Son of Transputer powers new Amiga box
There was only one place to be for Amiga enthusiasts this weekend: a tent at Bletchley Park. Saturday saw the unveiling of the first dedicated Amiga box for some time, in the shape an unusual and technically advanced system that maintains the Amiga's bleeding edge reputation. The AmigaOne X1000 is a custom dual core PowerPC …
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Yes it did
But then again, the Amiga didn't make the rest of the market look like toys either, being the computer with the garish, primary coloured desktop that was mainly known for games.
Try AROS
If you want Amiga on an x86 box download AROS and try it out. Otherwise there are two Amiga classic replacements: The FPGAArcade and the Natami in the works. Google them for more info.
1500UKP+
A 400UKP machine with 2x250UKP GPU cards will whomp this beastie - and you get the dev tools for free under linux :-)
IMHO The BIG problem with the original Ami's was the need to purchase a load of dev stuff - and the dev software was never what I would call stable.
I just hope they dont make the same mistake C= made.
Re: 1500UKP+
^ This...
You are absolutely spot on.
I have been an anti-intel zealot for a while but really the sun really appears to have set on ppc's as a viable high end bleeding edge desktop cpu. Your current average intel box (or amd) with an average video card will probably give you more horsepower for less.
My next machine (for messing, mind you) will be either a 6 core AMD or an i7, with a mid range nVidia cuda capable video card ( or an ATI alternative whichever appears most attractive at the time).
Plus...
I will (probably) be able to run crysis :P
Maybe.. just maybe
Amiga set the standards back then and who knows maybe they can up the ante again.
or maybe not
@Inachu
"Amiga set the standards back then and who knows maybe they can up the ante again."
No they really won't. It's a different world now. There is no way you can compete with wintel, apple & linux hegemony.
Amiga X1000 and Amiga OS4.1 in general.
I would like to make an open invitation to anyone who wants to try/see AmigaOS4.1 Update 2 to Attend the next Amiga North Thames Usergroup Meeting (Held in Enfield UK) Anyone with an open mind is welcome (Our website http://www.amiganorththames.co.uk)
To answer a couple of points raised, The Amiga was in the doldrums thanks to decades of mis-management. Since Hyperion won the court case against Amiga inc, the developments have been coming through at a very fast pace. We now have 3 proper web browsers, Java is on the way as is Open office, Flash is not available, and unlikely to mature, but given the fact that HTML 5 is on its way, it may not be that necessary.
Why use AmigaOS4 against, say Windows or Mac? I can't answer that, other than perhaps, its a different, unique experience to the other two. At the end of the day Choice is always good. It helps promote innovation etc. If you are happy with Windows or Mac OSX or Linux, that's fine. No need to knock someone else's hobby. Imagine if the world only had 3 car manufacturers? i.e. Ford, Nissan or VW? Not that there is anything wrong with them, but surely choice is a good thing and I am sure, always welcome.
I hope to see some of you at our next meeting (We don't bite and don't wear anoraks!, on July 11th)
Thank you.
Michael Carrillo
Amiga North Thames Chairman
Organiser "Amiga Area" at VCF 2010
Hahaha
For me as a kid it was always because of the games and cool 8bit music which was cutting edge back then.
If I could fit this new version of Amiga into its original pc casing it might make me smile a bit
hahaha.
What is it good for?
Other than allowing excentric hobbyists with a spare £1500 to benchmark how many copies of 25 year old games they can open and run at the same time (Look it's multitasking! Apples & PCs didnt use to be able to do that!), what is a modern Amiga for? I'm sure the Firefox & Openoffice ports are super, but what can it do so much better than any other current platform that it would make it a rational commercial decision to buy or even to have developed in the first place?
The elephant in the room is waving frantically.
Couple of points regarding your post.
"Other than allowing excentric hobbyists with a spare £1500 to benchmark how many copies of 25 year old games they can open and run at the same time (Look it's multitasking! Apples & PCs didnt use to be able to do that!), what is a modern Amiga for?"
You don't have to spend £1500 to run Amiga OS4.1. The lower spec SAM boards are capable to give you a good Amiga experience, for around half that. Indeed, If you go for the now defunct earlier AmigaOne models (by Eyetech), a complete AmigaOne XE system (G4) just sold on ebay for £350.
"what is a modern Amiga for? I'm sure the Firefox & Openoffice ports are super, but what can it do so much better than any other current platform that it would make it a rational commercial decision to buy or even to have developed in the first place?"
That depends on your perspective. At the end of the day, Web Browsing or writing a letter is the pretty much the same on one computer as it is on another. Again, I come back to my earlier point. What's the point of buying a Vauxhall or an Audi when a Ford will do exactly the same? Or indeed, what's the point in buying a Toshiba TV when you can get a Sony or Panasonic which will do the same job?
- It comes down to a matter of taste or preference. Each platform has its own unique way of doing things. Its down to the experience for the user. There is no commercial rational behind it.
It's a computer.
What is it for? It's a computer. It mostly just does the same things other computers do, and does them about as quickly as other computers do them. You can tell that from the specifications.
This is, however, an oversimplification. It says nothing of quality or feel. Part of the utility of a tool--even though a thing may just be a tool--is how it feels to use it. Two tools, of whatever kind, may have entirely equivalent functionality, but the one that feels better to use, at least for a given user, is superior for that user, all other things being equal.
Even if all other things aren't equal, it's a big deal. You cannot simply compare things on plain specifications (though the specifications for this thing are pretty awesome), because that says nothing of how this wrench or that actually feels in your hand; sadly, the Wintel-minded market has gotten used to doing nothing but comparing specifications versus price with little regard for quality, reliability, or how nice a thing is to use; thus, most of the market is the same boring, fungible stuff that comes in a flimsy plastic-clad pressed-aluminum box with some holes punched in the back*--the sort of machines that compel us to refer to computers as "boxes". That is another merit of this kind of thing: It offers at least something of an alternative to that monotony, just in case somebody wants to try something different--and sometimes people do.
*sadly, the case of this thing appears to be a flimsy plastic-clad pressed-aluminum box with some holes punched in the back. At least the circuitry is interesting.
Go on yersel, Mikey
The world would be a sadder and infinitely boring place if we were all the same and had the same toys. Harken not unto those who drink keg lager, for they are void and without passion.
I'd be tempted, even at £1500. I miss my AmigaOne. What could I do with it? The same things as I do with a PC mostly, but with less hassle and more enjoyment.
And AOS 4.x is an amazing achievement, especially when you realise how tiny the dedicated band of (extremely gifted) programmers that produced it really is.
No such thing as a modern Amiga
"what is a modern Amiga for"
Nothing since it doesn't exist. The Amiga spirit with Commodore. The A1200, A600 and A4000 were the last Amiga.s A succession of owners have slapped the Amiga or Commodore brand on a sucession of (vapourware) products but none of them have come to anything.
The brand has no meaning any more. Calling something an Amiga doesn't make it any more so than if Coke went bust and someone decided to use the brand name 15 years on a packet of gravy sauce.
Furthermore, any advantages AmigaOS had were surpassed a long, long time ago. There is no value in any of the brands and its hard to understand why the Amiga's mouldering corpse is desecrated even today.
Case Closed
The case is made by Fractal Design, it's a Define R2. I own an R1 and the case is awesome. And anyway, aren't most PC cases plastic-clad aluminium?
The PSU is a Corsair HX620W but what I don't get is the use of an IDE hard drive...
Amiga on Sam440 videos
Yes, OS4 on a 667Mhz machine is possible, watch them here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e5zwPhMClk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_1PjOEFPTk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUoArmgzz_A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRH3w1Y18pQ
I was at Bletchley on Saturday.
I went in the Amiga tent and tried to see what the fuss was about with the 1000. All I saw was a few studenty types sitting round what looked like more old home brew PCs. I saw the 1000 box and didnt realise it was anything new. Looked like any £400 cheapo PC but with IDE cables in it!!??
Nice!
Had more fun chatting to Chris Smith about the Sinclair Spectrum ULA chip.
Well worth a trip to visit though.
Memories...
Upgraded my A500 back in its day to a Super Fat Agnus, remember Denise and Gary as well...
Had 10MB RAM in there alltogether but never really used it, GVP 110MB hard drive hanging off the side edge connector. Then moved the lot into a PC tower case that was doing the rounds at the time, can't remember the name now. Had a daughterboard in there that you plugged the A500 motherboard into and also gave you a couple of ISA slots which I stuck a hd card into.
Had an external graphics board as well, for Super HAM. The demo picture looked great, true 24 bit but never used it for anything else! AOC multisynch monitor, great setup at the time... Nearly got to put a 68030 turbo cpu card in there but the company went bust on me, taking half the money (only to setup again under a different name - gits...)
Video digitiser card as well and a 56K modem for accessing the BBS - happy times!
Customisation and expandability and memories
for my A500 I had a home-maid (not by me) SCSI adaptor card and a third-party memory expansion hanging off the side, and then I plugged the CD Drive box (A530?) into the end of the line. I was running out of width at my desk in the end.
a extra board on the inside gave me the choice between the two Kickstart ROMS. a bit of luck was coming across a junked Iiyama monitor with a a wide frequency range. For £40 (a fortune to me then) I had it fixed and the helpful people at Iiyama gave em the pinouts so I knocked up a cable to connect it to the Amiga. ran at some unusual refresh rate.
Never got the parallel port based data connection to my A1200 working though...
Is it just me...
Or does Trevor Dickinson look disturbingly like Nick Griffin?
i see flatcables
it's 2010. ever heard about Sata or sas connections ? obsolete hardware running obsolete os ...
It's not finished yet!
It's an early version of the system, and SATA drivers aren't finished for it, hence the flat cables. The little SAM440 board has been using SATA under OS4 for years now... There's still plenty of work to be done on it - drivers for more up-to-date graphics cards, the gigabit ethernet and so on (you might also have noticed the PCI NIC plugged in there while you were looking for something to poke fun at).
a (good) First Step
The Machine is aimed at developers and Amiga fans with no budget concerns, it is NOT aimed at people living in the People's Republic of NetBooks.
I see the most original computer since some 15 years ago, and it will probably stay so even when my grand grand son will die more than twice as old as I am today (hint I still don't have grandsons).
Most don't recall it but it was start-ups like this that made computing fun in the 80s
Long live Amiga.
Not usually>>>>>>>>
"Or does Trevor Dickinson look disturbingly like Nick Griffin?"
Not normally ;-)
TrevorD
Ahh Amigas. The Zombie's computer!
They're not fully dead. But they're not fully alive. Instead, they roam the earth, to feast on the CPUs of the living.
£1500?
Thanks but no thanks. If I wanted an overpriced walled garden, I'd buy a Mac.
Or maybe spend £250 on a PC and put an Amiga emulator on it. Sorted!
And seriously, number of cores is meaningless these days when your average GPU could out-core-count this thing. In its day the Amiga was the daddy of home computers.. but they fucked up. The PC got cheap 3D accelerators, got things like HDD and RAM upgrades way cheaper than any Amiga hardware, and the old Commodore machine went the way of the dodo.
So what does this new machine do that a £1500 PC doesn't?
A1200
I stumbled across my old A1200 in the basement about a month ago and hooked it up to a handy TFT screen. Booted from the HDD first time (fortunately was already configured to drive a VGA monitor..). Didn't find the mouse and couldn't remember any hotkeys to do anything useful so put it back again for the time being. Apparently can stick a 3com PCMCIA ethernet card in and download drivers for that if I can find where I put some, so when I have half an hour spare (in 2015 or so) I might give it a try...
PA6T
It is cool they have PA6T CPU there but at 1500 english pounds this is way too expensive. I was there at the show and timbermilf crashed couple of times when deomed.
Timbermilfs roaming wild
I think I prefer the name TimberMILF. Project fork with XXX bookmarks preinstalled, please?
but can it run x264
and can this xcore run x264 code faster than anything else on the end user market place....
were's Dave (Haynie) http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7514955261061091399#
when you need a real objective POV..
DAVE cant You do that
transputer & Parallel processing
not herd transputer since early 80's, the INMOS TRANSPUTER, omg!, i had one as a tie pin, in the 80's.
it was to be the future of computers, the transputer. (not the tie pin)
another word from the 80's that was all the rage Parallel processing, oh the good old times!
fun times what i can remember of them.
After Reading the Comments
I took my steel baseball bat and hammered a Corvette to bits and I told the crying fella that a Toyota is cheaper, more widespread and efficient.
Later I whooped up on a fat kid in the gym for saying he'd like to be a professional baseball player some day. THAT will teach him !!!
Finally after really getting revved up I came here and monkey stomped anything positive about some folks who, on an extraordinarily limited budget, have a dream to create the best, most up to date Amiga computer ever.
I think some haters smelled a dream.
-----------------------------------------------------------------/
I think this is very exciting. I saw the Timberwolf Firefox alpha and it looks just like Firefox. I didn't even know Open Office was being worked on! That's excellent! Amiga already does music and movies so... I think its time to finally pony up the dollars and revisit the Amiga and check out the improvements. Hope The Register follows up on this. Cheers!!
Unfortunately.....
....these folks are effectively remaking the computing equivalent of a high-tech mangle (or wringer).
Once very useful and necessary. However, now quite redundant.
You cant turn back time, and certainly not for £1500.
Not the Real AmigaOS?
Er yes it does.
The source code for the earlier AmigaOS4 (now 4.1) is taken from the last OS available to Hyperion Entertainment, namely AmigaOS3.1 it is built on that.
Perhaps you mean Amiga OS 1.2? or 1.3? When it was just blue and white with the odd bit of amber thrown in? or maybe you really mean OS3.0 which was black and white and to be honest quite ugly too.
Any mac users out there who wish to argue that MacOSX is not really MacOS5, 6, 7, 8 or 9?
- I didn't think so.
Any mac users out there...
"Any mac users out there who wish to argue that MacOSX is not really MacOS5, 6, 7, 8 or 9?"
It isn't. Don't be daft, it most resembles a BSD, practically speaking.
And I might as you, is this new AmigaOS one in which everything runs in the same address space effectively like prior ones?
I think I will
Still have my A2000 w/040 and my A4000T w/PPC and Video Toaster 4000. Oh, and an A1200 toy/game machine someone gave me (I've never been into games). One of the sweetest machines to develop for/on. I miss EVERY application having an ARexx interface since I've had to develop software/hardware on nasty x86 platforms for a living. Now that I'm retired I might just pick one of these up and finally ENJOY developing again.
going to add my tuppence :)
If I can afford it, I will buy it :)
there is always room for a new platform to develop, they dont even need to be backward compatible in my opinion.
Its a 2.5 horse race at the moment with OSX Windows and Linux
(I am not going to specify the .5 :) )
So an extra platform is exciting, just as it was in the 80's and 90's, and awesome idea would be for the Amiga to be the ultimate cross platformer. running Mac Linux and Windows software right out of the box... its got to be possible :)
Transputer
My very first job was trying to figure out how to parallel up various algorithms on a transputer array. Using an occam simulator - we never actually got a transputer. Says it all, I suppose.
What, no mention of the Iron Bru & Muffin HDD option?
http://www.wallydug.demon.co.uk/wallydug/hard_cases_rhd/article.html
letters making up a title
Reading the comments, I see a lot of wonder. Some of it is simple marvel, some of it is the usual "but what can it do that my crap box at home can't?". Well, if the latter's you, this isn't for you. Back again are the days thought lost of some upstart with a good idea. How else would something new come into being? The big players have no interest in that happening.
The funny thing is, it's mostly a mindset issue. Way back when there were quite a few hardware platforms, all incompatible. With the business driven push to a single platform, and the resulting monoculture sustained by lots and lots of users with the same at home and no education to show them it didn't have to be that way, well, all of IT was essentially stuck.
But the sometimes rabid users of linux (and the open secrets only the Real Men With Real Beards use) already showed the monopoly is easily breakable if you don't let yourself be roped into believing it's all that's viable. In the beginning that zealous conviction was necessairy by dint of the sheer apathetic inertia they had to overcome. Now, well, it's perhaps time to tone it down and leave the backward masses behind. Either way, linux land has a lot of catching up to do, too. But I digress.
The more interesting question is, how was this even possible? Is it because the amiga brand? I don't think so. It's a useful hook to gain attention and establish a beachhead. After all, the amiga users back then tended to be people not bound by convention and actively interested in new, better tools. They are about to get that treat again.
I haven't checked the specs, but just a look at the picture tells me there's been sufficient attention to detail to make hardware maintenance a better experience than the usual atx-or-variant box. That I take as a good sign.
It's easy to sneer while looking back, but back then people were pushing the envelope too. So why did it take so long for people to start doing that again? I think some never stopped, it's just that some parties held much more market power to suppress potentially disrupting ideas.
Is that all there is to it? You can also just send your design to some instant shop and get PCBs back, sometimes even soldered and all. What about all those fabless chip designers? I haven't paid attention, but it just might have become easier to come up with interesting CPUs, too. As long as you managed not to get gobbled up by apple.
Anyway. UKP 1500 for a fancy (if very well designed) box with lots of custom hardware (and ``1.0'' hardware at that) is a bit much if all you want to do is click buttons, use comic sans to write emails to your mom, or tinker with spreadsheets when you really shouldn't. Then again, that's not what this box is for. And why would that be a bad thing?
just so long as i can fast launch games
just want
"switch on"
"insert/select game"
"play"
no massive OS loading, no update checker for the fraggin printer or basic periferal device kicking in and eating disk/cpu/memory. bang the usb/firewire/TCP stacks and drivers in rom. job's a good un.
good luck to em, i may have a butchers myself...
The *real* question is........
....does it still have a Guru Meditation when it crashes?
I *loved* my A500 and A1200 back in the early 90's :) As someone earlier pointed out, it always seemed to be the more creative types not bound by uniformity that owned and used these machines.
Unfortunately, I left the A1200 (complete with 54MB internal HDD) in a loft when I moved house...the buyer asked if I wanted it back when he found it, but I said no. Bloody fool.
Hyperion and A-eon are not Amiga
Only thing is, this isn't an Amiga. The OS isn't Amiga either, it's Amiga-like. Hyperion has worked hard over the years to misappropriate the name Amiga so they and their partners could use it in some form in their products - otherwise who would pay any attention to them?
Hyperion is allowed to use the term AmigaOS, and their hardware partner can use the term AmigaOne. Neither are truly Amiga any more than AROS or MorphOS are Amiga.
Always someone trying to steal the limelight.
Sorry Frank Diangro, your reply is typical of the cancer that has spread through the Amiga Community for years.
Folks, During the 90's and mid noughties, Amiga was owned by one numpty company after another, the only one of any note was Escom (remember them?) who restarted production of A1200's - Sadly Escom went bankrupt the patents got bought out by Gateway for peanuts, who went on to set up an Amiga division led by Jim Collas. Everything was positive until the accountants got involved and the Plug was pulled. The rights were then Acquired for $5m by Amino, who didn't have a penny, to take the brand forward for the next 8 or so years. They hang onto the name in the hope that their "Amiga Anywhere" would make them some money. it didn't. For all extent and purposes the Amiga over those years was lost and rudderless.
Which brings me to the following point about Morphos and AROS.
These Alternatives sprung up as a result of the Amiga being rudderless, or if you prefer up the creek without a puddle.
Morphos is a very nice OS and will run on old Mac PPC hardware (check which one first) but its not THE Amiga.
AROS is the open source re-implementation of Amiga OS for x86. This in my opinion is the favoured option for those who spent all their time in the school playground swapping disk copies or are too tight put their hands in their pockets and buy some actual Amiga hardware.
- That's not to say that AROS hasn't got its good points, it has so if you want an Amiga like experience, without actually using the real thing - then this is for you.
The problem with the people who prefer the alternative solutions is that they are only too happy to slag off Hyperion, AmigaOS and indeed the real Amiga community, but are only too happy to come into forums like this and ride on AmigaOS's coat tails, because they can't gain the attention of their chosen platform by themselves, preferring instead to spread FUD in the hope of getting people away from "The real thing" and into their alternative choice.
Make no Mistake AmigaOS4.1 is the natural and continued successor to the Original AmigaOS/Workbench that we all grew up with. None of the Alternatives will run AmigaOS4.1x they are their own separate operating system.
At the end of the day, Amiga is the one grabbing the headlines, not MorphOS nor AROS.
As the old saying goes, you pays your money, you take your choices (or words to that effect)
I for one...
welcome another platform. However, I do agree that GBP1500 is very steep to most. Especially if the platform cannot garner widespread support (I hope it does though). Maybe the X1000 will serve as a top-of-the-range totem, and lower spec'd, more affordable beasts will emerge.
However, I also think that the earnest rise of the tablet computer is something Hyperion should not ignore. Just as the netbook became the (albeit short-lived) unexpected bastion of general consumer-use Linux (some of my totally non-technical friends bought early eeePC's with Linux), I believe Amiga OS needs an affordable and pervasive hardware platform on which to make itself known again. OK, the tablet might not be the ideal environment for the OS, but the key is to get into the hands and minds of the general public, as well as back onto the desks of the die-hard fans. However Amiga OS gets itself back on the map, it has to be quickly capitalised upon: killer apps, popular features/ports of popular software titles (Hello, GNU, are you there? It's me, Amiga!), and maybe even doing the games console thing again.
I think it's either that, going software-only, or death. And I'd rather not see the Amiga die again.
There is a lower end model already!
"welcome another platform. However, I do agree that GBP1500 is very steep to most. Especially if the platform cannot garner widespread support (I hope it does though). Maybe the X1000 will serve as a top-of-the-range totem, and lower spec'd, more affordable beasts will emerge."
There is a lower end model available, its called a SAM Flex. its by ACUBE Systems SRL it will run the same AmigaOS that the X1000 runs, the only difference is the speed. (Which to be honest is bloody fast anyway) In September ACUBE will be releasing their next model up, which is the SAM460 and was on display alongside the X1000.
However if anyone here doesn't want to wait, the SAM Flex is available from Amigakit right now (http://www.amigakit.co.uk)
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