Updated AmigaOS4 SDK Available

Mike Bouma writes "Closely following the update for the AmigaOS4 Pre-release, the updated Software Development Kit (SDK) is now also available. Meanwhile some first people have been able to buy Mini-ITX MicroA1-C boards and last weekend at a British Amiga Party one was even raffled amongst its visitors. Also some first photographs of the Micro AmigaOne Industrial motherboard (aka u-A1-I) have been revealed at the party. For an impression with regard to AmigaOS4's current state of development, within this recent show report there are links to some earlier demonstration videos."

OS4Depot - center of OS4 files

[Mike Bouma]

Since the release of the developer Pre-release earlier this year there's already a steady growing list of native AmigaOS4 software.

The central AmigaOS4 download portal can be found at:
http://www.os4depot.net/

A majority of freely distributable OS4 files can be found at OS4Depot.

Getting nostalgic?

[GQuon]

Getting nostalgic for your old Amiga?
The "Back to the Roots" [back2roots.org] software archive offers free legal downloads of many games, demos, pictures, etc.
Amiga Forever is a polished emulator solution with licensed operating system for sale by Cloanto Software, in a download version or a CD version that even can be booted from Knoppix-style.

There is a reason why this is in the developers section: It's ready for people to develop on, but not for general consumer release. But think about how quick the Amiga OS and GUI was running on 7,14 and 50 MHz Motorola 680x0 processors, and extrapolate that to a 800MHz G4. Of course there's more colours and new stuff, but they've kept the efficiency.

Speaking of which, I should get the newest upgrade to OS 4.0 this week. Been busy. PPC native graphics!

Multitasking OS

[BrookHarty]

My favorite aspect of the Amiga was how well it was laid out, the easy of use, both cli and gui, and it multitasked perfectly. But it had slow disk access, and network access was tacked on, and the colors of the basic workbench needed to be upgraded with a 3rd party addon (magicwb).. Not everything was perfect, but shareware was much better quality than PC of the day.

But, the new OS4 on PPC is sweet, back to smooth multitasking, easy upgrade path, tons of modern hardware support with special IO ports (via headers). Not sure about the 1 PCI port...

I remember when I got WinNT and a dual CPU box, Finally real multitasking, the system was smoothed by its crippled x86 setup. Even floppy access could pause the system (And still does have interrupt locks on Linux/BSD) Cdrom spinup still ticks me off when its 2004 and a cdrom insert can pause explorer, sheesh.... (no its not autorun, give me some credit)

I picked up an OSX box to play around with, put on darwinports, a fully unix box. And since all my favorite applications are opensource, it doesn't matter what machine I'm on, I have my normal applications. (Ok, I miss putty and Counterstrike, but WC3 works..)

Anyone remember BeOS? That system was a multimedia multitasking monster for its day, but lack of applications and slow gcc port really crippled its acceptance. (Also wasnt this around the time we switched from gcc2.9x?) Humm, it also wasn't free...

I'm rather looking forward to the new Amiga with OS4, see what technology for the interface and inside the system. I just wish we could of gotten here years ago before Commodore sunk the company, and the many years of torture of news tidbits.

Also, Amiga got me interested in Linux, after setting it up for networking back in the day, I learned about compiling slirp, and tcp stacks, .conf files, hell, started my hacker track..

I didnt just say "Back in the day" did I? Damn....

Re:Multitasking OS

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm rather looking forward to the new Amiga [...]

There is no "new Amiga" [nyud.net]. That's one of the points with AmigaOS4 and beyond. The "Micro Amigaone" mentioned in the article is another name for the Teron Mini [mai.com] from MAI.

It's just that we're forced to pretend [nyud.net] that there will be "Amiga hardware". Of course this will kill AmigaOS and makes the whole project a waste of time, but at least the proud tradition of utter incompetence and mismanagement throughout Amiga history has survived.

Re:Multitasking OS

[Bert64]

But OS4 is pricey and ultimately doomed to failure.. Not only do you need to pay for the OS, but you also need to pay for the hardware to run it on, you can`t run it on just any PPC machine. People won't be willing to splash out just to try OS4. Linux is slowly gaining acceptance because it costs nothing to try it and you can use your existing hardware, OS4 doesn't have that advantage, and also with a slow uptake then apps will be developed very slowly. The original Amiga was successfull as a games platform

Re:Multitasking OS

[Seehund]

But OS4 is pricey and ultimately doomed to failure..

The OS is priced similarly to other OSes. US$75-100.

But me listing this price separately is rather pointless, unfortunately.

As you say, Amiga Inc in their infinite wisdom (or rather: incompetence, and disinterest in AmigaOS in favour of their PocketPC "strategy") decided that despite there not being any plans for new Amigas, you should have to buy a "new Amiga" anyway. I.e., AmigaOS will only ever be released for PPC hardware that the manufacturer or

Re:Multitasking OS

[Bert64]

It was ultimately price that drove me away from the Amiga... Mostly the price of basic internet software which is free or bundled on all other platforms, but also the high prices of hardware which is by no means cutting edge enough to demand such high price points. Most amiga hardware that's been available for the past 8 or so years has been equivalent to previous generation(s) x86 hardware but at a higher price point than mac hardware (which is usually of a far higher quality) infact some amiga hardware i

Buy OSX

[GQuon]

OK, you've tried OSX. Now go buy it. Or should Apple be content with that you're "likely to buy new macs in the future"?

Re:Multitasking OS

[Lord Kano]

Ok, I miss putty

Well then download that bitch [earth.li], compile it and miss no more.

LK

Re:Just in time!

[NiceGeek]

Did you have a point or are you just bitching? I just love you guys who come on here and act like anything that isn't a mainstream OS is a mortal insult to you.

Re:Just in time!

[anarchic_teapot]

Dear Anonymous Coward,

Yes

Yours faithfully,

An AmigaOne dealer, who actually knows what the mobo and OS look like

Re:Just in time!

[abelikoff]

Instead of repeating the same propaganda-style cliches, consider an average software vendor. Given the opportunity to invest in porting their software to an obscure OS running on incompatible hardware with an incompatible (to UNIX9x, Win32, Java 2, .NET) API set, how big is the chance they would go for it?

As for the OS "that fills your hard disk" - unless AmigaOS is capable of running from a 128Mb USB dongle, I really don't care whether it takes 250Mb or 10Gb on my hard drive. I use my PC to actually run

Re:Just in time!

[mdwh2]

Finally, always remember the Law of Duality. This explains very nicely why neither AmigaOS, nor BeOS would ever enjoy significant popularity on the market.

That article says that the Law of Duality doesn't apply to the software industry. So by this logic, nothing other than Windows will ever enjoy "significant popularity of the market".

Of course, it depends on what is "significant". No one is claiming that AmigaOS is going to be a market leader, but that doesn't mean it can't exist at all. In all of the e

Re:Just in time!

[abelikoff]

The article actually tries to consider whether the law applies to software. In my opinion, this is exactly the case where it applies nicely.

You are absolutely right about small fish which would continue to exist along with the two biggest players. Remember however, that unlike hamburgers or vacuum cleaners, an operating system is a platform for other software, so considering it in isolation would be a mistake. Just imagine if my company came out with a tape recorder that would use a completely different c

Re:Just in time!

[mdwh2]

Just imagine if my company came out with a tape recorder that would use a completely different cassette type. Can it exist in theory along the standard formats - absolutely! Would it be able to exist (esp. as a commercial entity) - probably not.

There are various different incompatible formats for music storage out there, including proprietary ones (eg, Sony's Minidisc).

Certainly this is the a reason why we have a monopoly in the market of operating systems, but it clearly isn't true that there is one and

Props.

[terrox]

Awesome. Dunno what to do with it, but awesome none-the-less.

Maybe run cygwin on windows on top of Pc emulator running on OS4. ?

maybe have a game of Megaball

USD 500+ ???

[DAldredge]

The damn board is over 500 USD after you add in the mandatory OS license. Why are they selling it for so much? This isn't an SBC or anything like that, if they want to grow the market they are going to have to lower the price.

Re:USD 500+ ???

[Mike Bouma]

You should be able to buy these boards just with Linux in the future as well, which would then save you the cost having to buy AmigaOS4, but obviously those boards would be branded Amiga.

The reason for the relatively high cost is that the companies are initially dealing with a low volume market. That's why Alan Redhouse has been demonstrating the AmigaOne and AmigaOS4 to Chinese officials and important business representatives.

For the long run higher volume hardware sales would be very important for the s

Re:British Amiga Party

[Mike Bouma]

Such parties should IMO not be compared to Amiga fairs. These are just some nice gettogethers events where Amiga supporters can talk about their favourite platform. Have a friendly chat at the bar or having a barbecue are somethings some Amiga users like to do.

Have a look at this video of a Swedish Amiga party earlier this year, to get the idea:
http://www.mhd.mh.se/shoe/os4-party/

As you see it's just people getting together, eating barbecue food, eating AmigaOS4 cakes and truly enjoying themselves. Howeve

Re:British Amiga Party

[nicomen]

AmigaExpo [polarboing.com] held in Norway's third largest city with a ten days announcement had 100 visitors.

PegasosPPC + MorphOS owns

[Rares Marian]

AOS is produced by halfwits at Hyperion who still use 68k code for the PowerPC OS.

The Amiga was what the PC should have been.

[master_p]

Unfortunately, the best did not win for one more time. Artifacts of the crappy x86 architecture still exists; for example, when the floppy/cd is accessed, the PC pauses.

Commodore had a diamond in their hands. Unfortunately for us, they did not know how to handle it.