I don't know about the Amiga stuff, but as PowerPC board for running Linux looks great:
"The e5500 is a superscalar, dual-issue core with out-of-order execution
and in-order completion. It maintains the seven-stage, four-issue
pipeline that is a trademark of the e500 family, but is able to provide
additional performance, by scaling up to 2.5 GHz." [1]
It's a pretty old chip, and there's a newer generation of Freescale stuff -- the e6500 -- with more cores, smt, pcie 3, etc. Plus, it's kinda expensive compared to other PPC boards. Even the Qoriq reference board is cheaper [1], and reference boards tend to be rather high priced themselves. If you're gonna run Linux, your best bet is elsewhere.
Can someone tell me what makes "real" Amiga so wonderful that it's worth paying $1500 for an objectively outdated computer? What does legit Amiga do that something like, for example, AROS doesn't do?
The Amiga has a small but really enthusiastic fanbase that doesn't want to admit that it's dead. That's it, as far as I can tell. All of the modern Amiga hardware seems to suffer from similar issues to the ones mentioned here - it's expensive, slow by modern standards, has strange and annoying hardware and driver issues, and there's just not much software for PPC Amiga. It can't even run modern web browsers. (Unless I'm mistaken, the second core and a lot of the motherboard peripherals are entirely unused because AmigaOS doesn't support them.)
I also do not quite understand. As someone who loves 68000-based powerhouse art computers from the '80s, I can understand the appeal of the original Amiga line, but the PowerPC ones confuse me a bit because they no longer bring a unique graphics chipset to the table. Without the (potentially) interesting graphics chipset, does the appeal really extend beyond the OS interface design and the brand itself?
Does objective criteria matter if it is a machine that does what you need of it and you find pleasure in using it?
I write this while sitting in front of a modern machine that has as much appeal as a kitchen appliance, yet I regularly dig out an old computer to revive old interests. It is irrational, since that modern machine can easily be used to explore those old interests. Yet the old computer gives me pleasure while doing so, so that is the route that I have choosen.
What makes the Amiga so wonderful is a great question, but what makes it worth $1500 depends very much on the buyer. Some people will pay far, far more than that for a stamp or a coin or a rock, which do absolutely nothing. Beauty and value are in the eye of the beholder.
When we were kids the Amiga was for quite some time the center of our life.
When it was launched there were PC clones with EGA graphics (16 colours), the Atari ST just launched which was a good computer and we were also outgrowing our 8-bit computers (C64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum). Then, the Amiga was gem-like compared to the alternatives and I remember I was so in love reading colorful Amiga ads over and over: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/ce/8a/49/ce8a...
But to be honest, I don't get why people still stick to it nowadays.
There's a large number of electronic music producers that still use these things.
I'm absolutely convinced they can't produce anything on their Amiga 500 that can't be made on a $50 sbc just as much as the people I've spoken to are absolutely convinced that I'm wrong and just don't get it.
I think it's more a sign of prestige for them; like trying to argue that the durability and workmanship on the $1,000 designer t-shirt is indistinguishable in quality from the generic $10 one - this is also a losing battle.
I owned an original Amiga way back when. In fact, my was from the batch that had the design team signatures injection molded into the inside cover.
It was a fantastic machine at the time. I enjoyed using it. It was a refreshing new take.
Today? Nah. There is no reason to revive almost anything from that era. The only things I have that survive the test of time are my HP-41 calculators and a rugged-as-f--k all metal shop vacuum cleaner that still works as new thirty years after I bought it.
Personally, I like the diversity of ideas and implementations. It can lead to new explorations by researchers/developers, compilers detecting unforseen errors among other things, and immunity for a subset to untargeted malware.
Me, I'd rather emulate a few classic games. But it had me wondering for a while if I'd get any value from this, before deciding "no".
I find it interesting that so many of the people making YT videos and in the current Amiga community don't seem old enough to have been there first time around! So it can't be just nostalgia.
What I really want is someone to reimagine a 3000+ prototype[0] for this decade and a modern Intuition. Then I'd probably impulse spend a lot of $. Of course that would cost someone a lot of R&D spend! It's almost inconceivable anything could recapture the magic though. :)
I started out doing real programming on an Amiga and I took a LONG time to retire it. Wasn't for lack of trying...
For years after if I needed to do something useful I used the Amiga over Win, on my first couple of very expensive PCs, because it was an order of magnitude more productive. It felt faster, with endless virtual screens, despite the ludicrous MHz/graphics gap. It was actually faster at most real world tasks except those needing raw CPU loads. It was far more reliable ripping or writing CDs etc. You generally plugged any Zorro card in and it just worked - none of the faffing with interrupt jumpers and Plug n Pray/BSOD. I used it over Linux/BSD as the sw wasn't there.
It took until the XP era, and much expense, before the Amiga became pointless. I was delighted when the Macbook Pro arrived... I'd sold the 4000 well before then.
I still miss many aspects of it. Not because I am somehow stuck in nostalgia for the 90s, MHz over GHz or scanlines and flicker fixers, but because I feel it was, in many ways a far better starting point for modern computing - mostly Intuition, but also the approach to everything in the hardware design (pre 4000 anyway). If only they had developed over the years since...
I suspect, had Commodore lasted, that they'd have gone an OSX-like route - new processor (this was already planned as there was no future in 68k series) and reimagining of Intuition on top of nix, maybe BSD. It already had a rather nix flavour, ARexx and so on. Hopefully on something more interesting than just PC clone hardware, though I doubt it these days.
Medhi Ali wanted to cut cost above all, and make some crap PCs, so the world got the piece of junk A4000 and AGA instead. Oh, and a cost-cutting A600 that cost more to produce than the A500.
I was going to be short. Still, even if large, I won't price this above two cents.
I am saddened to say, but everything that made the Amiga great when it was launched seems meh by today's standards.
Amigas had preemptive multitasking before any other home computer. Today it's the norm. Amigas could switch video modes every scanline. Today, even the concept of a scanline takes a while to explain to someone born in the 90's. The same happens with the careful NTSC timing ("what's NTSC, grandpa?") that, ultimately, doomed the machine to low-resolution graphics until it was too late. Hardware accelerated graphics (their blitter was cool) is also the norm (and many orders of magnitude faster now). We don't even talk about audio quality anymore.
Everything that defined an Amiga is commonplace. To experience a UI that looks like a cross between Gnome 2 and BeOS running on a processor that once replaced 68Ks is not what would define an Amiga today.
So, what I would expect an Amiga for the 2020's to be?
I'd imagine, for starters, a uniform CPU/GPU architecture. Lots of cores accessing a single memory pool (let them have some scratch memory for themselves to save bandwidth) running the same software doing the job of both CPU and GPU. Make this CPU/GPU hybrid monster capable of combining multiple 4K inputs piped into textures and composite them in real time on any display surface available. A radical idea should set the tone.
Maybe, for the GUI, explore the idea of depth to convey information about windows. A simple sensor could locate your head and adjust the screen perspective accordingly. To the programmer, the GUI should be simple. Reminisce about Plan 9 a bit. If the head detection thing is capable of dealing with hand gestures, have a couple gestures to zoom in/out, switch task/workspace and so on. Make the visual language elegant for the 2020's. Let go of the 80's.
Embrace the idea of "the network is the computer". Again, think Plan 9.
Obviously, make the OS developer friendly, not only to develop for it, but for other platforms as well (whoever uses this computer needs to be able to work). Don't bother with the Amiga CLI - we have better stuff now. Ports of Clang/LLVM, OpenJDK, the usual browsers and, of course, Emacs, are the bare essentials. Make it POSIX so it's easy, but favor languages that express concurrency and multiprocessing easily because you'll have a whole lot of cores.
Obviously it should be able to read most common filesystems, even if its native filesystem is something alien. Snapshots, implicit RAID, part of the computer address space... Something new, please. Maybe don't have a disk and treat RAM as cache for a persistent store. It'd need to be radical or it'd be just another cute computer.
Ditch the mouse. Use a trackpad. Just make it right (as good as Apple's).
The system enclosure can't look like a PC. If at all possible, build it with no cables - edge connectors to drives, power, external ports. If it's pretty enough, you get the chance of using transparency to show it off. Again, 2020's, not 80's.
Use the ball as soon as possible at boot, at the highest resolution the display allows. Use the bounce sound to signal successful POST. 2020's, but still Amiga.
Finally, the keyboard. Whatever you do, don't make it a generic (or worse, cheap) PC keyboard. An Amiga should feel different (even if the original was so-so). From layout to switches to keycaps, it'll have to convey uniqueness.
I thought I read the Amiga's also had dedicated hardware for specific functions. That happens on desktops with graphics, sound, and networking cards. However, a modern Amiga might integrate a FPGA (or several) and standard API somewhat like HPC servers are doing. Then, apps can take advantage of it. Might also justify its cost.
Pico Computing already sells desktops that are similar to what I'm thinking about. They're just non-standard & you customize stuff to them where this would be standard with flagship apps (even FOSS) using accelerators by default.
EDIT: Or even heterogenous processors with varying strengths for great power/performance ratio. Similar to what phones are doing.
I'd buy one, just to motivate the producers. Since SGI died the computers are a bit boring. (And SGI was way too expensive but that was some pretty amazing hardware for the time.)
That's more or less what I wanted to say (as a former Amiga owner and enthusiast, back in the '90s). These nostalgic operations that keep popping up every few months or years are basically denying the spirit of the original Amiga, which was that of a machine ahead of its time. A completely new machine instead, entirely different and totally incompatible with the old Amiga, based on some radically different architecture from the current desktop computers, would be truer to its original spirit.
> Hardware accelerated graphics (their blitter was cool) is also the norm (and many orders of magnitude faster now).
Not really. Current GPUs don't have 2D hardware, everything is just done in "software".
> I'd imagine, for starters, a uniform CPU/GPU architecture. Lots of cores accessing a single memory pool (let them have some scratch memory for themselves to save bandwidth) running the same software doing the job of both CPU and GPU. Make this CPU/GPU hybrid monster capable of combining multiple 4K inputs piped into textures and composite them in real time on any display surface available.
LOL. Yes. That's what inspired me to write my own Windows text editor with smooth scrolling: http://deadfrog.co.uk
It's a bit rubbish.
It is written in the Amiga style of every-byte-matters though. If it wasn't for the embedded Python interpreter, the entire install would be about 300k.
I do. CED was simply amazing both feature wise and for its speed and smoothness. Text searching and replacing was really fast too. Later I became a registered user of GoldEd which was more programmer oriented and incredibly rich in features, scriptable etc, still it could not reach CED speed.
Also, a mouse pointer that was synced to vertical blank together with a mouse that seemed to feed the computer with events fast enough to make it non-laggy and fluid.
[+] [-] faragon|9 years ago|reply
"The e5500 is a superscalar, dual-issue core with out-of-order execution and in-order completion. It maintains the seven-stage, four-issue pipeline that is a trademark of the e500 family, but is able to provide additional performance, by scaling up to 2.5 GHz." [1]
[1] http://www.nxp.com/assets/documents/data/en/white-papers/64B...
[+] [-] Sanddancer|9 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.nxp.com/products/microcontrollers-and-processors/...
[+] [-] TD-Linux|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tombert|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] makomk|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikejmoffitt|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] II2II|9 years ago|reply
I write this while sitting in front of a modern machine that has as much appeal as a kitchen appliance, yet I regularly dig out an old computer to revive old interests. It is irrational, since that modern machine can easily be used to explore those old interests. Yet the old computer gives me pleasure while doing so, so that is the route that I have choosen.
[+] [-] pmoriarty|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stonogo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blurrywh|9 years ago|reply
When it was launched there were PC clones with EGA graphics (16 colours), the Atari ST just launched which was a good computer and we were also outgrowing our 8-bit computers (C64, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum). Then, the Amiga was gem-like compared to the alternatives and I remember I was so in love reading colorful Amiga ads over and over: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/ce/8a/49/ce8a...
But to be honest, I don't get why people still stick to it nowadays.
[+] [-] kristopolous|9 years ago|reply
I'm absolutely convinced they can't produce anything on their Amiga 500 that can't be made on a $50 sbc just as much as the people I've spoken to are absolutely convinced that I'm wrong and just don't get it.
I think it's more a sign of prestige for them; like trying to argue that the durability and workmanship on the $1,000 designer t-shirt is indistinguishable in quality from the generic $10 one - this is also a losing battle.
[+] [-] rebootthesystem|9 years ago|reply
It was a fantastic machine at the time. I enjoyed using it. It was a refreshing new take.
Today? Nah. There is no reason to revive almost anything from that era. The only things I have that survive the test of time are my HP-41 calculators and a rugged-as-f--k all metal shop vacuum cleaner that still works as new thirty years after I bought it.
[+] [-] nickpsecurity|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anexprogrammer|9 years ago|reply
I find it interesting that so many of the people making YT videos and in the current Amiga community don't seem old enough to have been there first time around! So it can't be just nostalgia.
What I really want is someone to reimagine a 3000+ prototype[0] for this decade and a modern Intuition. Then I'd probably impulse spend a lot of $. Of course that would cost someone a lot of R&D spend! It's almost inconceivable anything could recapture the magic though. :)
There's an interview from a couple of years ago with the guy who made the X5000 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb6nbQSOAA0 and his Amiga addiction.
I started out doing real programming on an Amiga and I took a LONG time to retire it. Wasn't for lack of trying...
For years after if I needed to do something useful I used the Amiga over Win, on my first couple of very expensive PCs, because it was an order of magnitude more productive. It felt faster, with endless virtual screens, despite the ludicrous MHz/graphics gap. It was actually faster at most real world tasks except those needing raw CPU loads. It was far more reliable ripping or writing CDs etc. You generally plugged any Zorro card in and it just worked - none of the faffing with interrupt jumpers and Plug n Pray/BSOD. I used it over Linux/BSD as the sw wasn't there.
It took until the XP era, and much expense, before the Amiga became pointless. I was delighted when the Macbook Pro arrived... I'd sold the 4000 well before then.
I still miss many aspects of it. Not because I am somehow stuck in nostalgia for the 90s, MHz over GHz or scanlines and flicker fixers, but because I feel it was, in many ways a far better starting point for modern computing - mostly Intuition, but also the approach to everything in the hardware design (pre 4000 anyway). If only they had developed over the years since...
I suspect, had Commodore lasted, that they'd have gone an OSX-like route - new processor (this was already planned as there was no future in 68k series) and reimagining of Intuition on top of nix, maybe BSD. It already had a rather nix flavour, ARexx and so on. Hopefully on something more interesting than just PC clone hardware, though I doubt it these days.
[0] Dave Haynie designed a machine that was another leap forward in 90/91 whilst AA was still being worked on (I think): early spec PDF: http://www.thule.no/haynie/research/a3000p/docs/a3000p.pdf
Medhi Ali wanted to cut cost above all, and make some crap PCs, so the world got the piece of junk A4000 and AGA instead. Oh, and a cost-cutting A600 that cost more to produce than the A500.
[+] [-] rbanffy|9 years ago|reply
I am saddened to say, but everything that made the Amiga great when it was launched seems meh by today's standards.
Amigas had preemptive multitasking before any other home computer. Today it's the norm. Amigas could switch video modes every scanline. Today, even the concept of a scanline takes a while to explain to someone born in the 90's. The same happens with the careful NTSC timing ("what's NTSC, grandpa?") that, ultimately, doomed the machine to low-resolution graphics until it was too late. Hardware accelerated graphics (their blitter was cool) is also the norm (and many orders of magnitude faster now). We don't even talk about audio quality anymore.
Everything that defined an Amiga is commonplace. To experience a UI that looks like a cross between Gnome 2 and BeOS running on a processor that once replaced 68Ks is not what would define an Amiga today.
So, what I would expect an Amiga for the 2020's to be?
I'd imagine, for starters, a uniform CPU/GPU architecture. Lots of cores accessing a single memory pool (let them have some scratch memory for themselves to save bandwidth) running the same software doing the job of both CPU and GPU. Make this CPU/GPU hybrid monster capable of combining multiple 4K inputs piped into textures and composite them in real time on any display surface available. A radical idea should set the tone.
Maybe, for the GUI, explore the idea of depth to convey information about windows. A simple sensor could locate your head and adjust the screen perspective accordingly. To the programmer, the GUI should be simple. Reminisce about Plan 9 a bit. If the head detection thing is capable of dealing with hand gestures, have a couple gestures to zoom in/out, switch task/workspace and so on. Make the visual language elegant for the 2020's. Let go of the 80's.
Embrace the idea of "the network is the computer". Again, think Plan 9.
Obviously, make the OS developer friendly, not only to develop for it, but for other platforms as well (whoever uses this computer needs to be able to work). Don't bother with the Amiga CLI - we have better stuff now. Ports of Clang/LLVM, OpenJDK, the usual browsers and, of course, Emacs, are the bare essentials. Make it POSIX so it's easy, but favor languages that express concurrency and multiprocessing easily because you'll have a whole lot of cores.
Obviously it should be able to read most common filesystems, even if its native filesystem is something alien. Snapshots, implicit RAID, part of the computer address space... Something new, please. Maybe don't have a disk and treat RAM as cache for a persistent store. It'd need to be radical or it'd be just another cute computer.
Ditch the mouse. Use a trackpad. Just make it right (as good as Apple's).
The system enclosure can't look like a PC. If at all possible, build it with no cables - edge connectors to drives, power, external ports. If it's pretty enough, you get the chance of using transparency to show it off. Again, 2020's, not 80's.
Use the ball as soon as possible at boot, at the highest resolution the display allows. Use the bounce sound to signal successful POST. 2020's, but still Amiga.
Finally, the keyboard. Whatever you do, don't make it a generic (or worse, cheap) PC keyboard. An Amiga should feel different (even if the original was so-so). From layout to switches to keycaps, it'll have to convey uniqueness.
That ended up longer than expected...
[+] [-] nickpsecurity|9 years ago|reply
Pico Computing already sells desktops that are similar to what I'm thinking about. They're just non-standard & you customize stuff to them where this would be standard with flagship apps (even FOSS) using accelerators by default.
EDIT: Or even heterogenous processors with varying strengths for great power/performance ratio. Similar to what phones are doing.
[+] [-] jacquesm|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Udik|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rjsw|9 years ago|reply
Not really. Current GPUs don't have 2D hardware, everything is just done in "software".
> I'd imagine, for starters, a uniform CPU/GPU architecture. Lots of cores accessing a single memory pool (let them have some scratch memory for themselves to save bandwidth) running the same software doing the job of both CPU and GPU. Make this CPU/GPU hybrid monster capable of combining multiple 4K inputs piped into textures and composite them in real time on any display surface available.
Sounds rather like Larrabee [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larrabee_(microarchitecture)
[+] [-] dleslie|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unicornporn|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bleair|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] abainbridge|9 years ago|reply
It's a bit rubbish.
It is written in the Amiga style of every-byte-matters though. If it wasn't for the embedded Python interpreter, the entire install would be about 300k.
[+] [-] squarefoot|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Flow|9 years ago|reply
Also, a mouse pointer that was synced to vertical blank together with a mouse that seemed to feed the computer with events fast enough to make it non-laggy and fluid.
[+] [-] microcolonel|9 years ago|reply
Pathetic operating system without dynamic filesystem page caching or SMP. I honestly don't understand why people obsess over Amiga.
[+] [-] hsivonen|9 years ago|reply