I voted for Both, but to be more accurate for me the Amiga, and indeed any tool, is defined by what it allows users to achieve. The technology is defined through the technique.

When I bought my first A500, I was aware of 286 AT PCs and the Apple Macintosh. Beyond those other options being way outside of my price range, the A500 with a 512kB expansion and an external floppy drive allowed me to do things that I had not been able to do before. 80% of the time it was a gaming machine, 20% used for university work.

When I got my A1200 in late 1992, gaming represented 50% of its use. I was using it with a HP laser printer and later a Cannon BubbleJet printer to produce many types of printed materials. I was doing amateur video production work with a genlock and Scala MM, I was initially communicating with people on BBSs and later connecting it to the internet. I started my '90s web development career on the A1200. By the time I blew the motherboard in 2002, gaming was about 10% of its use.

No machine before, and none since, has inspired such creativity for me. The combination of the hardware and the software was constantly expanding my world of what is possible.

Last edited by agami on 01-Nov-2021 at 07:16 AM.

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@bison

The name written on the label.

@bison

Amiga, is so much more than just the software and hardware, its the great community that comes with it, its the crazy story / ride it been on. Its places like this web forum and the great debates like this one, its the little meet up show, it the never ending challege of pulling / pushing the platform forward.

I think if you see Amiga as only a hardware / software thing you missing a big part of the hart of Amiga to me any.

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@bison

In the late 80’s, Amiga chipset pretty unique, but there other computers had similar features like SHARP X68000 (the Amiga Killer if had competed in the same market), and Sega Mega Drive, also SNES used planar graphics, so maybe the chipset was not so unique.

limited RAM, limited CPU power sparked creativity, resulting HAM6, dual playfields,
being able save memory using least amount colors to display a image, other computer has 2, 16, 256 colors. Amiga had 2,4,8,16,32,64, plus Ham6, it able work with images in layers, gave interesting blending of color for free, pretty interesting 80’s for sure, but the people wonted more colors in 90’s, when memory become more available, PC CPU’s got better, GPU’s got better, and advantages Amiga had, become more like disadvantages, PC’s got FPU, and Amiga can’t keep up with rendering, not with games, not video, and not with anything else. A1200/A600/A2000 got IDE on Amiga, but PC got EIDE quickly, sure there was some expensive Amigas that had SCSI. The problem with IDE was required lot CPU power, so Amiga quickly lagging behind on disk speed.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 01-Nov-2021 at 07:13 PM.

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I voted for both. My computers that run AmigaOS4 in my head are some type of neoAmigas. These are my two X1000s and my Sam440ep. It's interesting to me that, while not intentional, AmigaOne is an anagram of neoAmiga. If compatibility with more chip-banging or chip-utilizing 68K software were better integrated into this system, it would be less neo Amiga and more SuperAmiga for me, which would be more desirable. If there would be more and better quality new PPC software for OS4, that would become less important for me. I do appreciate that Petunia allows a fair amount of 68K software to work within OS4.

The Apollo Vampire in my Amiga 500 feels more the spirit of a classic SuperAmiga, and I am planning to buy a Firebird from these fellows soon, for my Amiga 2500. But wouldn't that be cool in my Amiga 1000 too? Suspect I will have more SuperAmigas as time moves on.

An interesting and I'd argue worthwhile thing for an AmigaOne would be a PCI card with an FPGA chip on it sufficient to provide some variant of the Amiga chips. I'd buy two of those if they existed. But, I don't see that happening so just daydreaming there.

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@bison

I would say that good old Amiga feeling is only limited by one's imagination.


redfox

@bison

What defines Amiga: the custom chipset, or the system software?

Years ago, I would have said both operating together.

But you also require good software and imagination to have fun.

My OS4 system works well because long ago someone discovered a way to retarget the graphics to other graphics chips.

I don't use petunia at all. I rely on the 68K interpreter built in to OS4. Final Writer 97, TVPaint, PPaint and other system friendly 68K software all work fine with OS4. I run E-UAE and AmigaOS 3.2 for some older software like the Appetizer suite and some games.


redfox

Last edited by redfox on 01-Nov-2021 at 11:56 PM.
Last edited by redfox on 01-Nov-2021 at 07:45 PM.

@bison

What -literally- defines Amiga is the text in Commodore’s RKRM documentation:

RKRM-AMIGADOS
RKRM-DEVICES
RKRM-Hardware
RKRM-LIBRARIES

That’s the definition, right there!

Quote:

bison wrote: What defines Amiga: the custom chipset, or the system software?

Legal definition:

The brand name 'Amiga' written on the case of the computer.

Historical definition:

The Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore in 1985 and built until 1996
At its core, the Amiga has a custom chipset consisting of several coprocessors, which handle audio, video and direct memory access independently of the Central Processing Unit (CPU).
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga )

Personal definition:

One of the computer I grew up with, it was a lot of fun playing with it, learning 'C' programming on it, playing around with NetBSD and there where even more thing I would not tell here because I want to stay anonymous.
Now I'm grown up, leaving the Amiga is like leaving your home forever but I will never be young and have the same experiences like I had it with this system.

@bison

Quote:

What defines Amiga: the custom chipset, or the system software?

I think you guys are asking the wrong questions, wouldn't it be better to ask for:

What would you accept (wish or dream of) as next Amiga?

Everything defines Amiga. Hardware, software, services like Aminet and the people. Just computers have moved on and Amiga market have shrinked so small that it can't keep up. But then again, thanks to Warp 3D Nova and ShaderJoy we can do fun things with GPU's. And there's some nice piece of software like SketchBlock, for example.

PS. And remember every computer has a chipset. (Except first IBM PC's had everything on addon cards, I think.)

Last edited by Tomppeli on 11-Nov-2021 at 12:21 AM.

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Rock lobster bit me. My Workbench has always preferences. X1000 + AmigaOS4.1 FE
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@bison

When you say 'chipset', does that, in broader view, also include a video output so it can be connected to a crt-based colourtv?

It WAS the chipset that enabled the Amiga to shine, it was the OS and all the other software that MADE it do so! But that was about three-and-a-half decade ago. And technology has not been twiddling thumbs in the meantime, especially so when it comes to computer related technology.
The elegance of the technology of yore is surpassed by the brute-force state of technology of nowadays. We don't need to make programs 'lean and mean', as memory costs next to nothing and processingpower only a fart and two marbles. Relatively speaking.
In my not so very humble opinion, it's the community around the platform, that makes it interesting! Wherelse do you find this level of bickering about the common subject of interest. Not with Windows, not with Mac, nor with Linux. Just to name a few.
The chipset idea was not a bad idea, but technology did choose a different path and sold it in masses to the masses, making it dirt cheap. 'Our' approach however, is lacking the economies of scale and is therefore more steeply priced.

Windows requires patience,
Apple requires a healthy bank account,
Linux requires skills,
but nothing beats the Amiga in providing fun, lots of good, old fun!

My 2 cents,
and back in to lurkingmode.

OldFart

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@bison Original post

I voted for both. Like agami mentioned way back in post #2, the combination of hardware and software enabled creativity of graphics and sound. For me it was high resolution graphics coupled with the hardware able to handle graphics more smoothly than the competition. I also thought the A1200 design of a computer in a wedge-shaped case was cool and conveniently small.

@bison

Amiga was NEVER just an operating system which sadly (IMO) a lot of people like to think these days.

"let's get Amiga to run on x86... let's get Amiga to run on Pi..."
What.. along with the dozens of other OSes that run on this hardware that people ignore? Yawn.

In the Amigas heyday it was always a proprietary HARDWARE platform with its unique custom chipset running its own native Operating System! It offered something different to the 'off the shelf' parts used in the PC and to a lesser extent the Atari ST. It was its own man like the MAC but was much more affordable and offered superior features and performance...

Amiga did best as BOTH a HARDWARE and SOFTWARE platform!!! So THAT is my final answer

Spud

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Night Operations

A1200 020/28MHz + 64Mb / 4Gb CF / OS 3.1.4.1 / 1438S
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A600