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It's amazing that Aminet still gets new releases every day. It's of course nowhere near its peak, but the fact that the Amiga refuses to die is still inspiring:

It's amazing that Aminet still gets new releases every day. It's of course nowhere near its peak, but the fact that the Amiga refuses to die is still inspiring: http://aminet.net/recent http://aminet.net/recent

0xcde4c3db 9y ago
Sadly, the other side of the coin is the train wreck of flash-in-the-pan Amiga "successor" hardware, the Amiga IP situation, and the acrimony around AmigaOS 4.
- ZenoArrow 9y ago
  It's not so bad if you look across all Amiga-related development. Is the PowerPC hardware for OS4 expensive? The high end devices like the X5000 certainly are, but entry level devices like the A1222 are coming out soon, and are priced around £500, which seems like a level many hobbyists would feel comfortable with: https://www.generationamiga.com/2017/02/10/preview-amigaone-a1222/ https://www.generationamiga.com/2017/02/10/preview-amigaone-... It's also possible to run OS4 in WinUAE, so it's possible to try out OS4 before buying new hardware. For an even cheaper route, the other two next-gen Amiga-related operating systems, AROS and MorphOS, offer cheaper hardware options than OS4. MorphOS runs (aside from a few niche devices) on PowerPC Mac hardware: http://www.morphos.de/hardware http://www.morphos.de/hardware You can easily get a working PowerPC Mac for less than £100 on eBay. AROS is even cheaper still, as it's open source and runs on standard x86 hardware. You might spend a bit of money on a supported network/sound/graphics card if the devices that came with a PC aren't fully supported, but otherwise it's essentially zero cost to get into. With regards to the Amiga IP, things are looking up, the rights have mostly been acquired by Cloanto now, which is one of the few companies actively supporting the Amiga: http://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2017-04-00033-EN.html http://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2017-04-00033-EN.html
  - bhaak 9y ago
    Don't forget that AROS can be run on Linux, the so called "hosted" variant. You don't have any noticeable speed penalty and can run it side by side with your normal Linux tools and you have more hardware support than in the AROS on the metal case.
  - 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
    The main problem I have with the hardware isn't price (although value is an issue with a lot of this hardware), it's longevity. I don't expect any specific model to last very long, but these things don't generally last long enough to get successors and build up any kind of ecosystem around them. As for the A1222, I think people are going to be disappointed by the performance (cf. PS3 Linux). As far as I know, e500 is in-order and only mildly superscalar. The P1022 is pretty much designed to run a compact low-power router/firewall or act as the offload engine on a NIC, not to be used as an application processor.
  - jacobush 9y ago
    The cool thing about AROS IMHO, is that it can run on Amiga hardware... that means you can sell Amiga clones, such as Minimig, with basically Amiga OS out of the box, open source and all. Before that you had to get ROMs from random places. Another Amazing development is the FGPA 68000 compatible CPU board for Amiga 500, 600 and 1200, the "Vampire" board. It is four times faster than the fastest 68060 accelerator back in the day. It also adds SD card reader (for storage, instead of hard drive), 128 megs of RAM. (A tricked out Amiga back in the day had maybe 8 megs. 2 megs was standard in the A1200 and 1 meg was standard in the A500.) It also adds a DVI/HDMI connector so you can connect it to modern monitors/projectors easily. http://www.apollo-accelerators.com http://www.apollo-accelerators.com Actually, the Vampire is almost a complete reimplementation of an Amiga. I expect them to release a complete "PC", so you don't need an old Amiga to plug the Vampire into.
    - 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
      I think they've said that the Vampire V4 will run standalone. Presumably the only non-crappy way to support HDMI was to implement Paula and Denise equivalents in the FPGA (a similar project exists for NES HDMI output, basically cloning the entire PPU and just snooping the bus of the original one for the raw timing and input data).
      - jacobush 9y ago
        I can imagine. I hope they keep going, first give the Amiga chipset clones higher internal bandwidth (probably already on the table), then add instructions to the copper or something...

0xcde4c3db 9y ago

Sadly, the other side of the coin is the train wreck of flash-in-the-pan Amiga "successor" hardware, the Amiga IP situation, and the acrimony around AmigaOS 4.

ZenoArrow 9y ago
It's not so bad if you look across all Amiga-related development. Is the PowerPC hardware for OS4 expensive? The high end devices like the X5000 certainly are, but entry level devices like the A1222 are coming out soon, and are priced around £500, which seems like a level many hobbyists would feel comfortable with: https://www.generationamiga.com/2017/02/10/preview-amigaone-a1222/ https://www.generationamiga.com/2017/02/10/preview-amigaone-... It's also possible to run OS4 in WinUAE, so it's possible to try out OS4 before buying new hardware. For an even cheaper route, the other two next-gen Amiga-related operating systems, AROS and MorphOS, offer cheaper hardware options than OS4. MorphOS runs (aside from a few niche devices) on PowerPC Mac hardware: http://www.morphos.de/hardware http://www.morphos.de/hardware You can easily get a working PowerPC Mac for less than £100 on eBay. AROS is even cheaper still, as it's open source and runs on standard x86 hardware. You might spend a bit of money on a supported network/sound/graphics card if the devices that came with a PC aren't fully supported, but otherwise it's essentially zero cost to get into. With regards to the Amiga IP, things are looking up, the rights have mostly been acquired by Cloanto now, which is one of the few companies actively supporting the Amiga: http://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2017-04-00033-EN.html http://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2017-04-00033-EN.html
- bhaak 9y ago
  Don't forget that AROS can be run on Linux, the so called "hosted" variant. You don't have any noticeable speed penalty and can run it side by side with your normal Linux tools and you have more hardware support than in the AROS on the metal case.
- 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
  The main problem I have with the hardware isn't price (although value is an issue with a lot of this hardware), it's longevity. I don't expect any specific model to last very long, but these things don't generally last long enough to get successors and build up any kind of ecosystem around them. As for the A1222, I think people are going to be disappointed by the performance (cf. PS3 Linux). As far as I know, e500 is in-order and only mildly superscalar. The P1022 is pretty much designed to run a compact low-power router/firewall or act as the offload engine on a NIC, not to be used as an application processor.
- jacobush 9y ago
  The cool thing about AROS IMHO, is that it can run on Amiga hardware... that means you can sell Amiga clones, such as Minimig, with basically Amiga OS out of the box, open source and all. Before that you had to get ROMs from random places. Another Amazing development is the FGPA 68000 compatible CPU board for Amiga 500, 600 and 1200, the "Vampire" board. It is four times faster than the fastest 68060 accelerator back in the day. It also adds SD card reader (for storage, instead of hard drive), 128 megs of RAM. (A tricked out Amiga back in the day had maybe 8 megs. 2 megs was standard in the A1200 and 1 meg was standard in the A500.) It also adds a DVI/HDMI connector so you can connect it to modern monitors/projectors easily. http://www.apollo-accelerators.com http://www.apollo-accelerators.com Actually, the Vampire is almost a complete reimplementation of an Amiga. I expect them to release a complete "PC", so you don't need an old Amiga to plug the Vampire into.
  - 0xcde4c3db 9y ago
    I think they've said that the Vampire V4 will run standalone. Presumably the only non-crappy way to support HDMI was to implement Paula and Denise equivalents in the FPGA (a similar project exists for NES HDMI output, basically cloning the entire PPU and just snooping the bus of the original one for the raw timing and input data).
    - jacobush 9y ago
      I can imagine. I hope they keep going, first give the Amiga chipset clones higher internal bandwidth (probably already on the table), then add instructions to the copper or something...