Hi All

My Name is Steve Jones and some may remember me as the face behind a couple of Amiga companies, Checkmate Digital ltd, HiQ and Siamese System ltd the last two which were basically the same but a name change.

I spent 10 years promoting the Amiga as a serious platform and tried to get the PCI Amiga card off the ground but failed. But please don't hold that against me.

My Love of the Amiga is undiminished but I use it rarely except to play with my much loved A1000 that I have had for 20 years, which makes me a hypocrit that must pay bills.

My ideal scenario is that AROS developers and Hyperion can get together. Cheap hardware and an OS that people can love again. Oh, and Bill from Amiga inc. hands the Amiga brand over to someone that can do it justice, as if that will happen. I failed to rejuvinate the Amiga with Gateway and the PCI 060 card but I tried, politics.

I have a hobby site which you are welcome to look at and pull to pieces. http://clusteruk.dns2go.com/

And if anyone has a Pal DCTV to sell for my A1000, I have two NTSC versions

Steve Jones.
Siamese Systems

Hello Steve,

You also may want to keep an eye on a project called Anubis which some of the AROS developers are creating. It's similar to AROS, but it's being based on a Linux kernel (minus most of the GNU crap).

Dammy

Quote:

AFAIK and to the public knowledge extent, Hyperion have their own agenda regarding AmigaOS 4.x - Keep it closed source and port it to PPC hardware of their choice. Open-source multi-platform AROS is unlikely to be included on those.

The only relationship possible regarding Hyperion's expressed point of view is a one way relation - AROS providing information/code. And since Hyperion devs had access to the original AmigaOS source-code and have provided some advanced features (memory protection/virtual memory)...

As for Bill from Amiga Inc. as one says in my country: "I believe that the march is still in the church yard..." - which means that we'll be probably hearing from him soon and is not to let go of the Amiga brand.

My ideal scenario is Hyperion and a few other companies put some money on the AROS development, keeping it open-source. That's what Sun /Red-hat and other companies do... (Dream mode off!)

My guess is that at some point, AROS will be the only amiga like system alive. How many OS4.1 have hyperion sold, how many sam440 boards are sold. The same goes with morphos and efika.

When everyone realize that AROS is the only possible way for an amiga-like future OS everyone will join.

Welcome to the AROS World Steve!! I always thought that the Amiga on a PCI card was the coolest idea ever since the invention of Amiga itself. I always wanted to know more and see if I could buy one to play with.

What would it take to resuscitate that project?? I am sure there would be a lot of interest if it could be made and sold for not too expensive.

why not team up with the natami guys for this?
:)

The PCI card could not happen now and to be be honest it is probably not worth it. I have joined this site to follow the AROS progress as I do think it is a potential future path. However, it is not perfect but it is a small miracle it has got this far.

Remember the most important things about it are:

A: that to my knowledge Amiga inc cannot touch it for copyright issues as it is re-engineered.
B: It is using commodity components ie cheap and powerful
C: With a real tie up with Amiga forever to run old programs it could be the basis of a future as Amiga forever is an official Amiga brand with licensed kickstarts, a bit like when Apple went to 0SX and had a compatibility layer. My Amiga forever runs faster than an 060 on my pc which is average.

Hyperion and AROS could make a good team moving over to PC architecture but Amiga inc. may and probably will spoil that party. Amiga forever and AROS would be better, IMHO ppc always was a bad choice hence the reason we went for the pc platform because it was always going to get faster and more powerful with better graphics if not as elegant as the ppc.

Natami may be a good idea but why go backwards, there is a huge amount of cheap and incredibly powerful hardware available, this is why Siamese was a great concept in the past, and why AROS is so special now.

I would like to get involved again in the Amiga community again as my passion never died I just had to recover the failure of the PCI Amiga/Gateway deal.

However, the whole package has to offer a new take on the computer world to gain an edge. It must leap the experience that people have now, and it can if focused. I am sure that the AROS developers have the kind of ideas to push it into the future.

All in all it will be fun to watch.

Steve Jones

You make valid points. And to be frank when I first heard about the AROS project in the mid/late nineties I didn't put much faith in it (misconceptions from my part regarding AmigaOS + hardware issues / copyright reasons / project dimension / team know-how and will).

As for Natami, I think it will be a great thing if they adopt AROS as one of supported systems. Natami will be (possibly/probably) the last hardware project to bring Amiga Hardware Architeture update. Since so many "Amiga users" have terrible misconceptions about AROS what it is and what are its features/possibilities, this could be a good way for people to free themselves from narrowed mind regarding Amiga either as AmigaOs and Amiga hardware (as in classic) or AmigaOS (as brand or licensed), and embrace the port of the Amiga philosophy towards open-source.

P.S.: Sorry for my manners - Welcome to AROS!

IMHO, natami is a brilliant project which should be fully supported. I mean, AROS is Amiga. Natami is Amiga. There's AROS for Amiga. Finally, we get what we've been waiting for - a new Amiga. There has to be a way to team up. I'd be a shame if there wasn't. Both sides will benefit from this, it's a fact. (As long as both sides work together, of course.)

anyway, that's philosophy.

to cut it short:

hi steve. welcome. nice to see you.

Thanks for the comments, and on the subject of Natami which is popular I believe that it would be great if it appears and AROS on it would be cool, trust me I would want one. The only problem is one of costing, the reality is that small scale developments will always be expensive and no matter what people say money counts.

If you forget the ppc processor which cannot compete now and can accept commodity x86 variety there is some awesome graphics and sound hardware for absolutely peanuts. We should support that hardware and move on. I have fought this theory that Amiga chips are still everything, I still have and use my A1000 but what is wrong with the 3d and 2d in some of the latest NVidia GPU's. Reinventing the wheel is not a good idea, that I learned the hard way.

I can buy a 2.6ghz dual cpu, motherboard, NVidia 7000 series 3d gpu, 16 bit sound, network and 1gb ram for less than 50 euros including vat.

Sam boards are great but around 500 euros without graphics, sound etc. Do not know how much Natami will be. Efika is great at only $100 but Amiga people say it is to slow when the Sam is maybe 5 time the price and 50% speed increase.

Bottom line, AROS on x86 stands a chance of a future. MorphOS transferred to x86 would be cool also. The only other option maybe to move to Cell based PS3.

Sorry to ramble but I have believed this since trying to launch the PCI Amiga.

Thanks again for the warm welcome, flame away.

Steve