

AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition: Now Shipping to Dealers - bane
http://oldschoolgameblog.com/2014/12/19/amigaos-4-1-final-edition-now-shipping-to-dealers/

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mdm_
I'm not familiar with Amiga and the surrounding culture, but I was surprised
to learn there is modern PowerPC hardware and an updated OS. What can you do
with an Amiga in 2014? Why would someone pay $3000 for an AmigaOne X1000
workstation? Is it purely nostalgia?

~~~
fractallyte
Perhaps surprisingly, it _does_ have a killer feature: the Xena co-processor,
which introduces - for the first time in a consumer machine - 'Software
Defined Silicon'.

From the blurb: 'Capable of eight concurrent real-time threads with shared
memory space, at up to 500 MIPS, Xena gives the X1000 a very flexible, very
expandable co-processor. The uses are endless; control hardware, DSP
functions, robotics, display - even SID chip and console emulators.'

Link:
[http://www.a-eon.com/index.php?page=nemo](http://www.a-eon.com/index.php?page=nemo)

(It reminds me of the 'Geek port' on the BeBox.)

If the number of Amiga developers reaches critical mass, an emergent 'killer
app' could yet make this a compelling platform.

~~~
makomk
The "Xena" co-processor is just an off-the-shelf XMOS XCore microcontroller
interfaced to the CPU somehow. I've got a development board for one of their
chips kicking around somewhere, though obviously without the CPU interface.
It's only "software defined silicon" in the sense that it gives you very
powerful ways of implementing custom I/O; it's not that fast at any compute
tasks compared to a modern PC. There also doesn't appear to be anyone who's
done anything with this, and the official prototyping board for connecting
stuff to it is very expensive too:
[http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php...](http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1135)
(several times the price of a standalone XCore board). Oh, and apparently the
toolchain required to compile code for "Xena" doesn't even run on Amiga or
PowerPC, but that's not terribly surprising.

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mariuolo
If I understand the changelog, they introduced memory protection only in this
release, in 2014.

I was an Amigan back in the 80s and early 90s and have fond memories of the
platform, but I think they should just remain memories.

~~~
vidarh
The thing is there are a number of people for whom they have never been just
memories. There are people still using the original classic 68k machines on a
day to day basis. And there's still stuff in there I miss in Linux. I don't
use AmigaOS any more, but I do occasionally use (and even less occasionally
contribute to) AROS, which is an AmigaOS compatible OS that runs on (amongst
others) PC hardware either natively or under Linux.

As for memory protection, AmigaOS has a particular set of issues there: The OS
is full of dependencies of message passing where the messages includes
pointers, and where many apps may use the pointer passing to pass ownership of
objects. Proper memory protection is incredibly hard to add to it.

With the resources of some large company, it might be possible, but to do it
without losing a large percentage of the software catalogue, which is not
being "replenished" very fast by ongoing development (though there are a few
handfuls of commercial software products for AmigaOS still, and a small
community of open source developers) would effectively require auditing of
most applications to figure out how they're using the message passing, to try
to find out how to avoid breaking them.

------
LeoPanthera
Non-blogspam link: [http://www.amigaos.net](http://www.amigaos.net)

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MichaelTieso
Lots of great memories with the Amiga. It was my first computer. I remember
the day my dad had told me he was selling my Amiga for a PC. I had cried and
told him not to do it. I had maybe a dozen drawers filled with floppy disks
mostly of games. It lasted maybe for another year before I gave in for a PC.
Can't remember what year that was but I know I had about two or three Amiga's
and at least two in the house always.

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erickhill
I guess this proves you never should name anything "Final".

