#NT
20 messages in this thread
Before anyone goes ballistic on this subject, I am a loyal Amiga user
and I hope to remain so far into the future. This NT thing though is starting
to percolate a few questions in my head.
1. What is going on with C= and DEC? I've just been reading that DEC is going
to go in a big way for the NT platform for its Alpha chip. It seems to me that
if C= is eventually going to a RISC chip that it would be also be NT capable.
2. The power pc chip architecture is supposed to be 100% compatible with the
68000 family. It is also supposed to be the base for interoperability between
Apple and Windows apps. Everything I've read seems to indicate that the NT will
also wind up eventually on power pc architectures. How big a step is it for C=
to step up to this chip and running the NT platform and/or maybe Mac apps?
3. It seems the big push is towards some big platform and though I have a
severe dislike for virtually all Windows products, it seems that old Bill Gates
is positioning himself to grab the whole mess. I have a bad feeling that NT is
coming for us.
4. If it does, what does it mean? Will we lose this wonderful machine with its
multitasking environment for the ability to run 123 NT or some
other business related app or could the Amiga run such a system concurrent with
its own OS?
Well Amigans, what do you think?
Well, if they do adopt a machine that offers a 680×0 emulation mode, we
might well be able to run any OS, including WorkBench, on it.
I have a strong feeling that future OS' will offer MUCH better
multi-tasking than we see now, and losing the WorkBench for some other GUI
might not be the worst thing . . .
In the near future, I'm sure you'll agree that we'll all be just as happy
with our Amigas as we have always been. When something better comes along,
maybe it'll be time to rethink which tool is best for the job?
Keep On Toastin'
Erik Flom
Bill is invading, Bill is invaded, Bill is!
1. I'm not sure what's up with DEC and C= other than that they're working
on something which is supposed to see the light of day in a few years and
be really expensive. And yah I hope that the Alpha is one of the chips
the Amiga OS is ported to.
2&3. Uh uh. The PowerPC chip is new, not compatible with anything,
though it is based on the RS/6000 line of workstations from IBM. However,
IBM and Apple have already pretty much finished the PowerOpen OS, the
details of which I am not sure of, but it's some sort of framework unix
arrangement that will run Mac and Windows and other stuff in different
windows. Since Apple has already ported the Mac Toolbox to (I think) a
hardware independant level, Mac apps will run pretty quickly on PowerPC
chips. As to NT running on the PowerPC – possible, but I doubt it,
because IBM and Apple are both competing _AGAINST_ MSoft. And the last
thing I'd want to see on an Amiga is NT – it has plenty of shortcomings, I
like the Amiga OS (though there's plenty of room for improvement) and if
an Amiga ran NT, it would just be another NT box, requiring marketing
abilities of C= that C= doesn't have. And frankly, I haven't seen
multi-tasking to compete with the Amiga's from a one-machine end-user's
perspective. From a programmer's perspective, we need memory management
to allow protected multi-tasking, but the performance we have whips the
hell out of OS/2.
4. Be a BridgeBoard type solution I expect, although I've been told clone
DOS at least could be implemented _very_ cheaply at the hardware level.
Still, some fringe nut from C= (I hope he was a fringe nut, though he
otherwise sounded knowledgable and was minding the 4000T demo) at WOCA
mentioned NT as a possible future OS running on an Amiga. Gag!
Well, them's my thots
Paul
1. First, DEC is definitely banking on NT to propel its Alpha chip into the
market. I have no idea about DEC and Commodore talking. The Alpha chip looks
like it will be pretty expensive from Commodore's point of view.
2. Contrary to other responses (Paul Idol's I believe), IBM and Microsoft have
recently announced their intention to create a version of NT for the PowerPC
chip. As a side note, I find this bizarre behavior on IBM's part since they're
running an ad right now that says "N"ice "T"ry, slamming NT vs OS/2, yet
they're now intent on it being ported to PowerPC!? Do they not intend to
support OS/2 down the road? And then there's the OS that Apple and IBM are
jointly developing for the PowerPC as well. Highly confusing. I guess it's
just IBM covering all bases.
3 & 4. Before we start thinking that NT might be "coming to an Amiga near you",
realize that it is HUGE, and contrary to "the Amiga way". The Amiga OS is
compact, very efficient, and can run on machines with relatively little memory.
NT (right now) takes 60MB of hard disk space at least, and really requires 16MB
of RAM to run. Hardware similar to the Amiga OS! I think we really have to
ask ourselves what we would like the Amiga to be. I think some Amiga users
might say "don't make the OS huge, but it would be nice to run some of the
other applications out there." That's a VERY difficult thing to deliver. So I
think it's key to look at what we want. The original Amiga intention was an
affordable creative machine with a state-of-the-art OS design that could run
with very little (256K back then) memory. Do we really want Commodore to move
away from those goals? We must be careful of what we wish for – we might just
get it!
Looking forward to your comments….
Paul.
<IBM and Microsoft have announced…>
Really? Or is Microsoft claiming IBM's support, as they did during the
development of Windows, which IBM did NOT support but didn't bother to
deny it unless specifically asked? It wouldn't be the first time Gates
has employed smoke and mirrors (or outright lied to people)….
First I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Marcus Gasser and I live in
Berne/Switzerland. I'm a member of the crew of the only "AMIGA-
specialized" Store in Berne.
As answer to point 3&4 of your message: I'd like to see several lines of
the Amiga.
A cheap line with the A1200 and Amiga-OS (for games and some
word-processing). For playing games 256 colors at resolutions of 640×400
would be sufficient.
Another line could be a "consumer" or "Multimedia" line with the
A4000-030/040 with (new) AGA-Chips running Amiga OS. Video-processing and
Multimedia doesn't require (very) high resolutions, but lots of colours
and fast animation- and better sound facilities.
A third line could be a "professional" or "business" line with an
A4000-040/060 or an Alpha/PowerPC/MIPS-Amiga with high-resolution
(1280x1024x256) graphics, running one of these big OS (I'd prefer
NextStep). Desktop publishing, wordprocessing and spreadsheets doesn't
require animation and sound facilities, but it requires high resolutions.
Windows NT on the Amiga? I hope it won't come for us !!! The Amiga should
not be one WinNT platform among hundred's of others. There allways should
be something "Only the Amiga makes possible".
MARCUS Flying on AMIGA with MOTOROLA 68030 inside and AutoPilot engaged
Welcome to the AmigaForum, Marcus. And thanks for your input. I hope you
will be joining in all our discussions.
—Betty
Please no NT for the Amiga! We have two NT (beta) machines running here now…
Both are 486 66 boxes with 32 meg ram and 520 meg hard drives, and they need
every ounce of that hardware! The multitasking on a 486 is no better (in the
beta) than that offered by OS/2 2.0, and given a choice between the two I would
go with OS/2. Not to mention the fact that Billy the Kid can't get NT out the
door, the dos box still has big problems, and IBM has delivered on OS/2 2.1 (we
are expecting copies via ups tommorrow).
Amiga operating system is so smooth and productive. And the size is
unbelievable compared to the other multitasking operating systems out there.
I just don't think nt is gonna fly…
I think you guys have this all backwards. You should be thinking of the ALPHA
as the next drop in CPU chip for the Amiga, not NT as the next OS for the
Amiga! Seems to me that the DEC/C= remationship is more likley to sell boxes
this way. After all, you can get Windows NT on alot of boxes, but the speed of
an Alpha with 64bit architecture would make the Amiga OS light years ahead of a
68040. BTW, I get to play with an Alpha box for a year because of a promotion I
won locally from DEC. Should have it in a few weeks, with NT. Be interesting to
compare. I seriously doubt any incarnation of Windows will ever beat the
elegant, efficient code of the Amiga OS!
A Panasonic VP who has deep ties to DEC heard about some of the Commodore
alliance. He said it was 2 = years away and would be horribly expensive, I
don't know relative to what though. What is the price of a low end DEC
machine? Time lines of this length in the computer industry are very
volatile.
–Paul < Motorola Inside >
A lowend DEC Alpha Workstation running faster than a Pentium (many times a 486)
goes from $5,000 to $7,000 or so in monochrome I guess. Adding an Alpha CPU
chip to an Amiga 4000 might increase the existing price by only $1,000 or
$1,500 if wwe are talking just the chip. That is, an Amiga Alpha might go in
the range of $4,000 to $6,000. But this would be a helluva box. The alpha is a
64bit chip. The paths ways are not twice that of a 32bit chip. They are more
like 2^32 time the width. You can push an enormous amount of sound and graphics
thru the cpu with 64 bits. I would be way cool!
If big C= actually does make a machine with the Alpha chip, it will
probably be not Amiga related. Closer to Sun or RS/6000 UNIX
workstations. If it is compatible with Amiga's, the better for us…
//
Gary Vander Mei on Auto-Pilot \X/
Why do you think Commodore would swing back to Unix…it really never did much
for the Amiga Unix it has now?
Yes, but that was on a Amiga 3000, put it in a Workstation type machine
and you have a whole new ballgame. Unix is alive and well, just not with
an Amiga product. If C= dumps the Amiga name and comes out with a product
labled as a Unix Workstation, that is similar to Sun or RX/6000 platforms,
it would probably sell. Sadly to say that if the Amiga name is on the
product, the workstation community will completely ignore it.
//
Gary Vander Mei on Auto-Pilot \X/
If C+ put out an Amiga/Unix 4000 without the Amiga name, what name would it
have? Do you think it would sell better as a "never heard of" brand than as
Commodore/Amiga/DEC (if ALPHAbetized) brand?
Launching a new machine with no history in the marketplace usually requires a 3
to 1 marketing dollar ratio against the competition… That is not a Commodore
trait (how's that for understatement)!
Stephen,
I would conjecture that it would be called the DEC (Make up model
number) by Commodore. (Well something like that..) As I stated, if the
machine is Amiga compatible, the better for us.
The Amiga still has a home/gamer stigma to its name. I'm sure, for
marketing reasons, that C= would stay away from the Amiga name when
releasing a pro-status (read work station quality) machine.
I would be content with a Risc-processor board capable of keeping up
with the new Pentium chips. With the proper design this could easily be
attained, and surpassed, with less cost. The setback right now is the R&D
of such a project. Processors that come out from Motorola, and the rest,
have documentation on how to exactly use them from the manufacturer.
Designing a RISC based processor board would have no such support.
Well, time will tell….
//
Gary Vander Mei on Auto-Pilot \X/
Gary, Keep up with Pentium chips? You already have that with the
'040. An excellent article in Dr Dobbs pointed out that you can
slice the cat to prove what you like but fundementally the cpu's line
up 386/020..etc. The Pentium is listed as 2*486 in speed. The
natural alignment in numbers may well be the reason why Motorola is
apparently skipping the '050 to go to '060 for the next
release….RSN 🙂
Lu,
I read (in Byte)that the reason that Motorola is skipping the '050 is
because they use odd numbered extensions for minor changes and even for
radical changes. (Pardon any errors in phrasing.)
-Sean
Michael,
NT is simply an operating system. Much like UNIX, it's *supposed* to
run on many platforms and applications are supposed to be portable across
those platforms with simply a recompile.
Since NT hasn't been released yet, we'll see how true that is after the
product is released.
Don