Now that Commodore has arisen from the depths of obscurity like Cthulhu awoken from R’lyeh, the question on every shoggoth’s squamose lips is this: “Will there be a new Commodore Amiga?” The New Commodore is reportedly interested, but as [The Retro Shack] reports in the video embedded below, it might be some time before the stars align.
He follows the tortured history of the Amiga brand from its origins with Hi-Toro, the Commodore acquisition and subsequent Atari lawsuit, and the post-Commodore afterlife of the Amiga trademark. Yes, Amiga had a life after Commodore, and that’s the tl;dr here: Commodore might be back, but it does not own the Amiga IP.
If you’re wondering who does, you’re not the only one. Cloanto now claims the name and most of Amiga’s IP, though it remains at loggerheads with Hyperion, the distributors of AmigaOS 4. If you haven’t heard of them, Cloanto is not an elder god, but in fact the group behind Amiga Forever. They have been great stewards of the Amiga heritage over the decades. Any “new” Amiga is going to need the people at Cloanto on board, one way or another. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible– the new Commodore might be able to seduce Cloanto into a merger, or even just a licensing agreement to use the name on reproduction or new hardware.
While a replica C=64 was a no-brainer for the revived Commodore brand, it’s not quite so clear what they should do with the Amiga name. An FPGA reproduction of the popular A500 or A1200? Would anyone want newly-made 68000-based machines, or to follow Hyperion and MorphOS to now-outdated generations of PowerPC? All of these have been proposed and argued over for years.
We’d love to see something fully new that captures the spirit of the bouncing ball, but it’s hard to imagine bottling magic like that in the twenty-first century. For now, Amiga lies dreaming– but that is not dead which can eternally lie, and we hold out hope this Great Old One can return when the stars are right.
There are a lot of new Amiga HW, both in PowerPC and FPGA`s
I don’t understand the nostalgia trend. I loved my Amigas and I learned a heap of stuff about software development on them as a teenager. I have fond memories of making incredible stuff with them.
And also, I have moved on, grieved, and grown.
I’m tired of seeing old familiar names of my childhood dredged up and repackaged again and again. If someone wants to build replica hardware or an emulator in a box, that’s cool, but let’s not kid ourselves with promises of a grand revival of dubious purpose.
Make something new! Remember the ways these classic systems sparked joy for you and express them in a new form. Create something delightfully quirky for the next generation to fall in love with.
I don’t need a new Amiga. Not when there are so many other possibilities to explore.
this!!
Plus its’s still the old copyright crap about , using the C- logo to generate $$$$, I congratulate efforts like from Olimex ! Not only modern-rertro systems like AgonLight, but also affordable (that was the spirit of ol’ Commodore , remember??) and the most important Open Source Hardware !!! SO far copyright only harm done to the Amiga – sorry I wont pay a damn dime to the new commodore to ask permission to use their ‘roms’ whatever in order to feed their lifestyle.
I agree, those of us that had those systems when they first came out mostly have fond memories of them, but the reality is technology has moved on so much that you can’t recapture that time. It isn’t possible to develop a new system based on an old one that is able to compete with the capabilities of today’s computers.
The majority of these revivals end up being a fun distraction for a brief period, then put in the closet to be forgotten about.
Benefit of old systems is lessons to learn from. Right now the new presents a lot, but they also left a lot behind in the name of economic progress.
back then the amiga was cutting edge for the price point, and you could do things no other computer could at the time. Thus why it was so good.
But I don’t know why anyone wants to go back, our pc’s today are so much MORE usable than amiga was then. If you want that small system programming fun – I agree it is – boot up your c++ compiler and write programs for the esp32 or something else with an embedded RTOS..
Another, less popular point of view: It was cutting-edge from 1985 to 1987,
then VGA, Sharp X68000 and Acorn Archimedes hit the scene.
By the time A500 and A2000 were released, the Amiga’s star was sinking already.
By 1990, it was technologically obsolete. Then died silently past 1994.
There’s a “Commodore” in Italy that doesn’t do retro, claims it “innovates” new and exciting things for the modern age. I.e. rebadges shitty made in china laptops and tablets.
“I don’t understand the nostalgia trend.”
I do. Older people now have enough money to relive their youth.
Some need the original hardware, often restoring it using modern devices to replace out of production custom ICs or to add features (HDMI output), those devices often being capable of emulating the entire C64 or Amiga at many times its native speed if applied to that task. They may have original peripherals that require this route.
Others can be satisfied with machines that merely look like the original hardware with the actual functions of the machine emulated by the aforementioned modern hardware.
Others don’t even need that and use an emulator on a PC or a dedicated SBC.
On this old Raspberry Pi, Sysinfo showed the Amiga emulation to be 246 times as fast as an A600 and 7 times as fast as an A4000 with a 25 MHz 68040:
Is the Raspberry Pi the best Amiga available?
Aug 11, 2017
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HZXM6cLVUg
I don’t believe nostalgia can fully explain the trend. If it was only nostalgia, then nobody younger than the machines would be interested in them, which (while a minority) is not the case.
But I don’t think these people are interested in a brand revival either.
Alternatives to the trinity (Apple, Microsoft, Linux). Especially considering the behavior of the first two, and the “year of…” the last.
You can totally wax nostalgic for a time you never lived in yourself. Its called anemoia.
Interesting concept, thanks for the info! ^^
There’s one catch, though: The C64 can be re-lived the way it really was, with your own memories.
Feelings of nostalgia/anemonia about distant times are a bit different, I think.
Tales of living in medival ages are likely being rose colored, maybe.
About pretty dressed people living in fary tale castles,
stories about gentle knights fighting dragons and saving princesses and so on.
“Tales of living in medival ages are likely being rose colored, maybe.”
As are tales of living in the 1960s despite you being able to buy bellbottoms and tiedye today.
Tales of living in the 80s or 90s are no different. Those of us who lived then can rose color our memories.
The distance of time doesnt matter to nostalgia/Anemoia.
Its still Anemoia if your too young to have been then.
PS. Castles, knights and princesses existed in medieval times, But when you start adding in dragons youve left nostalgia/Anemoia and entered fantasy escapism.
I for one liked the 90s and was a bit sad when it passed away.
At the time, I mean. Not in retrospect. I loved the optimism of the decade.
Thus, it’s not about rose colored memories to me, at all.
I had been there, I have recordings on VHS and photos that support my memories.
My memories aren’t fooling me.
Likewise, there are many people out there who have a direct connection to other eras.
Some have family members that are older than them,
who are the living manifestation of another time.
That being said, I’m afraid it’s not really possible to discuss these things rationally.
There are always people who argue that the past must be rose colored
and not possible any better than the current times we are living through.
It’s kind of interesting, though, that so many hold on to the 1970s to 1990s, no matter their generation.
Something must have been special about this time, thus, objectively speaking.
Maybe it way a healthy balance of real life vs technology? I don’t know.
Maybe it’s just because the current days are simply feeling exceptionally bad, so that any other era feels better?
Again, I don’t know.
“PS. Castles, knights and princesses existed in medieval times, But when you start adding in dragons youve left nostalgia/Anemoia and entered fantasy escapism.”
Good point, but didn’t dragon tales exist in medival times?
Back in the day, magic and phantasy were reak to people, maybe? 🤷♂️
I wasn’t there, so I don’t know for sure. Just wondering.
I don´t need a new Amiga either. What is need is a highly modular, extensible, massively parallel / many cores platform based for example on RISC-V , with tensors.
Like a modern offspring of the transputer, with PCIe like interconnect lanes, that can break the hegemony of Nvidia and CUDA
Massive number of cores, massive memory, massive memory bandwidth.
All expensive.
But then again, the C64 ticked cheap, massive ram, and bandwidth (in doubling ram bandwidth to enable graphics run from the same ram).
Sadly I don’t think we’re likely to see innovation like that again.
My guess: History unfolded differently and was less rosy, less hopeful than some of us had hoped for.
Such as the smartphone, streaming, software as a service, bleakness in daily life.
Therefore, some long for a future that never came.
Today’s technology is both very advanced and very closed.
We have modules and highly advanced “black boxes”, so to speak, whose inner workings are only vaguely understood.
In stark contrast to this are the achievements of our youth from a time
when people still picked up soldering irons themselves,
even in groups and together, tinkered with their favorite devices, coded for fun (demoscene etc).
In addition, things back then were “close” and tangible.
That, at least, is my attempt at an explanation.
I’m not exactly talking about myself here, as I can’t exactly claim to be a die-hard Commodore fan.
Commodore died in the 90’s and it’s mostly the fond memory of the related period that remains, many people cherish that, it’s called retro computing.
I own several C64 computers, good old cool retro stuff. But now that Commodore is in the process of being resurrected and new “official” C64’s are about to be released. My good old official Commodore retro C64 will suddenly be nothing more than just another “old” C64.
The fun thing of retro computing was that that old stuff from the 80’s and 90’s has reached a steady state of oldness, now suddenly, old things are getting older.
There is more than gaming, though.
There’s demoscene and music MOD music (tracker), SID tunes..
Or artists using D-Paint for pixel art.
Another term is vintage computing, by the way.
“Retro” is more of a fad, a trend of looking back on something.
A retro console is a remake (A500 mini is retro), while a vintage console is the real old console.
That’s one way to see it.
Personally, I’ve simply never stopped using certaing things from the past.
Software such as Winamp, MOD4Win, DOS 6.2x, Quick Basic 4.5, for example.
Or my FM radio (pocket radio). Still use vintage shortwave radios, too.
There’s even an 80s thermal paper fax machine that I’m still using in daily life. It’s not retro to me, at all.
Speaking of the C64, it’s nice as a RTTY terminal. I can use it to read weather news on shortwave with it.
Another useful task is using it as an cheap EPROM programmer.
There’s that DELA EPROMMER II for module port, for example.
Other users in the BBS hobby use the C64 as a PETSCII terminal and have fun going “on-line”.
Commodore has essentially become immortal. Anything that can fit on a Micro ATX motherboard can now be placed in a Commodore bread bin.
why? the brand died a long time ago. as a previous commodore system owner, user, service repair and programmer. i hate to say this but its time is done and unless you can really compete with this current industry and not charge the same prices as equipment available today, it will die again. They have to create an ecco system just like apple and i dont think this new team has the know-how. just like the other commodore owners they wont listen to the users new and old. You have to create an ecco system you must go above, beyond and not worry about the financials which what the old owners did. When steve jobs come back to apple that was what he did and at that time apple was almost going to file for bankruptcy. You have to have that umf and if you dont you go broke. Ask intel, ibm, and hp that did not want to think outside the box. Its not just enough to love the system and want to see it go on. You have put money and time for new and improved products.
Commodore computers are the thing of the past and only us oldies will use it. in business that not enough you need to bring in the new users to turn a profit and the new user have iphones. Also, let not forget the emulation (which is what i do for cheap). Also, another thing what destroyed commodore software developers, piracy. I stop developing software because there was not money in it because of piracy. I left for pc, made private contracting software and made a ton. Why, do you think the precious commodore brand name holders sold current items.
As a business owner may self, what run though my mind everyday, competition competition. How to make my business better and don’t get left behind.
sorry i love commodore but their time is up……
It’s a try to change/correct path of history a bit?
To try to get things back on course?
Not a few seem to be unhappy or even depressed about noways life, so this idea isn’t too far fetched, maybe.
Is that all there is? If so, it would make even more sense that
a minority of people wish so desperately for a way out of the hamster wheel.
Is that this so-called “gatekeeping” everyone talks about these days? ;)
Seriously, though. I have the impression you were living under a rock in this regards.
You’re victim of a misconception, I think.
The C64 isn’t just a random old computers for people age 50+.
No, it has gained an iconic status meanwhile, it has become a symbol.
There’s even the term “Generation C64”, that is similar to “digital natives”.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_C64
Also: Young people into gaming also are aware of video game history, of course.
They may never have seen a C64 in real life, but they know it from the news on the internet, YouTube videos, in the news papers and TV documentaries.
They may also had run a copy of VICE from time to time, for sake of curiosity.
Or bought a C64DTV on a garage sale, fleamarket etc.
To walk on the paths of their parents and grandparents, so to say.
Here’s a video that explains why especially young people love old things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dEJiQnotR8
Long story short, let’s think about this analogy:
If you grew up in a cage all your life, don’t you want to explore the outer world eventually?
Because that’s what tablets and smartphones are. They’re a box many of the young are being caught in.
They want to go beyond touching plates of glass, want to feel things in reality.
Here’s an idea: buy Apple and bring back the original Macintosh.
Hm. Is it even needed? There’s a not so small community for M68k and PPC Macintoshs that is being well.
And the original Macintosh had been cloned a few times, too.
It’s not as if it can’t be re-made in principle. Without help of Apple.
1:1 replacement chassis are sold for years, I think.
The electronics of the Mac’s logic board are off the shelf parts and publicly available.
Merely the automatic floppy drive and CRT are a bit harder to acquire these days..
B/w camping TVs might be suitable as donors for CRTs, but they’re a bit smaller.
Otherwise, the first Macintosh is very simple from an electronics point of view, it’s a basic 68000 system, with insufficient RAM and a dumb framebuffer.
The magic rather lies in the design and in the software.
The future of Amiga, its is OS. A strong investment in a new modernized version should be a priority. Combining AmigaOS4, Morphos and AROS into a new OS “Workbench 5” as the base, making one version open source and a proprietary commercial version like Chrome/Chromium. Arm, X86 version should be updated alongside. A robust and powerfull DEVKIT for Workbench 5 should be developed and maintained. if the actual developers hand copyright holders, don’t what to come along. Make it from Aros only. accessible and powerfully new amigas should be based in more mainstream hardware, with a distinct amiga design. Powerfull ARM based Amiga Laptops and X86-64 Amiga computers, should be acessible and powerfull. the drivers whould be optimized for the machines in production for “Workbench 5” , talk with older and new software developers, to port modern versions of classic Amiga professional software . lightwhave, PageStream … etc… a modern browser is critical. Firefox, Chrome, or a up to specs version of Ibrowse
Amiga OS already is free through AROS, which is API compatible.
The 68k version is binary compatible, too and can be used
on the bigger platforms in a similar way to how Mac OS 9 could be used in “classic environment” on OS X.
No one needs Amiga OS 3.x and 4 anymore, really.
Except for nostalgia and a few buggy applications.
Just like nobody really needs Atari TOS anymore, since there is EmuTOS.
It’s just like that the majority of Amiga users don’t yet have realized what they have gained through AROS.
They still are focused on “official” Amiga OS so much. IMHO.
Thats the point , AROS is Opensource and Free. if Warp and AmigaOS Owners dont what to join. Then make a modern version of AMIGAOS from AROS. 64 bits, SMP , protected memory is already present in AROS, a Newer modernized and secure version , would make the diference. AmigaOS had features in 85 (preemprive multitasking ) that MacOS only could had after trashing Classic MacOS, and replace it with a complete new system based on unix. AmigaOS flexibility and speed ( Microkernel , Datatypes, devices , Libraries, Arexx. ..etc) can be updated and surpass modern OS. its a matter of investiment. AROS is the proof of that. macos, atary tos , dos/windows up to 95 ) where a joke compared to AmigaOS
I’d like to see a completed AAA system. I was so eager for this to be released. Granted it would be old tech by today’s standards. Bundle it with a modern Blitz or AMOS and see what people create.
The point of reviving these old machines is nostalgia, sure. But it’s also to keep improving upon them and to keep the spirit alive. Bedroom coding took off in the 80’s and today’s indy games owe everything to these computers that allowed anyone to create. And the c64 and Amiga scenes are stronger than they’ve ever been today. People are still using the platforms and enjoying the limitations of the machines to create music, games and animation. For me, I actually use these machines daily. And for those that don’t .. there’s a phone or an iPad in your future I’m sure for those who don’t get it.
I think the nostalgia isn’t for particular bit of computer hardware, it’s nostalgia for a time when your OS wasn’t surveilling you, selling your data and using it’s privileged position on your computer to show you ads and so on.
I think this is why the Raspberry Pi is doing as well as it is, and why so many people are creating variations of Raspberry Pis in 3D printed replica cases (be it PDP, Mac, NeXT cube, Commodore PET or even miniature beige boxen).