There has been a long while since i last wrote something in my blog. This time i want to write my own perspective on the current Amiga situation as a longtime loyal, die-hard Amiga fan for 24 years, starting from 1987 when Commodore released the Amiga 500 as the most popular home computer ever!
The sole reason to write this threat is to explain to the public why the Amiga was left behind, ignored and forgotten by almost everybody after the demise of Commodore back in 1994 when they filed for bankrupty. From here i will try to explain...
26 years ago, Commodore released the very first Amiga model to the public. That was 23th of July 1985 in Wessembly in Germany, where the Amiga was born. Amiga at that time became the first true multitasking multimedia computer, both in the home market as well as the professional market. The Amiga amazed the world with its' stunning 4096 color HAM6-mode and 4-channel 8-bit stereo sound, thanks to the Amiga's own special custom chips which freed the main CPU from doing all the hard work, bypassing even Apple's Mac as the most advanced, best computer platform of the 80-ies through to the middle of the 90-ies. Amiga was 10 years ahead of any PC and Mac around that time. Many developers and great game companies started to develop great games and applications directly from their bedrooms. A cult that was unheard of by many, and one of many great explanations why the Amiga computer-platform is so special compared to others.
When Commodore went bankrupt in 1994, the Amiga was left behind in technologic development progress, and both PC and Mac were catching up increasingly. One of the reasons why Commodore went bankrupt was the money they spent into producing their own special customs chips to control the unique features of the Amiga. Great as they were on that time, but became too expensive to manufacture, compared to producing different graphic and audio cards as we see by today's standard. The explanation is simply that people unfortunately started to leave the Amiga behind as it was not able to catch up with PC's and Mac's increasingly advancement in technology.
The Amiga was suffering a lot during the first 10 years after the demise of Commodore. Being bought firstly by Escom back in 1996, with a re-launch of Amiga 1200 and Amiga 4000T with AmigaOS 3.1 (not to be compared with AmigaOS 4.1), but the company existed for only a year and became another company to go for bankrupt. In 1997, Viscorp took over the rights for the Amiga, but weren't able to provide anything new for the Amiga community nor the market. Shortly after, Gateway 2000 bought all the Amiga rights and made big promises to the Amiga community. Promises that turnt out to be false indeed, as in 3 years until the beginning of the 21th century, they appeared to do nothing for the Amiga community, but only held to the Amiga rights, hungry to earn money on the Amiga brand without doing anything for the Amiga community.
Things didn't get better with Amino Development Group. In 2001, they were able to secure the Amiga rights from Gateway 2000, claiming they were tired of Gateway 2000's arrogance and self-behaviour destruction to the community. For the first time in many years, Amino Development Group became today's Amiga Inc and went into an agreement with the Belgian Hyperion Entertainment (a former great game company now focusing on AmigaOS-development) to start developing the next-generation Amiga system. To move the Amiga away from the old Motorola 68000 CPUs and to make the Amiga indepedent on graphic and audio hardware, freeing the Amiga from being tied to its' custom chips that hindered the Amiga to catch up in technology.
The decision was made to focus on the PowerPC-technology. A powerful, flexible RISC CPU-technology which became a great alternative to the traditional x86 CPU-platform. Hyperion signed a contract with Amiga Inc to produce AmigaOS4 with PowerPC-support. A lot of hard work was put into the development, and Eyetech was involved to produce the next-generation Amiga hardware known as AmigaOne, based on both PowerPC G3 and G4 CPUs at a time when Apple were still using the PowerPC-technology in their own Mac-systems. AmigaOne was distributed firstly with the PowerPC-version of Debian Linux while AmigaOS4 was still in pre-versions before the final version of AmigaOS 4.0 became available. AmigaOS has come quite a long way since then, with AmigaOS 4.1.2, but no further new Amiga systems since Eyetech dropped out of the Amiga market back in 2006. There was again time to think about the future for the Amiga...
In 2007, just before Amiga Inc sued Hyperion Entertainment for breaking the AmigaOS development contract with them, Amiga Inc promised to release new powerful Amigas, claimed to be produced by ACK Software (a one-man-company which no longer exists), supposed to be similar in advanced spesifications as A-EON Technology's AmigaOne X1000 (more on that later on).
In 2009 it was clear that Amiga Inc was again not able to provide new Amiga hardware at all, and claimed that Hyperion Entertainment was illegally producing AmigaOS4 after the contract was ended after 2007. As a protest to Amiga Inc's similar arrogance as Gateway 2000, and for not providing anything great for the Amiga community, Hyperion Entertainment became a hero for the Amiga community. A true saviour of the Amiga, as they proved to be faithful to the Amiga. They decided to keep producing AmigaOS4, despite the conflict with the contract. A 2 years long trial case between Amiga Inc and Hyperion started in 2007, and was ending the 30th of September 2009. As we know, Hyperion was declared the true winner with all the rights to AmigaOS source codes, AmigaOne brand and the Boing Ball Logo. Hyperion are therefore legally permitted to continue developing AmigaOS the way they feel serves the Amiga community the best way, while Amiga Inc still own the rights to use the Amiga brand, but only that and any product related to the Amiga brand. As it turns out today, Amiga Inc to support the Amiga brand doesn't seem to be a good thing at all. During late spring 2011, Amiga Inc licensed the Amiga brand to Commodore USA, claimed to be a worthy successor of the original Commodore's legacy, so that they can relaunch Commodore 64 and Amiga again with new technology.
The first impression of this was positive and hopeful, but when the Amiga community learnt that Amiga Inc and Commodore chose to only establish a Linux-system dubbed "Commodore OS", based on traditional, boring x86-technology, the community as myself learnt that Amiga Inc had betrayed us again, with a childish embarrashing attempt to weakening Hyperion Entertainment's position as the right company to make Amiga a big, important name to the whole computer industry again, just like in the 80-ies...
ACube Systems from Italy has released 2 versions of SAM460ex, the first next-generation but still unofficial PPC Amiga-clone based on AMCC 460ex PowerPC SoC CPU. Both the normal version of SAM460ex with 2GB DDR2 memory, ATI RadeonHD PCI-e GPU cards and a CPU running at 1.15 Ghz! The first true Amiga to break the 1Ghz barrier, and to provide state-of-the-art technology unheard of in any Amiga before! However, ACube is not the only company to bring out a true, modern next-generation Amiga. A-EON Technology and the Britian manufacture company Varisys, in close co-operation with Hyperion Entertainment, have finally managed to produce the first true high-end power Amiga based on advanced PowerPC-technology - the AmigaOne X1000. The high-end platform to continue the Amiga's legacy, and to give the Amiga brand a serious but important perspective, instead of the failure the original Commodore did when they marketed the Amiga as a game system, instead of marketing the Amiga as an allround, true multitasking, flexible multimedia system as it was meant to be in the first place. A failure Commodore did in the 80-ies.
It's quite impressive how much work and resources have went into producing a true next-generation Amiga system that is now finally able to give the Amiga brand a serious, respective perspective, completely moving away from being considering a hobby-toy to a true modern, high-power multimedia system of the 21th century, aimed at creative, die-hard Amiga fans, with the possibility of strengthening and expanding the small Amiga market, and to convince the public that the Amiga never died, but only Commodore. Too many people seem to think that Amiga died just because Commodore did so in 1994. It's true that Amiga-models released under Commodore, like the original Amiga 1000, 500, 2000, 3000 are dead, but that doesn't mean the Amiga itself is dead. The Amiga has managed to grow strong and indepedent as a sole, stand-alone computer platform both without Amiga Inc and Commodore USA. Future is finally looking bright, but appears slow...
There is light in the end of the tunnel after all. We know that brand new features will be intergrated into future versions of AmigaOS. Hyperion Entertainment plan to bring SMP multicore CPU support into AmigaOS, knowing that the AmigaOne X1000 is the first advanced Amiga to use a dual-core PowerPC CPU based on P.A Semi. Future Amiga models will likely use Freescale's multicore PPC CPUs, and it's possible that AmigaOS also may be ported to ARM, an another advanced multicore CPU technology making quite a huge impact to the CPU industry, so much that even Microsoft and Apple realize they have to support it in Windows and MacOS X.
Other features to appear in AmigaOS are the OpenGL graphic system Gallium3D, Java-support, possible security/internet security support, a new dynamic audio system to replace AHI, new printer support, support for more than 2GB maximum memory, full memory protection and more! We are going into a great future for the Amiga, with Update 3 of AmigaOS 4.1 just around the corner!
Then why writing this blog anway, you ask? Well, the Amiga market is still small and all Amiga development is therefore going slow. It's my hope that this blog partly can inspire and convince people to realize that the Amiga never died, but was only left behind, even in my own country. In Norway, almost everybody seem to think the Amiga died, because they never were quite aware of Amiga's unique features, but also because the Amiga was marketed as a game system.
It's now time to make the Amiga important, serious and respective again. It's time to speed things up and gather more people to join the fun. To join the development of the Amiga, moving away from arrogant companies like Amiga Inc and Commodore USA, and to only focus on true faithful Amiga companies such as ACube, A-EON Technology, Hyperion Entertainment and Varisys.
Because "ONLY THE AMIGA MAKES IT POSSIBLE". Amiga can do it again, as long as we all stick together to bring the Amiga back to the frontline again. Forget about Amiga Inc and Commodore USA! Their offer to the community are no native Amiga-systems based on the native AmigaOS. The 4 mentioned companies above will provide true, native Amiga-systems based on the true, native AmigaOS! No other! Remember that and try to understand why the Amiga is so important. Why the Amiga is so unique, and without reason why the Amiga community is so faithful and spiritual to the Amiga platform. It's not just a cool hobby or a cult. It's not even just an own religion. It's a lifestyle on its' own, because it's pure fun and in many ways, way better than traditional systems like Windows, even bypassing the modern MacOS X in special areas where the Amiga used to dominate, like video and music. We can make the Amiga the sole leader again!
Before i end this threat, i have a small message to give in term of music applications. There are almost no music applications to the Amiga anymore! OctaMED SoundStudio for the Amiga is considered dead and abanded by RBF Software, and the development of the highly promised Digibooster Pro 3 is still not completed, but still only in beta. These music applications, as well as
all other Amiga development must speed up. We must now take the Amiga serious again! Make it the big, important, highly-respective name to the public again, but only if most people as possible can stick together as a team, because the Amiga can do it again. Never forget that. Very important.
Let show the main computer industry what REAL computing is ALL about! Let start today...
Written by
Helge Kvalheim, Norway
