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Amiga 1000 Phoenix Project

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Re: Amiga 1000 Phoenix Project

#11

Post by TYPE_FASTER »

pornel wrote: post #9
rbanffy wrote: post #6

I often wonder what a current Amiga would be in order to capture the qualitative jump the original offered when it was launched, and somehow preserving some of its identity.

To me Amiga's identity was: • stunning graphics, audio, GUI, and multitasking • demoscene community • platform where "indie" creativity created "AAA" games So it was mostly an artifact of its time. I don't think you can pack exactly these things in a single device any more. Maaaybe if there was a next-gen console, but with an open OS and hackable hardware? But graphics are reaching diminishing returns (RTX is nice, b…

Having grown up using a VIC-20, C64, and Amiga 500, I've had similar thoughts.

There was something magical about the innovations in the hardware and software on the Amiga platform. Seeing the bouncing ball demo running was cool, but dragging the Workbench screen down to show the ability to multitask was awesome at that time. Using Deluxe Paint to render animations and record them on VHS using a cheap genlock was fun.

It's that intersection of accessible magic that makes me nostalgic. My most recent experience of that feeling was playing Breath of the Wild on a Switch hooked up to a TV a couple years ago. The opening scenes where you look out over the Great Plateau for the first time really took me back to thinking anything is possible.

Re: Amiga 1000 Phoenix Project

#12

Post by hnlmorg »

stinkytaco wrote: post #10
pornel wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me Amiga's identity was: • stunning graphics, audio, GUI, and multitasking • demoscene community • platform where "indie" creativity created "AAA" games So it was mostly an artifact of its time. I don't think you can pack exactly these things in a single device any more. Maaaybe if there was a next-gen console, but with an open OS and hackable hardware? But graphics are reaching diminishing returns (RTX is nice, b…

People at the time thought computers were "good enough" as well. Part of Amiga's influence was its ability to show us what computing could do in our day to day life (games, video, etc.) that we didn't even know we wanted until it was there. So I have to think there's something that could come along and capture that essence again. I'd say the iPhone represented a similar qualitative jump, though by that time Apple had…

> People at the time thought computers were "good enough" as well.

I don't think that was true. People thought some computers were powerful but we were always aware of their limitations. We just never imagined those limitations would go away as spectacularly as they have.

I also don't agree with the iPhone comparison. Maybe smart phone (generalised) but the smart phone idea was about long before Apple entered the market. Whether it was PDAs (which I owned), Blackberry or Palm handsets (which I had as a work phone) or feature phones like Sony Ericsson handsets that had the web, maps and games (written in Java). For me, the thing iPhone and Android changed was the UI from being a physical key or stylus interface to a multi-touch glass screen. But there are some lost benefits to this (precision with the stylus and tactile buttons are faster to type on than touch screen) so, for me at least, the transition was bitter sweet once I'd gotten over the honeymoon period of owning a shiny new gadget.

I think you're right about VR being one of the next big leaps. AI/ML definitely feels like another one of those "wow" techs. That last one leads to greater autonomy (like self driving cars) which definitely feel like science fiction. But for me, the most exciting innovation yet to happen is augmented reality. I mean sure, we had some products that fizzled out (like Google Glass) and some cool phone apps that use AR. But I think wearable AR will take off again in our lifetimes and that will be as monumental a culture shift as the rise of the smart phone.

Re: Amiga 1000 Phoenix Project

#13

Post by HacklesRaised »

pornel wrote: post #9
rbanffy wrote: post #6

I often wonder what a current Amiga would be in order to capture the qualitative jump the original offered when it was launched, and somehow preserving some of its identity.

To me Amiga's identity was: • stunning graphics, audio, GUI, and multitasking • demoscene community • platform where "indie" creativity created "AAA" games So it was mostly an artifact of its time. I don't think you can pack exactly these things in a single device any more. Maaaybe if there was a next-gen console, but with an open OS and hackable hardware? But graphics are reaching diminishing returns (RTX is nice, b…

Do we really want MultiTasking? This is a question that I have been pondering for a while. What made the Amiga / ST / Archimidies special was that all that computing horse power, for the era, was dedicated to a single 'user' task. Today we have powerful hardware that doesn't seem to live up to its potential. I have no data but one wonders how many cache misses of a foreground application are the result of a background application invalidating cache lines? No, I have not totally convinced myself of the argument, but I do think, that when we look back at the golden age of the home computere, we should at least recognize that the operating systems in play were not the multi-user, multi-tasking leviathans of today; it was a simpler time and perhaps we could do with a little more simplicity in our lives.

Re: Amiga 1000 Phoenix Project

#14

Post by thesimp »

Like already said in this thread: the Amiga was a product of its time because it introduced some hardware and software features that were radical at that time.

If you want to make an Amiga 2020 today you will really need something that the normal PC/Apple/phone/console does not do.

For example:

The Amiga 2020 needs: a 64 core CPU in which each core or set of cores can run a fully independent&secure version of the OS. I'm thinking switching between OS's like the Amiga workbench could switch between resolutions.

The Amiga 2020 needs of course a hardware chip that does perfect speech interpretation. None of this half/half Siri or Ok Google stuff. The local AI on chip will handle that all.

The Amiga 2020 needs a hardware chip that will control any set of VR glasses easily. The OS will of course have a graphical layout that will fully use AR and VR capabilities such that the user can do cool things with it like AR augmented desktops that exist both on computer and physically on the desk in front of you. I want to have my AR rolodex as my address book.

The Amiga 2020 needs 21st century expansion to talk to external devices. Either via 4G/5G such that computer and peripheral can always talk to each other no matter how far away they are. Or something more fancy like low power led/laser beam comms so that you just have to place the peripheral next to the computer to make them sync up.

The only thing missing is the spirit of the "future of the computer". Do not underestimate how optimistic we were at that time that computers, with their endless possibilities, would solve just about any problem in the world. The 21st century is a very different place.

Re: Amiga 1000 Phoenix Project

#15

Post by rbanffy »

pornel wrote: post #9
rbanffy wrote: post #6

I often wonder what a current Amiga would be in order to capture the qualitative jump the original offered when it was launched, and somehow preserving some of its identity.

To me Amiga's identity was: • stunning graphics, audio, GUI, and multitasking • demoscene community • platform where "indie" creativity created "AAA" games So it was mostly an artifact of its time. I don't think you can pack exactly these things in a single device any more. Maaaybe if there was a next-gen console, but with an open OS and hackable hardware? But graphics are reaching diminishing returns (RTX is nice, b…

Building a bit on that, I'd imagine fluid multitasking with imperceptible latencies. A unique programming model or language, say, an OS written in Rust and, relying on that, extensive multithreading and async calls everywhere.

A lot of that is in Haiku, but I'd expect more, adapted to heterogeneous cores.

Re: Amiga 1000 Phoenix Project

#16

Post by HacklesRaised »

thesimp wrote: post #14

Like already said in this thread: the Amiga was a product of its time because it introduced some hardware and software features that were radical at that time. If you want to make an Amiga 2020 today you will really need something that the normal PC/Apple/phone/console does not do. For example: The Amiga 2020 needs: a 64 core CPU in which each core or set of cores can run a fully independent&secure version of the OS.…

I could definintely get behind sets of cores and associated L3 cache being isentified as a task unit.

Re: Amiga 1000 Phoenix Project

#17

Post by stinkytaco »

hnlmorg wrote: post #12
stinkytaco wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People at the time thought computers were "good enough" as well. Part of Amiga's influence was its ability to show us what computing could do in our day to day life (games, video, etc.) that we didn't even know we wanted until it was there. So I have to think there's something that could come along and capture that essence again. I'd say the iPhone represented a similar qualitative jump, though by that time Apple had…

> People at the time thought computers were "good enough" as well. I don't think that was true. People thought some computers were powerful but we were always aware of their limitations. We just never imagined those limitations would go away as spectacularly as they have. I also don't agree with the iPhone comparison. Maybe smart phone (generalised) but the smart phone idea was about long before Apple entered the mar…

The original question was: "what a current Amiga would be in order to capture the qualitative jump the original offered when it was launched?".

There were computers before the Amiga as well, but it represented a shift from computers as a business tool to a general purpose device.

What the iPhone did was introduce a whole new way of thinking about the phone -- as an entertainment device -- in the same way that the Amiga changed the paradigm of what we expected from computers. As the next comment pointed out, that change is not coming on the desktop PC again. It has to be something that really shifted the paradigm on computing and I think the iPhone did that. I owned a PocketPC and a Palm Treo, but those were both productivity tools and the iPhone was something entirely different in the same way Amgiga was a shift away from the PC as a business tool.

What the I think the "next big thing" will lack is the second part of the question: "and somehow preserving some of its identity." I don't see another plucky upstart shifting the hardware paradigm of computing. Though that might be because I lack the creativity, skill or vision to see what that might be.

Re: Amiga 1000 Phoenix Project

#18

Post by rbanffy »

TYPE_FASTER wrote: post #11
pornel wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me Amiga's identity was: • stunning graphics, audio, GUI, and multitasking • demoscene community • platform where "indie" creativity created "AAA" games So it was mostly an artifact of its time. I don't think you can pack exactly these things in a single device any more. Maaaybe if there was a next-gen console, but with an open OS and hackable hardware? But graphics are reaching diminishing returns (RTX is nice, b…

Having grown up using a VIC-20, C64, and Amiga 500, I've had similar thoughts. There was something magical about the innovations in the hardware and software on the Amiga platform. Seeing the bouncing ball demo running was cool, but dragging the Workbench screen down to show the ability to multitask was awesome at that time. Using Deluxe Paint to render animations and record them on VHS using a cheap genlock was fun.…

> dragging the Workbench screen down to show the ability to multitask

Not just multitask, but have different screen resolutions at the same time.

Re: Amiga 1000 Phoenix Project

#19

Post by LIV2 »

HacklesRaised wrote: post #13
pornel wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me Amiga's identity was: • stunning graphics, audio, GUI, and multitasking • demoscene community • platform where "indie" creativity created "AAA" games So it was mostly an artifact of its time. I don't think you can pack exactly these things in a single device any more. Maaaybe if there was a next-gen console, but with an open OS and hackable hardware? But graphics are reaching diminishing returns (RTX is nice, b…

Do we really want MultiTasking? This is a question that I have been pondering for a while. What made the Amiga / ST / Archimidies special was that all that computing horse power, for the era, was dedicated to a single 'user' task. Today we have powerful hardware that doesn't seem to live up to its potential. I have no data but one wonders how many cache misses of a foreground application are the result of a backgroun…

One of the most touted features of the Amiga at the time was its multitasking (Though most popular didn't even have caches to worry about)

https://youtu.be/rhS7wrgfTKk

Re: Amiga 1000 Phoenix Project

#20

Post by qubex »

thesimp wrote: post #14

Like already said in this thread: the Amiga was a product of its time because it introduced some hardware and software features that were radical at that time. If you want to make an Amiga 2020 today you will really need something that the normal PC/Apple/phone/console does not do. For example: The Amiga 2020 needs: a 64 core CPU in which each core or set of cores can run a fully independent&secure version of the OS.…

I don’t really understand the reference (by concept, at least) to LPAR (Logical PARtitonining) and hypervisor capability. This would be a consumer machine and there’s not really much utility (that I can think of) in having many fragmented OS instances running on each core of a heavily parallelised CPU.

However... you give me the opportunity to bring up my favourite OS of the late 1990s, BeOS which was both “pervasively multithreaded” to take advantage of what they perceived as being an incipient multiprocessor revolution (“One processor per person is not enough!”), and which was also somewhat conceived as a “hobbyist system” along the lines of an Amiga successor. (And no, much as it is was pretty and performant and very pleasant and a great personal favorite, BeOS was not multiuser so had very poor innate notions of permissions and security).

TL;DR BeOS (a spiritual Amiga successor) was an early comer to the world of consumer multiprocessing, but I don’t understand why you’d want a vastly multicore machine that you can logically partition.

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