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by ofalkaed·3y ago·view on hn ↗
It is very very silly of you to think they are trying to compete with modern general purpose desktops, they are attempting to fill a niche which Amiga helped create and has never quite been filled since their demise despite modern computers being so much "better."

I was referring too the X5000 which is PowerISA architecture. A1222 is planned to be around $500 which is not all that expensive, X5000 is on the expensive side. Considering my use of such a computer would be to run various audio software that was designed for much slower single core machines I suspect a dual 2ghz processor with XMOS coprocessor would be quite satisfactory. It would allow me to use some software which does not play well with emulators and would probably be just about ideal for my needs when it comes to a studio computer.

I suspect the A1222 project was scrapped due to shutdown fallout, chip shortages, etc but who knows, it may still happen.

1 comments
The Amiga was one of several very popular late 1980s home computers. They all have this same rather vague nostalgic sentiment attached to them by fans, but it's true that none of them have been more preyed upon by crooks than the Amigans over the subsequent years.

Nothing is going to "fill that niche" because it's not actually a niche, just your brain playing tricks on you.

And the X5000 isn't "in production" in any meaningful sense. Somewhere there may be some boards on a shelf that are technically "new in box", but this is fairly old hardware from an even older design. That P5020 CPU is thirteen years old and whilst its industrial customers presumably used the second core, Amiga software does not.

Amiga "developers" periodically claim that they're working very hard on that, all the way back to 2013 you can find very earnest sounding men explaining that they've mostly got it working but it is being tested by a select group under NDA. They're bullshitting, telling Amigans you just need a few more weeks a bit more money means you don't have to admit that you spent every penny and there's nothing to show for it. Maybe a miracle will happen.

Amiga OS does use the second core even if the software does not, just like every modern system. Do you think it just piles every single process onto a single core?

I never said the x5000 was in production, I actually said it wasn't.

The closest thing to "Amiga Developers" would be Hyperion who took over the OS and has made licensing deals with 5 or 6 different hardware producers, they make no hardware themselves. Over the past decade or so at least a dozen different Amiga systems and motherboards have gone into production and sold well for what it is. Most of the hardware is sold through various online stores with a couple of those producing hardware also selling online, Hyperion only sells software; so who exactly are these evil "Amiga developers" you talk about? Or is it a conspiracy and they are all involved?

If you are going to make accusations you should identify the culprit, would you blame Microsoft and everyone who makes or sells computers which run Windows because HP ripped you off?

> Amiga OS does use the second core even if the software does not, just like every modern system. Do you think it just piles every single process onto a single core?

It's much worse than that. Only the first core is even "running". The Amiga OS isn't intended to handle true concurrency, which is why the 68k era operating system provides Forbid/Permit and Disable/Enable, which respectively forbid the OS from task switching and disable all interrupts. This made writing a 1980s home video game for the Amiga hardware much easier, but most application software took advantage of this too.

The PowerPC port of the system from the turn of the century actually doubles down on this nonsense, presumably because it made it easier to implement. As a result even "new" Amiga software, such as it is, still relies on these Forbid/Permit and Disable/Enable semantics, ensuring it can't be made to run efficiently on multi-core hardware. If there was widespread new application development you could imagine first shipping new SDKs which avoid these semantics, and latterly getting rid of the programs which use them but obviously for Amiga that's not practical at all and probably hasn't been for many years.

Over the 20+ years since I'm afraid things got a lot more complicated than "Hyperion took over the OS" although since Hyperion are one of several entities engaged in pointless legal wrangling about this topic perhaps if you believe their version of events that's what you'd get out of it. Trevor Dickinson ends up funding a lot of the remaining software development. sometimes via the A-EON Technology Ltd vehicle, other times personally.

There are a long parade of "culprits" if you want to use that term, whether Amiga Inc, Hyperion Entertainment, Eyetech Ltd, or specific individuals like the Friedens, Bill McEwen, Steven Solie, Ben Hermans, Alan Redhouse, Trevor, there are always people who'd like to exchange your money for their promises. Do they know the promises are bogus? I don't care, and if you ensure you don't give them money then nor should you.