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[JJ]

Wasn't the jaguar actually two 32bit chips.

I bought one years after they came out. Thought they were awful

[runequester]

Originally Posted by JJ

Wasn't the jaguar actually two 32bit chips.

I bought one years after they came out. Thought they were awful

They had some sort of convoluted scheme to make it "add up" to 64 bits. Apparently also made it really hard to code for

[JJ]

bit like the saturn

[commodorejohn]

Sort of. The Saturn's bigger problem was that the whole thing was ungodly complex (two main CPUs and half a dozen supporting chips/CPUs contending for various subsets of nearly a dozen different memory areas!) I gather this is because it basically came out of Sega corporate mashing up a follow-up attempt for the 32x onto an existing CD console project and making them throw in 3D acceleration at the last minute...gah!

[persia]

Also Saturn has only six games when it was released and cost $100 more than PS.

[Nlandas]

Originally Posted by runequester

The complaint levelled against OS 4 was always that the hardware was too expensive for what it did, and that the only reason people were clinging to it was the name.

The complaint levelled against CUSA is that the hardware is too expensive for what it does, and that the only reason people are clinging to it is the name.


Everything thats wrong is right again?
The world is backwards?


EDIT: In order to facilitate discussion:

Does the name matter?
What makes a machine amiga?
Is anything post CBM amiga?

For me it was the small elegant OS that booted quickly, got out of my way, was easy to tweak without a lot of knowledge and kept evolving more capabilities while not consuming massive quantities of RAM, processor, etc.

Now I know I'll be crucified but the custom chips were revolutionary but can now be emulated faster on the cheapest and slowest of todays modern hardware platforms. They are irrelevant in todays world and have been replaced by custom sound and graphics chips that are much faster. Dave Haynie convinced me of this back in the early 90s when he'd talk online with the community.

So for me Amiga IS the OS. AmigaOS. Now if someone makes and OS that is just as elegant and modernizes it - I AM SO ALL OVER IT. It should run on a standard readily available diverse hardware platform though. (Read 'evil PC clone') I'd license multiple copies just to support the cause and I might even buy a pre-built computers running it.

None of the systems coming out that are PCs and only running Linux or Android(Linux) are Commodore or Amiga. I think the retro Commodore machines are simply a neat little retro-flashback. Much like the people who put miniITX into the real old C64 cases to run a C64 emulator. That's all - it's not really a 64. The Amiga branded devices running Android aren't an Amiga either - without the OS or similar OS.

However, yes the Commodore brand name is just that - a brand name. They made - CPM machines, DOS machines/Windows, Unix machines, custom 8-bit Microsoft Basic OS machines and yes our favorite AmigaOS machines. I didn't see anyone arguing that the Commodore name was anything other than a brand name back then. If Atari had bought the Amiga, it would still have been just as ground breaking.

The Amiga name is something different. Look at the transition that Mac made from Classic OS to OS X and PowerPC to Intel. Would you argue that modern Macs aren't Macs? Most normal people wouldn't, Franko?(Just kidding), because they retained their unique OS through the transition. I would argue that the AmigaOS, if ported to Intel x86 and modernized would then allow anyone to call that computer an Amiga. Especially, if they are cool and add backwards compatibility through emulation - just like Apple did for older software on OS X.

I will never forget the innovation and experience that the custom chips when coupled with AmigaOS brought to the world for the first time - EVER. They were simply 15 years ahead of their time. However, today - the custom chips have been surpassed by other models of co-processing and it's the OS that really retains the identity that can carry forward today and into the future.

Today, I still don't see an OS that really feels like AmigaOS to me. I still think there is potential for that user experience to exist and that the market is never closed to a competitor that offers a unique user experience. I use Linux(SuSe, Unbuntu), Andoroid(Linux), Windows 7 and even sometimes Mac OS X. None of them offer the same user experience as the old AmigaOS, there is still something special there even if it must evolve significantly to incorporate modern OS technologies.

Would someone Open Source the existing AmigaOS code already so someone can get busy porting it to AMD?

-Nyle

[Belial6]

Originally Posted by bloodline

Custom chips are designed by a company for a specific product, the alternative is "off the shelf", where a company buys in chips designed by another company.

The Amiga's chipset was custom designed for the Amiga, it's CPU was an off-the-shelf part made by Motorolla for general sale.

That is kind of what I am getting at though. Like psxphill said, some custom chips are good, and some are not.

There is no value to users in having a chip custom. Being the only system running the chip does not increase the performance of that system. The 'Custom-ness' of the 'custom' chipset did not improve the Amiga in any way. It was the 'coprocessor-ness' of the 'custom' chipset that made the Amiga shine.

This misunderstanding of why the Amiga chipsets where good lead many Amiga fans down a self destructive path. They start obsessing on having the system 'custom' for custom's sake because they have come to believe that custom = good and cots = bad.

With all other things being equal, cots > custom. The only time that custom is a better choice is when it brings something to the table that out weighs the cost benefit (for manufacture as well as further R&D) of using cots parts. The fact that the Amiga had a 68k showed that Amiga understood this.

[thedocbwarren]

I always thought the whole 'custom chips' thing on the Amiga was strange anyway. The Amiga was unique for the co-processor design. It's a great idea that worked real well for Jay's other system Atari 8-bit. The opposite for the Mac and Atari ST. That being a CPU and not much else.

That being said, this is why I have a hard time with the idea that a PC with some Amiga-like OS on it seems like an alternative OS and not an Amiga. I guess it's all lost in ambiguity since most machines these days are not 'systems' but collections of similar parts with some OS on it. I guess that's where it gets hard to classify. That's even true for consoles.

[Iggy]

All computers have to perform the same tasks and all computers use 'custom' chips (unless they're based on SOCs which is about as 'custom' as you get).
Yeah, Amigas worked well when they were current. Today's computers work even better. What worked well in the '90's isn't necessary these days.
So what's left except the OS?
I like MorphOS and AOS4 'cause they're compact, efficient, and boot quick. Very Amiga-like.

[trekiej]

Saturn:
SH2 cpu
SH2 cpu
SH1 cdrom, cart, math coproc
VDP1 sprite/ background
VDP2 sprite / play field ?
68000 ?
Yamaha Sound Synthesiser
8 total?
During the playing of Dark Saviour it slowed
They were able to make it do things toward the end that were not originally advertised.

[AmigaNG]

Originally Posted by takemehomegrandma

If you are going to sell to a bunch of ~200 tech nerds "an insanely overpriced piece of unproven HW with 2007 level performance and features nobody really needs, wants and even knows what it is for, bundled with an incomplete, feature lacking and rather unstable take on what Amiga OS was about", then NO!

Or you could say, selling a 111Euro incomplete, feature lacking and slightly unstable take on what Amiga OS could be with MUI on old out dated second hand macs hardware systems, then NO!

Just saying
---------------------------------
Does the name matter?
YES, proof of how strong the brand is just becuase CommodoreOS was named Workbench 5 it got a lot more of intrest and since its change its name I've not seen as much discussion on the matter.

What makes a machine amiga?
Well to me it certainly not just the Brand name, it different things to different people, but the most important thing to me is that it must be still fun to use and the 'amiga' community is part of it.

Is anything post CBM amiga?
The only real Amiga is the prototype Amiga Lorriane, after that it was a Commodore Amiga, then Escom Amiga, Gateway Amiga, Amino Amiga, C=USA Amiga, IContains Amiga, Hyperion Amiga, each one had their own vision of what the Amiga should be, becuase Commodore Amiga was the one that launch Amiga and the only successful Amiga and the one we all know, a large part of the community will only every see them as Amiga. I think had a Commodore Amiga with HP Risk and the other stuff they where going to bring had been relased there would be no question that it was an Amiga, had the AmigaMCC came out I think a lot of people would of felt that was Amiga, if AmigaDE/Anywhere took off that might of been considered Amiga, but at the end of the day I think for me whats made me stay is more the community than any one product, AmigaN's and the Amiga ride/story is just too fun to get off now and I'm glad I'm still here, because if it was just about Multimedia, Multitasking and pushing the OS forward I think we should of all been talking about BeOS by now.

[Duce]

Use what you like, lol. I used my SAM today. Had fun. Fiddled around with the mini and Morph a bit, good times.

Loaded my server/UAE box to add FILE_ID.diz files to the entire Aminet archive for the BBS that's hosted on said SAM, networked via SAMBA from SAM to the UAE/WinXP slipstream box.

All good times. The Amiga community was always a bunch of semantic weirdos, nice to see nothing has changed.

[AndyLandy]

Originally Posted by persia

Had Amiga survived it would have likely followed the Mac route, first to PPC retaining a classic environment for a time until software caught up and then moving to X86 with a Rosetta layer that would eventually be abandoned as software caught up. Unfortunately it didn't and so you have the Coelacanth OS you have today....

That's always been the way I'd have expected things to go. Compare to the Mac world, which is the only real analogue: Do you consider OSX on Intel to be 'Mac' in the same way that the classic 68k Macs were?

I'd say 'yes', but I think the big difference is that the transition was always there. PPC Mac OS still ran 68k code. Eventually the 68k compatibility went, but the platform had moved on. Now we're on x86 and the PPC compatibility days are numbered. There's old Mac software I simply can't run any more, but my x86 Macs are just as much Macs as my old PPC or 68k ones.

The problem Amiga has is that the gap was too long and the Amiga-ness got lost somewhere along the lines. AmigaPPC never really took off. PPC cards for the classics weren't tremendously popular at the time and the newer PPC-only 'Amigas' had no backwards compatibility, there was nothing to tie them to what people already considered 'Amiga'

As for me, it's only an Amiga if I can boot it off my Lemmings floppy. If Natami can do that, it's an Amiga in my book!

[matt3k]

My 2 cents (400 cents if you factor in inflation).


Does the name matter? The name really doesn't have value because it is way to diluted in the market place. An Amiga means so much to so many.


What makes a machine amiga? For me, my Amiga 3000 is an Amiga since it was engineered and built by cbm and my Peg II is an Amiga because I agree with Persia, if the Commodore didn't go belly up, they most likely would have went to PPC similar to AOS 4 or MOS and dumped the custom chip route. So Peg II and MOS is the best modern for me.


Is anything post CBM amiga? Sure, the name is destroyed by usage, I have an Amiga branded pen, that must be an Amiga ...

[bloodline]

Interestingly I don't think of the Machines that we now call Macintosh as the same machines from the past. I thought MacOS 1 through to 9 were utter crap, with hardware that was crippled and expensive.

For me the current Macs are consumer branded NeXTstep machines, and I love them

In reality Commodore would only have survived if it had become a Multimedia Card maker for PCs... It would be like Nvidia now