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{subhead} Future of the Amiga?{def}{p}
Article by M.Emrah Oral
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Dear Amigan, here is an open letter for you, aimed at sharing my opinions
and views of the future of the amiga. Do not take it too serious but if
you decide you would spend some time reading it, please do share your own
opinions with me.
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Allright, so everyone has thought and said a lot about the future of the
Amiga. I never thought that I would write this thing. Yet here I am on the
keyboard to present you with what I call my own manifesto of what the
"near future" of the Amiga should be like... What makes me say "the near
future" is the fact that I still would like to keep faith in those people
who keep promising fantastic visions for the next generation of the Amiga.
Well, the superb mystery box that contains the promised Amiga which will
make the most sophisticated PCs of today look ordinary and outdated, and
which will be priced something like $300 may remain a dream forever or it
might come true as some dreams do.. Yet, what I have in mind is a machine
which will keep the proud, keen and enthusiastic Amiga users happy while
they wait for the NG amiga.
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Let us remember shortly that what made the Amiga so successful back in
the 80s was basically its incredible graphics capabilities, astonishing
sound, and superb multitasking. But look what we have now ? PCs with
superior video cards, capture boards, scsi interfaces, Hi-Fi 32 bit sound
cards.. and the worst OS on earth. Before a lot of you prepare to attack
my idea of PC peripherals and hardware being superior, lets be honest to
ourselves and admit that our beloved amiga shall remain our beloved amiga
no matter what .. but its hardware is badly outdated, and it would not
be wise for anyone to deny that a 4MB SVGA card like the S3 Virge is better
than AGA. In fact a 8MB GFX board with the RIVA 128 chipset provides
resolutions up to 1600X1200 in 32 bit true color. Yes, I agree that if
someone kept developing the amiga since 1994, could do much better.. And
yes I agree that the integration of AGA to the rest of the Amiga hardware
and the AmigaOS might be better, but even in its current state a PC GFX
board of middle quality can perform better.. Why have I been praising
the PC boards shall remain a question in your mind while you read the
next paragraph, but make sure you don't stop reading because be sure that
I will not be trying to make you buy a PC in the end, but will in fact,
attempt to show you how easy and near the solution to make the classic
amigas up-to-date is.
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Lets take a look at the sound arena now.. If you have ever heard a
SoundBlaster AWE64, you would probably not deny that it is very hard
to develop a sound card further when sound quality and flexibility is
considered. Offering Hi-Fi 32bit audio at rates as high as 48000Hz, the
AWE64 can also mix Wave, WaveSynt, Auxilliary Line Input, Mic. Input,
Internal MIDI synth, and CDDA signals. Not to mention that it has a built
in MIDI synth a built in audio amplifier for direct speaker connection,
and a MIDI interface socket containing also the inputs for joystick
connection. Visit a friend with a PC and AWE64 and listen to some MP3s on
it making sure that he has a good set of speakers, and you will see what
I mean.
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I won't be telling you the great [! :)] specifications of PC things for
any longer. Don't we all have a prejudice against them as they are
produced for the PC ? But wouldn`t you like to replace the 4 channel, 8
bit Paula chip of an A1200 with a SB AWE64 ? Wouldnt it be great ? You
may say there are sound cards for the Amiga already .. What about their
prices ? .. availability ? .. quality ? .. quantity ? The same applies
for the GFX cards... The Picasso/CyberGFX systems may be great, but there
are cheaper soultions with better performance.. An S3 Virge would cost
less than half the money you would pay to the Amiga counterparts. And
why ? Because it has a larger market. But imagine the AGA replaced by a
8MB Riva128 chip! I must admit there can always be "betters"... The amiga
might deserve something better, something special , etc.. And thats what
AmigaInc, Gateway2000, Fleccy Moss, had been saying too. And they promised
to make the dream come true. But what about us Amigans waiting rather
desperately ?
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Now take a look at the "picture of the amiga I have in mind".. Basically
an Amiga! Yes, no *radical* hardware change! But one magic word for the
above thesis is essential for my amiga.. PCI boards. And again, for those
who prepare their arms to shoot me for treason, I must admit that I know
that the PCI bus is slow, etc. etc. but is it not going to be better than
the AGA ? Imagine an Amiga with  4 PCI slots.. There are already a LOT of
PCI cards on the market. They are cheap , qualitative, and have a variety.
They are produced by a lot of different third party manufacturers, and it
is very unlikely that they will cease to exist in the near future.. (And
"near future" is what we are ineterested in, right ? We will have our
amigaNG in the distant past.) Imagine the power of a 8MB fast gfx board,
a SB AWE64 in your amiga.. Its already exciting right ? But what about the
other issues ? An impoved OS would be essential yet what I have in mind
is not a completely new or radically changed one... Basically it is AmigaOS
with built in RETARGETTING systems. We already have AHI for audio which
would provide compatibility with any PCI sound card. We already have RTG.
Screens can open on S3 Virge's, Riva128's.. It is already possible. If
anyone has tried running WinUAE on a Pentium PC, he/she would have noticed
that the speed of CPU emulation is laughably slow, but the speed of
Retargettable graphics over the PC's gfx board is impressive, although
it is a software-only emulator, that runs under.... Windoze!!, the worst
OS on earth! Can you imagine AmigaOS ruling the gfx board ? Yeah ? Then,
imagine also , AmigaOS & superb amiga DMA capability, showing off an AWE64.
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The PC has great hardware add-ons, but terrible integration and out dated
means of bringing these together, coupled with a disaster like Windoze
prevents it from using the add-ons to their full capability.
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Up to now, we have been mainly considering sound & video. I can hear you
say "is that all ?" .. Definitely not.. A PCI gfx board would mean 100%
compatibility with cheap and good quality SVGA monitors. Internal 56600
modems, CD Re-Writers, Ethernet Cards, Video Capture boards, Scanners,
ISDN adapters, MPEG decoders, DVD based devices, all use PCI (or at least
are available in PCI bus versions). It is nothing but logic and maths.
Take a price list for PC parts, and one for the Amiga, create two machines
of equivalent capabilities (if you can find counterparts for all the PC
parts for the Amiga.. anyway) and compare the prices.
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As for the memory, 2 ports which would take SD or EDO rams would fullfill
the needs of most if not all amigans. It would mean at least 256MB and
remember , unlike MS & win applications, Amiga proggies are very memory
conservative.. A 500K code does what a 3MB code on the PC does. But it
needs to run on the new amiga! Which takes us to the issue of compatibility.
In my personal opinion, what is essential for the new amiga is backwards
compatibility. If AmigaInc creates a great beast running at 500Mhz,
astonishing capabilities, etc. and no amiga compatibility, would you call
it an amiga ? Wouldn't it be like calling a completely different thing an
Amiga and trying to believe it ? I may as well, try to find consolation
in having to use a PC by calling Windoze98 , Workbench... :P Dual CPU
is a great concept and is very suitable for the Amiga, wether it be
PPC + 680x0 or any other suitable CPU + 680x0. Only by adding a ppc.library
or something similar, you can have a double CPU OS even on the classic
amiga which is definitely good proof of the power and flexibility of
AmigaOS. Some say that the best solution for the amiga would be the 68090
(350Mhz).... if it existed!! :P Unfortunately it doesn't. And there is
nothing wrong with having a PPC or a even faster CPU in the box, but 68000
compatibility MUST be there, and must be FAST! And here comes the relatively
unpractical-looking  but rather possible solution! Parallel processing.
Ever seen, or read about the parrallel computer clusters of NASA doing
the jobs of the mainframes, and costing nothing near ? If we can not have
a 350Mhz 68090, why not have several 68060s in the box working parrallel
to get the job done as quick as possible ? This would be the only thing
that might pull the price a bit high, but that is just "a bit".
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While everyone is promising great changes, and improvements about our
beloved Amiga, let us ask ourselves does what we need have to be as
radical a solution ? Wouldn't it probably be better that the new miggy
would come as a cheap un-equipped basic motherboard with multiple CPUs
and STANDARD PCI ports, so that the owner can load it with as many
features as he/she likes (or his/her budget allows) , and still preserves
expandability for the future ? Wouldn't a machine that the programmers
already have experiance with programming not only its cpu but also the
custom chips like for instance the BT848 (AverEZ PCI capture board)
have software support ? Wouldn't it last long with all the hardware
support that is available, and will be available for a long time ? And
wouldn't you like to play with it while you wait for the (rather suspicious)
ULTIMATE AMIGA-NG ?
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{bold}M.Emrah Oral{nobold}
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{bold}memrah@usa.net{nobold}