AMIGA

2. AMIGA introduces developer system and future plans

On the Amiga show "Amiga 2k", which was in St. Louis, USA, on April 1st and 2nd, AMIGA explained their plans and presented the announced developer box, which is the base for programming the new Amiga operating system and first applications. These are the most important details:

The developer system:

• The developer system contains an AMD K6-2 (500 MHz), 64 MB RAM and the graphics board GeForce 256, on which the Tao system would run fine, according to AMIGA.


• The developer envirenmont would run "hosted" on a RedHat-Linux kernel.


• Developer software is supposed to be made available using a support website.


• The developer software is expected to run on any PC matching the specifications, but support will only be for those buying the device from AMIGA.


• The developer machine is expected to become available in approx. two to four weeks and can be bought from anybody.

The user system:

• Notice: Developer machine and user system are two different things (more about that at the end of this edition)


• The new Amiga operating system is to be used either as an "add-on" (e.g. under Linux) as well as a stand-alone.


• Decisive would be Taos virtual processor, which already runs on x86, PowerPC, MIPS, ARM, SH4 and will run onother powerful processors, which will be announced soon.


• So, the new Amiga operating system will not be limited to a certain hardware platform.


• The Tao Group would only make the kernel of OS available.


• The kernel has a size of 25 KB, the complete OS with GUI and Java would require approx. 3 MB of RAM.


• The Amiga operating system would be very scalar.


• The GUI system would exist seperately, which allowed to ad various GUI models.


• The first GUI model would be quite different from the current AmigaOS-GUI, but users could create, what they wanted.


• The Amiga software should become the common "Consumer Application Layer" for 26(!) different Linux versions and the common interface for Corel-Linux applications.


• Java plays an important part. There will be many Java applications for the new Amiga.


• Espial (http://www.espial.com) developped an 800 KByte-Java browser for the new Amiga.


• There will be a new version of Scala.


• 117 of the current Amiga software titles will be ported to the new AmigaOS. These should come from Scala, AMIGA, Titan Computer, Haage & Partner, Digital Images, Hyperion and Crystal Software.


• Currently, AMIGA would not develop a 68k emulation, but they would have contact to various companies, which would like to do this job (but follow different targets).


• Animators of Disney Corp. would have given conceptional designs for towers, desktops, servers and game consoles to them. (Disney used more than 500 Amigas to make animations for their movies).


• The user system is expected to become available within this year.


• Two groups of customers are targeted: The "digital adventurer" (an expansion of the current Amiga market) as well as those, which basicly do not like computers very much (Domestic Digital Habitat).


• The Amiga technology should be licenceable from any company with a good idea and some money.


• Tech Head Stories (http://tech-head.com) would bring some detailed analyses of Amiga announcements, regarding the streaming video, text and graphic formats.

Partnerships and other things:

• Sun, RedHat and Corel would be strategic partners of AMIGA.


• Various consumer electronic companies, including Sony and JVC, would be interested in the new Amiga technology.


• Soon, an announcement of AMIGAs participation regarding a worldwide ISP (Internet Service Provider) alliance will be made.


• Phoenix (targeted to create an own Amiga successor, up to now) supports the plans of AMIGA.


• Newtek made the source code for Toaster and Flyer available (take a look on http://www.toaster.amiga.org).

Impressions:

There are not many descriptions of show visitors, who saw the developer system working, but according to the first reports they liked it. Especially the speed of the software was praised.

By the way, a first analysis of the announcements is included at the end of this AMIGA aktuell International edition.