Gateway Sells Rights to Amiga Name 80
kman writes "I just read the news on ABCNews that Gateway Sells Rights to Amiga Name - Personal computer maker Gateway Inc. signed a deal to sell its Amiga trademarks and computer systems to closely held Amino Development Corp. " Ah, the saga of Amiga continues - terms were not disclosed, but Gateway has decided to "wrap Amiga's software
engineering function into Gateway's product development
systems" making it sound like GW is considering continuing to make the "information appliances" they were originally planning.
I want Atari! (Score:1)
We'll never see another real Amiga... (Score:3)
Re:We'll never see another real Amiga... (Score:2)
Booting from a ramdisk sure was a nice feature. On a 1M A500, I often copied my system floppy into a recoverable ramdisk; after all, why let all that memory go to waste?
Re:Amiga changing name to Vapor, Inc. (Score:1)
http://www.vapor.com/
Re:Phase5 (Score:1)
Can you tell I have a real beef with this? I can understand announcing a product in advance to generate interest, but phase5 typically does so about a YEAR in advance, and then takes their announced "anticipated ship dates" and adds MONTHS to them.
Dammit Wolf, I know there aren't many hardware developers left for the Amiga, but that doesn't give you and your company free reign to jerk us all around.
Amino? Reason to celebrate? (Score:1)
Amino is a group made up of many people who have been prominent in the Amiga Community. As any wanderings through an Amiga UseNet group will demonstrate, there are multiple opinions about exactly what direction Amiga needs to go in order to innovate and survive in today's market. One of the first things Amino will need to do is come forth with a single coherent direction for the future. That sure as hell isn't happening overnight!
Secondly, what kind of financial backing does Amino have? Do they have the juice to kick out the kind of development that Amiga users are craving? Maybe not now, but they might develop sufficient fiscal muscle in the future. But until then, we'll probably have to continue the proud Amiga end-user tradition of sitting on our hands waiting for the sun to peek out from the clouds.
I'm not telling you (other Amigaheads) not to be thrilled at the news. Nor am I trying to be a complete pessimist. We've been burned repeatedly in the past by news developments which serve to inflate our hopes, only to leave us disappointed in the end. You'd think that after so many such experiences, we'd learn to approach each news story with a little more realism/skepticism.
I wish the Amino group the best of luck. This Amiga 4000 could use some new toys. :^)
Re:Giving up the ghost (Score:1)
Oh, the descriptions were there all the time, right since 1994: Amiga with Super DSP, MMC, PPC, whatever...
The actual *products* however..
Amiga changing name to Vapor, Inc. (Score:2)
The company also announced plans for an IPO, including gratuitous use of the words "Internet", "E-Commerce", and "Linux". They plan to trade under the ticker symbol NULL.
(Editor's Note: The above is what is called "humor". Look it up in the dictionary.)
the chain (Score:1)
Re:Amiga changing name to Vapor, Inc. (Score:2)
Vapor [vapor.com]
Secondly, they make Internet software.
Thirdly, yes they have released it and not just announced it
Greg
Giving up the ghost (Score:2)
Re:Giving up the ghost (Score:1)
Umm... duh. (Score:1)
Umm... duh.
Thank you, Captain Obvious. Why do you think that the poster mentioned Q*Link in the first place?
Re:We'll never see another real Amiga... (Score:1)
________________
Re:AMIGA ??? does it really matter? (Score:1)
The Amiga was an elegant platform, for a more civilized age...
The potential of the Amiga is what keeps it alive; the potential of a computer with advanced hardware for multimedia capabilities, standard file formats published for multimedia, a decent and reliable GUI and multitasking operating system (built on top of an architecture that did interrupt-driven I/O, no busy looping bringing the machine to a crawl), a common scripting and interprocess communication language for all applications, a nice (somewhat quirky) command line interface, which you could replace with another shell if you want. That's what the Amiga was at its height.
I may be dating myself
If the Amiga had lasted until today, I can only imagine how far it would be right now: hardware for doing MPEG-2 video and mp3 audio compression/decompression in real time, 3D acceleration for video, support for multiple monitors, multiple channels for CD quality sound, running on the fastest available processor (PowerPC no doubt), support for multiple processors, DVD support,
The Amiga been out of the picture for so long it's doubtful that it could make a meaningful comeback, unless the OS is open-sourced and this allows it to gain enough momentum... There is a movement around to do this... It would also be an interesting idea to see if it's feasible to open source the hardware, and perhaps the ultimate computer architecture for the 00's could come out of this as well...
Re:AMIGA ??? does it really matter? (Score:1)
I must admit I've been out of touch with the Amiga 3rd party market for a while...
Can you provide a URL to a company that is producing MPEG-2/mp3 hardware based codecs for the Amiga? Certainly if a hardware based MPEG-2 decompression were available, DVDs should be playable.
3rd party graphics cards and sound cards are all well and good, but the problem is the lack of support by and/or tight integration with the OS. I seem to remember that some of that improved with the later graphics cards....
If the Amiga platform had continued to progress, I would have expected to see advances in the multimedia coprocessors like I described...
I imagine a machine that you would be able to call on your telephone and say "Record the X-Files tonight. And see if there are any new songs from my favorite artists on mp3.com." This is possible right now, theoretically. There are are all these pieces floating around out there, but no one platform has everything...if the Amiga had stayed ahead of its time, I think it would have everything.
I want a true multimedia computer--cable ready, CD & DVD, with a reliable OS, good support in terms of 3rd party applications, real time MPEG2 encode/decode in hardware (video in & out of course), voice recognition through mic or telephone input, AutoConfig, multiple monitors--2 by default so it can support display on both a TV and a monitor simultaneously, multiple processors, compatibility with a wide range of add-ons (PCI, USB, FireWire support?)
Did I leave anything out? I don't ask for much do I?
Re:AMIGA ??? does it really matter? (Score:1)
And you are also comparing the Amiga as a hardware platform to Windows which is a software platform. This is wrong comparison, because you are missing the fact that the PC hardware platform is much more customizable than the Amiga platform. There is also a greater choice of Operating Systems and software that you can use on the PC and even Windows is technologically more advanced than Kickstart/Workbench.
Get with the times.
Re:Hmmm..... (Score:1)
I know that the Amiga was used for the editing of titles in SeaQuest, Babylon 5, but was it done in REAL TIME??
I agree that the amiga possibly has a lot more hacked up hardware available then any other platform. This is largely thanks to the bright ingenuity of the nostalgic amiga community...
When I said customized, I did not mean hacked up by John Doe in his tin-shed at home. I meant commercial hardware that is available in the store. Another point I want to make is that the PC was DESIGNED to be expandable and upgradable more so than the Amiga.
Amiga is dead. Get with the times. If you still use it exclusively, then I'm happy for you. Just do not spread bullshit hype on how brilliant it is because it's not.
Re:Probably for the best (Score:1)
Phase5 (Score:1)
A trademark is one thing, where's the technology? (Score:3)
The Amiga still isn't dead, and has a good community, which deserves better support than being shifted from company to company in business deals. How about some new hardware or licencing?
Fross
Re:We'll never see another real Amiga... (Score:1)
Not to toot my own horn, but the company I work for is trying something similar, using many of the same tricks and techniques to perfect a much more, interesting system than has been tried before.
Whoever says that Amiga is the only machine ever capable of being like the Amiga is deluding themselves. It was smart engineering that made the Amiga, and smarter engineering can replace it.
What this means.... (Score:2)
This could be good yet.
You're sick! (Score:1)
It does really matter. (Score:1)
Re:Hmmm..... (Score:1)
Probably for the best (Score:1)
Sad but true, I'm afraid.
Re:We'll never see another real Amiga... (Score:1)
My old Xerox-820 machine could do cool stuff too.
It didn't have a set of chips named after girls, though.
Re:...open source? (Score:1)
Amino QNX United Architectture
There's an interesting interview with much discussion about it at http://www.williams.demon.co.uk/seal/fleecyint2.ht ml [demon.co.uk].
Re:It's a BIOS limitation (Score:1)
Memory tests don't need to be destructive. Simply get the old value, test that a certain location can be written and read back, and put back the old value.
AmigaOS did perform a complete memory check, but it was non-destructive (actually, it had checksums on the most important on-memory structures so it could detect tampering or stomped-over memory).
It's a pity good concepts that save time and money for the user never catch on. Bad concepts that save time and money to the big guys, obviously, are often forced down your throat without compliments.
Staying Alive (Score:1)
1. It obviously increases the number of companies with any amount of investment in Amiga.
2. Gateway is a company in flux (i.e. Waitt's departure, etc.). Gateway does some good things, but I don't think Amiga lovers want to rely on them to carry the torch.
Unfortunately, this doesn't address the primary problem--Amiga needs a prime player (e.g. Dell, Compaq, even a newcomer like Red Hat) to get behind it and push it back into the limelight. As it stands, I fear that as the months pass without any new Amiga hardware or major developments, the Amiga becomes increasingly marginalized, cool as it is/was.
A change for the better? (Score:2)
Stelios Kalogreades
Re:Fleecy & Bill (Amino) rule! (Score:1)
Re:We'll never see another real Amiga... (Score:1)