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I wonder sometimes, what could be built using today's tech if it was focused like Amigas back in the day with a single hardware spec and a dedicated OS just for

by wowtip 8y ago

I wonder sometimes, what could be built using today's tech if it was focused like Amigas back in the day with a single hardware spec and a dedicated OS just for that platform. Without regard to backwards compability in OS, like BeOS at the time. What would a revolutionary Amiga 1000 look like in 2018? With modern hardware and latest OS/system ideas. Gaming consoles could be considered examples of this, but they are kind of single purpose. Maybe a topic for an AskHN, for a rainy day.

pjc50 8y ago
The three distinctive features of the Amiga: - revolutionary custom graphics hardware - better sound hardware than competitors - pre-emptive multitasking Therefore, if I was attempting something like this today, I would: - make the graphics preeminent in the system. In other words, keep the graphics card and throw away the legacy CPU. Let it drive PCI devices. - on its own, doing that makes it much harder to program, so put considerable work into making the instruction set and programmer's model open and well documented - find a DAW engineer and let them build the audio subsystem with an obsessive focus on low latency. Let's aim for no more than 10 samples latency between input and output processing and see where that gets us. - full multitasking in which nothing is ever allowed to block anything else unrelated, through resource reservation (qv the Nemesis research operating system). Having an Electron app on the system should not impair anything else, and the system's default editor should also be focused on low-latency. - apps are by default fully security partitioned from each other. The operating system would maintain a CRDT-based record-orientated personal data storage system, incorporating lessons from PalmOS. This gives both native sync and automatic persistence across power-off. - low latency non-USB keyboard and mouse. PS/2 would actually work but we could go for something really surprising like gigabit Ethernet or optical TOSLINK. (Low latency is a good example of a feature which is extremely hard to retrofit and you end up redesigning the system around it).
- pjmlp 8y ago
  And you left out the way libraries worked, GUI modes, pro-tracker and AMOS?!? :)
- the_af 8y ago
  > keep the graphics card and throw away the legacy CPU If you throw away the CPU, how do you run general purpose programs (of which games are one type)? If the graphics card can run them, why are you not calling it a CPU? The Amiga had a CPU :) Never owned one, but I understand a key feature was that graphics were very easy to program (mapped to main memory, or so a friend who owned one told me).
pjmlp 8y ago
Some ideas come to mind like Surface Pro and Surface Hub.
jcalabro 8y ago
This talk from Casey Muratory of handmade hero might be of interest https://youtu.be/kZRE7HIO3vk https://youtu.be/kZRE7HIO3vk
lsadam0 8y ago
> ...a single hardware spec and a dedicated OS just for that platform. Without regard to backwards compability in OS, like BeOS at the time. I would argue the closest mainstream machines currently available that meet this requirement are Macs and iOS devices. Sure, there's a handful-ish amount of different configurations, but they do not vary greatly. Backwards compatibility certainly isn't much of a concern in macOS.
digi_owl 8y ago
Given that outside of the Switch the consoles are x86 AMD made socs, even consoles have bowed to the PC. In hindsight i feel the Amiga's custom chips was actual an Achilles heel. Yes it allowed each model to sprint out of the gate, but it also limited how far the user could upgrade them. In contrast the only thing on the motherboard of a PC of the era (once we hit the 386 and later) was the CPU and RAM. Everything else lived on replaceable boards hooked to a bus. And as the Pentium era showed, even the bus could be "replaced" by placing a new one (PCI) side by side with the old one (ISA). All this allowed a continuation of sorts, where a humble DOS box could live on into the Win9x era in some way or other.

by wowtip 8y ago

pjc50 8y ago

The three distinctive features of the Amiga: - revolutionary custom graphics hardware - better sound hardware than competitors - pre-emptive multitasking Therefore, if I was attempting something like this today, I would: - make the graphics preeminent in the system. In other words, keep the graphics card and throw away the legacy CPU. Let it drive PCI devices. - on its own, doing that makes it much harder to program, so put considerable work into making the instruction set and programmer's model open and well documented - find a DAW engineer and let them build the audio subsystem with an obsessive focus on low latency. Let's aim for no more than 10 samples latency between input and output processing and see where that gets us. - full multitasking in which nothing is ever allowed to block anything else unrelated, through resource reservation (qv the Nemesis research operating system). Having an Electron app on the system should not impair anything else, and the system's default editor should also be focused on low-latency. - apps are by default fully security partitioned from each other. The operating system would maintain a CRDT-based record-orientated personal data storage system, incorporating lessons from PalmOS. This gives both native sync and automatic persistence across power-off. - low latency non-USB keyboard and mouse. PS/2 would actually work but we could go for something really surprising like gigabit Ethernet or optical TOSLINK. (Low latency is a good example of a feature which is extremely hard to retrofit and you end up redesigning the system around it).

pjmlp 8y ago
And you left out the way libraries worked, GUI modes, pro-tracker and AMOS?!? :)
the_af 8y ago
> keep the graphics card and throw away the legacy CPU If you throw away the CPU, how do you run general purpose programs (of which games are one type)? If the graphics card can run them, why are you not calling it a CPU? The Amiga had a CPU :) Never owned one, but I understand a key feature was that graphics were very easy to program (mapped to main memory, or so a friend who owned one told me).

pjmlp 8y ago

Some ideas come to mind like Surface Pro and Surface Hub.

jcalabro 8y ago

This talk from Casey Muratory of handmade hero might be of interest https://youtu.be/kZRE7HIO3vk https://youtu.be/kZRE7HIO3vk

lsadam0 8y ago

> ...a single hardware spec and a dedicated OS just for that platform. Without regard to backwards compability in OS, like BeOS at the time. I would argue the closest mainstream machines currently available that meet this requirement are Macs and iOS devices. Sure, there's a handful-ish amount of different configurations, but they do not vary greatly. Backwards compatibility certainly isn't much of a concern in macOS.

digi_owl 8y ago

Given that outside of the Switch the consoles are x86 AMD made socs, even consoles have bowed to the PC. In hindsight i feel the Amiga's custom chips was actual an Achilles heel. Yes it allowed each model to sprint out of the gate, but it also limited how far the user could upgrade them. In contrast the only thing on the motherboard of a PC of the era (once we hit the 386 and later) was the CPU and RAM. Everything else lived on replaceable boards hooked to a bus. And as the Pentium era showed, even the bus could be "replaced" by placing a new one (PCI) side by side with the old one (ISA). All this allowed a continuation of sorts, where a humble DOS box could live on into the Win9x era in some way or other.