The top Amiga "DOH" of 2011

[GiZz72]

Hi Guys,
[disclaimer]
It's apparent that I really like to post this on the ORG, but It might end up in the sock drawer due to the nature of my question(delecate). So I'll just post it here instead to be safe from the flames.
[/disclaimer]
I have just a couple of them here, just add some more if you have one. So here goes..
• CUSA - Well, just the accronym alone gives ya goose bumps. I just notice it stirred the whole community so much, even the red/blue/beige camps were getting their arms for a holy war. God helps us all! I'm sure in 2012 it will be Armageddon for sure. lols.
• CUSA conspiracy - As the result, they've tried to spread the word about their products to different forums. As a result, most of the Amiga forums seem to have negative reaction to them, if I'm not mistaken. Further splitting what so little Amiga community left we had like suicide Lemmings!

• CUSA confusion - Did they just bought IP is Commodore As of TODAY? More things are still happening?

Thanks and Happy New Year 2012
-- GiZz72

 

[redrumloa]

There is a largely negative opinion all around because so far they have not produced anything retro except the for the case and keyboard of the C64x. We Amigans and ex-Amigans are a nostalgic bunch. We want our "Amiga" to be 68k or now PPC running something that is API compatible with OS3.X. Failing that, it is not "teh true Amiga". This underlying feeling seems to go across most camps to different levels. MorphOS and AROS users will mostly shrug it off and laugh since they left the name behind. The feeling is stronger with OS4 users since their product of choice still has "Amiga" somewhat in the name and with a portion of this group taking the feeling to an extreme. Granted it is a vocal minority even with OS4 users, but this group is acting like CUSA is the great satan and will bring on Armageddon.

Heck, I started off negative. That first website gave me flashbacks of iWin. Once I saw that there was a real company with real plans, I moved to neutral. Some refuse to accept this is a real company with real plans. Worse, some refuse to accept that a 68k or PPC "Amiga" running OS3.X API is not viable to a real business in 2012.

It appears CUSA will indeed be owner of C= IP. I see it this way, there is no way CUSA could be any worse than the various owners of the C= IP since the original C= demise. The C64dtv was the one and only good product prior to CUSA IMHO.

There is a plan, the next step should be very obvious at this point.

 

[Kesa]

There is a largely negative opinion all around because so far they have not produced anything retro except the for the case and keyboard of the C64x. We Amigans and ex-Amigans are a nostalgic bunch. We want our "Amiga" to be 68k or now PPC running something that is API compatible with OS3.X. Failing that, it is not "teh true Amiga". This underlying feeling seems to go across most camps to different levels. MorphOS and AROS users will mostly shrug it off and laugh since they left the name behind. The feeling is stronger with OS4 users since their product of choice still has "Amiga" somewhat in the name and with a portion of this group taking the feeling to an extreme. Granted it is a vocal minority even with OS4 users, but this group is acting like CUSA is the great satan and will bring on Armageddon.

Heck, I started off negative. That first website gave me flashbacks of iWin. Once I saw that there was a real company with real plans, I moved to neutral. Some refuse to accept this is a real company with real plans. Worse, some refuse to accept that a 68k or PPC "Amiga" running OS3.X API is not viable to a real business in 2012.

It appears CUSA will indeed be owner of C= IP. I see it this way, there is no way CUSA could be any worse than the various owners of the C= IP since the original C= demise. The C64dtv was the one and only good product prior to CUSA IMHO.

There is a plan, the next step should be very obvious at this point.

Start a witch-hunt and burn Barry at the stake?

 

[Dammy]

There is a largely negative opinion all around because so far they have not produced anything retro except the for the case and keyboard of the C64x. We Amigans and ex-Amigans are a nostalgic bunch. We want our "Amiga" to be 68k or now PPC

Amiga was never PPC.

running something that is API compatible with OS3.X. Failing that, it is not "teh true Amiga". This underlying feeling seems to go across most camps to different levels. MorphOS and AROS users will mostly shrug it off and laugh since they left the name behind. The feeling is stronger with OS4 users since their product of choice still has "Amiga" somewhat in the name and with a portion of this group taking the feeling to an extreme. Granted it is a vocal minority even with OS4 users, but this group is acting like CUSA is the great satan and will bring on Armageddon.

Funny thing is that 3.1 API is dead even with OS4 wanting to break it.

Heck, I started off negative. That first website gave me flashbacks of iWin. Once I saw that there was a real company with real plans, I moved to neutral. Some refuse to accept this is a real company with real plans. Worse, some refuse to accept that a 68k or PPC "Amiga" running OS3.X API is not viable to a real business in 2012.

It appears CUSA will indeed be owner of C= IP. I see it this way, there is no way CUSA could be any worse than the various owners of the C= IP since the original C= demise. The C64dtv was the one and only good product prior to CUSA IMHO.

There is a plan, the next step should be very obvious at this point.

but that's not the big announcement that is going to be made. But I will certainly be doing the when what you are thinking of finally happens in the not too distant future.

 

[redrumloa]

Amiga was never PPC.

Depends on your definition of "Amiga". Amiga by Commodore was never PPC, but Amiga under Escom (Petro) certainly announced the next Amiga would be PPC.

Funny thing is that 3.1 API is dead even with OS4 wanting to break it.

It is time to move on from it, just keep an emulation layer.

 

[Pyromania]

Hi Guys,
[disclaimer]
It's apparent that I really like to post this on the ORG, but It might end up in the sock drawer due to the nature of my question(delecate). So I'll just post it here instead to be safe from the flames.
[/disclaimer]
I have just a couple of them here, just add some more if you have one. So here goes..
• CUSA - Well, just the accronym alone gives ya goose bumps. I just notice it stirred the whole community so much, even the red/blue/beige camps were getting their arms for a holy war. God helps us all! I'm sure in 2012 it will be Armageddon for sure. lols.
• CUSA conspiracy - As the result, they've tried to spread the word about their products to different forums. As a result, most of the Amiga forums seem to have negative reaction to them, if I'm not mistaken. Further splitting what so little Amiga community left we had like suicide Lemmings!

• CUSA confusion - Did they just bought IP is Commodore As of TODAY? More things are still happening?

Thanks and Happy New Year 2012
-- GiZz72

You can post that to Amiga.org no problem if you want. Also, it will not go to the sock drawer.

 

[GiZz72]

Hi,
Got another update. My friend who was an ex-amigan was strolling along a mall when he came across stall name "Gigahertz" and he found a really big poster of an Amiga and on sale a C64x from CUSA worth 60,000 pesos, if you divide that to 45$ it would come to $1333.33! Expensive even for me. So I see cusa is starting invade the market here as well.

You can post that to Amiga.org no problem if you want. Also, it will not go to the sock drawer.

@Pyromania
Thanks for that.
-- GiZz72

 

[Glaucus]

I wonder how much my real Commodore Amiga 4000 040 would sell for on eBay...

 

[Dammy]

Hi,
Got another update. My friend who was an ex-amigan was strolling along a mall when he came across stall name "Gigahertz" and he found a really big poster of an Amiga and on sale a C64x from CUSA worth 60,000 pesos, if you divide that to 45$ it would come to $1333.33! Expensive even for me. So I see cusa is starting invade the market here as well.-- GiZz72

It depends on what hardware the dealers are installing in the C64X barebones that effects the final retail pricing. I own't be shocked to hear of retails stores selling the C64X with Windows installed.

 

[redrumloa]

I wonder how much my real Commodore Amiga 4000 040 would sell for on eBay...

Prices fluctuate and I have not checked in a while. Last time I looked, big box Amigas were pulling down some big $$$.

 

[Glaucus]

Hmmm... I should take it apart and check to see if the battery leaked. I replaced mine years ago, but not sure if the replaced battery is any more robust than the original. Hope it's ok.

 

[Karlos]

Depends on your definition of "Amiga". Amiga by Commodore was never PPC, but Amiga under Escom (Petro) certainly announced the next Amiga would be PPC.

PPC hardware for AmigaOS appeared prior to OS3.5 and Amiga applications capable of running on it, or just delegating computationally intensive jobs to it have been around for years before MorphOS/OS4. Moreover, OS3.9 officially included WarpOS (the argument over WOS versus PUP is a different issue, each had their strengths and weaknesses, but the point is, they picked one, effectively ending the kernel debate) and added some limited PPC functionality out of the box. IIRC, the OS3.9 picture.datatype, for example, would use PPC to perform colour remapping/dithering if it was available. I can always remember noticing a huge difference back when I was using a 1600x1200 16-bit display. Under 3.1/3.5, I had a 24-bit RGB backdrop that used to decode very quickly compared to the 040 (thanks to a PPC jpeg.datatype) but there was still a really long delay when the decoded image was dithered from 24 bit to 16-bit, so much so that I turned off dithering and lived with the colour banding. Even without dithering, it took the 040 some time to simply truncate the colours in a bitmap that size, at least as long as it took the PPC datatype to decode it. After installing 3.9, the first thing I noticed is that my (undithered) backdrop appeared within a second of the screen opening. Turning on dithering only added another two seconds or so; no more time than it took the old 040 version to simply truncate it. A simple task like viewing images benefited significantly from this "official" support for the PPC.

So, while the original Commodore produced x86 bridgeboard hardware, it was intended to run then PC DOS level applications. It was not something that integrated into the existing OS at any meaningful level. Looking back with 20/20 vision to the time when Phase5 dreamt up the dual processor board idea, it's obvious that x86 would have been a better choice than PPC but at that time the first PPC boards appeared, this was as clear cut. The PPC was still holding it's own against x86 as Apple were demonstrating. Furthermore, integrating x86 into the host environment in the same way they did with PPC would have been a much more difficult challenge and would probably have necessitated some sort of amithlon style big-endian memory model at least for any data shared with the host OS. So, you can't really fault Phase5 for choosing PPC under those circumstances. Apple had demonstrated the transition from 68K could be done and they did it on much weaker PPC processors (601@66MHz) than we ever had to put up with. I for one was looking forward to the BlizzardG4 board and had already worked out which internal body parts I could trade for one

Of course, these days it shouldn't matter; modern descendent of the old x86 are shockingly fast and JIT emulation of both 68K/PPC on them is pretty much a solved problem.