2003 In Review
by Ron Schwartz, the AmiTech-Dayton Gazette, December 2003
To analyze the events of the year in the Amiga Community is very simple. It is basically identifying how the two major system elements, the computer motherboard and the operating system, have failed to materialize on a timely basis for the two competing systems that tend to be of primary interest to the Community. Obviously, the efforts to get both major elements of the Amiga One/OS-4 and the Pegasos/Morph systems to market have not been the only events of interest to the Amiga Community during the course of the year, but they have so totally overshadowed any others that all others pale by comparison. Interestingly, the problems encountered by each of the systems have been diametrically the opposite of the other. With both systems, early on, their intent was to have both the motherboard and the Operating System available initially and include them both as a package. Both began promising initial availability around early second quarter to mid 2002. The availability continued to slip, until very near the end of 2002. At that point, products were beginning to become available in very small quantities.
Amiga One hardware was available, but its path to market was delayed hoping OS-4 would be available very soon so they could be marketed as a package. It didn't happen. The major problem was that Amiga, Inc. had chosen Haag and Partner to update the Amiga OS for versions 3.5 and 3.9. However, they selected Hyperion to develop the new OS-4.0, which converts the OS to operate on the Power PC chip set. This caused hard feelings that resulted in a lack of cooperation requiring Hyperion to, essentially, develop the entire OS from scratch. This was complicated by the need to maintain compatibility with the previous OSs. As it became clear OS-4 would be delayed, it was decided to proceed with marketing the Amiga One motherboard, providing PPC versions of LINUX with it, so it would be a useable product. By this time, OS-4 has been demonstrated all around the world, but the demonstrations, apparently, continue to be done with alpha and beta versions. The release date seems to continue to slip. In the meantime, Amiga, Inc. appears to be in severe financial problems. One wonders, since the actual products for both parts of the system are being developed, produced and marketed by separate firms, what will happen if Amiga, Inc. goes away.
On the other hand, at about the same time, the Pegasos/Morph system hit the market. The Morph OS was fully operational, although some elements were still in development, the Pegasos1 was available and they were sold as a package, along with a PPC version of LINUX. Early on, however, problems appeared with one of the chips used in the Pegasos. As an interim fix, a replacement chip was supplied to purchasers and a small additional group of Pegasos1s were sold with the new chip. The decision was made, at that point, rather than continue with a compromise solution, the motherboard would be redesigned to solve the problems. Thus was born the Pegasos2. It was also decided to give purchasers of the Pegasos1, the option to trade them in on a Pegasos2 for an additional charge. Therefore, for most of the year, Morph has been available without the Pegasos. Pegasos2s were to be available by mid December, but apparently someone has purchased their entire first production run, so the availability of the Pegasos2 motherboards is still an unknown.
It does appear that things are finally coming together and sometime in early to mid 2004, all the problems will be solved and that both systems will finally be available to anyone who wants one. The primary hope, then, is that there will be enough demand for both systems to make them economically viable, support their developers and their continued development.