On the hardware front, the Eyetech AmigaOne has now shipped to many eager developers - albeit with a Linux PPC / UAE bundle. Several other Linux distributions have been made available for the new hardware and the MorphOS team announced recently that MorphOS has also been successfully ported. This is all good news, ensuring that the hardware will receive a suitably broad user base essential for future development and funding. In fact, the partnership between MAI Logic (who provide key technology for the AmigaOne motherboard) and Eyetech has blossomed, with a long-term commitment announced by both parties.
The AmigaOne has, however, needed a refinement. The BIOS has been upgraded to deal with the increased demands, leading to a joint Eyetech-Hyperion development that has ported the PPCboot firmware to the new hardware. This has proceeded well and added several enhancements of benefit to both AmigaOS 4.0 and LinuxPPC users. LinuxPPC appears to be the OS of choice for the hardware until AmigaOS is publicly released later this year. Yes, I admit I have been tempted to buy the hardware first and then upgrade to OS 4, but I'm going to wait just that little bit longer...
In the meantime, why not take a look at the-product-formerly-known-as-Amithlon? (Hereby referred to in this article as TPFKAA from now on). Bernie Meyer's officially-endorsed Amiga emulation provides all the Amiga compatibility of UAE, with the benefits of JIT compilation for maximum performance. While I've not yet used TPFKAA, I've been a long-time fan of AmigaForever which I use on a dinky 2kg laptop to give me Amiga compatibility on the road. I've been thinking of upgrading to a more TPFKAA-friendly laptop and seems Amiga Inc have been propositioned by one of their OEMs to help me in my quest.
The deal is still in its infancy, and subject to interest, but will see Celeron and Pentium 4 notebooks dual-booting TPFKAA and a Linux/UAE bundle. If you're interested, e-mail interested@amiga.com - which reminds me, I haven't fired off my e-mail because the chance of officially approved and supported laptops running AmigaOS is too good to pass over.
For those looking for desktop solutions, these will also be available though hunt out your nearest Amiga retailer as many are already offering similar desktop bundles.
So, To Recap:
Mobile phones and PDAs running AmigaAnywhere, Dixons set to retail AmigaAnywhere goodies throughout Europe, AmigaOS 4.0 scheduled for a pre-Christmas launch, AmigaOne available with Linux/UAE now or with OS 4 soon,
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to John Chandler's Amiga Software topic, please visit the Discussions page.