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Amiga

AmigaOS 4.0 Developer Pre-release 331

Posted by michael from the powered-by-real-amigas dept.
David Doyle writes "Hyperion Entertainment and the Amiga OS 4.0 development team announced on Amigaworld.net that after nearly 30 months of painstaking development the Amiga OS 4.0 Developer Pre-release has gone gold and will be sent to the duplication plant on Monday, April 19, 2004. The Amiga OS 4.0 Developer Pre-release consists of a current snapshot of AmigaOS 4.0 for the AmigaOne platform with a straightforward HTML installation guide in English, German, French and Italian as well as the Amiga OS 4.0 SDK. The Amiga OS 4.0 SDK will allow near effortless migration of existing Amiga OS 3.x source-code to OS 4.0 as well as the creation of altogether new content. Full announcement and Amiga OS4 SDK feature list."
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AmigaOS 4.0 Developer Pre-release More

AmigaOS 4.0 Developer Pre-release

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  • Good timing (Score:5, Funny)

    by flewp ( 458359 ) on Saturday April 17, 2004 @04:54PM (#8893559)
    Phew, just in time. I've been seeing reports that BSD is officially dead, so it's a good thing AmigaOS is here to fill the void.

    • Re:Good timing (Score:4, Funny)

      by Squareball ( 523165 ) on Saturday April 17, 2004 @05:05PM (#8893641)
      *whew* First Apple now BSD. At least I will have an OS to run on my PPC in the future ;)

      • Re:Good timing (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Squareball ( 523165 )
        Ya know thinking about it, are there any VM type programs I can run on my mac.. that DON'T emulate x86? On Windows and Linux I can run VMWare which gives me a virtual machine to install another OS on but on the Mac I don't know of any that will give me a virtual PPC machine to install say YDL or even Amiga on. Other than installing Linux and running MoL that is (which I don't want to do). Any one know of any?

        • Mac-on-Linux-on-Mac (Score:3, Informative)

          by brion ( 1316 ) *
          Not at the moment that I know of, but MoL is apparently being ported to Mac OS X. (This comes up on the mailing list from time [maconlinux.org] to time [maconlinux.org].)

    • Amiga's 'Sixth Sense' (Score:5, Funny)

      by Simonetta ( 207550 ) on Saturday April 17, 2004 @05:13PM (#8893687)
      Remember the movie 'The Sixth Sense'?

      Aren't the dead always the last to realize that they're actually dead?

      Do Amiga users ever find it, well,... strange that sometimes people in a crowd will walk right up to them and then right through them?

      Or are they too busy thinking up new features for the next operating system?

  • 30 months... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kid Zero ( 4866 ) on Saturday April 17, 2004 @04:56PM (#8893584) Homepage Journal
    that's better than Microsoft is managing right now. :)

  • all they need is hardware to run it on. Seriously who sells a motherboard capable of running AmigaOS and what are the advantages?

    • Seriously who sells a motherboard capable of running AmigaOS

      Amiga Inc.

      • Re:Now (Score:5, Informative)

        by Seehund ( 86897 ) on Saturday April 17, 2004 @05:37PM (#8893838) Homepage Journal
        Nope. Amiga, Inc. sells trademark licences. Well, they were trying at least, until it was announced during a lawsuit that they had transferrred the AmigaOS + "Amiga"(TM) rights to something they call "KMOS, Inc."

        Since there won't be any more Amigas, AmigaOS will run on old Amigas (with old PPC expansion boards) and third party hardware. The first hardware to be supported are the Teron CX (discontinued), Teron PX and Teron Mini motherboards designed by Mai Logic [mai.com].

        Amiga, Inc. got "consultation" from the UK computer shop Eyetech [eyetech.co.uk] to decide that we should still have to pretend that there is "Amiga hardware [8bit.co.uk]". I.e. in order for AmigaOS to run on (be ported to) a piece of hardware, that hardware must be sold on a separated "Amiga market" by a distributor with a licence from Amiga, Inc. AmigaOS will not be available for sale, except as in a bundle with licensed hardware (and later on for those ancient PPC-equipped Amigas).

        Only Eyetech have been granted such a license, and are now (well, since two(?) years) selling the Teron boards mentioned above with an extra 60% on the price as "AmigaOne SE", "AmigaOne PX", and "Micro AmigaOne", respectively.

        Thereby suitable Macs (otherwise a pretty damn obvious target for a PPC "consumer" OS), Terons sold by anybody else regardless of trademarks, Pegasoses, and whatever you could possibly think of in the future, are all out of the question by default. No licence/licencee, no new hardware base for AmigaOS.

        • Seehund, you troll you (Score:2, Informative)

          by csirac ( 574795 )
          Seehund,

          I know you don't like the "exclusive hardware" concept and that is fair enough, but you've told a few lies in this post that counts as going so far as trolling.

          1. Only Eyetech have been granted such a license
          Eyetech is the only one who applied for a license. It's a support and anti-piracy measure; if you don't like that, then fine. Hyperion/Amiga, Inc. have stated repeatedly that there is no reason why a 3rd party PPC mfg. cannot apply for an OEM AmigaOS4 license. Some have said that piracy

          • Eyetech is the only one who applied for a license.

            Which, if it were true, would serve as yet another excellent illustration of how retarded the compulsory licensing idea is. But it's not true. There's been one more (w00t!) interested distributor. Bigger, better, cheaper, more competent than Eyetech. They suddenly stopped getting replies from AInc. Ask "T_Bone" if you don't know what I'm talking about.

            It's a support and anti-piracy measure ...

            Both AInc's illogical and transparent "anti piracy" and "su

        • Re:Now (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Mike Bouma ( 85252 )
          Although that the AmigaOne-XE is currently relative expensive compared to PC hardware, this is mainly due relatively low expected volume sales as the AmigaOne-XE board is mainly targeted at the current Amiga communnity of powerusers and developers. Therefor sales aren't expected to reach more than a few thousand. There are significant development costs for designing the hardware and well as the software which comes with it (such as the 30 months of hard work for AmigaOS4).

          Also any hardware company can nego

    • Re:Now (Score:2, Informative)

      by mdwh2 ( 535323 )
      The AmigaOne has been selling [eyetech.co.uk] for over a year now IIRC.

    • Re:Now (Score:2, Funny)

      by curne ( 133623 )
      That's why we need this ported to x86 hardware right now!

      [Bitchslap] Ow...!

  • More on AmigaOs4... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Andreas(R) ( 448328 ) on Saturday April 17, 2004 @04:57PM (#8893587) Homepage
    Here's more info in AmigaOS4 [amiga.com], features, screenshots, etc. Looking forward to this!

  • What is this? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by -tji ( 139690 ) on Saturday April 17, 2004 @05:01PM (#8893614) Journal
    Can someone explain to an Amiga outsider what this is?

    I am familiar with the old Amiga, and all the cool things it could do long before anyone else. I had a couple friends that swore they were the greatest thing ever, but I never really used one (I was an Apple ][e user). There are frequent announcements about new Amiga stuff... but in today's computing world, I'm not sure what that means.

    - Is this a standalone OS, or a modified Linux / BSD system?
    - Does it run on Amiga hardware, PowerPC, x86, or something else?
    - It is compatible with the old Amiga software, API's, etc?

    - What is the compelling reason for this to exist? What does it do better than all the other options available?

    • Re:What is this? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It is a standalone OS, and runs on the powerpc platform. As it is today, it will only run on the new AmigaONE or a classic amiga with a powerpc accelrator.

    • Re:What is this? (Score:3, Informative)

      by metlin ( 258108 )
      Here are the answers [amiga.com] to most of your questions.

    • Re:What is this? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 17, 2004 @05:31PM (#8893802)
      This is a PowerPC native port of AmigaOS.

      It's a standalone OS, which runs on the new AmigaOne [eyetech.co.uk] motherboards and is currently being worked on, to work with the older dual CPU (68k&PPC) add-on cards by phase5. (One of which, I have in my Amiga 1200)

      The whole of AmigaOS and Exec (kernel) have basically been overhauled and modernised and given memory protection (which will work with new OS4 native programs that make use of it) and can be turned off for OS3.x compatibility. Not to mention a new file system, virtual memory and everything else a modern OS should have. (without needing a shutdown procedure)

      68k programs are emulated via a JIT emulation system, to be fully integrated into the OS itself, so "classic" retargettable programs such as Wordworth, Final Writer etc all work without problems, at super-fast speeds :)

      As for a reason for it to exist, AmigaOS is an OS of such efficient nature, I've been using it for years on this "old" hardware of mine. If it's fast on a 25mhz 68040, what do you think it's like on an 800mhz G4? That's just one reason...it does what you want it to do, and it runs circles around anything else I've used.

      http://os.amiga.com [amiga.com] for more info and features. And the url provided in the topic too, of course :)

      AmigaOS4 is going to rock :D
    • "Can someone explain to an Amiga outsider what this is?"

      Think computing... circa 1987.

      :)

      (YES! I own an Amiga... No flames please.)

      • Re:What is this? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Bingo Foo ( 179380 )
        No kidding. As a former Amiga owner, and a former rabid Amiga fan, I can say that the new Amiga OS is the successor to the old Amiga in trademark only. What made Amiga cool in 1985-1990 was the hardware. Let me repeat, the hardware. What about the ease of programming? Again, that came from the hardware. It did have a color GUI desktop before macintosh, yes, and that was cool. Nobody, though, chose Amiga for any reason that can not be satisfied by other hardware/software combinations today.

        The only analogue

    • Re:What is this? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Seehund ( 86897 ) on Saturday April 17, 2004 @05:54PM (#8893926) Homepage Journal
      - Is this a standalone OS, or a modified Linux / BSD system?

      Standalone. It's a direct update to AmigaOS 3.x.

      - Does it run on Amiga hardware, PowerPC, x86, or something else?

      It's for PowerPC. It's initial target are the current Teron series by Mai Logic (a.k.a. "AmigaOnes" when sold with a new trademark licence by the only distributor that AmigaOS4 users are allowed to buy their hardware from).

      See this post [slashdot.org] and this introduction [8bit.co.uk] for more info (and opinion).

      It will also be available for old Amiga 3000/4000 computers if they've got Cyberstorm PPC accelerator boards.

      - It is compatible with the old Amiga software, API's, etc?

      Yes. It will have a JIT 68k-emulator integrated too (think of when the Macs and MacOS went 68k to PPC). Most system friendly software is said to run fine. If your old software bangs the metal (depends on Amiga hardware) it's not likely to run, however.

      - What is the compelling reason for this to exist? What does it do better than all the other options available?

      What's the compelling reason for any OS besides Windows to exist? ;)
      Sadly Amiga Inc/Eyetech have killed any chances for AmigaOS4 by throwing a definitive and unnecessary stumbling block as their "Amiga hardware market" invention on the race track, but that's just a business decision that's easily revoked with a stroke of a pen. It has to be.
    • Sadly, both the old Amigas hardware and software are woefully out of date (I'm an old Amiga coder, and I know what I'm talking about). The hardware was amazing and the OS was great too (efficient but no memory protection), and hardware and software were very well integrated (Amiga screens for instance). Unfortunately, the Amiga hardware side of things, while brilliant for CLUT based 2D was very poor at 3D stuff (because 8 bit planar graphics require that a pixel be updated 8 times (once per plane) rather th

  • That's nice, but... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by rqqrtnb ( 753156 )
    ...where are the machines for me to run it on?
    I'm not making fun of anyone here, and I seriously would like to know; I've always been hearing about Amiga this and Amiga that here on Slashdot every once in a while, and doing a little sniffing around on the web there appears to be a pretty active Amiga community. Also, they're still developing the operating system, so there still must be Amigas, right? Right?

    Well, that's what I was hoping, but after doing some heavy searching on google I haven't been able to
    • I won't get into the full history of the Amiga hardware platform, a clever frankenstein of processors. The old Amiga was a 68k platform primarily, the "new" Amiga runs on a PowerPC platform called the AmigaOne [amiga.com]. For those who care, the OS was ported using the same technique that Apple used to port the MacOS from 68k to PPC, using a 68k emulator for as yet unported code.

  • Not terribly useful to old-school Amiga fans? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by JessLeah ( 625838 ) on Saturday April 17, 2004 @05:08PM (#8893658)
    "The Amiga OS 4.0 SDK will allow near effortless migration of existing Amiga OS 3.x source-code to OS 4.0 as well as the creation of altogether new content."

    Well, that's great. So, in other words, they can play their old Amiga games on it... if they can convince the makers to come out of retirement and port them. Or they can run their wonderful old Amiga graphics manipulation apps... if they can convince the makers to come out of retirement and port them. Or .... well, you get the point.

    This is going to really really upset the old-school Amiga fans. For all intents and purposes, it isn't AmigaOS at all!

    It is as if the Linux kernel received no updates at all for ten years after 2.8 was finished... then suddenly, wow, "Linux 3.0" was announced! But it said that it wouldn't run old apps compiled under Linux 2.x-- oh, but it "would make it trivial to port apps originally coded for Linux 2.x". By which time, of course, none of said source code would even be in general circulation...

    How the heck can they call this "AmigaOS" if it has essentially ZERO backwards-compatibility with previous AmigaOSes? Jesus. This is worse than those non-commercial/FOSS efforts to create a "new AmigaOS". I could have sworn one of them can at least run old AmigaOS apps, if only in emulation...

    The LEAST they could have done was provide a "Classic AmigaOS layer", like what Apple did with Mac OS X to allow it to run "Classic" (pre-X) Mac OS apps...
    • The linux scenario is somewhat different, because at least the source code would likely be available. Maybe. 10 years is a fairly long time; I'd suspect that quite a few projects would be lost due to developers losing data, etc.

      Btw, such a "phase out" of support for 2.x applications would likely be unacceptable -now-, let alone in 10 years. That's an MS approach to software - phase out the old software's support so we can sell more.
    • It may be a little off-topic, but I just discovered a seriously cool Atari ST program.
      Atari ST is was a 'cousin' computer popular at the same time (about 15 years ago) as the original Amiga.
      It is a powerful sys-ex voice editor for an obscure but magically powerful tone module music synthesizer that I found on Ebay for peanuts.
      It only runs through an advanced emulator program that allows old but useful programs for the Atari ST to be run on modern PCs. It's the STeem emulator. Kudos to the people who
      • Yes, WinUAE and Fellow are Amiga emulators for the PC (and Linux).

        Or you can get everything legally from Cloanto Software for $60 or so, in the new Amiga Forever 6.0 software package that includes lots of software, the latest 68k OS version (3.9), and so on.
      • If you're interested in Atari emulation, you might be interested in looking at Aranym [sf.net] (Atari running on any machine).

        They include a Live CD that boots a Linux distro and automatically runs aranym, which I've yet to burn and test :)

    • Re:Not terribly useful to old-school Amiga fans? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by BESTouff ( 531293 ) on Saturday April 17, 2004 @05:50PM (#8893900)
      So, in other words, they can play their old Amiga games on it... if they can convince the makers to come out of retirement and port them.

      No they can't. Even if they had access to source, all games were written in assembly and directly hit the hardware (the famous blitter and copper), most of them didn't even use the filesystem and had a custom trackloader on-disk. Even if the AmigaOS was quite good, directly programming the Amiga hardware was a joy and was really the preferred way of coding. Aaah, those were the days ...

      • While it is true a good number of games programmed the hardware directly (mainly because commodore documented it quite well for this purpose) not all do.

        Good example of this is Quake and Quake 2 on AmigaDOS - both use standard libs:

  • Jesus Christ! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 17, 2004 @05:10PM (#8893675)
    I used to program professionally on the Amiga. I was part of the original Video Toaster team at Newtek back in the day. That was a decade ago!!!!For god's sake just die!!

    Evil Man
  • ...at how they didn't deal with a bug in OS3.5 that froze my Amiga semi-daily (but occasionally three times a day) for the last year that I used my Amiga.

    And how they ignored it as a problem, and how the update that should have had the fix mainly appeared to contain christmasy animgifs.

  • Who uses Amigas? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by shrykk ( 747039 ) on Saturday April 17, 2004 @05:15PM (#8893699)
    Serious question from someone for whom Amigas were games machines as a kid.

    Who uses amigas nowadays? People nostalgically playing old games? Is it kick-ass for music or something?

    Is AmigaOS designed for modern hardware, and can you do everything with it that you can with other systems?

    I see there are a few similar questioning posts. Everyone seems to be like, "Oh, cool, but why..?"

    • Re:Who uses Amigas? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by lvdrproject ( 626577 ) on Saturday April 17, 2004 @05:34PM (#8893821) Homepage
      Yes, i second (or third or fourth or fifth) this question. I really don't see the point in releasing this at all. Maybe if it was on x86 or Mac, there'd be at least some use in it for playing around or something (similar to BeOS for some people), but i can't really fathom why somebody would go out and buy an entirely new computer just to play around on what seems like a rather out-of-date operating system. :/
    • My Amiga 500 makes a wonderful space-filler in the closet. Much more effecient than a C64, the box is at least twice as big..

    • Re:Who uses Amigas? (Score:2, Informative)

      by amigabill ( 146897 )
      I do. I use it for all my email. It's something to tinker with and create things for and do some programming. I do image editing with it. I haven't fired up a game on it for quite a long time now. What does your Linux box do that makes it so special compared to Windows, and why don't you just use Windows instead because more people do that than use Linux?? You may think Linux is so cool and stuff, but why bother?? It's basically the same question as you and other Slashdot people always ask from Amiga users.

  • duplication (Score:3, Funny)

    by selderrr ( 523988 ) on Saturday April 17, 2004 @05:16PM (#8893712) Journal
    you mean, to all 5 users ?

    seriously, isn't a hardcopy a bit ridic here ? They barely sell a copy, so better not waste cash on duplication and offer a download instead.

    • Re:duplication (Score:3, Informative)

      by mdwh2 ( 535323 )
      1314 people [amiga-anywhere.com] joined the "Amiga club" which costs $50, which suggests that the idea that barely anyone is interested in the OS belongs in fantasyland.

      If they were worried about no one buying it, don't you think that the duplication cost is going to be rather insignificant compared to years of development costs?
  • It rocked as a games platform and for video editing. 15 years ago.

    http://computermuseum.50megs.com/images/collecti on /commodore-amiga-500_small.jpg

    Today?

  • let it lie! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by polyp2000 ( 444682 ) on Saturday April 17, 2004 @05:30PM (#8893792) Homepage Journal
    I was an Amiga fanatic for many many years; It is/was an amazing operating system. The way it handles multitasking was something else. It was with reluctancy that i bought my first PC with windows. I always hated windows there were so many things that AmigaOS did better simple things like formatting a disk or the way it handled screens. I've been using linux for many years now. Im glad to be using a decent operating system again.

    I would love to see AmigaOS succeed in the marketplace again like it once did. But even this new release visually looks very poor and dated. In all honesty they should just open up the source instead of flogging a dead horse. AmigaOS will always live on as a hobbyist OS things like AROS WinUAE and whatever else will see to this. But I really dont think a proprietary OS stands a chance in this world any more. I really cant see Amiga succeeding with their wildest dreams using the closed business model.

    Amiga OS still has a warm place in many peoples hearts but not this way. The kindest thing to do is open up the source to the community.

    Dont get me wrong though, I wish them all the luck; prove me wrong please do. But id rather see it go the way BeOS did!

    nick ...

    • Re:let it lie! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Flamingcheeze ( 737589 )
      I agree, polyp. I always look back at my Amiga days as some of the most satisfying computing in my life. I also recall my sadness when I had to retire the old girl in favor of the far-inferior Windows OS, simply because "that's what the world uses."

      As I recall, a lot of the efficiency of the OS had to do with its shared architecture, which used several chips to do the work that Apple and PC computers did with the single CPU. I don't see how that kind of efficiency could translate into our modern architec

    • Re:let it lie! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jbrandon ( 603700 )
      The BeOS source was purchased by Palm; it's still closed.

  • serious question... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by GooberToo ( 74388 ) on Saturday April 17, 2004 @05:42PM (#8893864)
    ...and this is not a troll.

    But why would anyone waste their time on AmigaOS these days? Ya, it was way cool when Apple II's roamed the earth and whatnot....but why does anyone really care about it now?

    Did I miss the boat? Help me understand why anyone cares about this, let alone why it qualifies as /. worthy? How many people even mess with that platform? I assume all three of you are happy. Seriously, anyone have any idea how many people still use Amigas? Hundreds? Thousands????? If it's not at least tens of thousands, I can't imagine this is really /. worthy.

    Can someone help me understand why this platform is still getting development effort? Please!

    • It's more an issue of potential. There's a large number of people who want to get away from windows, but bawk at either the price and undeservidly negitive reputation from the pre osx days of the mac. And who find linux a bit too geek oriented and would only use it if a lot of the choice (ie window managers) were removed from the equasion. Amiga still has some name recognition going for it, and with everything else combined and some good ports of popular open source software it might, just might, be a good
      • First, let me say thanks for taking the time to respond. So, "thanks!"

        So your argument is that you think AmigaOS has a future? Beyond that of mere geekdom and minimal hobbiest interest? Accordingly, in your opinion, it has a grand future, the general population is interested in hearing of its advances? Forgive me for placing words into your mouth. I'm just trying to follow the logic. Please feel free to correct me as needed.

        Do you have any logic, beyond best wishes, to suppose that AmigaOS has any r

  • Shows how much you lot know (Score:3, Informative)

    by jerg_smiler ( 772213 ) on Saturday April 17, 2004 @05:47PM (#8893880)
    Amiga users never died - there are still thousands of them. It wouldn't surpriseme if they equal BSD users.

    Firstly, Amiga have been continuing development for a long time. They realsed OS 3.9 a few years ago, this time it was actually them (OS 3.5 was written by somebody else). They've also been developing an embedded technology called Amiga DE which is already in use in several mobile phone units (cellphones for those Americans).

    Amiga OS 4.0 is designed to run on a new computer, called the AmigaOne. This is a new motherboard designed by the UK company Eyetech, to which you can attach your A1200 motherboard for running older programs natviely, should you want to. Yes, that's right - the A1200 motherboard becomes the AmigaOne's daughterboard.

    The computer is based on the PPC architecture, I believe with G3 or G4 processors. There have been add-ons for the A1200 motherboard which add G3 processors for a while now, but these were expensive and pointless.

    As for software and games, there are several developers still producing software and many excellent games too (a recent one which springs to mind is Nightlong, a very graphics heavy point-and-click adventure, like Broken Sword 3).
    Many of these use the PPC CPUs available for the Amiga, and also many ofthe graphics cards too.

    The Amiga still lives, and it's not gonna die without a fight.
    • The Amiga still lives, and it's not gonna die without a fight

      Kind of reminds me of that knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The one that keeps taunting the King even as his limbs are being hacked off. Yeah, Amiga won't die. :P Pity they didn't do something interesting 15 years ago when it might have mattered. I really liked my 2000. :(

    • Wrong, on as good as every point.

      Amiga Inc. (not "Amiga", that's a dead computer platform) have had nothing to do with developing AmigaOS 3.5/9. Thank Haage & Partner instead.

      "AmigaOne" is not a new computer. It's a trademark owned and used by one distributor (Eyetech) to sell Mai Logic's Teron series motherboards. They've been trying to sell these for two years now (but the Teron CX model first appeared in 2001, later a.k.a. "AmigaOne SE").

      "AmigaOne" once was the name of a project for a new Amiga, m

    • Amiga users never died - there are still thousands of them. It wouldn't surpriseme if they equal BSD users.

      Um, maybe not you but I'm sure it would surprise pretty much everyone else. The BSD world isn't small, it's just a lot less rabid ;)

      Firstly, Amiga have been continuing development for a long time. .. They've also been developing an embedded technology called Amiga DE which is already in use in several mobile phone units.

      With a handful of developers and next to no investment I'm not surprised it's b

    • Amiga users never died - there are still thousands of them.

      Boy, that truly is a scary thought. [dawnofthedeadmovie.net]

  • ram disk (Score:5, Interesting)

    by broothal ( 186066 ) <christian@fabel.dk> on Saturday April 17, 2004 @05:55PM (#8893930) Homepage Journal
    It's true that Amiga once ruled the earth. But today, it has long been surpassed. Except for one thing. Back in the amiga days I mounted a piece of RAM as a disk, using it for temporary downloads etc. I have yet to see a ramdisk for win32 that works just as seemless.

    • Re:ram disk (Score:3, Informative)

      by coldmist ( 154493 )

      Here is one I use. [arsoft-online.de]

      I use it with my HTPC to cache a few files that my LCD driver wants to read 30 times a second, so instead of hitting the physical disk, I just set up a 32MB drive 'L', and have a perl script dump data to that.

      It works great!

  • to moderate or to reply??? that is the question... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by 3seas ( 184403 ) on Saturday April 17, 2004 @06:51PM (#8894197) Homepage Journal
    ... answered by this post being made.

    The Amiga OS has well earned its stigma of being in troubled waters. Even the company where the original creators came to create the AmigaOS had money problems that caused them to seel it to commodore, who went bankrupt and sold to ESCOM, who went bankrupt and it was sold to Gateway, who couldn't figure out what to do with it so that sold everything except the Amiga Patents to former Gateway marketeers, who sold a bunch of t-shirts and never delivered and were evicted from their building..... who has now stated they sold the AmigaOS to KMOS after in a lawsuit against them they owned it at a time they did not....

    The scamming is deep and the troubled waters as well....

    For the proprietary AmigaOS to make a comeback it will have to overcome the extreamly long running stigma of its troubled waters..... and since i8t didn'yt come easy or over nite, neither shall its removal of this stigma curse.

    However, there is www.aros.org which is well along the way to cloning the AmigaOS 3.1 as FOSS software, where it is inherently without the need for those who have caused AmigaOS troubled waters..

    I really hope this post is found to be informative/interesting as it the reality of the scope of AmigaOS history.

    Would you buy a car or brand name that had such a questionable history of continuing at a consumer respectable level?
  • Who is this release targetted towards? Are there still companies using Amigas for production quality work?
  • When Amigas were in their heyday, they had a lot of stuff that nobody else had- a lightning fast graphics blitter chip, a modern OS, and video capability. There were quite a few areas where they were demonstrably and clearly lightyears (or Lightwaves ;-P) ahead of everybody else at the time.

    Totally the opposite now, though. Other computers have had all that stuff for at least ten years. So what's the "raison d'etre" for Amigas, now? Is there anything that the AmigaOS does better than other OSs?

    I'm
    • "So what's the "raison d'etre" for Amigas, now?"
      I dunno, choice, maybe?
      Because it is being offered and some people perceive it as better value than other offerings?
      As long as they have willing, paying customers, I say more power to them.
      In a car analogy, why would anybody want to drive anything but /*insert your favorite car here*/?
      • I dunno, choice, maybe? Because it is being offered and some people perceive it as better value than other offerings? As long as they have willing, paying customers, I say more power to them.

        I'm not saying that there shouldn't be choice - I'd love to see more choices on the market, as well as cheap PowerPC hardware, like I said. But it's also a marketplace reality that you need to do *something* better than others in order to stand out, and for the life of me I can't figure out what on Earth Amiga suppo
  • Because I had to issue this claim in the County Court [mooli.org.uk] against Eyetech when they shipped me a DOA board and were particularly reluctant to refund my money. I got my judgement against Eyetech with a cheque following shortly thereafter.

    IMO, AOS 4.0 is dead if the only way to run it is to deal with that company. Perhaps others have had better experiences, but for obvious reasons, I'm unable to recommend them at all.

  • Now I just need that PPC card, IDE hard drive interface, Ethernet adapter, etc for my Amiga 500 to finally run it. ;)

    I cannot wait until the Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, GNUCash, Evolution, Apache, and other open source projects are converted to run on AmigaOS 4.0, yeah! :D

    Finally, maybe now us Amiga users can start to get more respect than the OS/2, Plan9, DR-DOS, CP/M, A/UX, Desqview, Xenix, OS9 (Not MacOS 9, that 6809 based OS that the Radio Shack Coco series ran), and GEM users have gotten. >:)

    Of cour

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