Commodore Amiga

The Commodore Amiga was a personal computer marketed by Commodore International between 1985 and 1994. It was designed by Jay Glenn Miner and a small team of engineers from the Didbit company. located in Santa Clara, California. Its modest entry price and its multimedia capabilities, much more advanced than the PC and Macintosh compatible ones of the time, made it more popular among video game lovers. Its operating system has an exceptional feature for computing at the time, consisting of being the first multitasking and multimedia computer aimed at the general public.

History

Development of the Amiga began in 1982 with Jay Miner, (developer of the Atari 800 chipset), as principal hardware designer for the Amiga Corporation. It was initially intended as a next-generation game console, though it was eventually redesigned as a general-purpose computer after the video game crash of 1983. A prototype of the complete computer model was first exposed to the public in the summer 1984 at the ≪Consumer Electronics Show≫. In order to bring the design of the computer to market, Commodore International bought the Amiga Corporation, and financed the development of the computer. The first model was released in 1985 simply as ≪The Amiga from Commodore≫, although it was later designated the ≪Amiga 1000≫. The following year the Amiga product line was expanded by the introduction of two new models, the ≪Amiga 2000≫ intended for professional and high-graphics use, and the ≪Amiga 500≫ aimed at home use. Commodore subsequently released other models, both for home gaming use and high-end productivity.

In 1994 Commodore declared bankruptcy and its assets were acquired by ≪Escom≫ PC manufacturer of German origin, which created the subsidiary ≪Amiga Technologies≫, which relaunched the A1200 and A4000T models, in addition to creating a new 68060 version of the A4000T model. However Escom also filed for bankruptcy in 1997. The Amiga brand was then sold to another PC maker, Gateway 2000, which had big plans for the Amiga; however in 2000 Gateway sold the Amiga brand without having released any products. The current owner of the Amiga brand has the rights to sell hardware using the Amiga or AmigaOne name to US computer vendors Commodore, Eyetech Group, Ltd. and A-Eon Technology CVBA. Unofficial AmigaOne clones were developed by Acube, an Italian hardware company.

Hardware

Friend 1200.

The basic idea with which the Amiga was designed was to make each task (sound, graphics, peripherals, etc.) decentralized, having a specific chip for each one, with a central processor, the Motorola 68000, that coordinates all these specially designed dedicated chips (custom chips, in English).

We distinguish three families of Amiga computers grouping them according to their chipset:

• OCS: Original Chip Set (Original Chipset);
• ECS: Enhaced Chip Set (Improved Chipset);
• AGA: Advanced Graphic Architecture (advanced graphic architecture).

When it appeared in 1985 it was many years ahead of other systems, using ideas like IRQ sharing, memory mapped input/output, true multitasking using the preemptive multitasking system, etc. Although some of these techniques had been invented before, they had not yet been really used in practice or on a personal computer.

Models and variants

Commercialized Amiga models

As in certain applications (rendering, large interactions, etc.) the computing power fell short, boards appeared capable of replacing the original Amiga processor with a more powerful one. It is what we call accelerator cards. A wide variety of manufacturers and models emerged, basically covering the entire MC68000 family (from 68010 to 68060, as well as the Poco 603 and 604 microprocessor models).

Operating system

The AmigaOS operating system is sophisticated, combining a Macintosh-like GUI with the flexibility of Unix.

At least the following operating systems are available for the Amiga in addition to AmigaOS:

• Amiga Unix System V R4 (also known as AMIX): distributed with the A2000UX and A3000UX, came on a tape stream.
• Mach.
• GNU/Linux.
  • Linux m68k: for family processors 680x0. It should be noted that it was the first non-X86 Linux implementation.
  • Linux PowerPC: There are several projects, the most famous is APUS (which provides a PPC native kernel for Amiga PowerUP).
• NetBSD.
• OpenBSD.
• Minix 1.5.
• pOS: commercial system created by Pios to replace the AmigaOS. She failed swirlingly.
• MorphOS: commercial system created to take advantage of PPC accelerators.

Present and future

Despite the fact that the user community has been progressively reduced due to the stagnation of its technology (which has not evolved in parallel with that of PCs), there are many users who continue to bet on the Amiga, so it continues to be actively developed hardware and software for the platform. A new Amiga is expected to appear soon, although it has been waiting for years without tangible results. The new version would try to take advantage of current PC technologies and provide them with a microprocessor from the PowerPC G3/G4/G5 family or later and an efficient operating system that does not waste system resources.

Software

Emulators

Another avenue for the future that some users see is the emulation of the Amiga on other platforms. There are different Amiga emulators that are shown below:

• Free or free:
  • UAE: Acronym of Unix Amiga Emulator. It was Amiga's first emulator.
  • WinUAE, BeUAE,...: UAE for Microsoft Windows, BeOS. See UAE website.
  • Fellow: Another emulator for Windows.
• Commercial:
  • Amithlon: Produced by Haage And Partner. It runs on a Linux mini kernel and is currently the fastest one that exists thanks to JIT (Just In Time) compiling technology.
  • AmigaOSXL: Also produced by Haage And Partner. Basically it's a UAE version that runs on QNX. It is Amithlon's coetaneous and the differences with the previous one is that this sacrifices pro speed of compatibility with the chipset. It also has the ability to run QNX x86 binary directly from the Workbench.
  • Amiga Forever: Commercialized by the house Cloanto. It is basically the WinUAE with the ROM files introduced by express permission from Amiga, Inc. The latest version features JIT compiling technologies, like Amithlon.

Operating systems

The following current operating systems are successors to or have some compatibility with the Amiga:

• Amenities 4: official, commercial, successor to PowerPC.
• AROS: opensource, for x86, ARM, m68k and PowerPC.
• MorphOS: commercial, for PowerPC.
• Amenities 4.1 Final Edition

Hardware

As for the new hard projects related to Amiga, we find:

Already discontinued

• Phase5 BlizzardPPC (for Amiga 1200) and Phase5 CyberstormPPC (for Amiga 3000 and 4000) 1997-2000 that allowed to install a PowerPC CPU in Classic Amiga. In July 2007, a version of AmigaOS 4.0 was released exclusively for machines with BlizzardPPC and CyberstormPPC, updated in February 2008. Previously the Morphos 1.4.5 was released for such products

• AmigaOne based on the designs of Teron de MAI, runs AmigaOS4.0 but is not currently produced. Originally it was to be manufactured by Scena for Eyetech but due to delays it was opted for MAI reference plates. They left 3 models between 2002 and 2004, AmigaOne SE (Teron CX, with a PPC750 to 600Mhz and numerous problems), AmigaOne XE (Teron GX, with CPU MegArray socket incompatible with Mac, usually with a G3 to 800Mhz or a G4 at 800/933Mhz) and MicroA1 (mini Teron, with G3 PXPC750FX). Run Friends 4.0 and 4.1.

• Pegasos is a machine manufactured by bplan GmbH and marketed by Genesi. It came out in 2 versions, Pegasos1 (with a 750cx/600Mhz and chipset ArticiaS from MAI), of which 3 versions were in turn. The first had DMA problems, and the next two were correcting them with the chip called April. The latest version with the April2 chip was at last very stable) and Pegasos2 (with Marvell chipset, DDR memory support and a G3/600Mhz or a G4/1Ghz, as well as 2 Ethernets). Both plates run LinuxPPC and MorphOS (a modern SO compatible with AmigaOS3.x, WarpOS, PowerUP - and AmigaOS4 via a third-party emulator-). They are no longer produced, they were manufactured between 2002 and 2006. The Pegasus 2 (not the Pegasus 1) supports AmigaOS 4.1 since 2009.

• A-EON AmigaOne X1000, computer announced in January 2010, with CPU PowerPC dual core and XMOS XCore coprocessors. It was expected to be marketed from the summer of 2010, but after several delays his first batch saw the light in 2012. It ceased production in 2015 due to the shortage of units of its CPU, but a replacement was announced (not yet for sale).

• EFIKA 5K2 base plate sold by Genesi with CPU PPC Freescale 5200B, after the Pegasus 2. It supports, among others, MorphOS and Linux. Presented in 2005, it followed the sale in Directron, a manufacturer that managed to reduce the price to 99 dollars.

Currently for sale

• Sam440ep base plate produced by the Italian company ACube Systems Srl that integrates a CPU PPC AMCC 440EP. Two versions: "ep" with integrated ATI Radeon Mobility M9 graphic and "ep-flex" without integrated graphic. Supports AmigaOS 4.1, AROS, Linux and FreeBSD. Launched in 2007, it continues to be manufactured today (January 2012).
• Sam 460ex: In April 2010 Acube announced that a new Sam460ex base plate (with CPU more powerful than the Sam440) would be available at the end of September 2010, was delayed. In November 2010 it was for sale for the industrial market of teams embedded with Linux and in March 2011 for the general public with AmigaOS 4.1. It does not replace the Sam440, although it is above 440 for price and benefits. Acube subsequently announced a more affordable version, the Sam460ex-Lite (intermediate presentations between 440ep-flex and 460ex) and a complete computer based on the Sam 460ex, the AmigaOne 500.

• Minimig is a free reimplementation of an A500 in a Altera FPGA. The first version has a real 68000 of 3.3v, a PIC to load the FPGA program and also to read MMC cards. They require an image of the ROM of an A500 (either 1.x.2.x.3.x) to work.

Announced

• AmigaOne X3500 and X5000, successors to the X1000, announced in January 2014.

• Other projects were announced but sine die was cancelled or delayed. For example the Elbox Shark PPC, concept similar to the Phase5 BlizzardPPC and CyberstormPPC, microprocessor PowerPC-based accelerator cards, but in this case it is coupled in a PCI slot, application for extended classic Amigas with an expansion PCI Elbox Mediator, Prometheus or similar. There is no news from this manufacturer, it was assumed that in these machines with this expansion AmigaOS 4.0 would work. It was promised that it would come out when the AmigaOS4.0 was officially released which has not seen the light. The Amiga netbook, a laptop announced by Hyperion, was also cancelled in October 2011.

Amiga Inc

On the other hand, the current owners of Amiga, Amiga, Inc. have opted for AmigaDE/AmigaAnyware products that are not related to AmigaOS and do not run on top of any of its incarnations. This system is the Amiga DE (Digital Environment) that uses abstraction technology at the platform and processor level. It uses Elate/intent technology from Tao Group and runs on GNU/Linux desktops and also on WindowsCE. It is a kind of virtual machine that allows you to run the same program without recompiling it.