AmigaOS 4.0 Developer Pre-Release

Comments

1. 
   17 Apr 2004 ~ 10:53pm drasnor I need to go down to the local Goodwill and get one of those. Actually, isn't the Amiga an m68k machine? Will AmigaOS run on my Quadra?
   
   -drasnor
2. 
   18 Apr 2004 ~ 5:30am KingFish /me shrugs
3. 
   18 Apr 2004 ~ 5:55am Enverex No. AmigaOS 4 is for the new PPC Amiga systems (Classic Amigas were 68k - 000, 020, 030, 040 and 060). There will also be 2 over versions of OS4 released for original Amigas that contain PPC accellerators such as the BlizzardPPC (A1200) or CyberstormPPC (BigBox). Some classic program will be runnable on the new machines, but anything that hits the hardware directly will not work and will have to be emulated under UAE. OS4 will not run on anything other than specifically A1s. CS and Blizz both require a special version. You also cannot buy OS4, it only comes bundled with A1 systems.
   
   The cheap A1 motherboards will set you back about $800 or more and that is only for the motherboard and processor, so they aren't exactly the easiest thing on the wallet, on the other hand there are now the other alternate OSs such as MorphOS (PPC) or even AROS (x86) which people could use instead, but none of them are binary compatable with each other, which doesn't exactly help the dwindling situation.
4. 
   18 Apr 2004 ~ 1:55pm BuddyJ So then what's the point of it? Why use Amiga over anything else?
5. 
   18 Apr 2004 ~ 2:02pm Enverex The only reason that I can see at the moment is because of the OS which lots of people still prefer, but it is a rather high price to pay considering the cost of the hardware and the very small software market.
6. 
   18 Apr 2004 ~ 2:10pm BuddyJ Am I wrong in thinking that those Amigas are slower than your typical desktop system?
7. 
   18 Apr 2004 ~ 3:16pm Enverex Er, Amigas are general classes now. The old ones are well.... old. They are based around the 68k processors which are very slow in comparison to todays machines. The highest 68k processor that was in general use was the 68060 @ 50MHz which was very fast for the times, but isn't really anything now (roughly the same as a Pentium 133MHz). In the later years one company (Phase 5) started developing PPC accellerator cards for Amigas that contained both a 68k processor, and a PowerPC processor (a 603e in the BlizzardPPC and a 604e in the Cyberstorm) which were used by certain programs (Wipeout 2097, Payback, Datatypes (Amiga Codecs), Renderers and such) Phase 5 later went bancrupt and were brought out by another company called DCE who continued making the accellerators.
   
   The new Amiga systems are very much different, they are basically iMacs and use either a G3 or G4 processor ranging from 600Mhz to 1300MHz currently. So for raw performance purposes, you can compare the hardware directly to an iMac, but on the other hand, the OS itself is very different. OS4 is PPC native, even on the older Amigas, which means it has to use certain bootstrapping to get in to the OS as the 68k is the CPU on the original Amigas. Once in OS4, 68k emulation is done via JIT compiling. Problem is though, one of the reasons the original Amigas were so good is that most things were done in Assembler with excessive amounts of direct hardware hitting, conseqently there is a lot of software (and all but the newest games) won't work on AmigaOnes.
   
   I still play about with my original Amiga which is actually a towered A4000 with 50MHz 68060 and a 233MHz 604e PPC dual processors. Even though the 68k is the main processor it is still very snappy due to the OS.
   
   Going from reports, the A1 systems are very fast messing about in the OS, but games and other software will still be limited by the hardware itself.
   
   The latest OS for the classic machines isn't actually that old. It was released in 2000 and the latest BoingBag (AOS service packs) was March 2002.
   
   It's another one of those not really stright comparisons, different archetectures and OS'.
8. 
   18 Apr 2004 ~ 4:36pm drasnor Wow, I didn't know they made Amigas with processors newer than PowerPC 60x's.
   
   -drasnor
9. 
   18 Apr 2004 ~ 4:56pm Enverex

   drasnor wrote:

   Wow, I didn't know they made Amigas with processors newer than PowerPC 60x's.
   
   -drasnor

   
   All different companies now. Everything has changed hands multiple times. The original companies are all involved in lawsuits now.
   
   AmigaOS now belongs to a company named KMOS with Hyperion developing the OS (3.9 was made by Hauuge & Partner). The boards are beingmade by a company called Eyetech (one of the original companies).