I don't know tons about this, but some of the postings that I've seen by Amiga folks seem to indicate that this is a good thing for platform. I'd love to see a return of the Amiga myself. I don't know how they would do it on the PPC though... http://www.hyperion-entertainment.biz/index.php Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 Yeah this would have been a good thing... 10 years ago. Amiga OS hasn't been updated in ages (not significantly anyway) and has been relegated to running on an ancient PowerPC platform which IIRC you can't even buy anymore. It would require a major MAJOR overhaul to be viable again outside the small die hard hobbyist community. Tempest 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 As someone very active in all things Amiga, OS4.1, MorphOS and AROS are all doing well, continually updated and "fine". Yes, they are still PPC platform, but when the kernal is as efficient as this, doesn't matter. Of course you'd be comparing apples to oranges. MorphOS was just ported to the MacMini G4. So, with the compactness of the OS (pun intended), you now have the worlds most powerful "Amiga" operating system in use today. MorphOS is from the guys that were talking with Commodore before their demise in continuing their OS. Talented group of folks with tremendous support. For me and for all practical intents and purposes, the Amiga incarnate or legacy - take your pic, are very current platforms capable of doing anything anyone might want a personal computer to do. I just bought an Efika computer and will be using MorphOS on it. There are also SAM motherboards and systems that run AmigaOS4.x that are current and run up to 800mhz. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 As someone very active in all things Amiga, OS4.1, MorphOS and AROS are all doing well, continually updated and "fine". Yes, they are still PPC platform, but when the kernal is as efficient as this, doesn't matter. Of course you'd be comparing apples to oranges. MorphOS was just ported to the MacMini G4. So, with the compactness of the OS (pun intended), you now have the worlds most powerful "Amiga" operating system in use today. MorphOS is from the guys that were talking with Commodore before their demise in continuing their OS. Talented group of folks with tremendous support. For me and for all practical intents and purposes, the Amiga incarnate or legacy - take your pic, are very current platforms capable of doing anything anyone might want a personal computer to do. I just bought an Efika computer and will be using MorphOS on it. There are also SAM motherboards and systems that run AmigaOS4.x that are current and run up to 800mhz. My understanding was that MorphOS and AROS aren't really Amiga OS but rather are 'clones' so to speak. I guess that's open to debate though. Amiga OS4.1 on the Amiga One was what I was referring to. EDIT: I guess OS 4 has been updated recently. I didn't think anything had been done to it in years, but Wiki says otherwise: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmigaOS_4.1#AmigaOS_4.1 Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+sgrddy Posted October 20, 2009 Author Share Posted October 20, 2009 As someone very active in all things Amiga, OS4.1, MorphOS and AROS are all doing well, continually updated and "fine". Yes, they are still PPC platform, but when the kernal is as efficient as this, doesn't matter. Of course you'd be comparing apples to oranges. MorphOS was just ported to the MacMini G4. So, with the compactness of the OS (pun intended), you now have the worlds most powerful "Amiga" operating system in use today. MorphOS is from the guys that were talking with Commodore before their demise in continuing their OS. Talented group of folks with tremendous support. For me and for all practical intents and purposes, the Amiga incarnate or legacy - take your pic, are very current platforms capable of doing anything anyone might want a personal computer to do. I just bought an Efika computer and will be using MorphOS on it. There are also SAM motherboards and systems that run AmigaOS4.x that are current and run up to 800mhz. Definitely an 800Mhz computer is totally usable for almost anything. Nevertheless, I would much rather see something competitive with current hardware. I read something somewhere about someone using the Coldfire for the Amiga OS (sort of like the Atari Coldfire Project). There are those that have upgraded their Amiga 1200s with PPC chips. It would seem to me that it would be possible to do something similar with the Coldfire where the Amiga OS or Atari TOS was running on the Coldfire and yet there could be another chip like an Intel Core i7 also on the board or an expansion slot. Either that or just port the thing to x86 already. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 (edited) Definitely an 800Mhz computer is totally usable for almost anything. Nevertheless, I would much rather see something competitive with current hardware. Me too my friend, me too lol And for those that are reading this and might be a little confused, to give you an example though of how different the architecture is, on my Amiga 2500 with a Blizzard 060 card running at 50mhz... I can surf most of the net perfectly fine. Certainly the kind of sites I frequent. Tons of recent plug-ins (jpg, bmp, sound, pdf, sound, etc.) aid browsers such as iBrowse and am even setup for SSL surfing. Of course, I'm not including the sites with frivolous "features" such as video streaming, but for the most part and trying to keep daily tasks on a comparable level, my A2500 feels snappier than my 2.1ghz G5 iMac. If only the power requirements were the same, I'd actually want to use my Amiga more than my Mac (wish it had a true sleep mode, not just shutting down the SCSI drive). But then again, a reset or cold boot takes less than 30 seconds I've got USB, Ethernet, large HD and a relatively "modern" video card; the Cybervision64/3D, all inside this puppy. Edited October 20, 2009 by save2600 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Koopa64 Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 Definitely an 800Mhz computer is totally usable for almost anything. Nevertheless, I would much rather see something competitive with current hardware. Me too my friend, me too lol And for those that are reading this and might be a little confused, to give you an example though of how different the architecture is, on my Amiga 2500 with a Blizzard 060 card running at 50mhz... I can surf most of the net perfectly fine. Certainly the kind of sites I frequent. Tons of recent plug-ins (jpg, bmp, sound, pdf, sound, etc.) aid browsers such as iBrowse and am even setup for SSL surfing. Of course, I'm not including the sites with frivolous "features" such as video streaming, but for the most part and trying to keep daily tasks on a comparable level, my A2500 feels snappier than my 2.1ghz G5 iMac. If only the power requirements were the same, I'd actually want to use my Amiga more than my Mac (wish it had a true sleep mode, not just shutting down the SCSI drive). But then again, a reset or cold boot takes less than 30 seconds I've got USB, Ethernet, large HD and a relatively "modern" video card; the Cybervision64/3D, all inside this puppy. Wow! You're pretty hardcore with your operating system of choice... Most everybody else would choose Windows XP or something... O_o I'd choose Fedora as my "non-mainstream" OS of choice though. Best part about it is, Fedora can run on the same hardware that Windows XP can! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+sgrddy Posted October 20, 2009 Author Share Posted October 20, 2009 Definitely an 800Mhz computer is totally usable for almost anything. Nevertheless, I would much rather see something competitive with current hardware. I've got USB, Ethernet, large HD and a relatively "modern" video card; the Cybervision64/3D, all inside this puppy. That's hot. Maybe one these days I can get my Falcon up to that level. Hopefully before the quantum computing era. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 That's hot. Maybe one these days I can get my Falcon up to that level. Hopefully before the quantum computing era. Without spending half a day using Googles completely worthless search engine, did the Falcon ever have an 060 option? Those 3.3v chips run cool enough, so no reason you couldn't cram it into a desktop... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted October 21, 2009 Share Posted October 21, 2009 That's hot. Maybe one these days I can get my Falcon up to that level. Hopefully before the quantum computing era. Without spending half a day using Googles completely worthless search engine, did the Falcon ever have an 060 option? Those 3.3v chips run cool enough, so no reason you couldn't cram it into a desktop... Yeah there's a third party 060 add-on (Cuza tech?). They don't make them anymore IIRC. Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
carmel_andrews Posted October 21, 2009 Share Posted October 21, 2009 Isn''t that all the AMiga is these days, just an o/s platform...not a hardware platform as it was 14-15 years ago Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roland p Posted October 21, 2009 Share Posted October 21, 2009 Definitely an 800Mhz computer is totally usable for almost anything. Nevertheless, I would much rather see something competitive with current hardware. Me too my friend, me too lol And for those that are reading this and might be a little confused, to give you an example though of how different the architecture is, on my Amiga 2500 with a Blizzard 060 card running at 50mhz... I can surf most of the net perfectly fine. Certainly the kind of sites I frequent. Tons of recent plug-ins (jpg, bmp, sound, pdf, sound, etc.) aid browsers such as iBrowse and am even setup for SSL surfing. Of course, I'm not including the sites with frivolous "features" such as video streaming, but for the most part and trying to keep daily tasks on a comparable level, my A2500 feels snappier than my 2.1ghz G5 iMac. If only the power requirements were the same, I'd actually want to use my Amiga more than my Mac (wish it had a true sleep mode, not just shutting down the SCSI drive). But then again, a reset or cold boot takes less than 30 seconds I've got USB, Ethernet, large HD and a relatively "modern" video card; the Cybervision64/3D, all inside this puppy. Cool! Thanks for sharing this. How much RAM does your amiga has and what resolutions does the Cybervision support? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted October 21, 2009 Share Posted October 21, 2009 (edited) Cool! Thanks for sharing this. How much RAM does your amiga has and what resolutions does the Cybervision support? Thanks for taking an interest! I'm quite proud of my baby. Ram is maxed out here. The Blizzard 2060 card has 128mb of 60ns RAM on it, the Amiga mainboard has 2mb of Chip Ram and the Cybergrafx64/3D has 4mb. I put together what I believe to be one of the nicest Zorro II based Amiga's around. No internal 16-bit card (I would like to get one again, just to have an original Amiga product), but I do have a modern external USB soundcard: Creative's SoundBlaster X-fi. The Cybergrafx is an RTG (Real Time Graphics) card and works transparently with all Amiga Workbench screen modes. Games and apps obviously too if they're supportive. Screen resolutions go up to 1600x1200 @ 8-bit depth, 1280x1024 @ 16-bits and 1024x768 at the full 24-bit depth and that's what I run my Workbench at. It's hard to describe and not just because I am biased, but the output from this card, colors anyway, are more pleasing than my iMac which runs at "millions of colors" @ 1344x840 res. Only thing that kind of 'sucks' about the Cybergrafx is that you have to play around with the pixel clock settings, etc. in order to get all the screen modes to work on a modern LCD monitor. The CRT's I've had are much friendlier (more refresh rate modes) and offer a much better picture, but the LCD has its charms. Refresh rates are totally different today (much stricter) than they were in the mid 90's. Still, the card is much easier to tweak than say a Picasso II (which is a little easier to find). For native 15khz output (all games and many apps), we have the Indivision ECS adapter coming soon! Plugs into the 'Denise' video socket and will provide us with fully modern capable monitor support. Not a graphics accelerator like the Cybergrafx, this little doo-dad gets to convert the Amiga's RGB to work with any modern VGA monitor. I will be getting one, but it's not totally necessary as I have plenty of 15khz (regular) Commodore and Amiga monitors. 'Course, they're only 15", but... lol Edited October 21, 2009 by save2600 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
desiv Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 Without spending half a day using Googles completely worthless search engine, did the Falcon ever have an 060 option? Those 3.3v chips run cool enough, so no reason you couldn't cram it into a desktop... Google for "atari falcon 68060" and the first hit is: Atari ST - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 3 visits - Oct 19 There are accelerator cards, such as the CT60 & CT63, which is a 68060 based accelerator card for the Falcon, and there is the Atari Coldfire Project, ... desiv Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
desiv Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 For native 15khz output (all games and many apps), we have the Indivision ECS adapter coming soon! Plugs into the 'Denise' video socket and will provide us with fully modern capable monitor support. Not a graphics accelerator like the Cybergrafx, this little doo-dad gets to convert the Amiga's RGB to work with any modern VGA monitor. I will be getting one, but it's not totally necessary as I have plenty of 15khz (regular) Commodore and Amiga monitors. 'Course, they're only 15", but... lol That's the issue for me getting back into Amiga recently. Just picked up a Amiga 500 to start. Having fun running it through a Commodore A520 composite output to the TV for now. It's OK, but I'll be looking at the video hack on the A520 to go S-Video. The ECS flicker fixer looks nice, but I think its going to cost over $120 or so? Not that it shouldn't be valued that high for what it does, but that's a lot of money to get this guy working on a monitor. There's the Amiga monitor option, but buying monitors is tricky. One, they are old. Two, shipping is crazy as they are HEAVY. I'm getting a device for $30 that will (if it works) run composite and s-video to a monitor. Will be nice for all my systems if it works. It remains to be seen how s-video would compare to a flicker fixed RGB connection. I've heard s-video is pretty good. It gets trickier with AGA machines. Unless s-video is "good enough", you will either have to go with two solutions (s-video/composite for games and VGA for hi-res modes that will work straight) or get an AGA flicker fixer, which costs even more. While I envy anyone who does that, my "habit" is already pretty spendy as it is. :-) I'm considering downsizing now that I have my Amiga (and I just got a C64). I might look to get rid of my 520STF, TI 99/4A, SegaCD, and some of my 68K Macs. (I don't think I can part with the Adam, Apple 8-bits, and other systems I have.. :-) ) Doing that might offset my new Amiga fix... a bit.. (Unfortunately, I know I'm going to want a 1200 eventually.. Might be looking at swapping my video projector (that I got and then got married and the wife doesn't watch movies much so it's just sitting) for a 1200 so to speak.) It's all checks and balances at this point. More power to you for keeping the Amiga burning bright, but I don't know that I can spend that much on it. Then again, I just got it, so we'll see.. desiv Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 (edited) @desiv: DOH! I've grown so accustomed to NOT using Google to search for things, I didn't even try. Just sick and tired of sifting through the first couple pages of paid "links" that have little to no relevant content typically. If you're looking for advice and considering you're relatively new at the Amiga stuff, I'd recommend playing around with the 500 for a while and be happy you have a 520 composite out device. That's good enough for games. If you find you love the Amiga (and who wouldn't? lol) and the wealth of software that is everywhere - expansion options abound for both the A500 or A1200. If you think you're going to want to get "serious" with the Amiga and are leaning toward the AGA A1200 anyway, I'd not invest so heavily in the A500. A1200 peripherals such as ram and accelerators are easier to find and often cost less than comparable A500 upgrades. I had an AGA Indivision in my A1200 and loved it. Jens builds great products. The ECS Indivision will be just as cool and in fact, have a feature the AGA model doesn't: you can stack two together! We're talking extended desktop here, like on a Mac or PeeCee (if you have the right video card). And yes, $120 is the projected cost of the ECS version of the FF/SD. Easily worth it. Especially considering the quality, size of monitor in use and the fact you wouldn't have to track down an old Amiga monitor. And it's true... the Amiga habit can be quite expensive - that's why I recommend sticking with your stock A500 for now. You can upgrade the snot out of that and actually, just remembered something... there is a brand new 68000<>IDE adapter that has both a CF card slot AND and a 40-pin IDE interface you could put in your A500. It costs about $80 shipped from Germany and would provide you with internal mass storage. I have something like that for my A500, but it ain't very pretty Slingshot A500 card (can also be used on an A1000) designed to turn the 86-pin expansion port into a true 100-pin Zorro port. I've got a 2091 SCSI card with 2mb DMA ram and then a SCSI<>IDE adapter and then coming off of that, an IDE<>CF card adapter! lol Edited October 22, 2009 by save2600 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
roland p Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 It seems that morphOS, which is also an amiga-like OS, runs on a Mac mini G4! So this can be a very cheap way to run a cool OS. It seems to run 680x0 code too, with just in time compilation. A dutch thread, but with nice pictures: http://www.amigascene.nl/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=1069&forum=6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 I'm currently using an Amiga 1200 with an AGA Indivision and a Cobra accelerator with 32M of memory. I can do just about everything I need with this setup, the only stuff I can't run are programs that require an external video card or a PPC add-on (all 15-20 or so of them). The problem is PPC add-on accelerators and external video cards for the Amiga are REALLY pricey and generally not worth it unless you're a die hard Amiga fan. The nice thing about upgrading the Amiga is that there's actually a point to doing it. Sure you can accelerate and enhance a stock ST or Falcon, but outside of running a few demos and a small amount of programs there's really no point. With the Amiga there were games and programs actually designed for these updates. Maybe it's because the Amiga lasted longer? Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mos6507 Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 My hat's off to those who have stuck with Amiga. I wound up throwing in the towel back in 1998 when I got my first Windows PC, which was Windows 98 and aside from editing Stella at 20 on a Flyer I haven't looked back since. The Amiga was a good alternate platform back when Windows was still running a 16-bit kernel but once it went fully 32-bit with Windows 2000 and intel CPUs rocketed ahead, it was really hard to keep making a case for it. Then developers up to and including Newtek threw it under the bus and it was the end of the line. The classic Amiga has no memory protection and crashes at the drop of a hat. When I look back at my experience with the Amiga, I'm afraid to say that I remember the crashes more than I remember anything else. I wound up losing a ton of work to crashes back in the day. And it's the kind of thing that only used to make me paranoid about trying to look in futility for the root cause. These days the stuff I want to get done on my computer preclude me from having anything less than a modern CPU. I'm about to upgrade my hardware and this time around I want something which can play blu-ray and modern games. So that locks me into Wintel whether I like it or not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted October 22, 2009 Share Posted October 22, 2009 (edited) The classic Amiga has no memory protection and crashes at the drop of a hat. Lack of memory protection has been brought up before, but we have monitoring programs that isolate these crashes and allow us to see what the real problem was for prevention and implementation in the form of an update or patch next time. But the truth is, MOST Amiga software is written in such a way that the lack of memory protection does not present a real problem. Even during all of its multi-tasking operations. Sorry you've had bad experiences in the past, but lots of reasons could and did attribute to an Amiga crashing on the rare occasion. Weak power supplies which Commodore was notorious for shipping and poorly seated Kickstart and Agnus chips. I don't want to come off as being a total Amiga fanboy, but saying that it crashes at the drop of a hat is BS. I've experienced far fewer crashes cumulatively over the course of 23 years using Amiga than I have (especially) PeeCee's or Mac's within the last ten years. Kernals, memory protections, service packs, updates, et al... that's amazing when you think about the evolution (or not) of an OS. Amiga to this day has an incredible support network and www.aminet.net is just one of them for anyone interested. Another important fact people seem to forget (besides responsibly backing up data), is during the extremely rare time your system does need to be reset (the Guru screen usually lets you close the problematic program and brings you back to Workbench; there's your "protection" right there - lol) is that a system re-boot often takes 40 seconds or less. Even on a modern Amiga jam packed with modern goodies, almost half that time Another good link: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AmigaOperatingSystem Edited October 22, 2009 by save2600 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
icbrkr Posted October 26, 2009 Share Posted October 26, 2009 Good to see another Amiga OS user on here. I'll admit I'm not as hardcore to buy a newer system to run it, I have sunk way too much cash on my current system: That's an older picture since I've been too lazy to take a newer one, but my main miggy is a A4000T with an '060/50Mhz, 144MB of RAM, Cybergraphx64 4MB video card, Xsurf 3 NIC, couple of hard drives, CDRW, external FF/SD, PS/2-USB mouse adapter and keyboard adapter and various expansions in there (bridgeboard, Amax, others). When I'm doing shows, I usually take my A600HD or A1200/040 since they're much more compact. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+save2600 Posted October 28, 2009 Share Posted October 28, 2009 (edited) Good to see another Amiga OS user on here. Indeed! Sweet setup btw. What processor is in your Bridgeboard? I have (2) 8088 models and a few disk drives. No cables yet for 'em, but I really can't bring myself to installing them anyway. Just wanted one for the sake of the collection. I know a chap in Germany that claims he has a 586 Bridgeboard. Never knew anything like that existed! Lots of cool and current Amiga items from Germany these days :-) BTW: if anybody reading this would like my extra Bridgeboard and 5-1/4 internal floppy... I'd be interested in swapping for some other Amiga items... Edited October 28, 2009 by save2600 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
icbrkr Posted October 28, 2009 Share Posted October 28, 2009 Good to see another Amiga OS user on here. Indeed! Sweet setup btw. What processor is in your Bridgeboard? I have (2) 8088 models and a few disk drives. No cables yet for 'em, but I really can't bring myself to installing them anyway. Just wanted one for the sake of the collection. I know a chap in Germany that claims he has a 586 Bridgeboard. Never knew anything like that existed! Lots of cool and current Amiga items from Germany these days :-) BTW: if anybody reading this would like my extra Bridgeboard and 5-1/4 internal floppy... I'd be interested in swapping for some other Amiga items... It's a 286 though I have a pile of 8088s over here as well. There *were* 586 bridgeboards, but if I remember right they're Cyrix processors. I think it's the Golden Gate bridgeboard he might be talking about. It's fun to have, but not very useful Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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