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[James]

Hola!

Some things I've noticed while trying to setup some stuff on my amigas... Why is it that the Amiga has a very long, extensive history of being owned/supported by people with very hungry pockets that don't actually contribute much to keeping it alive? By that I mean..

As I understand it there are basically two amiga families right now, the classic amigas, and the new modern ones (amithlon, os4). And there doesn't seem to be any actually development made on the classic OSes anymore. So why would people get the rights to them and block their distribution and try to sell run down copies as part of an emulation package when they could ensure a longer life for the actual machines if the stuff needed to set them up properly was available?

Let's face it, the classic amiga is finished, in the sense that it won't go anywhere else than where it is right now it terms of OS development. What will keep it alive is hardware additions like Elbox does (even though I find the prices a wee bit high) and software support from a community that wouldn't have to worry about getting a system up and running. I think all classic KS roms and system disks should be made available by whoever owns the rights at the moment lest the real physical amigas disappear in favor of emulation.

I am very grateful for the emulation scene mind you. But even with huge companies like Nintendo and Sega, you don't need to buy all sorts of overpriced and incomplete packages to get a functional NES/SNES or Megadrive emulator running and that has kept the scene so alive, that the people really get in to the real hardware and every few months you see someone who super-modified a console into something very very cool while most amigas end up in a 200$ dbox running os 3.9 because that's basically the only legal option available.

Nobody benefits from the sale of these things anymore... The original creators of these products don't see a penny from this. I can understand that owning the licenses and making the products commercially available requires some sort of business operation going on and I for one would not mind paying a few dollars to get the products legally. But right now, this isn't even an option. Nobody sells complete original copies of wb1.3 2.04 2.1 3.0 and 3.1 as far as I can tell. The only available copies are on Amiga Forever and they don't include the full sets of install disks, only disk 1 of everyset (the wb itself).

We see all kind of efforts by the users to keep the machine alive like this site... like (rip?) back2roots, like planetemu, like so many others. But I don't feel the same level of support from the people who own the rights to these old gizmos we love so much.

my my.... that was a lot of negative energy right there. Well it had to come out! I hope I don't offend anyone

[Piru]

I tried to resist it... but I failed miserably. Sorry :-)

[ChaosLord]

:horse:

[NoFastMem]

James wrote:
my my.... that was a lot of negative energy right there. Well it had to come out! I hope I don't offend anyone

Doubt anyone read past the first paragraph, to be fair.

[James]

Erm... I was sort of expecting that... then why support ridiculously large archives like aminet if all the software that's there need something that is unavailable to run?

[deBrun]

You're missing a lot of history!


Try here!

http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/amigahistory.html

[James]

Nah I know about the new amigas, and frankly it looks too much like a bad tv drama to get me interested. Every two weeks some new geek buys the thing and it starts all over again. But the classic/dead amigas should have their kick/wb offered up for grabs on a website somewhere, at least up to 3.1.