I'm a lapsed Amigan, been away since Amiga Active magazine folded, and am looking for a way back in but i can't make head nor tail of what's going on.

Could someone tell me what has happend since whenever it was that AA went out of print, what's happening now and what looks like happening in the future.

@Drathro


A really short version.

Amiga OS 4 is the latest version. There is a legal battle now over it. You can't buy it new at the moment. Only way to run it is to buy a used "AmigaOne" machine that came bundled with the OS. Chances of finding one are not too high and they command a pretty penny when they do go up on ebay.

Amiga Inc. has announced they plan to make new machines with a company called ACK, one for about $500, the other for about $1500. The community is split on whether this will ever come to pass. Firm release dates have not been given yet.

Last edited by fairlanefastback on 21-May-2007 at 09:49 PM.

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@Drathro

How long you got?

Well, OS 4.0 is finished. Hyperion have the source, but won't give it back to Amiga. Amiga are sueing Hyperion and both parties think they have the rights to the OS. Meanwhile, Hyperion announced some hardware and Amiga announced some hardware, but neither has any real release date, so make of that what you will.

An upcoming port of the KHTML-based browser Sputnik, is probably the best news OS 4 has had in ages. It will transform its usefulness.

Across the pond, MorphOS has had a few minor updates and there are rumours of a bigger one, after a long period of quiet. (EDIT: I'm pretty lacking in knowledge of MorphOS, to be honest)

AROS has improved steadily - USB, networking, support for alternative filesystems, a slightly more feature-full Wanderer and theming support are coming along, so a 1.0 release is getting closer. Still not many apps, but I was glad to see WookieChat being ported last week...

Chris

Last edited by clebin on 21-May-2007 at 09:55 PM.
Last edited by clebin on 21-May-2007 at 09:50 PM.

@Drathro

Quote:

I'm a lapsed Amigan, been away since Amiga Active magazine folded, and am looking for a way back in but i can't make head nor tail of what's going on.

You picked a confusing time to return. While a lot is going on right now, I don't think anyone really knows what the outcome of such events will be.

Amiga is suing Hyperion for ownership and posession of OS4. Genesi is talking about suing Amiga (again) to get some degree of control over OS4. Regardless of who wins which lawsuit, the viability of OS4 afterward is uncertain to some extent, as no one single person/company comprehensively owns the IP for each and every single piece of what we call OS4 today. It's possible that some 3rd party contractor OS4 developers who did not give up ownership of their work in their contract and may walk away from the prevailing lawsuit party, and leave the product with important bits missing.

Amiga and ACK have announced new hardware, but some people consider ACK to be a hoaxer due to not delivering anything, not even photos of prototypes, on previous hardware announcements. He claims to have some pretty exciting sounding hardware coming soon, and I do hope it becomes reality. I'd love to get one of the high-end boards, but we'll see if I can afford anything after buying a car soon and losing all my rent-paying roommates at the end of the month. Curse the new interns for not choosing my housing option for the rest of this year!

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@Drathro



Enjoy the CHAOS . . .

Kick up your feet . . .

Have a

Watch a real life soap opera unfold . . .

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@Drathro

Welcome!

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@Drathro

Go to the back issues section of Total Amiga Magazine and you can pick up where you left off by downloading the PDF's and reading up to the present day.
That way you might get a better understanding of where we are today and how we got here.

Amiga is dead

@Kicko

Quote:

Amiga is dead

I went to reply to this in IBrowse and my Amiga crashed. It is DEAD!!

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@Drathro

Quote:

Drathro wrote: I'm a lapsed Amigan, been away since Amiga Active magazine folded, and am looking for a way back in but i can't make head nor tail of what's going on. Could someone tell me what has happend since whenever it was that AA went out of print, what's happening now and what looks like happening in the future.

You haven’t missed a lot. Only the situation got worse.

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@Drathro
What no-one has told you is that Amiga Inc's dream of AmigaAnywhere (aka AmigaDE) failed to live-up to it's promises, and has pretty much been in hibernation/dying since then; Amiga Inc will tell you it is not dead, but there have been almost no game releases (some cross-word puzzles were about the biggest thing).

During that Amiga Inc got stripped off it's assets/IP by KMOS, before being closed down. KMOS then renamed themselves as Amiga Inc. So the Amiga Inc *you* knew (the one run by Fleecy & Bill) is long gone. Bill (and maybe Fleecy) seem to be part of the new company, but not in such positions of power, and no-one really knows what Amiga Inc's plans are any more (although they continue to occasionally make positive *sounding* PR noises). I could give you a very pessimistic interpretation of the facts, but I'm sure the facts are bad enough for you!

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@Kicko

Quote:

Amiga is dead

And people here are all ghouls and ghosts.

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@Kicko

Are you in happy mode again =0)


K0rky

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Enjoy life,use Amiga

How did the AmigaOne/OS4 handle old software? I still have a cardboard city of boxed games n stuff in my spare room.

@Drathro

Quote:

How did the AmigaOne/OS4 handle old software? I still have a cardboard city of boxed games n stuff in my spare room.

AmigaOS4 includes a built-in emulator for the 68k-type processors in "Classic" Amigas, so in theory, old applications should be able to run fine.

The problem is that a lot of older software (especially games) wasn't written in a system-friendly manner whatsoever, and in many cases directly accessed the custom chipset (which was the only way to utilise a lot of its power if you wanted to code stunning games and demos). From what I know OS4 can trap a few of these tricks, but certainly don't expect any classic games to run straight from WB. I guess they'd run on OS4 on a Classic machine with PPC, but only beta-testers would know that at the moment! For these, there's a version of the Amiga Emulator UAE for AmigaOS4 that will run them fine (but not seamlessly).

Last edited by alx on 22-May-2007 at 04:18 PM.

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@Drathro
Quote:

How did the AmigaOne/OS4 handle old software? I still have a cardboard city of boxed games n stuff in my spare room.

Through emulation. You're better off going to your local thrift store and picking up an actual Amiga for $15 to run those old games with.

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Here for the whimpering end

@Drathro

Welcome to Limbo


I strongly advise you to sod off for another year or five !!

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@The_Editor

Nonsense. All matters will be resolved in 6 months time. That is the day aliens arrive to destroy the Earth and the only way to hack into their computers is via AmigaDos and that laptop A600 that was custum built a few years back flown up to the mothership in a Sinclair c5 crossed with the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipOne (Powered by Amiga).

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@Drathro

The AmigaOne is PC whit PowerPC CPU; it does not have chipset emulation so only system friendly works programs works, AmigaOS4 supports WarpUP programs, if you copy some parts form update 4.

Quite a few classic/680x0 programs do have bugs, this programs whit bugs are stopped by AmigaOS often before they can do harm, the grim ripper will tell you that program X is trying to overwrite some memory it does not own, you have the option to ignore the error but it can be fatal if you do.

There are some one working on external chipset emulators that can be started, currently blitter, and CIA and Paula emulation has been tried, whit some success but they are incomplete.

For older games you need E-UAE, most games are playable, E-UAE does support USB gamepads, it quite cool.

I have written a program that will start E-UAE when ever you click on ADF file.

I have also written a program that will start E-UAE when ever you try running a WHDLoad game; it makes every thing where transparent.

I don’t really know any has head any problems installing this, but no one has complained yet.

There is also some one working on gluae that tries start games, it requires some packaging etc.

For Amiga DD floppy disks, you need the Catweasel MK4 or MK3 hardware; I have written a driver its buggy but works

For PC floppy disks you can use onboard floppy controller if like too,
(I have completely converted to 1GB USB memory stick from kickston, I don’t use any thing else this days)

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@jorkany

Quote:

Through emulation. You're better off going to your local thrift store and picking up an actual Amiga for $15 to run those old games with.

i could but i'd like to at least pretend i'm moving forward while living in the past.