| From: | Zoltan Hunt |
| Date: | 13 Oct 2000 at 11:24:32 |
| Subject: | Re: AMIOPEN: Zorro vs PCI - My Sword is Bigger |
This is a bit big, put its an e-mal from Dave posted a year or two back. I was at
the last WorldofAmiga show in Toronto (1993) and they (can't remember his name,
was the head hardware guy at the time) basically they said that they were
originally developing a follow-up to Zorro (Zorro4?) but then decided that PCI
pretty much did what their proprietary design would.
They also talked about AAA, some nice stuff in there (I have the Developer Notes
on it somewhere found them on the internet last year) but reading it through last
year and it really shows its age, i.e. the a low end ATI card can match and
exceed its resolutions/colours. Lets get this Resurect-AGA debate wound soon- we
still haven't debated whether Paula should be revamped ;) Bring back ChipRam! ;)
Zoltan
Starts Here:
Hey, Y'all --
I thought that all of you should see what Dave Haynie posted on ZD
Net in response to that site's coverage of the NG Amiga.
Enjoy yourselves, and enjoy some of Dave's sanity and perspective,too.
Peace,
Steve Folberg
Name: Dave Haynie Email: dhaynie@jersey.net Location: Arid South Jersey
Occupation: Iconoclast Wow! It's like Christmas, hearing all the good postings
about Amiga after all this time (ok, two ignorant cavemen didn't like it, but the
appreciation of fine art is beyond
the grasp of some lesser minds). I worked at C=/Amiga from 1983-1994, and
consulted for Amiga Technologies (ESCOM) 1995-1996. The dream hasn't died for
many of us, and it's telling, if you view the history, that fools destroyed the
Amiga from within, not competition.
For hardware: in 1991, I was designing the next generation Amiga systems
architecture, to replace the A3000/A4000 design. With all the cool stuff that
went in there, I can honestly say the PC industry has pretty much caught up and,
in many places, surpassed this
architecture (if you include USB and I2O, they have nailed it). So using part or
all of a PC design can still yield a perfectly Amiga-like system.
Software, on the other hand, is at issue. I was very concerned when Gateway/Amiga
dumped QNX (very much a modern Amiga-like OS) for Linux. Linux is a fine free
UNIX, but in many places, it's the opposite of AmigaOS. You can't do multimedia
on Linux in the Amiga way (in fact, even Windows is better, today, and Windows
usually fails the Amiga definition of recorder-ready multimedia). You don't have
autoconfig at all, not even the primitive static autoconfig Windows uses. But
this may well change. Jim Collas called me last month, we spoke for more than an
hour, and I'm convinced they may do well. Basically, at worst, you'll have a
machine that fulfills the promise of NeXT, only very open. At best, you'll have
that merged with basic Amiga ideas, and perhaps these will propagate to the
greater Linux community. If you were to look for one simple way to Linux, in
general, doing "the desktop thing" better than Windows, all you need is an influx
of Amiga technology -- we had that stuff done right, for the most part, back in
'86. I can't say how it'll come out, but Collas seems to be the best guy since
Jeff Porter (A500/A2000/A3000 era) to be running things at a solvent Amiga-owning
company. You could do worse, market wise, to base things around Linux and Java,
so even if it the machine doesn't pass my Amiga acid test, it has a good chance
of standing down Windows at 20 paces. And if it the new Amiga, for real, done
right, reaching The Mainstream, people won't see personal computers the same way
again.
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