Emulation - The Amiga's Saviour? 13/03/98

By now, everyone should know about the new Amiga planned for release by Phase5 in Autumn. Currently known as 'pre/box' the new machine is not just another under-powered, over-priced Amiga solution for the die-hard enthusiast. Phase5 have taken the brave step of only keeping what is necessary, the beautiful Amiga OS and an Amiga ethic, to produce a real option for real computer users. The key to pre/box's success is - hang on to your trousers - a massive 4 CPUs working in parallel! Add to this huge bus speeds (greater than your best Intel), a great graphics card and a host of other top features and you've got yourself an Amiga that isn't just 'arguably' better than an Intel PC, it is also 'technically' better.

I salute Phase5 for taking this brave step, the idea of parallel processing means that they have taken 'The Fight' to a new level that Intel can't compete on properly for ages. The low-end model (haha!) starts with 4 x 200mhz PPC processors, just think about that for a second. Even by the time you have 500mhz PCs (and let's not forget, that will be soon) it is still a better option. The idea of a multi-tasking, parallel processing, graphic eating Amiga leaves me gob-smacked. The benefits for a lot of serious users are too many to list here, just use your imagination.

So, have I persuaded you yet? Are you ready, as I am, to start saving and selling to get around £1500 and PURCHASE ? Well, some people aren't happy. They never are.

The New Amiga - Phase5's Problems

So, the price is hardly in the best Amiga tradition, is it? Well... no. Let's not beat around the bush here, the Amiga used to be £400 and it was still great. That Amiga is dead. That Amiga opened up a huge market, in the UK at least, for all things home-computery. That market has been flooded by cheap consoles for gamers and powerful computers for everyone else. How can we seriously expect the Amiga to come in and kick all of the pretenders out? Progress is something you have to move with, rather than against. The people that will actually consider buying a new Amiga are the creative ones that always did. It seems ironic that we were always moaning about the Amiga being labelled as a 'Games Machine' and yet some people want to go back to that. With stuff like Alphas and the new Amiga getting around, it is the PC that is starting to look like a games machine. I'm glad the new Amiga won't be £400 and sit in front of a TV because our favourite machine always deserved more. I always saw the Amiga as a computer people actually used, whether it was coding, graphics or music, the Amiga community has to be one of the most productive yet.

Phase5 are making a computer that will be the better option for those people. I don't think that the price is an issue. The 'Home Amiga' can come later.

Oh great, now I'm coming to the point of this article, backward compatibility. I both love and loathe the Amiga chipset. I loved the timeless 68000 series of processors, admired the AGA chipset and listened intently to glorious melodies from the sound chip. However, as Phase5 have realised, they all need to be shot! These bottlenecks have crippled the Amiga for far too long, something I wouldn't have said in 93. Do you guys realise that 5 years have passed since then? Even if Commodore were still around, they wouldn't have been stupid enough not to have changed the chipset by now. I really don't want to see these chips in another Amiga, even an 060, they are an unnecessary cost. Phase5 have been trying to move us away from these problems for a while now with PPC add-on cards. I say we should stop wasting our precious time (the end is nigh for old Amiga) and make the leap. I want to use all of the old games and software as much as the next person does. However, I can almost run a virtual Amiga on my P166...

The Emulation Solution

I don't blame people for not taking emulation seriously. It used to be the domain of Spectrums and C64s, a source of amusement for ageing games players. Those that are out of touch should be brought up to date then. With the power of computers increasing at the usual high rate, emulation has started to become serious business. The Playstation and N64 are already in the process of being converted to software, with stunning results. Amiga owners may already know that the Megadrive, SNES, PC-Engine and all the other competitors of our era, have been successfully emulated (Amiga owners themselves already enjoy SNES emulation). What often shocks, and sometimes upsets, Amiga owners is that the Amiga itself is well on its way to becoming immortalised in software.

So why is this such a bad thing? Old software does not make any money for the Amiga anymore because it has disappeared from the shelves. So we have two choices. Either we let the software (I'm thinking of the games we love) disappear completely or we preserve it on whatever new medium we can. In my opinion every person on the planet should be able to play about with the Amiga as it was, not just those that manage to keep our favourite grey-plastic doorstop in working condition. Preservation is the only option for the tons of classic software available on the Amiga.

The point of this article? I believe that Amiga International, Gateway, Phase5 or whoever, should seriously implement emulation as a solution to backward compatibility. With the emulators 'Fellow' and 'UAE', some authors are almost there without technical or financial help. With this kind of help from the big boys surely a complete emulation solution could be achieved by the time the new Amiga comes out. The results could change everything for a lot of past Amiga users. If they could buy a fantastic new machine like the pre/box but be confident of being able to run their old software, the transition would be a lot easier. Even the lowest spec pre/box could probably achieve perfect emulation of the A500, A500+ and A1200. If the software is recent enough to need an 030 or above then it is likely to be converted to the new computers anyway. Also, being able to use old software will ease the wait for new stuff. Most importantly, this would end the need for expensive 'extra chips' that achieve backward compatibility in hardware, needlessly. We could move seamlessly to the next generation of Amigas without the hangover from past glories. Backwards compatibility is, after all, the same fundamental reason that the PC architecture is so crap.

New Amiga, New Direction

I can't finish without a little comment about the direction I think the new Amiga should take. It should take every area that the PC is weak in and avoid the ones in which it is strong. This is, of course, a medium term view. There are no prizes for suggesting the Amiga still concentrates on graphics, this is obvious. It should blatantly still go for the video editing market, publishing and other such areas. I do believe that for the most part we should forget about the mainstream games market. I think this will continue to be something that happens in the Public Domain and through Shareware. Perhaps this will blossom at a later date. Again, it is useful to remember how the PC started becoming popular. I really do think that it should aim for the real computer user rather than families. It is not difficult to see how jaded coders and developers are with Wintel systems. The increasing popularity of Linux and Alpha boxes is testament to this fact.

Where I think the Amiga could be the strongest is in another recent development, the Internet. I don't mean that the kids should be using them to help with the homework. I mean the Amiga could be the premium choice for the people that make the Internet happen. It could be fantastic for, say, authoring web pages, due to its graphics capabilities. I also think that Amiga OS is great for coding in. Wouldn't it be brilliant if the Amiga was the premier machine for Java development also. Because Java is platform independent (and I don't just mean applets), it means the unusual nature of the Amiga is not a problem. If it was Java friendly then people could quite happily develop on Amiga for other, less friendly machines.

Finally, I hope for two major things in the new Amigas. I hope that people aren't going to offer them in bits and pieces but as complete systems, so that they become less 'hobbyist'. Secondly, I hope that they will be able to run a 'backup' OS like Linux or Windows NT so that people won't be scared of 'backing the wrong horse'. Giving the option of both might even convert some users to Amiga OS.

Summary

The announcement of a new computer, utilising the new Amiga OS 3.1, from Phase5 has caused a tea-cup-like storm. Designed from scratch, the 'pre/box' uses parallel processing, advanced graphics and amazing architecture to keep the spirit of Amiga alive. This computer presents problems with 'backwards compatibility' which might worry some users who want to use older software. I suggest that the problem should be solved using emulation rather than hanging on to old chipsets. This would mean we could run A500 and A1200 software but make a clean leap to the next generation of Amiga with titles specifically made for New Amigas. I understand that Phase5 are considering emulation anyway, smart aren't they.

I would like to take this opportunity to explain that although I have been raving about Phase5's 'pre/box' this is not the only next-generation Amiga in development. It is, in my opinion, one of the most exciting 'complete' systems in development from a company that usually delivers the goods. There is also a hybrid 'siamese' system in development that would be an Amiga on a card for your PC. This is possibly going to use the extremely fast 'Alpha' chips. I would like to point out that all of the comments and suggestions are applicable to any new Amiga. I think that emulation could be the solution to many of the problems we face. I think that 'divided we fall', Amiga emulation and Amiga developments should be hand-in-hand. I will cover other 'solutions' in news and further articles.

New Amiga exists in both Software and Hardware. In hardware it is cutting-edge technology, pushing the Amiga into the next millennium. In software it is immortalised, keeping alive the greatest computer ever created. Let the new era begin! Jonathan Withey