Anyone ever use Amiga 4.1?

[swoll1980]

A friend of mine is giving me a Genesi ODW (1GHz 1GB RAM) with a ATI Radeon GPU and Amiga OS 4.1 installed on it. I had never heard of any of this stuff before. I heard of Amiga, but thought it was a pc company from the 80s. I did a little research. The Amiga OS looks like it's pretty advanced for an OS that no one I know has ever heard of. Have you ever used this before? What did you think?

[DeadSuperHero]

I've really wanted to. I'm actually waiting with bated breath for the A-Eon X1000, which is being produced in conjunction with Hyperion Entertainment (the guys behind the AmigaOS 4.x series)

Edit: Ars Technica has a really great review of the OS4.1 release.

[swoll1980]

I'm actually waiting with bated breath for the A-Eon X1000, which is being .

Sounds exciting. The A-Eon X1000, that is. I'll go check out that Amiga 4.1 review.

link (http://arstechnica.com/software/news/2008/09/amigaos41-ars.ars) in case anyone else wants to see

[mips]

The Amiga OS looks like it's pretty advanced for an OS that no one I know has ever heard of. Have you ever used this before? What did you think?

The Amiga hardware & OS beat IBM clones & OS as well as Macs hands down back in the day. It was way advanced for it's time. Problem was the idiots at Commodore that could not sell lemonade in a desert. Great shame they went under.

How old are these people that have never heard of it before? I had a couple of Amigas back in the day and would love one of the newer hardware platforms with the new OS on it. Actually wish they would opensource it and port it to standard x86 architecture.

It was basically a love affair to be honest. No machine/os since then has made computing feel as exiting I'm sorry to say.

Be prepared to be amazed at how fast an OS can run on limited hardware.

[toupeiro]

The Amiga hardware & OS beat IBM clones & OS as well as Macs hands down back in the day. It was way advanced for it's time. Problem was the idiots at Commodore that could not sell lemonade in a desert. Great shame they went under.

How old are these people that have never heard of it before? I had a couple of Amigas back in the day and would love one of the newer hardware platforms with the new OS on it. Actually wish they would opensource it and port it to standard x86 architecture.

It was basically a love affair to be honest. No machine/os since then has made computing feel as exiting I'm sorry to say.

Be prepared to be amazed at how fast an OS can run on limited hardware.

My first exposure to computers was on an Amiga A500. I concur that they were awesome systems. Can't say that I want it to jump over to x86 architecture though. Quite a bit of what I personally believe Amiga was able to deliver is due to the fact it was truly custom. What little interest I had in macs, I lost when they started throwing Intel chips in them. Not that I have anything against modern Intel chips at all, but my enthusiasm for any reborn Amiga will stay much higher if it stays true to what made an Amiga great in the first place. Throwing x86 architecture at it makes it "just another PC".

[Swagman]

Swoll

I am a long time Amiga enthusiast, being the main instigator for the Amiga Big Bash shows here in Peterborough.

I too am awaiting the release of the X1000 but I haven't updated my A1 to Os4.1 yet.

Here's a little vid of my 800mhz AmigaOne in action (Os4)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSAhR7uXcCc

[mips]

Can't say that I want it to jump over to x86 architecture though.

Throwing x86 architecture at it makes it "just another PC".

I agree with you to an extent. My main reasoning would be price and accessibility. The current PPC systems are expensive considering what you get and secondly a real pain to get hold of. If this could change I would be a very happy camper. I hate x86 as much as the next guy but unfortunately it's all around us.

[dragos240]

Look at this guys (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f8/AmigaOS_4.1-b.png)

Look at the Directory icon, it kind of looks like the old KDE symbol.

[koshatnik]

A friend of mine is giving me a Genesi ODW (1GHz 1GB RAM) with a ATI Radeon GPU and Amiga OS 4.1 installed on it. I had never heard of any of this stuff before. I heard of Amiga, but thought it was a pc company from the 80s. I did a little research. The Amiga OS looks like it's pretty advanced for an OS that no one I know has ever heard of. Have you ever used this before? What did you think?

Amiga invented the modern OS. Workbench was awesome. I still have an AMiaga somewhere, gathering dust....

[toupeiro]

I agree with you to an extent. My main reasoning would be price and accessibility. The current PPC systems are expensive considering what you get and secondly a real pain to get hold of. If this could change I would be a very happy camper. I hate x86 as much as the next guy but unfortunately it's all around us.

Current top-end x86 systems, ones where I think would be in competition with a modern PPC by amiga, aren't in the normal PC consumers desired price range either. There is a premium associated with buying high end regardless of platform. Heck, look at your name. I somewhat recently decommissioned some 12-year old MIPS powered servers that were still doing what they were sopposed to be doing performance wise. Twelve years ago, they paid a higher premium than any x86 system available at that time, but the signs of antiquation showed in software and availability long before performance and workload handling. The cost of the amiga isn't quite to that scale, but the performance curve in the desktop market mirrors what MIPS was in the server market historically. People that want it will get it, and they won't be disappointed I don't think. Amiga has never catered to the masses.

The graphic designers of the movie Titanic used a program called Lightwave3D on Amiga to design a good portion of the graphics. That's a taste of what Amiga's were capable of, then. Don't kid yourself, a huge part of that had to do with its platform. :)

[TenPlus1]

AmigaOs was definately state of the art when it came out and did many things that pc's could only dream of at the time... I had my amiga built into a tower with a ppc processor and 3d gfx card when normal pc's could just about manage 256 colours and 800x600 resoluions... Amiga Workbench was very easy to use and never needed a reboot when upgrading or installing and was very versatile... Although it didn't have many of the features found in today's Os' but AmigaOs 4.1 seems to have remedied most of this... Try WinUAE emulator on linux for some insight :)

[swoll1980]

You guys got me excited now. I have to wait until Friday to see this thing, but can't wait.


You got me excited about Amiga in general. I might have to look into getting one of these new ones that are coming out.

[DeadSuperHero]

Yeah, I don't even care how much the X1000 is going to cost. It's unique, right down to the system design.

CPU: Dual-core PowerISA™ v2.04+ CPU (Meaning PowerPC hardware)
Co-processor: "Xena" XMOS XS1-L1 128 SDS
Audio: 7.1 channel HD audio
Memory: 4× DDR2 SDRAM slots
10× USB 2.0
1× Gigabit Ethernet
2× PCIe x16 slots (1x16 or 2x8)
2× PCIe x1 slots
1× Xorro slot (giving access to "Xena")
2× PCI legacy slots
2× RS-232
4× [[SATA 2] connectors
1× IDE connector
JTAG connector
1× Compact Flash


Some of these components are things I've never even heard of before I read up on the X1000. Co-Processor? Xorro? XMOS?

But after reading up on it all, it's exciting stuff. For all I know, it could easily be a few grand, but I'd just as soon pay for it and hold on to it for dear life.

[toupeiro]

Co-processors are not a new concept, even in the x86 platforms. FPU's and GPU's are all types of co-processors, that term is just not used as much amymore. (the effect of a set of compute cycles being offloaded to another processing unit for faster results is generally qualified as a co-processor to the Central Processing Unit (CPU)). Pre-pentium, this was the big difference between the 386 and 486 SX and DX lines of hardware. SX were systems without the means of a math co-processor, and DX were systems with math co-processors integrated into the motherboard.

[yester64]

The Amiga hardware & OS beat IBM clones & OS as well as Macs hands down back in the day. It was way advanced for it's time. Problem was the idiots at Commodore that could not sell lemonade in a desert. Great shame they went under.

How old are these people that have never heard of it before? I had a couple of Amigas back in the day and would love one of the newer hardware platforms with the new OS on it. Actually wish they would opensource it and port it to standard x86 architecture.

It was basically a love affair to be honest. No machine/os since then has made computing feel as exiting I'm sorry to say.

Be prepared to be amazed at how fast an OS can run on limited hardware.

I'll feel you.
It was the only computer with a true love and really for the rest of us. Since it was very affordable.
It was actually the only computer where you could have an editor who could cut down a text in the middle > CygnusEd!
Never to be found again. Sadly.
Anyone remembers still AmiXpress? Or CNet? I had for years a mailbox running on both apps. Truely, i have very fond memories about that time.

P.s. /X was a very easy to use software. All configs were saved in the icon's. How easy can you make a software, if not like this.

[K.Mandla]

The Amiga hardware & OS beat IBM clones & OS as well as Macs hands down back in the day. It was way advanced for it's time. Problem was the idiots at Commodore that could not sell lemonade in a desert. Great shame they went under.

How old are these people that have never heard of it before? I had a couple of Amigas back in the day and would love one of the newer hardware platforms with the new OS on it. Actually wish they would opensource it and port it to standard x86 architecture.

It was basically a love affair to be honest. No machine/os since then has made computing feel as exiting I'm sorry to say.

Be prepared to be amazed at how fast an OS can run on limited hardware.

+1 on all points.

[mips]

It was actually the only computer where you could have an editor who could cut down a text in the middle > CygnusEd!
Never to be found again. Sadly.

Please don't, you are bringing tears to my eyes :D

I have not come across anything closely resembling CygnusEd on any platform.

Apparently the license of an older version is open source. I sent off emails but never got any response *sigh*

[mips]

Current top-end x86 systems, ones where I think would be in competition with a modern PPC by amiga, aren't in the normal PC consumers desired price range either. There is a premium associated with buying high end regardless of platform. Heck, look at your name.

I can buy a quad core x86 system right now for less than the price of a Amiga PPC motherboard and don't tell me the amiga systems has a better spec. If it was ported to x86 it would kill the PPC platform the current MB is based on.

No need to remind me of my name, I'm all to familiar with MIPS & SGI. Just like VHS vs Betamax we all know the best system does not always win, that's life ;)

[yester64]

Please don't, you are bringing tears to my eyes :D

I have not come across anything closely resembling CygnusEd on any platform.

Apparently the license of an older version is open source. I sent off emails but never got any response *sigh*

You may remember SnoopDos too. Haven't found that either. This tool made my life so easy.

Btw. i have to research CygnusEd again. If there is an opensource version, perhaps it can be...well..
sadly, i sold all my software that time. But it is still developed for the Amiga if i am correct.