The Year In Review
by Ron Schwartz
from the AmiTech-Dayton Gazette, January 2003
Well here we are again. At 12, Midnight, on December 31st, the year 2002 drifted off into Never Never Land and 2003 became a reality. 2002 will be analyzed as a year having varying levels of success, depending on what your interests are. For the Amiga Community it was a very uneven year. It was filled with promises that, for the most part, did not come to fruition. Finally, at the very end of the year, some of the new generation Amiga and Amiga-like systems began to appear, months after they had originally been promised. Initially promised to be delivered eariy in 2002, the Amiga One Motherboards, at least the G3 PPC version, actually became available during the last weeks of December. The down side was that Amiga OS-4 was not available when the Amiga One boards were. The decision was made not to delay, but to deliver the Amiga One boards with Linux initially. A number of dealers are taking orders for them and I hear reports on the web sites from people who claim to have them, however, it is difficult to determine just how available they really are.
The Pegasos and Morph OS were also apparently beginning to deliver before the end of the year. So far however, I have seen nothing indicating any dealers in this country are selling them. They do have a North American web site that you can apparently order them through. The controversy continues. Each of these systems has its proponents and its detractors, which results in a lot of flame wars on several of the discussion groups. As I have mentioned before it is unfortunate that these systems are dividing the small Amiga Community that still survives. Of course, there are other operating systems out there that have either been derived as attempts to do independent updates of the Amiga OS, or were developed as part of the early efforts to develop the next generation Amiga OS by whoever owned Amiga at the time. QNS is a perfect example of this as it was to be used as the kernal for the initial efforts by Gateway to develop a new Amiga OS until they did a 180 and switched to using Linux as the kernal. I guess I am not even sure just how many different Amiga-like OSs are out there, but there are at least half a dozen.
Speaking of some of the other Amiga-like systems, this year Amiga Inc. threatened to take legal action against any of them that were infringing on Amiga's Intellectual Properties. They gave the option of either licensing those items or removing them from their programs. This effort appeared to be primarily aimed at Morph OS with the claim that the part of their OS that provides compatibility with the classic Amiga OS had been derived illegally. Amiga Inc. stated very emphatically that they would initiate legal action during the last few months of the year. Well, the year has ended and, so far, nothing has happened. In fact, Amiga Inc. has been very quiet about this issue lately.
It is unfortunate that one very promising system, Amithlon, which was somewhere between an OS and an emulator, appeared this year, but now appears to be dead. While it is, technically, an Amiga emulator that runs on an x86 PC, it is self contained and does not run over windows or any other OS. They did not develop it but, Haag & Partner distributed it in a package with another X86 Amiga emulator. While it ran the classic Amiga programs, it had the advantage of being very fast on a newer PC with a fast processor. It provided those who must have a PC anyway the capability to have a higher performing Amiga and also provided the capability to have an Amiga laptop. While it was primarily a stop-gap until the next generation Amiga situation settles out, it provided a lot of capability at a low cost. I don't fully understand what happened but, apparently, a three way legal battle developed between Amiga Inc., Haag & Partner and Bernie Meyer, the Amithlon developer. As a result, Bernie finally withdrew from the whole thing in frustration, and apparently Amithlon is dead.
There have been quite a few new developments that have become available, over the last year, to help owners of the classic Amigas keep current and to take advantage of the standardized, less expensive, PC gear. The availability of PCl busses for Amiga makes a lot of equipment useable on it. USB adapters that allow connection of the myriad of USB equipment is now available to Amigas. Many Amiga programs have had updates released during the last year, especially games, and several are being ported to the Amiga One.
While it has been a year with mixed progress, overall, as the year ended, things were definitely beginning to move in a positive direction for the Amiga Community. The biggest problem for most of us will be making a logical determination of which direction to proceed among the options available and whether that option will be viable and survive as things sort out. Overall, however, it appears that things are definitely looking up for us. So, Happy New Year, and may you make all the right decisions in the coming year.