Amiga Interactive Guide: v3.7
Thursday November 1st, 2001
We live in unsettling times: numerous Amiga-related products have
been announced but have yet to appear; the market is shrouded in
doom and gloom; even Amiga news sites are being hacked. The
so-called community impatiently waits for new exciting products to
replace their slow machines. As always, the future is around the
corner... Will it be worth the wait? Only time will tell.
The November 2001 update is another biggie - over 16MB
of changes and new material! The more observant of you
will notice I've done a bit of housekeeping recently. The main site
entry point has been changed and each section has been
redesigned.
The site has been reorganised to make the main sections easier
to navigate. Several articles on the Features page have been moved to the all-new
Amiga History page. The BenchPress
main page has been deleted and the various descriptions have been
integrated into the 'Techies
workbench' page. According to the server logs hardly anyone
would visit these pages, so it seemed pointless to place it
prominantly on the navigation menu. The remaining articles have
been moved into more logical sections. As part of the new update,
Merlancia have been given
their own company page.
The site is currently organised in eight main sections:
| What's New? |
This page. Recent updates to the site. |
| Features |
Articles on Amiga magazines, corporate identity, the people who
made the Amiga, games, and galleries. |
| Amiga
History |
A new section! Charts the Amigas progress from
its original incarnation and articles on the major businesses that
have controlled its destiny. Current material on the new Amigas in
development. |
| Amiga
Systems |
Every Commodore Amiga, Amiga clone, bundle, and prototype. Also
covers Amiga-related operating systems and emulators. |
| Techies
workbench |
The newly renamed 'Get Technical!'. This page contains articles
on Amiga diagnostic, Easter eggs, Workbench guides, and frequently
asked questions. |
| Interviews |
Past interviews with people who created the Amiga or were
inspired by it. |
| Web Links |
Other interesting sites |
| Downloads |
Download TV commercials, AROS demos, and
more |
Further down the site structure the Official Amiga products have
been moved into the Amiga Gallery
and the Joyboard box page
has been turned into a gallery for surfing Amigans.
Prototypes galore
Thanks to the contributions of Mr. Dave Haynie and several others,
the prototypes section has been expanded further with new
information and photographs. Dave Haynie has provided detailed
background on the Amiga Nyx, and
dozens of other prototypes. To catalogue these I've created a
page dedicated to prototype versions of motherboards/expansion
cards that were launched at a later date. The page displays several
early images of the A2000, B2000, and A4000 prototypes. These can
be found on the graphic-intensive 'Prototypes that became
Classics!' page. The A3000+
and AA3000 page has also been updated with several photographs
of the motherboard and lots of juicy specifications to make the
mouth water.
The Lorraine page has
almost been completely rewritten. It now includes better
photographs of the prototype unit, taken at the VCF show last year,
and press comments that were made at the time. I'm working on
getting other items of interest from this time period. Watch this
space!
While looking for more information on the Lorraine I discovered
reference to an Amiga PC
Developer machine. There is very little solid support for this
at the moment - it is likely that Amiga Inc. could not afford to
produce such a machine. Thanks to the webmaster of CDTV.org, more
information and better images on the CDTV-CR have been revealed.
These can be found in the CDTV-CR page.
The A1000+ and A1000Jr variants have been seperated into
different pages and an advert of the A1000Jr has been found. The
A300 has finally got its own
page, although it does not provide much information beyond the
obvious. Ah well! It has a pretty picture of an A600 to liven it
up!
In an attempt to gain more information on this area I've
collected numerous references to Amiga Transputer projects. This
page is rather basic at the moment but it should generate
discussion and feedback on the mentioned and unmentioned projects
that were developed in this field.
Updated the BoXeR page to mention its
recent cancellation.
The Commodore rumour mill
was also shortened when I moved several items to their own pages
and Joshua Walker's iAmiga
spoof was added to the Prototype
page.
Amiga in the Arcade
Information on an unlaunched Amiga arcade machine has been
discovered - The Super Sente
System. On a related note, the Amiga Arcadia page has been
updated with new information, including screenshots of several
Arcadia games. They can be found on the Arcadia page.
New machines
The new machines are not restricted to unreleased prototypes. Since
the last site update several new Amiga-compatible machines have
been announced and more details have been released on products in
development. Merlancia have been busy bunnies of late, announcing
six new AmigaOS/AmigaDE machines - the MMC Apocolyps, MMC Apocolyps Leopard, Hurricane UltraLite, Multimedia Convergence Computer,
MMC Radian, and MMC Tsunami. More details on the
Eyetech AmigaOne has emerged and
bPlan have released images of their Pegasos PPC machine (a PPC machine that
uses MorphOS to retain compatibility with the AmigaOS). New
screenshots of the Sharp Zaurus
have also been added.
New applications and games
For the first time in 18 years, Amiga Inc. are selling games under
the 'Amiga' brand name. The latest Series Zero compilation
demonstrate similar gameplay values to the original games, but are
designed for a wider market. The Amiga DE Party Pack and
Amiga DE Player has been
launched to allow Windows/Linux users to play these games.
Bundles
Several Amiga bundles have been added to the bundles page. The
original A1000 bundle,
standard A500, A600 Robocop, Checkmate 1500, German O-Box, and the Cubo CD32. The Amiga DIY page has a new
submission - the coolest Amiga case
design ever! The Amiga case has to be seen to be believed.
Emulation
To catalogue the growing number of Amiga emulators an Amiga
Emulation page has been added to 'Amiga Systems'. This page covers
Amiga emulators that are currently available. At the moment it
mentions Amithlon, AmigaOS XL, UAE, and Amiga
Forever. A write up of the DOS/Windows emulator, Fellow is
coming soon.
New discussion forum
I have a confession to make. When I created the site the
interactive part of AiG was intended to be ironic. Y'see, AiG has
never truely interactive. The use of a forum in version 3.2 was a
step towards viewer interactivity, but it was ugly and unpopular.
No longer! I've moved the forums to a new service - the new forum
can be access by clicking here.
Other Items
There are so many changes that I have probably forgotten
something. In the miscellaneous department we have a copy of the
original Amiga patent and a note from
Jonny Högsten telling me that he has found a copy of CDTV
'Indy and the Last Crusade'. As a result, I have updated Peter
Olafson's CDTV retrospective. The Amiga
Power page has also been altered to take into consideration
certain criticisms made on the Amiga Power newsgroup. Finally, the
23/10/01 AROS update has been updated for IBM PC
Thanks
Special thanks go to the following people (in surname order) for
making suggestions, highlighting errors for the current site
update:
Bernhard Berger
Diamond Braganza
James Boyd
Andew Crane
Jonny Högsten
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Last Update:
10/3/2002
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