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Amino Got More Than the Amiga Name
Posted by
Hemos
on Tue Jan 04, 2000 04:00 PM
from the getting-the-whole-kit'n'caboodle dept.
from the getting-the-whole-kit'n'caboodle dept.
vigi writes "Despite early announcements, it seems Gateway sold pretty much anything Amiga to Amino. As this executive update points out, Amino (soon to be renamed Amiga Corporation) acquired all trademarks, inventory, licenses, domain names and the Amiga OS."
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WOW, LEO SCHWAB !!!! (Score:1)
QNX supporters (Score:1)
opensource amiga == better emulation? (Score:1)
For a while I was trying to get some of these games to work with UAE (the only amiga emulator available for linux). It is a great emu but it still is a bit slow (choppy sound) and a lot of games refuse to work.
If they decide to opensource the amiga will it help the emulator any? Is UAE still being maintained?
Tim
Patent ownership (Score:1)
-E
Re:An old Amiga user and lost hope (Score:1)
You know, that's one of the things that really bothers me about the "Open-Source Uber Alles" crowd here; the basic assumption that anything cool or powerful developed by anybody should be open so we can pick it apart for the crown jewels like Apple did to PARC.
insert the customary parrot sketch here... (Score:1)
oh... and... (Score:1)
http://www.freiburg.linux.de/~uae/
You can also get Fellow which is a great emu as well (and a lot faster) but not as compatible with a lot of software from here:
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Peaks/52
Then of course there is AmiNet which has TONS of software on it... www.aminet.org (i think)
/ k.d / earth trickle / Monkeys vs. Robots Films [xoom.com] /
Amiga Forever from Cloanto (Score:1)
www.cloanto.com
/ k.d / earth trickle / Monkeys vs. Robots Films [xoom.com] /
Apple paid Xerox (Score:2)
As far as Open Source goes -- the Amiga as a separate general-purpose hardware platform is dead. Nobody in their right mind today would bring out a computer based upon proprietary components and expect it to be cost effective in today's market. The only possible commercial use for the AmigaOS is as a webtop OS, where it's lighter-weight than other operating systems like BeOS (for example) -- an AmigaOS webtop could operate in 4mb of ROM and 4mb of RAM quite nicely, thank you. But as a general purpose OS? Get real!
Open Sourcing the thing could create some excitement. AmigaOS is a much simpler and easier to understand OS than Linux is (thanks to having only one address space, thus no flutzing about with page tables and call gateways). It is emmenently hackable, or would be if the source was available (even without source it can be hacked pretty niftily, thank you!). This in turn could bring some ports of software, though the Amiga memory model can be somewhat problematic for many Unix programs (especially the limits on stack space -- Unix programs, for example, are accustomed to allocating whopping buffers on the stack so that they'll get automatically de-allocated upon the 'return', and this is somewhat incompatible with the way the Amiga's stacks work). I don't think it'd ever get past the hobby stage to being a commercially viable platform again... but it'd be FUN, and it certainly wouldn't cost Amino any lost sales to Open Source it -- assuming that Amino intends to actually sell Amiga hardware. More software == more hardware sold. Even if Amino only came out with a video card for the PC platform that did the amazing tricks that the Amiga could do in 1985, that alone could finance their operations for quite some time...
-E
Why the Amiga matters (Score:2)
For better or worse the Amiga is dead. I have no delusions on that matter. Even if it wasn't dead, the Amiga design makes tradeoffs that don't make as much sense today as they did in 1985.
For example, the Amiga has one single address space within which all Amiga programs run. This makes interprocess communications basically a matter of plunking a pointer into another process's address space. Meaning that they could create an extremely light-weight multi-tasking message passing operating system in 1985 with hardware that would be viewed as laughably crude today. But the price... the price was high. The price was stability and portability. Stability was a problem because your program could overwrite anybody else's data. Portability was a problem because this memory model resembles nothing else under the sun... I ported several Unix programs to the Amiga, and the difference in the stack model alone caused me to make many patches to, e.g., allocate buffers on the heap rather than on the stack (programs were started in the Amiga model with a fixed-size stack segment, and that stack segment was NOT allowed to grow).
So the Amiga is dead, and the tradeoffs made to get adequate performance with 1985 technology means that most people wouldn't want to revive it today. But there are still important lessons to learn from the Amiga, the most important lesson being this: Simplicity. The Amiga was a very sophisticated machine for its time, with pre-emptive multitasking, near-real-time message-passing, dynamic libraries, dynamically loaded device drivers with full plug-and-play capability, dynamically loaded file systems, etc. etc. etc... but despite this, it was SIMPLE. You could take the documentation released by Commodore, read it, and you could understand exactly how each piece of the system fit with the rest. Other than the BCPL code hacked in from TRIPOS, the whole system had a simple elegance to it that, for better or worse, is totally lacking in today's Linux distributions. If you don't believe me, load Red Hat 6.1 onto your computer. I don't think anybody will ever describe Red Hat 6.1 as "simple" -- or even as a coherent operating system (it isn't... it's like, three layers of cruft, all sitting atop the Linux kernel, all resulting in enormous bloat).
Don't get me wrong. I'm running Red Hat 6.1 today to post this. But the simple elegance of the Amiga is nowhere to be seen, and that simple elegance is something that needs to be remembered.
-E
Oops. (Score:2)
Yes, indeed, a generic x86 box running Linux could do all the things described, for vastly less than $2000.
Glad to see that you noticed that...
(Hmmm... I wonder if I forgot to use the SARCASM tag on any of this message... Nah, I'm sure everyone's observant enough to know where it should have been applied...)
Re:I've lost count (Score:2)
New owner seems cool (Score:2)
So it sounds like Amiga might finally be in caring hands.
Makes me wonder what all the Amiga hype was all about.. I was always a C128 junkie myself :-P
--
How do you keep an idiot in suspense?
Tell him the next version of Windows will be faster, more reliable, and easier to use!
Re:An old Amiga user and lost hope (Score:2)
Maybe that's the route the Amiga folks should take; instead of reinventing the wheel, make a kick-ass Linux system and add the necessary multimedia stuff to Linux. They'll have all the help they can eat.
Re:Oops. (Score:2)
Consciousness is not what it thinks it is
Thought exists only as an abstraction
Re:An old Amiga user and lost hope (Score:2)
That is still a matter of choice.
---
Re:Okay, but.. (Score:2)
Actually they were about the same price on the street if you compared similarly equipped systems. Sounds like you are doing the old 'compare other guy's list price to my mail order price' routine.
Calling a II GS 'useless' of course is a matter of opinion. Both the Amiga and the II GS suffered from a lack of software (because things were swinging towards the Mac and PC direction by then), the Amiga moreso than the GS (the GS had lots of apps, but most of them weren't 'GS specific'). The GS had more productivity type apps, while the Amiga had a stronger game/demo software market. It was more a matter of what you wanted to do with the machine.
I came this close to buying a gs instead of an Amiga, and I never regretted the decision.
The NeXT? At $10k, I think it was a little out of the $1300 Amiga's range.
Of course it also came with a much faster CPU (25MHz 68030 vs 7MHz 68000), more memory, FPU, MMU, large megapixel display, rewritable optical, hard drive, built in networking, SCSI and lots of expansion slots.
Besides, the original NeXTs were b/w.
Actually they were 4 level greyscale. Again, depending on what kind of work you wanted to do, the NeXT megapixel display might be better than the Amiga's video.
Re:Amino (Score:2)
Is there really a big enough niche for Amiga to make it in today's world?
Re:QNX supporters (Score:2)
Re:Ooo Ooo I know the answer, let me... (Score:2)
That isn't what I said. Actually, quite the opposite, the point was that the port would be new, and thus behind where KDE and Gnome are now. You can't expect code ported from one platform to another (particularly code written as tightly to proprietary hardware as AmigaOS) is going to be stable immediately.
hmmm, how old is Unix?
Well, Linux is not exactly UNIX. However, Linux is already very stable. Linux has been under constant improvement for the past 7 years, AmigaOS has been essentially abandoned for 5.
Anyway, Amiga is MORE than A desktop environment, it was a MICROKERNAL OS, even LINUX is not as advanced as a Microkernal OS
Oh please. There are certainly differing opinions in the computer world on whether microkernal OSes are really better than monolithic kernels. At any rate, MkLinux has already proven that Linux is not entirely incompatible with the concept of microkernels.
(Linus was programming for an i386 architecture after all)
And Linux now runs on a lot more platforms than just x86. AmigaOS only runs on one so far, and that is unlikely to change any time soon, since it is closed source and highly dependent on proprietary hardware. There was a chance for the Amiga to jump hardware platforms around the time that Commodore bought the farm, but now it seems too late.
You cant make Linux into a Microkernal os by giving it a pretty desktop environment
And you can't make AmigaOS into a portable, network savvy, secure, multiuser, memory protected OS overnight either. Linux is not a desktop environment, it is a base on which to run one, but it is more than that. It is a base to run all kinds of server applications as well.
There are a lot of ways that the abandonment of AmigaOS for the past 5+ years has really put it so far behind that it really looks kind of hopeless.
If a deep pocketed company like Gateway doesn't think they can make a go of it with the Amiga, what makes you think some underfunded startup can? This new company seems like the shakiest attempt at resurrecting the Amiga yet.
Re:Patent ownership (Score:2)
Re:but will they use it (Score:2)
Patents are only good for 17 years. Many of the Patents in the Commodore/Amiga portfolio are already expiring or will be fairly soon. Making the assumption that Commodore/Amiga was filing patents up until their demise in 1994, the last of their patents will expire around 2011, which isn't really that far off.
As for trademarks, they are a little different. Trademark holders have to actively use and defend their trademarks or risk losing them. Given the way that Amiga has operated, or essentially not operated, it doesn't seem totally impossible that someone could challenge their trademark due to neglect within the next few years. I don't know why anyone would bother to do so, but in today's litigous society, it doesn't seem too far out.
Re:Gateway brokering? (Score:2)
is just useful for patent trading reasons?
Yes, it gives them a better position when negotiating with a big patent holding company.
Re:Ooo Ooo I know the answer, let me... (Score:2)
So you are trying to tell me that a new port from one platform and OS to another of a desktop environment that has been essentially abandoned for 5 years is going to be more stable than KDE?
Pardon me if I am a bit skeptical.
Re:Amino (Score:2)
Actually I can think of two machines contemporary to the Amiga that had sound that could put the Amiga to shame. First was the Apple II GS, which had a digital sound chip in it produced by Ensoniq. Second (and even more impressive) were the NeXT Cube/NeXT Stations, which had a Motorola 56001 DSP chip onboard. Read up on that chip and what it could do, still fairly impressive even by today's standards.
Re:Amino (Score:2)
As an ex Amiga user and developer, I'd like to do just a correction, for the sake of what's true: whey they come out (A1000) they had 256Kb ram, 4096 colours but not at the same time, no protected memory, no virtual memory (68000 had no MMU), not even a battery backed-up internal clock.
Any pointer gone wild or every memory leak brought down the system in seconds. Strangely enough, this resulted in really bug-free applications, which is somewhat unusual for a personal computer.
But then, aside from that, Amiga's main advantages were in its hardware (which was cheap, for the time, and powerful) and its community (Fred Fish comes to mind), fairly balanced by the badness of Commodore's marketing department (which insisted on selling it as some sort of evoluted gaming console).
So, let's watch if something interesting comes out (at last, QNX now has another appealing set of widgets). But I definitively don't hold my breath.
My 0.02 Euro
What the amiga could be today.. anyone listening? (Score:2)
I was one of the die hard amiga users who had their hopes dashed earilier in the year by the possibly premature announcements of whomever the flavor of the month is. (was?).
The amigas did amazing things in their day, but what a lot of people forget was how they did those things. There's room for some real amazing things to be done today too, but I think the culture of hackers that made the amiga are a much rarer breed than they used to be.
The amiga concept was that bigger wasn't better. The amiga was designed from the ground-up to be a multimedia and graphics powerhouse; Back in the day this needed those custom IC's that we were so fond of. The machine was designed so that the processor wouldn't be tied up with graphics or sound calculations; That chips could share memory and use it efficiently. Ah, for the days of chip and fast ram.
The amiga technology of yore is indeed dead. It's too slow and old to be of any use, anyone could see that after about 1995 or so. But what isn't dead is the philosophy that drove the brilliant engineering we saw in the amiga. The coupling of the ground-up hardware and tight OS integration are something that I have not seen since the Amiga, and possibily the early mac days - largely because of the legacy software problem. Nobody wants to break from the pack - be it x86, or MacOS. Remember the flak Apple took when they went to the PowerPC line and broke some stuff?
Set up boxes and thin clients suck ass. These things have been around for decades and never caught on, I have lots of ads for 286 "diskless workstations" and anyone remember the Commodore CDTV units? Yuk! This is not the future of the amiga.
What the market wants is a standardized platform for developing home applications on. No worrying about what hardware a customer has - it's all standardized at some base level. The Amiga 500 provided this, and that's why the games rocked hard. The game developers worked on using the hardware they knew everyone had to the absolute maximum - this is what 3dfx saw, and it's what the opengl people are starting to see too. (A standard platform or API is a good thing).
There exists a great opportunity for Amiga to take some existing (bitching fast) chips - like a optimized Athlon, or Alpha, or PowerPC - and then integrate it with ultra-fast graphics hardware from leaders like Nvidia, with sound engineering from someone like Creative or Turtle beach - and then write (or port something like Linux, or QNX Neutrino) an operating system that takes full advantage of the hardware with which it was provided. Something that used multiprocessing to it's intended end, and it worked right out of the box. Something that provided a nice platform for people to develop on. Something that (gasp) came in a sexy box.
Ship that with some applications, bring the gaming manufacturers on board, and I think you'd have a winner. That's what the amiga was about.
There's another player, though. If Sony "got it" and opened up an OS (like linux) for the Playstation II, or a derivative, you'd have the machine that I described above. Bitching fast graphics and IO, Intenet connectivity, a customized (preferably open) OS, and the rest will follow.
Kudos!
Good ideas for the Amiga name (Score:2)
That, and the world needs a kick-ass laptop with a SrongARM processor or some other RISC chip with high performance and low power/heat requirements, with good Linux support for all the hardware.
Maybe that's the route the Amiga folks should take; instead of reinventing the wheel, make a kick-ass Linux system and add the necessary multimedia stuff to Linux. They'll have all the help they can eat.
An inexpensive RISC laptop would be cool, especially if it used something Linux, BeOS, or BSD ran on. I suppose you could even use something like an early DEC Alpha (21064A @ 266 MHz). A true 64 bit laptop would rule, and it would live up to the cutting-edge Amiga name.
Now, what I'd do, if I owned the Amiga name, is
When the user is ready for the next level, he can simply upgrade. What happens to his old software? Well, if he's using a real operating system, he can still run it. If he's running NT, I suppose there's NT4/Alpha. But I really don't know about the future of Alphas and NT2K. I haven't followed it much, besides Compaq shutting it down. For all I know, Microsoft will take up the slack themselves. Maybe Be will port BeOS to the Alpha.
WEll, that's just me.
Re:An old Amiga user and lost hope (Score:2)
BeOS [be.com]. duh.
Maybe I should buy the rights to the Atari ST? (Score:2)
*sniff* I just threw two of the buggers out three weeks ago actually.
Re:Amiga...yeah, so? (Score:2)
Of course, the BeOS isn't perfect... any more than the Amiga was. And it certainly isn't a direct descendant of the Amiga, design-wise. However, I find it has much of the same ephemeral feel that I liked about the Amiga -- many of its design trade-offs strike me as, "what I person designing the Amiga would have done, if it had been ten years later." One of the primary goals of the system, for example, is to provide a highly responsive and interactive interface to the user.
And best of all, using BeOS lets you enjoy the pleasures of a nice, marginal platform, just like the Amiga did... with the difference that Be's management seems to actually be -sane-.
-- Dianne
Re:Amino (Score:3)
- Multitasks
- Offers 3D graphics and lots of colours
- Is widely useful for many kinds of tasks
and costs less than $2000.Of course, you can get a Milan [milan-computer.de] or Medusa [kingx.com] for probably around that price...
I've Solved The Mystery!!! (Score:3)
(In this case, the prize is probably bancrupcy.)
Oh, goody! I can't wait for the next game. I hear it's "Musical Chairs", with a random number of chairs being yanked away each time.
And now, "Son of Chucky", starring Amiga (Score:3)
It won't die, but it's walking around with knives, chainsaws, and barbed wire sticking to it's zombie hide, and there are gaping holes from the BFG blasts it's taken. I mean, geez!, this is getting to be worse than a bad horror movie - or to use the '80s metaphor, a bad episode of Dallas or Dynasty.
Alright, Amino - we'll give you until the end of CES. Then put up or shut up, I'm begging you!
- -Josh Turiel
Requiem for a Dear Friend (Score:3)
I wrote this essay [best.com] almost five years ago. Some of you may enjoy it.
Personally, I wish the puppeteers would stop coming forward, making the corpse flop around a bit and proclaiming, "Look! It lives!"
I'm really tired of these charlatans playing off (what's left of) the loyalty of the Amiga crowd. If you're going to do something with it, do something with it, and stop jerking people around.
Schwab
Re:Gateway brokering? (Score:3)
It would be interesting to see how the Commodore/Amiga patent portfolio is transferred with this sale. I would guess that Gateway may have already gotten all they needed to out of the Patents and felt it was time to cash back out.
Re:Amino (Score:3)
Unfortunately, some of the design compromises made to make the Amiga cheap at the time came back to haunt it later when the price of hardware changed. Too much of the hardware shortcuts that seemed cool in 1985 made it difficult for Commodore to keep up with other systems by the early 1990's. Too many things were tightly interwoven around things like NTSC/PAL video, which became a problem when cheap high resolution SVGA displays in the PC/Mac world changed people's expectations when it came to non-interlaced resolution and palate size. PC/Mac hardware started including powerful graphics coprocessors and stereo sound. With the advent of huge clock speeds, memory sizes, caches and hard drives, the PC made up in brute force with cheap off the shelf components what had once required custom hardware. Commodore/Amiga users had to deal with higher prices due to a smaller market for software and add-on peripherals such as network cards, SCSI adapters, etc.
As for the community, unfortunately, like most semi-grass-roots movements (Mac, OS/2 and Linux for example), the Amiga community was saddled with their share of the bad sort of zealots. That probably isn't such a big deal though, because even the 'establishment' such as DOS/Windows have their own problems in that area.
Re:Amino (Score:3)
To say it was 'stable' is a misnomer. The software running on them was also simpler (and I saw enough meditating amigas..)
They had thousands of colors, not millions (4096 in certain graphics modes)
And the stereo digital sound was great too. It took the IBM compatable world several years to catch up with that idea.. the *only* way an a500 could produce sound (other than using the floppy drive) was digitally, through one of it's 2 dac's... a concept that the rest of the world completely missed. THey spent all their time on FM synthesis and other wierd things....
I must say. The magical quality this machine had is unparallelled. Never has a machine caught my attention like the amiga. It was completely mystical.
And even today, the graphics on the amiga 500 have a certain quality to them that I've never seen on another machine. The mac comes close... I think it has to do with the way they blend colors.. but I'm not sure, and certainly not an expert.
And the sound was superb.
THE AMIGA LIVES ON! (Score:3)
LONG LIVE AMIGA!
Re:What is the point of an Amiga revival? (Score:3)
non-interoperability, i quite agree. So the question really is
One answer may come from the shift in home entertainment/game console systems. Amiga needs to compete from the ground up to be competive up with todays PC..and for what gain? a (small) piece of the sub $1000. market ? Why waste 5 million on a
(old) name brand... No way Jose...
Suppose however, that you were after a much bigger market..one dominated by only three or four players..like Sony, Sega and Nintendo. Now dumping 5 million into brand recoginition is a drop in the bucket compared to the potential payoff.
The Amiga home system... a nice American name..good technological references..viola ! instant player in a big field. Before you hurt yourself laughing...think of the Dreamcast in sheeps clothing. After all..the X-Box stills needs a home.
Amiga, the new Drama Queen. (Score:3)
I'm wondering if the only reason that Slashdot still covers the Amiga is that it makes good drama. Y'know, kinda like a soap opera for the keyboard-enabled culture. There can't be THAT many amiga owners anymore, can there? Do 500 Amiga owners and falling deserve this kind of attention on slashdot?
I should've known better than to believe that Gateway would have actually created a new desktop for people that was different than the generic PC they usually produce. Of course, the Amiga community never did learn their lesson with ESCOM, which pretty much did the same thing, apparently trying to get people to buy ESCOM branded PC's. And now everyone is supposed to take Amino on faith, that they will actually do something, anything, and release a computer that lives up to the AMIGA name.
Sorry Amino. It's not you. After following the Amiga story for 5 or 6 years, I know better. There's no way in hell that you can create a decent machine that lives up to the Amiga name. Even if you release a computer it better be fast, and it better capture the excitement that the Amiga did a decade ago, otherwise we'll just be laughing ourselves to the grave.
What an embarassment.
Amino (Score:3)
Is there room for a new Amiga? (Score:3)
When I got my hands on an Amiga 500 back in 1987 (has it been that long?) the machine was incredibly powerful compared to anything else I had ever tried.
Finally, I abandoned the Amiga in 1994 for educational purposes, even though I viewed the Amiga as a more powerful and user friendly platform.
Today however: I don't think there is room for Amiga hardware even loosely based on the original technology. There are numerous reasons for this
To sum it all up: I don't really think there is room for a new Amiga. If there will be a new Amiga I mainly think it's going to be an entirely new computer, with some ideas and behavior preserved from the old one. I hardly think it will attract the original Amiga owners.
but will they use it (Score:4)
Re:Amiga...yeah, so? (Score:4)
Yeah, that's it: the total package. It's not stapled together. No disconcerting shifts between text and graphics screens, no 50-foot barrier wall between apps with a GUI and apps without. The GUI is integrated, but lightweight enough that it isn't at all like having a 12MB X server running all the time. The interface looks and works consistent, MENUS ARE ALL GENERATED IN THE SAME PLACE, there's drag-n-drop, the system is configurable, and so on. There's cross-application scripting. There's interrupt trickery and display hacks to make things FEEL faster than they are (hence the illusion so many Amiga lunatics quote as gospel, that an A500 is faster than a Pentium). It boots QUICKLY; indeed, loading applications, opening and closing windows, and switching workspaces are all trivial and don't involve lots of swapping to disk.
It seems like nostalgia, even to us. But it's actually a thinly disguised disappointment that we are, in 2000, NOT fifteen years more advanced than what the Amiga was in 1985. In an age with machines with 10 times the pixels, 100 times the memory, 1000 times the MIPs, and 10000 times the disk space, to the Amiga user's eye, modern software has yet to CATCH UP with the combination of integration, simplicity, power, and efficiency we had two decades back. Therein lies the nostalgia: they literally don't make 'em like they used to.
Rant: we continue to look to Amiga-derived startups for The Way Forward, because no one else particularly cares. The Linux crowd is SUPPOSED (according to the hype) to be providing some grand unified theory of computing, but for every Linux shortcoming someone points out, we get either "write it yourself" or an explanation of why we don't want it. I thought it was the Microsoft way to give excuses instead of Products People Want.
I've lost count (Score:4)
BeOS is picking up where it left off... (Score:4)
I have never done audio/video production, but to me it is a very solid OS that has proven to be quiet stable.
I believe that if Amiga was to make a come back, it would have a hard time matching what BeOS has, and further more not only having to compete with BeOS, but deal with the loss of there cult following to other more interesting Hobby OS's. (I have the privilige of working on a Linux box at work all day, so I can't really refer to it as a hobby box anymore
$.02
Amino Website (Score:4)
http://www.amino1.net/ [amino1.net]
Not much there, tho'.
Trust this one, OK (Score:5)
BUT...
Gateway bought Amiga to strip the patents, then got a lot of people asking what they planned to do with regard to new Amigas. Hence the delays, the confusion and the rather half-hearted approach. It wasn't what they really wanted to do, and it showed.
I don't know Bill McEwen, but I DO know Fleecy Moss reasonably well and I'd trust him. I can think of almost no-one with more drive, more ideas, more enthusiasm. He loves the Amiga and wants to do something with it. And I'd say he's got as much chance as anyone of pulling this one off.
Maybe nothing will happen, just like before. Maybe I'm a dreamer. But this gives the Amiga the best chance it's had for years, as it's controlled by people who know and love it.
Give this one a chance please, guys. Don't be cynical until this bunch have proved themselves worthy of only cynicism. If they fail, I'll join you in the moaning. But they don't deserve that yet.
Greg
An old Amiga user and lost hope (Score:5)
As exciting as the idea that yet another handsome stranger will come and sweep the poor destitute Amiga (which means girlfriend in Spanish, I think) and save her, I think that it is really time for all of us Amigans to realise that she is well and truly dead.
The crucial upgrade that Commodore missed was the upgrade to PowerPC. Some companies came up with PowerPC cards, but they were all horrendously late, poorly constructed, had non existant support and always had underpowered chips compared with what was currently available on the market.
The Amiga has basically seen no development at all since Commodore went belly up. From the hardware standpoint, absolutely nothing, from software, well, OS 3.5 could have been thrown together by a group of open source people (who would have done a better job). Trying to make anything new from circa 1992 parts would be completely unworkable, even if you had lots of money (like say, Gateway).
Gateway was a huge disappointment. With huge amounts of funds available, they did basically nothing with the Amiga. Every week you would hear something completely new and different. New PPC Amigas, Amigas on a card in your PC, new Amigas with the Magical Mystery Chip (transmeta was the best rumor), new console type systems, then no new hardware, but a new AmigaOS, then no AmigaOS, but Amiga environment running on top of Linux. It made you think that Amiga, the company, consisted of five guys that went to lunch each week and came up with a new crazy idea to throw out to us hopefulls they drew up on paper napkins. Hell, I have even seen some of those paper napkin drawings on websites heralded as "the New Amiga".
What I really wish would happen is that the AmigaOS would be released to Open Source so that if there is anything still usefull or interesting in the code, it can be used for things such as window managers, etc.
Even though part of me wants to hope that something could come of this, I have to admit to myself that the Amiga is gone forever.
This is quite sad because, as much as I love Linux, I realise that it is not suited to be a home users OS. The Amiga was great for this, with it's GUI and standardised install program (which I loved, gave you 3 levels to choose from: expert, intermediate, beginner. I wish Linux had such a standardised way to install.) What the world desparetely needs now is a good home system, that does multimedia as well as the Amiga did (Windows will always suck at this, no matter how hard they try, as I found out with one of those Gateways that are designed to be multimedia), has as straightforward and simple interface as the Amiga, and as kick ass graphics as the Amiga.
But unfortunately we live in a world in which only one OS matters and we have to live with mediocracy.