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[bloodline]

We should name them them Bloodline as they are part of the Amiga bloodline.. and obviously in honour of me :-)

[Cheeeky]

A0S

"a" "zero" "s"

[trekiej]

Where does all this hardware and software information get collected?

1. Dedicated Web site.

2. Pre-amble, manifesto, constitution? Sorry, I have not done this before.

3. Officers?

[bloodline]

trekiej wrote:
Where does all this hardware and software information get collected?

1. Dedicated Web site.

2. Pre-amble, manifesto, constitution? Sorry, I have not done this before.

3. Officers?

I think the first thing you have to do is work out what you want to achieve... right now all you have is a bunch of ideas.

[amigadave]

Well, since Hi-Toro decided to choose a name that would come before "Apple" in choosing "Amiga" (plus it was a friendly term), we should choose another name that would come before (or maybe AFTER) Amiga, such as "All That & A Bag Of Chips", or "Ajax", or "Aim-High", or "Ahh-Nuts!", or "Agate", or "After-The-Fall-of-C=", or "Aerobic-Energy" and rename Workbench "Oxygen"

I think you get my drift. At any rate, I would be interested in joining such consortium. Put my name on a list.

[AMC258]

Please don't call Workbench 'Lifetime Movie Network' (puke)

How about V9IWV. Vglwv would confuse the lawyers for a while!

Why not just get together with the new C= people and let's all use the Commodore name?

How about Lorraine? :roll:

[giturox]

Sounds like a good idea. Currently a replacement OS exists, even a platform independent one (sort of). With Minimig released and a Minimig board commercially available the possibilities does like brighter for new hardware.

Judging from the content of this thread, one of the first tasks would be to weed out the talkers and focus on those people that can do something usefull (like design hardware or program).

I have been toying with thought of pulling AROS 68K out of unmaintained, but this is a huge task and having a consortium where decisions could be taken what direction the Amiga platform should take hardware wise would be nice. Then development could be focused in a future direction, not only aiming backwards.

I can offer hardware design skills (VHDL, analog and digital electronics) and programming (A68k). But my time is severly limited.

[amigadave]

I would love to see a group formed that is interested in creating what the Amiga should have evolved into over the years. A new computer design that uses the latest hardware components available at the moment the group chooses to finalize the design specification.

It should do High Definition TV, so new 3rd party add-on hardware that interfaces with the new TV standard(s) can be invented and run on this new computer just like the Video Toaster did in the A2000 at first. It has to hookup to new TVs, DVD players and HD-DVD/BlueRay DVD players with ease. Genlocking with those new TV standard pieces of equipment should be standard.

Any of today's top of the line graphic cards will provide more than enough processing power for games and applications for years to come, IF the same efficient principles that created the original Amiga are used to design the new system.

Use AmigaOS4 or MorphOS2.x as a base model of our beloved original AmigaOS and build on that to create the OS for the new computer I will call MorMiga just for fun in the rest of this post. Keep the principals that make these two examples different than all the other OSes, keep them small and efficient, true multitasking, but move the bar all the way to the top and be the first OS that truly takes advantage of Quad or Octuple Core CPUs. If we can keep the compatibility that is currently available in AmigaOS4 and/or MorphOS, great! If not create emulation that is as good or better than what is currently available with WinUAE. Keeping compatible so most or all of the legacy Amiga software can be used and enjoyed is key to success until new applications, tools, utilities and games are created for the MorMiga. Design the new MorMigaOS so that almost anyone that has the desire to be creative, can produce their own applications and games for MorMiga, this will bring back the glory days when there were thousands of people developing on the Amiga. A toolkit should be provided with the MorMigaOS that is easy enough that a 10 year old could use it.

Invent a new sound chip like the SuperPaula that I have seen discussed on these forums, or choose a current top of the line sound card to handle all MorMiga sound duties.

Write driver(s) for at least one DVD writer, or better yet, make that a BluRay writer/reader/player.

The Graphics and Sound cards should act exactly like the original Amigas custom chips did, only providing the fantastic performance difference that is available today.

It would be nice to include a 880kb/1.76mb floppy drive and build adf reading/writing software into the MorMigaOS. Yes, floppy disks and drives are DEAD, but they are a big part of the MorMiga's past, and with the intent to provide the best ever emulation and/or legacy compatibility, including the floppy drive and software make sense.

There is much more to add, but I will stop here and just say that I am sure I am not alone in dreaming of a new computer that would be a worthy successor to the Amiga line of computers. Something that should have been, IF ONLY ....... (fill in the rest of the sentence with what ever you have always thought concerning the sad direction the Amiga was taken, instead of what should have been). Who knows what might have been, if Microsoft had not dominated the market the way that they did so soon, or if Commodore had not trashed the chances the Amiga ever had, because of poor, or non-existant marketing, late and hobbled by cost concerns development decisions, too much "IN" fighting, inside Commodore, etc.

All a dream, yes, probably. Where would the money come from and who would do all the development work? It is my hope that the remaining Amiga community would join together and do this for themselves, for it is surely never going to happen by anyone else's hand! If we are going to dream, why not dream BIG! With the current state of the Amiga community, recent developments of MiniMig, NatAmi, CloneA, and the increased interest created by them all, I think that this highly improbable proposal could be remarkable possibility. Only Amiga made it possible in the past. Only the Amiga community makes it possible in the future.

AmigaDave
Amiga ENTHUSIAST!

[bloodline]

@amigadave

That's a very nice little fantasy... But it's not realistic, if the idea of an Amiga is to be real, we need to decide exactly what we want to acheive and why.

I've been here before 5 years ago, so I have no desire to rehash my old OpenAMiGA spec...

But think about it... A reasonable goal would be to create an opensource platform totally compatible with the Amiga500 with the intention of perhaps building an all in one games console... For example.

This is both achieveable and realistic, the minimig needs bug fixes and cost reduction, Aros needs the 68k port to be brought back uptodate (but we would only need 1.3 compatibility)... So there is a lot of work to do, but everything needed is already there. If this can be done then more advanced plans can be made.

[HenryCase]

@thread
Minimig is open source, but I don't think NatAmi or CloneA need to be open source for this consortium to work. What the consortium should be about is defining certain tests that ensure the new machines will be compatible with each other and legacy Amiga systems. For the NatAmi and CloneA it would be the responsibility of the creators to make machines that will pass these tests. Some sort of seal of approval could be worked out.

What it SHOULD NOT be about is providing a design template about what future Amiga machines and operating systems should consist of. I like the fact that Minimig and NatAmi are different. I like the fact that OS4 and MorphOS are different. Gives people choice.

Keep the diversity, improve the compatibility.

[itix]

The key for success of the PC was that there was a open design. Any PC manufacturer could build a "compatible" PC.
I believe that it would be very clever to do the same now for the AMIGA.

Idea is good but I wonder what you could achieve with open Amiga design as in hardware.

PC was never really about 100% compatible HW design but companies just delivered x86 based hardware that could run MS-DOS.

On Amiga it would be enough that you can run Amiga software. It could be just Amithlon, Pegasos or Natami. Running real Kickstart 3.1 or MorphOS or AROS, does not matter. It is up to consumer to decide if he wants Paula audio chip (or compatible implementation), Soundblaster, x86 cpu, PPC, 68k, Radeon 7000, Voodoo 3, AGA, whatever. Natami maybe runs old demos and games while Amithlon does not but Amithlon has (had) other advantages.

Everything should go via drivers. Direct access to custom chips should be provided only for backwards compatibility.

[Einstein]

A6000 wrote:

We also need a reverse engineered operating system.

There already is one, what truely is needed is an *evolved* amiga like OS that's also FLOSS, anything else is a disappointment and a proof of "the Amiga curse", sorry, but that's the inconvenient truth :-)

[A6000]

PC was never really about 100% compatible HW design but companies just delivered x86 based hardware that could run MS-DOS.

On Amiga it would be enough that you can run Amiga software. It could be just Amithlon, Pegasos or Natami. Running real Kickstart 3.1 or MorphOS or AROS, does not matter. It is up to consumer to decide if he wants Paula audio chip (or compatible implementation), Soundblaster, x86 cpu, PPC, 68k, Radeon 7000, Voodoo 3, AGA, whatever. Natami maybe runs old demos and games while Amithlon does not but Amithlon has (had) other advantages.

Everything should go via drivers. Direct access to custom chips should be provided only for backwards compatibility.

The key goal should be 100% compatibility, in years to come it would be nice to be able to buy new software that will run on new or old hardware without any problems.
The machines will just work. no problems with driver/ hardware incompatibilities.
AROS 68k should have all the features of AROS PPC.
Programs written for AROS PPC should also run on AROS 68k without recompiling, which suggests a hardware independant code like VP code or an interpreted language.
Forget about floppy disks, people can use a classic amiga or a USB floppy if they really want one.

[HenryCase]

Einstein wrote:

There already is one, what truely is needed is an *evolved* amiga like OS that's also FLOSS, anything else is a disappointment and a proof of "the Amiga curse", sorry, but that's the inconvenient truth :-)

"Evolved" being the key word there, i.e. it needs to grow from our existing tech.

The OS is second in priority to the hardware IMO, need to draw up hardware tests first.

[HenryCase]

A6000 wrote:
AROS 68k should have all the features of AROS PPC.

NOOOOOOO! Why hold back development of features for AROS PPC that AROS 68k can't handle? There should be a base level of compatibility between the two but the systems don't need to be identical to achieve that.

A6000 wrote:
Programs written for AROS PPC should also run on AROS 68k

What about programs that need to take low level access of a machine? If it's possible to make a program easy to port then the developer should see that as a good thing anyway.