General yatta


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There is a chap on Ebay selling GP32 games for £35.00 - yet you can go to the respective sites and pay conciderably less. Likewise almost £192 for a stock FLU.. inc P&P. Wishfull thinkng me thinks.. Mind you Im looking for a FLU at the moment.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...04&category=187

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie...99&category=187

At the weekend Axeman and I went to a demonstration of AmigaOS 4. We showed the GP32 to Amiga's CTO. He was impressed by the device. Amiga have a write code once, run it anywhere technology called Amiga Anywhere (AA) which makes software totally portable. Most of what they have done has been written with a PDA aspect ratio in mind - so it can work on the desktop as well as scale down for the PDA... If only the GP32 had an extra button you could turn it on its side and run this content in that vertical way, as the AA player can either be hosted or run native. (its not quite as simple as that - but if the player was ported it would be for us end users). He asked us questions about dev kits which Axeman was able to answer better than my "um... dev... codeing...whats that all about then" ;) He also asked about the price - we gave an approximation of around £140 for a FLU and about £120 for a regular flavour.
 
Sounds like the same idea as java -same piece of code will run on any OS as long as they have the java runtime installed.

what sort of software did they have running? we talking about games or apps?
 
So what was OS4 like in action? The screen shots over at amiga.com don't really give much of an idea what it's really like.
 
@ ardnut


Correct. It sounds a lot like Java - but with with one significant major difference. You can write in whatever language you so wish. Code in C - basic , forth, Peral.. etc.. and maybe even mix languages up. A little bit of C - some assembly...

You can code it in anything - as long as its written to use AA. Think of AA as Virtual Scalable Hardware. Its fast as well - the Hardware abstraction layer occupies 15k if that!! You dont notice this layer. It just runs. You download a game to your linux/wintel box - play it. Download to your PDA - play it Your microwave has a processor in it (albeit a basic one) well if the micro had a keyboard and screen - you could play it.

Download the game to your DVD player... Basically anything that has a processor can run this stuff.

Simple applications have been made - but its games at the moment as that is where most of the money is. But there is no reason why something like photoshop could not be written for it. If your PDA was super dooper it would run - and the same binary would work on your linux box, or wintel machine. Cool ;)
 
@ Dave18


It was nice. Very Fast as well. It now runs on PPC hardware, and on a low end G3 the whole OS could boot back after a warm reset in under 10 seconds. They apologised that is wasnt faster - but they are still working on the faster IDE drivers. When those are done they estimate that boot times will be halved.


It is currently at the Alpha stage - that is to say it is usable, but it does crash sometimes. They are still working on two major componants - the IDE, and the graphics libarary. When they are done it will go to beta - and current AmigaOne (next gen hardware) oweners will be given the task of beta testing. General polishing etc will then commence. They have implemented a basic transparent emulator as well to save time - for a some of the legacy things (tied to the old hardware) will be gotten rid of by the time we get to OS 5, so there is no point in porting them - but OS 4 is being designed so that it will also work on classic Amigas that have powerPC cards in them so it has to support them for the time being.

It felt very much like the old OS - (you could still flip screens, but currently you cant drag them - as that was a feauture of the custom chips. But it can be emulated in the new super fast hardware we have) but faster, and with some essential 2003 upgrades such as: Memory protection, killing tasks etc. A brand new, modern TCP/IP stack. A lot of the essential cool third party add on enhancements are now built in. In my oppinion the Amiga OS 4 dock is much better than what apple offers - at the moment it doesnt look as nice, but in terms of what it provides I think it is better.

It looked pretty as well - which I believe is essential for after all it has to be a human interface. So I cant wait till the new year when the beta is out :D


Forgot to add - the font engine. Proper fonts :D really nic eones - antialiased :)
 
Thanks for the reply.

I'm still trying to explain to the wife why I need an Amiga One when I've already got a PC but I'm working on her. :)

Plan to buy one once OS4 is out, not sure if I've got the heart to rip the motherboard out of my trusty A1200 though (which is still set up), so I'll probably keep that out as well then I won't need emulation.

I just hope they get some new games/applications out to exploit the potential of this machine so it doesn't end up as another marketing disaster, they don't seem to be advertising it too much (if at all) at the moment but I hope this is simply due to the lack of OS4.

I dream of the day when I can say to the wife that I don't in fact need a PC and an Amiga so she's welcome to put the PC in the bin! :p
 
Aye - tis a hard thing to justify to any woman....


They plan to release a mini ITX form motherboard - as well as a micro ATX board (Micro ATX is bigger than mini ITX) and everything points to it being cheaper than the Full sized A1 board.

Advertising will be done - but at the moment its too early. IIRC their intention is to let word of mouth suffice for now, getting tech heads on board. When OS 4 beta is released (quite soon - next few months) stuff can be developed or ported etc.. and when we have some software to get started - well that is when the world will know :)
 
Bobsonsirjonny posted on Dec 15 2003 at 01:46 PM said:
They plan to release a mini ITX form motherboard - as well as a micro ATX board (Micro ATX is bigger than mini ITX) and everything points to it being cheaper than the Full sized A1 board.
If they did release it in mini ITX format, that'd be awesome... one of the main reasons I've held back from getting another Amiga (of any discription) is the space they take up, at my house, space is at a premium. With it in mini ITX form, I could have it behind my LCD screen (when it comes - eventually).

Damn, that's just cool.
 
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Yup that guy was selling a 6 in 1 USB Card reader for over £44 I think, (he called it something like GP32 6 in 1 Card Reader...) Wounder if anyones bought from him...

btw Bobsonsirjonny the GP32 is running Great B) but I really need to buy a 128MB SMC hehe :D ... I have bought a Damaged GP32 off Ebay for £26 (Mainly for the box) to try and fix up and sell to my brother for £60 lol... :lol:
 
well Trooper and Degenerate,

My Amiuga User group is hopeing to organise an OS 4 preview in the north of england in early feb time - if you are interested PM me, and I'll keep you posted on when, where etc if it happends. Loads of shows have already been held in teh south. :)

Steve - good to here that all is well. I just thought that guy on ebay was being a bit cheaky with the prices he was asking...

But then you're being a bit cheaky with your bro ;) :p
 
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