Back in 1997, the QNX (pronounced either Q-N-X or Q-nix) operating system was positioned to play a vital role in the ongoing development of the Amiga platform. Georgios Panayio provides historical background about the proposed relationship between the two projects and shows how QNX’s alleged breach of contract resulted in causing significant damage to the Amiga platform.
How Qnx Failed The Amiga
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
62 Comments
2005-07-01 9:22 am
2005-07-01 9:24 am
sounds like amiga’s management failed them. not qnx.
Mehdi Ali killed the Amiga long before Gateway and QNX came along, besides.. now we hobbyamigans get the real thing instead of a totally different OS with the Amiga name. And AROS ofcourse
Sorry, but that’s wrong. For a year now, Amiga OS4 has been out in a prerelease form. For such a title, it is surprisingly complete and stable. Sure, it’s not the shrinkwrapped product, but saying that “Today, four years after contracting AmigaOne, the industry is still waiting for a finished product, the only tangible evidence of it being screenshots circulating news sites every few months.” just isn’t true. Machines are out, have been sold, and the prerelease Amiga OS4 is shipped with every machine.
Me, and many with me, know that this isn’t the case, since we have had our machines for (atleast) a year and we’re using Amiga OS4 Developer Prerelease. Other than that, the article was pretty good.
Hmm! I’d always wondered what had occured viz Gateway + QNX.
Great things were promised, but nothing eventuated at that period.
I’d suspected that MS was involved in some manner . . .
. . that Gateway was open to having a MS-free business division . . etc!
Maybe MS slipped some millions underhand to QNX, as MS later funded a certain player who’s made plenty of ripples that threaten Linux developers & business buyers?
If you really want to blame anyone else but incompetent and mismanaged Commodore, blame Motorola for dropping the 68000 platform.
The difficult and expensive platform switch thus necessary proved beyond the various Commodore successors.
While emulation worked tolerably for Apple’s mostly desktop software base, it wasn’t much help with the Amiga’s custom chips and many finely tuned games and apps.
Affordable 68060s would have provided a straightforward way to build new Amigas and keep customers and software vendors interested. And just imagine Amigas with an out-of-order 68080 with vector extensions.
So, somebody post story without any references, citations or mentioning sources at OSViews, and I’m expected to accept it as “historical background”?
This account differs substantially from what’s been said in the past, and the author makes some serious allegations without citing any sources. Unless he can substantiate his claims, I think there’s good reason to assume they are not correct. His inaccuracy about the details that can be verified, such as the current state of the Amiga project, hardly instill faith in his rendition of the QNX/Gateway story.
During the last couple of years of Commodore, it seemed that there was a definite lact of focus. I remember an array of machines being released or announced, which confused the userbase, and possibly dissuaded new customers.
When the Amiga changed hands, the focus seemed to be anything but the computer itself. I’ve read accounts, for example, that Gateway’s interest was at least partly motivated by politics against the Wintel alliance.
I think it is remarkable that the Amiga has continued in some form or another, although most of the credit must go to the userbase and those companies who supported it through thick and thin.
I’m not convinced QNX should shoulder the blame. If there were any grounds for legal action, for example breach of contract, then I am sure that there would have been court cases.
However, it appears that both parties failed on some points, and a clever contract would have protected each party should this be the case.
> Amiga is still running a twenty-year old operating
> system on chips that haven’t been updated in over eleven
> years, and is only able to use anything modern through
> emulation or as an add-on card.
Last time I looked at Amiga (around 10 mins ago). I saw OS4 running on AmigaONE and MorphOS running on the Pegasos2 as well as AROS running on x86 …. and yes, Mhedi Ali killed off Commodore way back around 1994/1996 or so (can’t recall the exact date) I urge people to get a look at “The Dethbed Vigil” movie made by Dave Haynie. It clearly explains the story.
I’d suspected that MS was involved in some manner . . .
. . that Gateway was open to having a MS-free business division . . etc!
Don’t be silly. By the time QNX got involved the Amiga was dead anyway, in the sense that games and other software had moved away and the user base was following them.
Furthermore, back then Microsoft was busy with the anti-trust case, they even propped up Apple to help against that.
sounds like amiga’s management failed them. not qnx.
Yeah, I was going to say the same. This article was a bit too negative about QNX Software Systems as far as I’m concerned. Acknowledge your own problems first before criticising others.
Everybody has disappointed the Amiga at some point or another.
Such a shame. It’s almost as if it was willfully managed into the ground [how far off am I?].
Someone should put a shrine to the Amiga in a Berrylium-Titanium alloy on Iapetus.
Why isn’t there any mention of Phase5 ?!
see: http://slashdot.org/articles/99/07/22/136235.shtml
(Qnx made an annoucement but it isn’t available anymore and Phase5 went out of businness since then)
Leo.
Why do you keep publishing these things Eugenia? I’ll check over future Amiga related articles for you if you want, so this doesn’t happen again.
That article really is rubbish. If anyone has come out of recent Amiga history with a clean reputation, it is Dan Dodge at QNX.
Somehow the idea arose that it would be impossible to update or port the Amiga OS, and the only thing to do was to put an Amiga-like GUI on top of some other OS. Gateway tried BeOS, QNX, and Linux. Amiga Inc tried Tao’s Intent. It was all a waste of time, and the people to blame were the Amiga managements of the time.
The nearest thing to a success in putting the Amiga OS on top of another is Amithlon.
MorphOS and AmigaOS 4 show that it is perfectly possible to update the Amiga OS as a free-standing complete OS.
Who wrote that article? What are his qualifications and exoerience? What documentary evidence can he offer? There are not even any links provided.
Don’t be silly. By the time QNX got involved the Amiga was dead anyway
What is death? The Visigoths entered the gates of Rome and Rome died! Yet, Rome exists . . . isn’t it the capital of Italy?
. . in the sense that games and other software had moved away
Yet in 1998 I bought ImageFX3, and Hyperion continued to create games . .
. . and the user base was following them.
Fairweather users maybe, but not diehards!
Furthermore, back then Microsoft was busy with the anti-trust case . .
I’d judge, with the money and personnel available, that Microsoft could attend to more than one matter at a time. Amiga may not have mattered to them, but Gateway is certain to have had a number of Microsoft staff allocated to manage the outcome of that affair.
Look what happens when a country, or a company, decides to investigate Linux.
What is death? The Visigoths entered the gates of Rome and Rome died! Yet, Rome exists . . . isn’t it the capital of Italy?
How about this then: the Amiga Empire had disintegrated
.
Fairweather users maybe, but not diehards!
Fairweather?!? By 1997 there’d been five years of very bad weather: no new Amigas, no more 68000, no OS development, no built-in IP, no Netscape, … . And the forecasts didn’t look sunny either.
The QNX Neutrino kernel seemed like a great foundation for a new Amiga system at the time. However the Photon GUI wasn’t the GUI to be used for a Next Generation Amiga platform.
An AmigaOS4 project seemed to be a too big of a task. The AmigaOS3.x design seemed too obsolete at the time and combined with dependencies on classic hardware such a project seemed to be too overwhelming. Luckily Hyperion togehter with the help of a large AmigaOS4 developer and beta-tester team has proven this to be wrong and AmigaOS4 has already turned out to be quite a masterpiece!
However AmigaOS 3.5 was released during the Gateway/Amiga Inc period. AmigaOS 3.9 was released by Haage & Partner during the first post-Gateway Amiga Inc period. Since them Amiga Inc changed hands again and is now under the leadership of Garry Hare, a highly acclaimed business professional (Amiga Inc are close partner with the Tao Group, a former QNX partner as well).
After the Gateway deal fell through, QSSL entered into an agreement with Phase5 to offer a QNX desktop, but sadly this company bankrupted. QSSL still remained some ties with the Amiga community for some time through their involvemebt with the Phoenix Developer Consortium, which both me and QSSL CEO Dan Dodge were still part of at the time.
I had a chat with Dan Dodge during a QSSL roadtour in Europe, but sadly he didn’t provide me much confidence with regard to their further involvement within the Amiga community. Later Haage&Partner still released an emulation package which included the QNX RtP, interestingly you could launch QNX software from within the emulated 68k Amiga environment (switching back to the host QNX RtP) and during emulation QNX had a Amiga-like title bar which allowed to immediately switch back to the Amiga environment, which was rather nice.
I do worry about the future of the QSSL company somewhat, as Microsoft has been taking significant market share away from them within the embedded space. An Amiga desktop niche would have been a nice oppertunity for them to widen their market. Still QNX provides some unique features and abilities compared to Microsoft’s offerings, which IMO will keep them going within specialized niche markets.
Thanks. That comment actually had more info than the article.
i do blame Qnx for their laziness in the Amiga affair, i tried their desktop OS around ca 2000 and it was a good start for them to a new market. it failed because of their nonfriendliness/nonvision to the users and the qnxstart.com forum.
so did Palm, they killed BEOS (the wonder OS) and they are struggling in the dirt. I havent used a Palm or Handspring since then.
even microsoft is better then these evil dummy companys.
boycott palm & derivates !!
Commodore went out of business – the amiga was dead (and still is for all intents an purposes just like the Atari ST).
Motorola is not to blame – they just made the chips, did not want to make them anymore so they stopped.
QNX is not to blame – they did what they promised, they claimed there was faulty hardware and could not do much until it was fixed – as is evident by their apparent success today I would say that the hardware gateway provided was faulty.
so how could the amiga have been saved? Once commodore went out of business someone should have snatched it up right away, move the platform to PPC just like apple did it’s macintosh line of computers, and upgrade the OS. This would have kept the amiga going, but company after company, acquisition after acquisition, people stopped buying, people stopped supporting, just the hobbyists remained….and now we are at a point where the platform is not viable to come back on its own.
It’s dead – it’s not going anywhere – get over it – move on!
Buy a Dell and use windows, if you dont like windows buy a mac, if you dont like the mac OS use linux or BSD – but stop pointing fingers and stop being a monday morning quarterback
I’ve owned 5 Amigas since 1986. My last one died in May, 1998. In February 2004 an Amiga user group in a near by city had a demo of a PowerPC Amiga running a beta version of OS4. I decided to have a look at what had been going on in the Amiga community in the past few years. I was shocked at how little progress had been made in the past 6 years (in terms of software). The PowerPC Amiga was running iBrowse for the main web browser. Ironically, they pulled up OSAlert.com. I immediately noticed the lack of support for frames. The guy doing the demo then went to one of those websites that can cause a browser to crash. He was extremely proud that it couldn’t crash iBrowse. Until I pointed out the fact that iBrowse didn’t crash because it also didn’t support Java. The people still using Amigas must not run other systems very often. If they did, they’d realize how far behind their platform has fallen.
The name “Georgios Panayios” appears in no search engines. That suggests that it is a false name. Does anyone know who actually wrote that article?
“I decided to have a look at what had been going on in the Amiga community in the past few years. I was shocked at how little progress had been made in the past 6 years (in terms of software). The PowerPC Amiga was running iBrowse for the main web browser. Ironically, they pulled up OSAlert.com. I immediately noticed the lack of support for frames.”
IBrowse does of course support frames. What it does not support is CSS. The lack of an up to date browser is indeed the biggest weakness of the Amiga today. (But the OSAlert site comes up fine.)
Java is a problem because Sun are completely uninterested in making it run across platforms. So a version of Java for any minority platform has to be coded without their help. So much for “write once, run anywhere”.
There is a JVM in work for Amiga OS. However, several people have attempted this before and failed, so there is no telling if it will succeed. It’s a big task, especially the AWT.
Flash is even more difficult for minority platforms. So is Real, and Windows Media.
@ Anonymous
> In February 2004 an Amiga user group in a near by city
> had a demo of a PowerPC Amiga running a beta version of
> OS4.
The project has come a long way after February 2004. Maybe you should have a look again at the following events:
http://amiga.com/events/
July 2004 demonstration video:
http://uniweb.free.fr/os4/moovidamp.avi
March 2005 demonstration video:
http://www.amiga.dk/amigaworld.net/os4bt-march2005.avi
> PowerPC Amiga was running iBrowse for the main web browser.
The IBrowse team works on releasing a new version, work has been somewhat delayed due to one of the involved developers working on OS4:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=8426&for…
However OSAlert and AmigaWorld.net load rather well enough for me with the current release already. Alternatively there’s an OS4 native port of AWeb (open source) available:
User screenshot of IBrowse on customized AmigaOS4:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/myalbum/photo.php?lid=146
User screenshot of AWeb on customized AmigaOS4:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/myalbum/photo.php?lid=308
Back in 1997, the QNX (pronounced either Q-N-X or Q-nix) operating system was positioned to play a vital role in the ongoing development of the Amiga platform. Georgios Panayio provides historical background about the proposed relationship between the two projects and shows how QNX’s alleged breach of contract resulted in causing significant damage to the Amiga platform.
>
>
What damage? The Amiga by 1997 was a *DEAD* platform, Eugenia.
The only going on with the Amiga was outfits hyping Amiga *VAPORWARE*
> User screenshot of IBrowse on customized AmigaOS4:
> http://amigaworld.net/modules/myalbum/photo.php?lid=146
Please note that the default (IMO rather ugly) OS3.x buttons can easily be customized, as is the case with most Amiga software:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/myalbum/photo.php?lid=128
The current release of IBrowse (68k) also functions on 14 Mhz 68020 classic Amigas.
Every time an Amiga article hits this site (or any tech site really), the same comments are brough up again and again…
An article is written concerning the Amiga, and out come the realists… “Not much progress”, “When is it being released”, “Who cares anymore at this point”, “Long oversdue”, etc.
Next come the defenders (the Mike Bouma’s of the world, if you will), with their rebuttals of the critics… “It’s come a long way, considering the resources”, “I still use my Amiga daily”, “Amiga’s still the best machine available”, “OS4 will be released any day now, and it rocks”, etc.
And finally the observers who evidently never read OSAlert until these stories are posts “What is an Amiga?”, “Is that thing still around?”, “What software’s available for it?”, “Why bother? Get a Mac”, etc.
It’s like one big repeating loop. The content may vary slightly based on the articles content, but when Amiga storys come up these days, it’s deja vu all over again… Everyone (re)posts the same content and comments that have been posted time and time again. It’s getting old…
@ Mr. Banned
> It’s like one big repeating loop. The content may vary
> slightly based on the articles content, but when Amiga
> storys come up these days, it’s deja vu all over again…
> Everyone (re)posts the same content and comments that have
> been posted time and time again. It’s getting old…
Have you ever considered not reading Amiga stories and comment on them?
To some your comments may also seem rather deja-vu at times. Just an idea.
You know, – this article makes me really smile. Now as amiga is simply dead (sorry folks, it really is – at least in a bigger picture), it even does not make me nervous.
BUT – author should take some medicine or he should learn how to do his work profesionally
I worked 4 years for Czech Amiga Review as a main columnist. I was at least in sporadical contact (email) with ppl like Dave Haynie, Fleecy Moss, Carl Sassenrath, Bill McEwen and others, and the article does not seem to be accurate.
When Gateway bought Amiga, they tried to get Carl Sassenrath on-board. But Carl seemed to be disgusted by what happened with VisCorp. Instead of Carl, they brought Dr. Alan Havemose on-board (he lead 3.0 or 3.1 development). They cooked something behind the scenes, and announcement was nearly out during one show, but it broke. We don’t know for sure, but 80% it was new AmigaOS will use BeOS kernel.
So everything started once again and 1998 (?), November, I travelled to Koln to visit Amiga show. New OS partner was supposed to be introduced, and ti was – we saw demo of QNX and I have to say, that it looked ultra-cool. I have also pleasure to talk to Dan Dodge from QNX for a while, and I have to say, that he looked like very fine guy, and that is why I regard mentioned article starting to be suspicious!
Gateway fired Fleecy for no apparent reason and things started to turn strange direction once again. Jim Collas was brought on-board, QNX was discarded and Amiga Inc. started to back their opinion, that Amiga’s future is fine with Linux. But Linux, back at those times – was far from being ready for near real-time experience and efficiency. Amiga suddenly started to talk about super mysterious GPU, they referred to it as a MMC (multi-media chip) and we don’t know for sure what it was, but we know one thing – it was not delivered. And OS? It suddenly was talked as being not so important, in comparison what MMC can do. Don’t remember the company, but it was one of GW subsidiaries who developed that GPU, but apparently failed.
QNX then published their announcement, that they will deliver on their promise to Amiga community and joined forces with Phase5, producer of Amiga’s PPC add-on cards. All amiga community feeled betrayed, as PPC was said as being a no direction and AmigaOS 3.x as a relict of the past.
Few months later, whole thing broke once again, and Jim Collas left Amiga Inc. and was probably so pissed, that he even sold his GW stocks. Later on, Bill McEwen found some investors and they bought some licenses to AmigaOS from GW and formed new Amiga Inc., together with Fleecy Moss.
Everything looked good once again, Amiga Inc. staff joined Phoenix consortium discussions, but it started to be clear, that Amiga Inc. does not like licensing issues or so. They wanted too much control, but for what? They had nothing, except for old OS, QNX had everything. QNX’s preference was not new Desktop and their own was not good experience. But Amiga Inc. could develop/port WorkBench, but did not. The whole deal got broke because of Fleecy behaving inconsistently IIRC. Dan Dodges morale remained to be on his high standard! (unless, of course, there was not something ongoing behind the scenes public does not know about).
Amiga Inc. suddenly announced they are going with Tao Group’s Intent OS, once again telling to us that old OS is not so important, and that AmigaDE (Amiga Anywhere) is the future. That was fast start of slow end ….
So – the article is nearly nonsense, Eugenia used to know some Amiga’s past (at least the bad one, where Amiga zealots were flaming BeOS :-), and I wonder why such LIES were brought here on osnews.com (… mostly kidding here …)
Cheers,
-pekr-
@ Anonymous
> I was shocked at how little progress had been made in the
> past 6 years (in terms of software).
Also note that many developers are working on new software behind the scenes, waiting for the final release of AmigaOS4 within the next few months.
For instance the OpeOffice.org and AmiZilla (port of Firefox) teams are doing their best.
http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2386
http://www.amigaopenoffice.org/
It seems in the near future we will be able to enjoy AmigaOS4 native versions of Pagestream (high quality DTP app!), Papyrus Office, SBasePro, Hollywood (with Scala support through Malibu plugg-in!), Audio Evolution, DOpus Magellan2, Real3D, etc! (maybe also HDRec [announced], ArtEffect [OS4 version demoed], Personal Paint [announced], GoldED (OS4 updated), etc.)
Also next to the AWeb, AmiZilla and IBrowse projects another AmigaOS4 native webbrowser is being written from scratch, called Path.
Other AmigaOS4 native internet software includes:
Jabberwocky (ICQ, MSN, etc), Simplemail (mailer), Yam (mailer), WookieChat, etc. Classic software which run great on AmigaOS4 include AmiFTP, AmIRC, AmiTradeCenter, MFtp-II, NewsCoaster, Thor, etc)
There are AmigaOS4 native ports of Apachy, Envoy, AmiPodder, Samba, TwinVNC and Remote Desktop Client available as well.
A similar amount of choice as compared to OS4 native webbrowers should be avaible with regard to AmigaOS4 native media players (next to the OS4 default MooVID media player). Such as AMP, MPlaye and DVPlayer!
So it seems AmigaOS4 users will not lack choices even for webbrowsing in the future!
In addition AmigaOS4 already runs many of the great classic Amiga productivity applications. Including:
Final Writer, WordWorth, TurboCalc, Final Data, Organiser,ProCalc, Prodata, Homebank, Cinema4D, CYCAS, fxPaint, Photogenics, TVpaint, Image Studio, ImageFX, etc.
With regard to entertainment Hyperion has a long list of licenses including Heretic2, Gorky 17, Shogo and SiN. Needless to say AmigaOS4 is currently their top priority. Also an AmigaOS4 version Crossfire 2 is already being worked on and lots of SDL OS4 natives games are available. As well as OS4 version of Quake, Quake2, Duke Nuken3d, FreeCNC, Stratagus, etc.
Also lots of AmigaOS4 native emulators are available to entertain AmigaOS4 users. Including: E-UAE (Classic Amiga), Fpse (Playstation), Frodo (commodore 64), xMame / xNEO MAME (Arcade emulator), xMess, Atari 800, WarpSNES, amiNES, SMSPlus, TGEmu, AmiGenerator, GBE, tgemu, SMSPlus, FCE, MESS, NeoMame, CpMame, VisualBoyAdvance, Genesis Plus, DarcNES/Amiga, Handy (lynx), etc.
Of course many of the classic high-spec games run on AmigaOS4 as well and classic emultors like ASp (Spectrum emulator) and Flamingo (Commodore Plus/4 emulator) work as well.
Needless to say I don’t view the future AmigaOS4 situation to be bleak at all.
“The project has come a long way after February 2004.”
But the browser hasn’t. The last release of IBrowse was two and a half years ago. Since then, there have been many promises, but no release.
Nowadays, a browser is more important than the OS.
“Nowadays, a browser is more important than the OS.”
Sure? And then why firefox is more stable on beos than on linux, and why firefox on linux is far more stable than windows version????!!!!! what is more important then???!! the software you are running or the OS where is running?
Remember that: when firefox will be ported to AmigaOS, we will see the fastest and more stable port of firefox and this will be due to the eficience of the OS
If anyone reads the comments after the article, one QNX employee expressly disavows the accuracy of the article. I also seem to remember things a little differently, but there really isn’t any point to beating a, uh, “dead” horse. If Amiga has a future, people need to talk about that — or better yet, STOP talking about it, and work towards it.
What is death? The Visigoths entered the gates of Rome and Rome died! Yet, Rome exists . . . isn’t it the capital of Italy?
Heh, modern Italy is the post-monarchical remnants of the former Kingdom of Sardinia, renamed “Kingdom of Italy” because the king wanted the people’s affection. Turin was the original capital. Rome didn’t become the capital until the Savoiards decided to invade it, too.
“Italy” as we know it today isn’t a creation of Rome, whereas the “Italy” of the Visigoths’ time was a creation of Rome. Ancient Rome is pretty darn dead, as both ruins and language well attest: quod barbari non fecerunt, Barbarini fecerunt.
I don’t know about Amgia being dead. It seems that the primary target is setop boxes and the like. If they can find a good solid customer base in that market then I say go for it. I loved my Amiga back in the day. I have consiered getting a new one but I still consider the hardware obsolete and way over priced. I truly wish I could get one of the new Peg Workstations and run Amiga on it. But alas, that can’t be done and that is truly is a shame. The Peg people have some nice hardware and Amiga has a nice OS but the two companies seem to hate each other and that is just sad.
“And then why firefox is more stable on beos than on linux, and why firefox on linux is far more stable than windows version????!!!!! what is more important then???!! the software you are running or the OS where is running?”
Presumably the various ports have different bugs. The point is that Firefox (like other up to date browsers) exists for these OSes, and not for Amiga. That makes it impossible to recommend an Amiga at present to anyone but an Amiga enthusiast. In fact, I wouldn’t even demonstrate it until there is a working browser.
“Remember that: when Firefox will be ported to AmigaOS, we will see the fastest and more stable port of Firefox and this will be due to the eficience of the OS”
That is pure speculation. Firefox on Amiga may well never happen. There is a reasonable chance that IBrowse 3 will eventually appear.
This still leaves Flash support as a big problem, particularly scripting.
“I also seem to remember things a little differently, but there really isn’t any point to beating a, uh, “dead” horse.”
There is. If sloppily written articles with gross inaccuracies are left unchallenged, people start to quote from them. Soon the false statements are accepted as truth.
The author should have done his research properly.
@ Don Cox
> That is pure speculation. Firefox on Amiga may well never
> happen. There is a reasonable chance that IBrowse 3 will
> eventually appear.
> This still leaves Flash support as a big problem,
> particularly scripting
Too bad we see little activety from VaporeWare these days, this is one of the few areas where Amiga Voyager was actually ahead of IBrowse development.
However, IMO doing work on AmigaOS4 is a good reason for IBrowse delays, I believe similarly as is the case for IBrowse other development projects will start to take up steam aftware AmigaOS4.0 final is out.
If sloppily written articles with gross inaccuracies are left unchallenged…
Sorry, I should clarify: I didn’t mean that that inaccuracies should be left unchallenged; after all I commented on that myself. In other words, I was complaining about the prevalence of articles like this guy’s (even if it were correct). What I meant to criticize was the bizarre preference that Amiga fans seem to have for talking about the past rather than the future.
Not that I’m any better, mind…
“However, IMO doing work on AmigaOS4 is a good reason for IBrowse delays”
That is what I disagree with. AOS 3.9 with a good browser would be more acceptable than AOS 4 without one. I think they have their priorities wrong.
The story is complete BS and FUD. There are numerous errors in the timeline (like when the G4 existed, and when/how long QNX had a PPC version of NTO). I’m not sure what the author’s intent was in publishing that article, but spreading the truth about QNX or Amiga certainly wasn’t what he intended.
Amiga Corp pulled the plug, just like they had in so many other deals in the past and like the continued to do with some deals in the future.
QSSL may have it’s faults, but not being able to support hardware and work with an HW vendor has never been one of them.
OSviews is quickly earning itself a reputation for publishing complete crap, false information, trolls, flamebait, etc.
It’s sad that they can’t be bothered to verify any facts of a posting. Sadder too that they have a name so close to OSAlert which *does* do a decent job of posting reputable articles.
Camz – operates the QNXZone community portal @ http://www.qnxzone.com
@ Don Cox
> That is what I disagree with. AOS 3.9 with a good browser
> would be more acceptable than AOS 4 without one. I think
> they have their priorities wrong.
AmigaOS4 is the way forward and the improvements made compared to AmigaOS3.9 is incredible. Also even the current 68k IBrowse is a lot more fun to use togther with AmigaOS4 as it benefits indirectly from AmigaOS advancements, such as a nicer gui, anti-aliased fonnts and better performance. AWeb (OS4 native) really flies on A1 hardware and similarly will IBrowse when an AmigaOS4 specific version becomes available.
Also according to AW polls, a vast majority of Amiga users also own PCs(Macs or both) next to their preferred platform. For instance you could use remote desktop clients to run Firefox, Internet Explorer or Opera on Windows (within an OS4 windows) without leaving your Amiga environment. Not ideal, but certainly an option until Amiga browsers become on par with mainstream solutions.
Just want to throw my own 4 cents in –
Time to port AOS4 to intel (just like apple had done with OS X), keep a bluebox environment for running old 68k apps (and PPC apps if any) – make the darned thing free or low cost and run it on gray boxes (provided that they meet certain HW criteria).
Who on earth would buy a Pegasus system when they can buy a mac or a dell/gateway and get much more value out of their machine ?
@ mini-me
Great idea! How could the Amiga community not come up with such a great idea!! You must be a very successful CEO or financial minister or something!
* Delay AmigaOS4 another few years to port it to x86 supporting only one single motherboard
* Make it available for free
=> Profit!!! To feed the Kids of AmigaOS4 developers, full time developers could even go to the Bahamas for the rest of their life.
Say hello to Doctor Evil for me.
>Also even the current 68k IBrowse is a lot more fun to use
>togther with AmigaOS4
It’s even more fun to use on Amithlon on a top end PC.
>as it benefits indirectly from AmigaOS advancements, such as
>a nicer gui, anti-aliased fonnts and better performance.
These “advancements” are nothing that aren’t common place when using Amiga OS3.9.
An OS is judged by the applications it has, and at the moment OS4 has nothing that Amiga OS 3.9 hasn’t either.
@ mdma
> It’s even more fun to use on Amithlon on a top end PC.
I don’t agree, Amithlon just uses AmigaOS3.9.1 by default. Of course AmigaOS3.x can be patched to look better and offer additional functionality (as is the nature of AmigaOS), but AmigaOS4 offers a far cleaner implementation and more stable environment.
When something goes wrong in AmigaOS3.x often the whole system is taken down, on AmigaOS4 the Grim Reaper helps usually to prevent this.
IMO due to recent advances, WinUAE (a new version of OS4 E-UAE will soon be released too) offers a far more interesting emulation solution than Amithlon currently does:
http://amigaworld.net/modules/features/index.php?op=r&cat_id=4&rev_…
> An OS is judged by the applications it has, and at the
> moment OS4 has nothing that Amiga OS 3.9 hasn’t either.
IMO it is both the OS itself (in the case of AmigaOS4, the OS comes bundled with some nice official and 3rd party software) as well 3rd party applications. Also Amithlon does not run any of the classic PPC or current OS4 software, for instance to be found at OS4Depot and other places.
AmigaOS3.9 is really many manyears behind AmigaOS4.x already, as the developers behind AmigaOS 3.9 would tell you (most of which have also been involved in the OS4 project for years).
Great idea! How could the Amiga community not come up with such a great idea!! You must be a very successful CEO or financial minister or something!
* Delay AmigaOS4 another few years to port it to x86
Mike, if you remember back to 2001 that’s what Amiga Inc said they were going to do.
Damien
@ Damien
No, they didn’t AmigaOS4 was being worked on to be used on PPC expanded classic Amigas and the new A1 systems and AmigaOS x86 (Amithlon) was also announced. The Amithon project got cancelled mainly due to developers getting into fights.
“AmigaOS3.9 is really many manyears behind AmigaOS4.x already, as the developers behind AmigaOS 3.9 would tell you”
They do. And they are doing a good job.
But what sells other OSes is the programs that run on them, and nowadays a web browser is the top priority. Nobody wants a wonderful OS with no programs.
There is also a long list of problems with compatability of existing programs because so much has been changed to make the OS more elegant.
It’s a matter of priorities. AOS3.9 is a great OS, except it is lacking in software. AOS4 may be better, if one is only interested in operating systems, but it has even less software. Big problem.
And I don’t think porting programs which were designed for Linux, a totally different OS, is the solution.
@ Don Cox
> But what sells other OSes is the programs that run on
> them, and nowadays a web browser is the top priority.
IMO to a great extend you are right. That’s why people are doing their best to address the situation. This process takes lots of time and effort, but having the foundation ready is always the top priority for new operating systems. This is nothing specific to AmigaOS.
For now Windows runs most desktop software. For now WinUAE runs most classic Amiga software (even more than classic systems, as you can easily reconfigure the emulated Amiga specifications!). But still Windows and WinUAE isn’t the best choice (or preferred) for everyone.
newsflash – AOS4 machines (i.e. pegasos, and amigaone – if it exists) are too expensive to *just* run BSD and linux JUST IN CASE at some point AOS4 makes it commercially. Switching to commodity hardware would benefit them. As for delaying release…dont make me laugh
I’ve been hearing about the imminent release of AOS4 for the last 2 years – so a year of intensive porting should be worth it.
As for it being free…OK maybe not a good idea, but a sub-$100 version would be nice for one simple reason P-E-N-E-T-R-A-T-I-O-N.
— mini-CEO of iCon enterprises —
OS4 doesn’t run on the Pegasos motherboards, it runs on an even more expensive and underpowered $1000 motherboard from Mai Logic.
Just get a Pegasos and run MorphOS on it. Morphos is even faster and more stable than OS4 and highly compatible to all (68k, WarpOS, PowerUp and partial OS4 (thanks to OS4 Emu). E-UAE is also available) Amiga applications. I do not see any advantage of OS4 compared to MorphOS.
You won’t regret it and if MorphOS is not enough you have the option to choose from a broad range of linux distributions (e.g. Gentoo has put Pegasos support to their main tree).
All in all one must keep realistic and all Amiga flavours are currently hobby systems only, be it 68k, OS4, AROS or MorphOS. But they all are fun also.
This is sort of a silly article to go back and make the case that QNX was mean and unscrupulous with Amiga in 1965, I mean who cares, really?
Now if you are a former Amiga user who was into the community and the software and the unique feel of it all, a lot of that is now in MorphOS. MorphOS has had some bumps but it is getting current development now and steady incremental releases, like 1.4.4 and 1.4.5 in the last 3 1/2 months.
MOS is based on the unique Quark microkernel which was made by an Amiga programmer. Does any other modern Amiga-like OS have a kernel that was made by an Amiga programmer? Noooooo.
So that settles it. Check out MorphOS, or if you must, wait for the 1.5.0 version that is supposed to have new awesome features and improvements right and left.
Who on earth would buy a Pegasus system when they can buy a mac or a dell/gateway and get much more value out of their machine ?
You don’t seem to understand the mindset of these niche platforms. I think a big part of the appeal of being involved with something like the Pegasos is the idea that it’s “ours.” Genesi is at least sympathetic to the situation of MorphOS users, even if most of the company’s OS promo efforts have to go to things with more immediate payback prospects, and the hardware has roots here, which is appreciated in the era of commoditization. Given the background of the developers and users, I think porting MorphOS to “alien” but “anonymous” hardware would destroy a lot of the appeal of the platform.
I know this sounds really touchy-feely, but people aren’t always coldly analytical about what they buy and what they do. Keep in mind that people are into this basically for fun, now, and don’t want to do whatever is necessary to ramp up the installed base figures. Of course we hope the number will hit the critical mass needed for production sustainability but if, to succeed, the soul is lost, then what’s the point?
OK, I was wrong. WOA May 1998:
# How do we get there?
* Amiga Classic — OS3.1, AGA, 68K
* Amiga Bridge — OS4.0, x86 (Developer system available November ’98)
* Digital Convergence — OS5.0, new architecture (Available end of ’99)
from http://www.amigamccc.org/journal/9806woa.htm
Damien
> OS4 doesn’t run on the Pegasos motherboards, it runs on
> an even more expensive and underpowered $1000 motherboard
> from Mai Logic.
The board comes from Eyetech and are based on Mai/Eyetech’s designs. The chips and components come from VIA, Mai and others.
The mini-ITX uA1-C (onboard sound and graphics) + AmigOS4.0 + G3 750FX @ 800 Mhz + 256 MB RAM costs 695.00 EUR
http://www.computercity.biz/product_info.php?cPath=21_22&products_i…
Some other developer systems are even more expensive.
> Morphos is even faster and more stable than OS4 and
> highly compatible to all
http://morphos.net/
People suggesting to substitute the standard environment with AmigaOS 3.9!
http://www.morphzone.org/modules/newbb_plus/viewtopic.php?topic_id=…
So that was the Gateway period. Even the current Amiga Inc incarnation isn’t the same company as in 2001.
> Morphos is even faster and more stable than OS4 and
> highly compatible to all