In a new Amiga editorial for Suite101, John Chandler focusses on the Amiga solutions already available and what we can soon expect from Amiga Inc. Among this are AmigaDE enabled Zaurus PDAs and smartphones, AA availability in mainstream European shops and AmigaOS 4.0 scheduled for a pre-Christmas launch.
The first AA pack contains 4 games, namely PlanetZed, Convex, Solitaire and Gobbler. You can download this games pack to your PDA/cellphone, buy the SD or CF version.
To get an idea of what PlanetZed looks like, you can watch the following demonstration video (The game real game also includes pretty good sounds and music):
http://www.zeoneo.com/zeoneo/products/planetzed/videos/planetzed01….
Compatible Devices: @migo 600-C, Audiovox Maestro PDA1032, Audiovox PDA1032C, Casio GFORT, Cassiopeia E-100, Cassiopeia E-115, Cassiopeia E-125, Cassiopeia E-200, Cassiopeia E-2000 (Japan), Cassiopeia E-700, Cassiopeia E-750, Cassiopeia EM500, Compaq iPAQ 31 36 3700 Series, Compaq iPAQ 3800 Series, HP Jornada 560 Series, HP Jornada 720, NEC MobilePro P300, O2 xda, Toshiba E570, Toshiba Genio-e
Amiga Anywhere is an AmigaDE content player derived from the full AmigaDE, while the AmigaDE is based on Tao’s revolutionary intent product: http://www.tao-group.com
The AmigaDE will eventually get integrated into AmigaOS 4.x. The technology is similar to .Net and Java but is fundamentally different, therefor it is alot faster and has a smaller memory footprint compared to the previously named solutions.
I’ll passover the description of AmigaDE as Similar but fundamentally different…
I think I know what you mean.
Is AmigaDE a portable API wrapper or a virtual machine?
Or, indeed, is it neither? It sounds very interesting from the point of view of other OS’ as a way of building crossplatform apps.
First, Mike sez:
The AmigaDE will eventually get integrated into AmigaOS 4.x. The technology is similar to .Net and Java but is fundamentally different, therefor it is alot faster and has a smaller memory footprint compared to the previously named solutions.
Sounds like marketroid-speak to me- being “fundamentally different” doesn’t automatically make something faster. To test the converse, Java is “fundamentally different” from AmigaDE, but Java isn’t neccesarily therefore a lot faster than Amiga DE.
I’ve played with the AA Ent Pack on PocketPC. I dunno, I’m not really into games. They required a huge amount of RAM for what was actually being delivered, but I recognize that there is an overhead and a mostly worthwhile one for a system, but for me, it’s a bit of a stretch for just a game- but the nagain, I’m not a gamer at all and I don’t put much importance into them.
It seems silly to me that they’re branding this Entertainment pack as being Amiga- I suppose the Amiga had good games, so they’re playing off of that. I guess it’ll have more meaning when there is actually an Amiga OS built on Tao, and perhaps these AmigaDE apps, apps that make the new Amiga the new Amiga, are available on PocketPC, &c.
I’m not sure why Mike has asserted that the technology behind AmigaDE is “fundamentally different” from that behind Java or .NET. To answer ~Seedy~’s question, AmigaDE is basically yet another virtual machine/library environment, with a fast JIT.
Intent/Amiga DE is also a *lot* faster than Java, and Java on Intent runs faster than Java on, say, Windows.
> I’ll passover the description of AmigaDE as Similar but
> fundamentally different…
Thr Virtual Processor is very different compared to for instance an ordinary Java Virtual Machine. The Virutal Processor is a register-based architecture. VP code supports an unlimited number of registers.
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-amiga3/?dwzone=linu…
Another major difference is that the translation is done at load-time. When the program is translated only the native translation is being executed.
With intent/AmigaDE you can write your software either in C/C++/VP assembler or even Java (as there are JVMs available for intent)
Finally intent can run standalone or hosted on top of any other OS and code can be combined with platform specific code if desirable.
> They required a huge amount of RAM for what was actually
> being delivered
Actually only PlanetZed is over 2MB, the other 3 games are really tiny: Covex (287.75 kB), Solitaire (142.25 kB), Gobbler (144.25 kB). Also ideally the AmigaDE should be already installed on the target device, with this entertainment pack the AA content player is included as well, it can be, as it is relatively very small.
I have a Zaurus. There is nothing Amiga-related on it. It’s a standard Linux system with the QPE GUI environment. If some Amiga-related software exists for it, it must be distributed by someone else, and it would run on other Linux machines as well.
> It’s a standard Linux system with the QPE GUI
> environment.
Although there is a version of AmigaDE/intent available to developers which completely replaces Linux on this device, the AmigaDE can also run on top of linux. To see this demonstrated take a look at the following demostration for TechTV:
http://www.aminet.net/pix/mpg/BillTechTV.mpg
> If some Amiga-related software exists for it
The article clearly stated that we can soon expect AmigaDE/intent enabled Zaurus PDAs.
Some Zaurus pictures running AmigaDE content:
http://www.getboinged.org/images/AmigaExpo/Camera_Photos019.jpg
(Last year Sharp demonstrated AmigaDE software, running on a Japanese model at the Japanese Business Show 2001:)
http://www.amiga-news.de/archiv01/jbs2001/000006.html
related interviews:
With CTO Fleecy Moss http://www.templeoftech.com/articles.cfm?ArticleID=58&PageID=1
With AmigaDE developers:
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=542