ARS AmigaOne X5000 review

Robert · May 26, 2017

This certainly put a smile on my face this morning:
The beloved Amiga meets 2017
A modern Amiga computer from A-EON that is both modern (2.5GHz!) and an Amiga.

The good

A new Amiga exists in 2017!

Runs all classic Amiga software (including games) and new PowerPC-compiled Amiga software.

The Odyssey web browser can handle many current web applications.

The Xena XMOS chip is interesting from a hobbyist developer perspective.

The bad

It's very expensive!

There is relatively little new Amiga software.

The Odyssey web browser still has a few compatibility issues.

There is no Xena-specific software available yet.

The ugly

The difficulty level required to convince my wife that I need to buy another £2,000 desktop computer.

adz · May 26, 2017

I had a read of that review yesterday, almost made me want to buy one :eek:

Kesa · May 26, 2017

That fan looks so easy to clean *drools*

Robert · May 26, 2017

adz said:
almost made me want to buy one

Likewise.
Can't possibly justify it though.

Still, it warms my heart to see such a positive review.

ilwrath · May 26, 2017

It does warm my heart to see a positive review, too. And the first reaction is YES, I want one of these! But then yes, I start thinking about a justification, and I just can't come up with one. Here was my comment from Ars... I've thought a lot about it since then, and I still come to the same confused conclusion.

I was one of those people who jumped on the Amiga bandwagon back in the late 80's with the Amiga 500, and owned, well, pretty much everything Amiga that Commodore built at some point in time or another... (Including a bunch of stuff built by Phase 5, DKB, GVP, Supra, and dozens of other supporting companies I've forgotten.) I've kept a wary eye on all the Amiga revival attempts over the years, too. (Glances at a dusty TAO/Amiga Anywhere/DE box sitting on a shelf of oddities.)

So it seems like I should be right in the wheelhouse that this machine is aimed at. But even with that, I still have a really hard time wrapping my brain around what a "new" Amiga has to offer. I mean, when you get down to it, $1500 for a full size motherboard that is less powerful than my 2 year old phone...? I know saying that is like comparing oranges and hand grenades. But, I still can't help but do it.

I do admit, the Xenu/Xorro/XMOS expansion and programmability sound really interesting. I'd love to read a follow-up about those once (if?) some supporting materials and SDKs emerge for that portion. There could be something to having a computer that is designed to be tinkered with. Sort of a rapid prototype of dedicated hardware applications...? Of course, what is really left that dedicated hardware is the right answer to, anymore, for that matter?

Color me confused.

Robert · May 26, 2017

ilwrath said:
Here was my comment from Ars... I've thought a lot about it since then, and I still come to the same confused conclusion.

hehehe - I had actually upvoted that comment earlier.

redrumloa · May 26, 2017

Sweet jesus no! They are calling it a new "Amiga"? It isn't an "Amiga"! So much wrong here, so little time. The cliff notes? A $3,000 paper weight.

Kesa · May 26, 2017

redrumloa said:
Sweet jesus no! They are calling it a new "Amiga"? It isn't an "Amiga"! So much wrong here, so little time. The cliff notes? A $3,000 paper weight.

Typical libtard comment

redrumloa · May 26, 2017

Kesa said:
Typical libtard comment

Not really

It's not an Amiga though and legally they can't call it an Amiga, so they let everyone else call it an Amiga. I know that the people happy to see ARS report really haven't followed the AmigaOne/OS4 debacle in probably a decade. This is no different than the X1000 hype. That was a $3,500+ machine with loads of promises that were never fulfilled and false advertising. Supposedly it was going to be a PowerMac G5 killer, but in the end it had lower range G4 performance. To this day there really isn't proper 3D, and the weaksauce 3d they do have is commercial software and extremely slow. The PCI slots are so broken on it that people who installed a Radeon 9200 hoping for proper Warp3d find performance slower than an A3000/4000.

Supposedly this X5000 will be a G5 killer once again, but I've seen nothing to back this up. The best thing about the X5000? You can install MorphOS on it. But why spend $3,000 to install MorphOS on a system that will likely be smoked by a $100 (or free) PowerMac G5?

Not pissing on anyone's parade, but I doubt anyone here would buy one if they did their due diligence first.

FluffyMcDeath · May 27, 2017

If I had gobs of spare money and spare time - yeah. I'd get one. But what would I do with it?
I still have a A2000, A4000, A500, A1200 and they all sit in storage. I stopped using the 1200 when I got my 4000 and I stopped using my 4000 when I got my X1 - which I stopped playing with when the network driver stopped working and I couldn't get it going again which tells me that connection is the most important part of my computing these days.

Most of the computers around my house are ARM and a bunch of those are raspberry pi which I use for all sorts of things - so I'm more about the cheap chip computers and linux these days anyway.

Back in the day the Amiga was the only affordable way to do a lot of the things I wanted to do right out of the box - graphics, games, animation, music and a fairly descent language for coding things I wanted to try out (which was a microsoft basic but more structured than the old line-numbered basic). A new Amiga would have to also offer me something that I want to do that I can't do on my pies. It needs a killer app I guess.

Or maybe I could use it simply to replace the linux box I'm currently using to do the same things I'm doing but have bragging rights I suppose. The one thing I really miss about the Amiga, especially when I overload this linux box and get into swap hell - is the responsiveness of Intuition.

redrumloa · May 27, 2017

FluffyMcDeath said:
If I had gobs of spare money and spare time - yeah. I'd get one. But what would I do with it?
I still have a A2000, A4000, A500, A1200 and they all sit in storage. I stopped using the 1200 when I got my 4000 and I stopped using my 4000 when I got my X1 - which I stopped playing with when the network driver stopped working and I couldn't get it going again which tells me that connection is the most important part of my computing these days.

Most of the computers around my house are ARM and a bunch of those are raspberry pi which I use for all sorts of things - so I'm more about the cheap chip computers and linux these days anyway.

Back in the day the Amiga was the only affordable way to do a lot of the things I wanted to do right out of the box - graphics, games, animation, music and a fairly descent language for coding things I wanted to try out (which was a microsoft basic but more structured than the old line-numbered basic). A new Amiga would have to also offer me something that I want to do that I can't do on my pies. It needs a killer app I guess.

Or maybe I could use it simply to replace the linux box I'm currently using to do the same things I'm doing but have bragging rights I suppose. The one thing I really miss about the Amiga, especially when I overload this linux box and get into swap hell - is the responsiveness of Intuition.

Box all those Amigas up and ship them down to me! ;-)

But seriously, I do hope you've at least opened them up and removed the batteries! If not, do it now!!!!!!!!!!!

ARS AmigaOne X5000 review

Robert

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adz

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Kesa

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Robert

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ilwrath

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Robert

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redrumloa

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Kesa

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redrumloa

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FluffyMcDeath

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redrumloa

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