What is an Amiga? The question should be rhetorical, but the definition of this marvellous (family of) machine needs to be explored in depth.

English: https://www.appuntidigitali.it/22307/the-amiga-cannot-be-redefined-at-will/

Italian: https://www.appuntidigitali.it/22265/lamiga-non-si-puo-ridefinire-a-proprio-piacimento/

@cdimauro

What the Amiga was is an immutable part of history.

Legally speaking, what the Amiga is today is entirely up to the trademark/IP holders. If they decided to launch a red and white checked shower curtain and call it an Amiga, that's their remit.

What the Amiga is to us as users is a broad spectrum of subjective opinions and wishes.

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Doing stupid things for fun...

@cdimauro

Quote:

Also because those who have had an Amiga in their hands know very well what they had to deal with and what satisfaction it gave. Emotions that, as we experienced them at the time, surrogates can no longer reproduce…

but it can?

Just look at review for the A500 mini
https://www.amazon.co.uk/The-A500-Mini-Electronic-Games/dp/B09BW8N7JZ/

Loads of people (ok you may call them casual users and not hard core Amiga fans or they are just gamers etc) but loads of them are happy with the experience an Arm emulated powered device gave them. It brought back memories for many who might of moved on from the Amiga. All without the custom chips and 680x0.

I mean, I do get the point you're making, would not the Vampire / apollo qualified because it still kinda based on 680x0 cpu and custom chip all be it running in FPGA?

Also AmigaONE X1000 & X5000 had Xmos, kinda a custom chip for this hardware, i mean it didnt add much to the platform but again, it kinda fits your suggestion of what an Amiga should be.

My own view of what Amiga is, has moved on beyond hardware and even software. Amiga is not just that anymore. Its the crazy Community, that have big events showing off all the different hardware and software for it, its the crazy forum where we still come together with ideas for the platform etc. its the freinds we make talking about past system and crazy mods and things that can push the platform forward.

Amiga is so much more than just hardware and software now.

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@cdimauro

Were there things that made the Amiga different and/or better?
Were there things that it introduced to the world.

I'm a fan of computers letting us do things so for me I always think around that.

Obviously it gave us actual and effective multitasking.
I think that may have already existed elsewhere but it was the first time individuals could experience the incredible benefit of that. I know it was eye opening for me.

It also evolved early towards allowing home users to experience the benefit of programs co-operating as user created mega applications via ARexx. Much better than DOS pipes...
Can you even do that with Windows programs?

It also had hardware parallelism. It took everyone else a long time to start catching up on that. Now it is everywhere of course.

One of the other distiguishing early featues for me was that there weren't dedicated and absolute resources. Of course there were still some built in limitations like Chip RAM. But it introduced unlimited size RAM disks (not really needed these days but a boon back then). You didn't know where your program was going to go which was a great thing. It didn't have A & B drives being floppies and C onwards being hard drives. If had more flexible file device naming.

It was a very pliable system. We ended up with several UI co-existing systems as a result which are more often frowned upon in today's Oses that want to rest most of the control from us mostly just out of necessity.

Of course they had BOOPSI which was a bit of a kludge but it worked and allowed possibilities
but sadly not all those possibilities were realised. They also had datatypes which is another arrow to things that were not fully realised. Beos tried to realise a few if those things with its Rhapsody.

There are many people who are out there in the industry who would not be there if they hadn't cut their teeth on the Amiga. It opened up the imagination at the time in an otherwise bleak market...

@cdimauro

You wrote all that on just this silly topic?
Like I wrote earlier, you sure seem to have plenty of time on your hands…

_________________
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

@gonegahgah

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/ipc/interprocess-communications

_________________
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

Quote:

Karlos wrote: Legally speaking, what the Amiga is today is entirely up to the trademark/IP holders.

Yes, and to be honest, if some clown would announce a shitty game console, give it an 80is design case in beige and write Amiga on it. Most media would not ask for its legacy.

@OneTimer1

As best proven with CommodoreUSA experience!

Leo is trying to milk C64 still, but at one point his Amiga redefined might be back :D

https://myretrocomputer.com/
https://linuxlap.com/distro/commodore-os-vision-2-0-a-retro-journey-into-the-future-2024/

_________________
Future Acube and MOS supporter, fi di good, nothing fi di unprofessionals. Learn it harder way!

@kolla

Thanks Kolla, that is a useful summary. I’ve summarised it further below with quotes directly from the page that you kindly referred to.

Clipboard
“The clipboard is a very loosely coupled exchange medium, where applications need only agree on the data format.�

COM for IPC
“OLE provides services that make it easy for applications to call on other applications for data editing. For example, a word processor that uses OLE could embed a graph from a spreadsheet.�

Data Copy for IPC
“Data copy enables an application to send information to another application using the WM_COPYDATA message.�

DDE for IPC
“The data formats used by DDE are the same as those used by the clipboard. DDE can be thought of as an extension of the clipboard mechanism.�

File Mapping for IPC
“When two or more processes access the same file mapping, each process receives a pointer to memory in its own address space that it can use to read or modify the contents of the file.�

Mailslot for IPC
“Mailslots provide one-way communication.�

Pipes for IPC
“Named pipes are used to transfer data between processes that are not related processes and between processes on different computers.�

RPC for IPC
“RPC enables applications to call functions remotely.�

Windows Sockets for IPC
“Windows Sockets is a protocol-independent interface capable of supporting current and emerging networking capabilities.�

AF_UNIX function in Windows
“Unix sockets allow inter-process communication (IPC) between processes on the same machine.�

OLE of course is the closest to the realm that we are talking about but is still not the same as the application interoperability that Arexx afforded us; but at least the user had control. All of the other features above are coded into the applications themselves and are not implementable by the common user.

Though even things like the Clipboard, and its derivatives above, could have been taken further on the Amiga than we possibly did by further adopting Amiga paradigms.

@cdimauro

Quote:

cdimauro wrote: What is an Amiga? The question should be rhetorical, but the definition of this marvellous (family of) machine needs to be explored in depth. English: https://www.appuntidigitali.it/22307/the-amiga-cannot-be-redefined-at-will/ Italian: https://www.appuntidigitali.it/22265/lamiga-non-si-puo-ridefinire-a-proprio-piacimento/

Fukcing bot.

_________________
Amiga 1200 (rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32/RPi CM4/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (rev 6A, ECS, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 4B/Emu68)
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB

@Karlos

Quote:

Karlos wrote: @cdimauro What the Amiga was is an immutable part of history. Legally speaking, what the Amiga is today is entirely up to the trademark/IP holders. If they decided to launch a red and white checked shower curtain and call it an Amiga, that's their remit.

The legal stuff was/is the very simple and obvious part.

The primary focus of the article was about the (technical) definition of what an Amiga was/is.
Quote:

What the Amiga is to us as users is a broad spectrum of subjective opinions and wishes.

That wasn't part of the article.

The point (and here I answer to other comments on the same topic) is that if you (I'm not referring to you personally here: it's a generic discussion) talk about "Amiga" then we should have a common ground / understanding of the term to have a proper communication.

It's exactly the same reason why we've a vocabulary/encyclopaedia for our spoken languages: terms in the vocabulary have proper meanings (some times depending also on the context, of course) which people should know (ok: more or less!) so that they can have a discussion without problems coming from the language.

Think about "bees", for example: you know what it is it and we can have a discussion because of that.

With the Amiga is the same: we can have a discussion because it was a well defined term (as I've reported on the article).

Problems come when people try to redefined it at their will, and pretending to be something different.

To give another example, it's like many "free" software zealots: they spread the word (and world) about such software to be "free", whereas in reality they have completely distorted its (free, freedom) meaning, since software with this licence has very heavy constraints that therefore deny freedoms.

If people think that "Amiga" is something different I've absolutely no problem with that, as long as they say "this is MY (personal) opinion". We all have our personal opinions and that's fine.

But this shouldn't change the definitions...

Last edited by cdimauro on 16-Jul-2024 at 05:39 AM.
Last edited by cdimauro on 16-Jul-2024 at 05:38 AM.

@amigang

Quote:

amigang wrote: @cdimauro Quote: Also because those who have had an Amiga in their hands know very well what they had to deal with and what satisfaction it gave. Emotions that, as we experienced them at the time, surrogates can no longer reproduce… but it can? Just look at review for the A500 mini https://www.amazon.co.uk/The-A500-Mini-Electronic-Games/dp/B09BW8N7JZ/ Loads of people (ok you may call them casual users and not hard core Amiga fans or they are just gamers etc) but loads of them are happy with the experience an Arm emulated powered device gave them. It brought back memories for many who might of moved on from the Amiga. All without the custom chips and 680x0.

I've no problems with that and I also use emulation from very long time.

However, it's very different from the experience which I had at that time, with the floppies (zzzZZZzzzZZZzzzZZ), the joystick, the CRT and, even more important, tinkering with my Amigas trying to see how they worked and how to squeeze the most from them.

That's a completely different thing which no post-Amiga machines will give again, IMO.
Quote:

I mean, I do get the point you're making, would not the Vampire / apollo qualified because it still kinda based on 680x0 cpu and custom chip all be it running in FPGA?

No, because it's emulation. Hardware emulation,but still emulation.

It will be a different story when they create an ASIC (and hopefully having an FPU with full/extended precision AND a proper PMMU).
Quote:

Also AmigaONE X1000 & X5000 had Xmos, kinda a custom chip for this hardware, i mean it didnt add much to the platform but again, it kinda fits your suggestion of what an Amiga should be.

That's even worse: the so called XMOS chip is a discrete component which anyone can buy and add to any other system.

Plus, it was supposed to offload work from the CPU, but it's very very very limited. Whereas we know how the Amiga chipset worked (basically the CPU was the "slave" of such chips: it was used to program them, offloading most of the work to them).
Quote:

My own view of what Amiga is, has moved on beyond hardware and even software. Amiga is not just that anymore. Its the crazy Community, that have big events showing off all the different hardware and software for it, its the crazy forum where we still come together with ideas for the platform etc. its the freinds we make talking about past system and crazy mods and things that can push the platform forward. Amiga is so much more than just hardware and software now.

That's ok, as long as it's your personal opinion (see above my reply to Karlos).

@gonegahgah

Quote:

gonegahgah wrote: @cdimauro Were there things that made the Amiga different and/or better? Were there things that it introduced to the world. I'm a fan of computers letting us do things so for me I always think around that. Obviously it gave us actual and effective multitasking. I think that may have already existed elsewhere but it was the first time individuals could experience the incredible benefit of that. I know it was eye opening for me. It also evolved early towards allowing home users to experience the benefit of programs co-operating as user created mega applications via ARexx. Much better than DOS pipes... Can you even do that with Windows programs? It also had hardware parallelism. It took everyone else a long time to start catching up on that. Now it is everywhere of course. One of the other distiguishing early featues for me was that there weren't dedicated and absolute resources. Of course there were still some built in limitations like Chip RAM. But it introduced unlimited size RAM disks (not really needed these days but a boon back then). You didn't know where your program was going to go which was a great thing. It didn't have A & B drives being floppies and C onwards being hard drives. If had more flexible file device naming. It was a very pliable system. We ended up with several UI co-existing systems as a result which are more often frowned upon in today's Oses that want to rest most of the control from us mostly just out of necessity. Of course they had BOOPSI which was a bit of a kludge but it worked and allowed possibilities but sadly not all those possibilities were realised. They also had datatypes which is another arrow to things that were not fully realised. Beos tried to realise a few if those things with its Rhapsody. There are many people who are out there in the industry who would not be there if they hadn't cut their teeth on the Amiga. It opened up the imagination at the time in an otherwise bleak market...

kolla partially answered, but volumes / assigns and datatypes IMO are the best things which Amiga have given us.
Plus, the "ONE library to dominate them all" (instead of the DLL and shared libraries Hell of Windows and Unix systems).

BTW I don't like much BOOPSI. I've plans since long time to write an article about it as well.

Last edited by cdimauro on 16-Jul-2024 at 05:41 AM.

@kolla

Quote:

kolla wrote: @cdimauro You wrote all that on just this silly topic?

Silly because you don't like it?

So, you don't like DEFINITIONS, right?

YOUR problem...
Quote:

Like I wrote earlier, you sure seem to have plenty of time on your hands…

I spend my free time exactly like you...

@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote: @cdimauro Quote: cdimauro wrote: What is an Amiga? The question should be rhetorical, but the definition of this marvellous (family of) machine needs to be explored in depth. English: https://www.appuntidigitali.it/22307/the-amiga-cannot-be-redefined-at-will/ Italian: https://www.appuntidigitali.it/22265/lamiga-non-si-puo-ridefinire-a-proprio-piacimento/ Fukcing bot.

A post ONLY with personal attacks: what a news with you, Amiga forums bot.

Ah, in Italy when someone reuses the same statement which was already used by someone else to make jokes against a person, we call it: "specchio riflesso" (roughly translated as "mirror reflection").
And we add that (again, roughly translated): "The reflection mirror was in use in (primary) schools".

TLDR: grow!

BTW, I was the one calling you "bot" before. Eh!

@amigang

Quote:

amigang wrote: Just look at review for the A500 mini https://www.amazon.co.uk/The-A500-Mini-Electronic-Games/dp/B09BW8N7JZ/

It's an emulator - and not a good one.

The keyboard doesn't work. The disk eject button is fake. Looking inside we see 3 large metal weights and a small PCB in the back. The weights are there to trick you into thinking there's more inside it. The whole thing is a fake. It's not an Amiga!

Want to relive the experience of booting off a floppy disk? Sorry, you can't. Of course it can't take any Amiga hardware addons either, so there's another part of the experience it can't provide.

cdimauro is right. Those of us who had real Amigas, whose hardware we became emotionally attached to, don't feel the same when presented with a fake 'Amiga' that treats that magical hardware as a joke. No Agnes, no Denise, no Paula. No CIA chips. No 68000... Nothing about it is authentic. The microscopic smd parts and BGA chips are not interesting to me. This thing contains none of the Amiga's essence, isn't hackable or repairable, and when then it fails there will be nothing in it worth saving. In short, it's a trinket designed to trick you into giving them your hard-earned money, when you could have just installed UAE on your PC and gotten the same experience.

Some people don't care though, and just want an emulator in a compact portable form with a case design echoing the thing it's emulating. That's fine by me - just don't call it an Amiga!

Last edited by bhabbott on 16-Jul-2024 at 06:50 AM.

@bhabbott

Quote:

bhabbott wrote: @amigang Quote: amigang wrote: Just look at review for the A500 mini https://www.amazon.co.uk/The-A500-Mini-Electronic-Games/dp/B09BW8N7JZ/ It's an emulator - and not a good one. The keyboard doesn't work. The disk eject button is fake. Looking inside we see 3 large metal weights and a small PCB in the back. The weights are there to trick you into thinking there's more inside it. The whole thing is a fake. It's not an Amiga!

Yeah, it's a nice gimmick, a toy that can be easily carried anywhere, but I haven't played with it once at my home where I have real Amigas to do it. I've taken my THEA500 Mini to events where it has got mixed feedback from casual users, and everybody understands it's an emulator box even without telling anything about it.

For the same reasons I'm not that excited about the A600GS either, it's an emulator box that doesn't even look good/nostalgic as a decoration :)

But for those who don't own real Amigas and want to have something to plug in on a living room TV setup instead of using an emulator on their computer setups, they're nicely done experiences for what they are.

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@cdimauro

The Amiga was supposed to a state of the art affordable gaming console that could also double as a home computer.

AmigaOS was the attempt to bring a proper OS onto a home computer.

Blitter, Copper, bitplanes and 68000 were means to that end.

Exec Intuition and so on was the best they could implement on the still limited HW.

The A500 was the only Amiga that came close to that vision as everything else was to expensive, to weak ( for it’s release date) or to much beta (A1000).

What would come closest to that vision in 2024? Maybe the SteamDeck, but surely nothing Amiga branded or related sold in the past 30+ years.

_________________
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@cdimauro

Quote:

cdimauro wrote: I also use emulation from very long time. However, it's very different from the experience which I had at that time, with the floppies (zzzZZZzzzZZZzzzZZ), the joystick, the CRT and, even more important, tinkering with my Amigas trying to see how they worked and how to squeeze the most from them. That's a completely different thing which no post-Amiga machines will give again, IMO.

That's how I feel too. Emulation has its place, but what really interests me is the actual hardware - the kind of hardware that was in home computers in the 80's, not the stuff we see today.

In the 1970's electronics was a popular hobby. Enthusiasts could buy standard parts to build their own radios, audio systems and other electronic gadgets. But computers were out of reach until the microprocessor was developed. By the late 70's some of us were building crude computers using the relatively simple devices of the time. I started with a kit based on the RCA 1802 (similar to the COSMAC VIP), and soon afterwards designed my own computer using a 6800 CPU and 6847 VDG with a proper keyboard etc. From there I moved to commercial home computers, starting with a ZX81 and then ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC664 and finally an Amiga 1000. I didn't just use these computers, I got to know how they worked and developed hardware hacks and addons for them, and created tools to help with further development (assemblers, EPROM programmers etc.). This was a large part of the hobby for me, taking up way more time than playing games.

Just because modern computers are appliances now and far too complex to create from standard chips - let alone be worth the effort - doesn't mean I should give up the hobby I have enjoyed for over 40 years. With today's technology it's easier for hobbyists to make high quality hardware (and software) for 1980's era home computers. I have lots of ideas for things to add to the various home computers I own. But I keep them simple in the style of what was being done 'back in the day'.

When you stray outside the domain of period hardware you are loosing the hobbyist elements. Program a GAL to replace some random logic? Sure, they did that in the A1000. Put all the logic inside a CPLD? Now you're getting into custom chip territory. Create an entire computer inside an FPGA? Now you have something else again. Now it consists of complex HDL code that takes an expert to understand, while the hardware is generic and uninteresting.

I don't want to just be a consumer, constantly being goaded into buying the latest product so producers can make a profit. The push to define the Amiga as whatever the latest tech can do for it is just turning it into another consumer product, exploiting our desire for higher performance and greater functionality while making the hardware less accessible. But we have modern computers for that. Don't try to turn the Amiga into something it wasn't designed to be. Instead savor and enhance its essence to achieve what it promised to be 'back in the day'.

@bhabbott

I'm a hardware fan, but I don't have the time and space for it just now. The stuff I work on is all under emulation but the goal is always that it should work on real hardware. Having said that, the emulation workflow is extraordinarily convenient. No risk to old hardware until something is beta quality.

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