The words ‘Amiga’ and ‘online’ might not
sound like a match made in heaven, but you may well be surprised.
Although the Amiga platform predates the
web, it’s surprisingly prolife rate on the internet. In fact, if anything, it’s
a little bit too confusing; pop ‘Amiga’ into a search engine and the term
needle in a haystack comes to mind. To give you a hand, here are the main sites
you’ll find useful.
Amiga
– Amiga on the web
Main OS
If you’re starting off and want to get an
overview of the current version of the official AmigaOS from Hyperion Entertainment, then your first port of call should be www.amigaos.net. The
site was put together primarily as an end-user centric portal for the
resurrected platform, with the fully PowerPC Amiga operating system as its
centre.
The
new(ish) official AmigaOS portal site at amigaos.net
The alternative
‘Amiga-like’ PowerPC OS is MorphOS, which can be run on various PowerPC
hardware including certain PPC Macs. The main site to start with is www.morphos.net.
Possibly of more
interest to the PC user is AROS, which has a confusing array of websites for
someone coming fresh. The best place to start I would suggest is with the
Icaros Desktop distribution of the ‘Amiga-like’ OS. Popping to www.icarosdesktop.org
will give you the option to download a DVD-ROM image of Icaros Desktop Live,
which you can boot directly.
Of course, if you want
the retro vibe, your best port of call if you’re a PC owner is www.amigaforever.com,
where you can grab the full classic Amiga emulation experience.
Hardware
Of course, if you want to use Amiga OS 4.x,
because it’s PowerPC, you’ll need something to run it on. There are currently
two producers of hardware for the OS, with a potential other waiting in the
wings.
A-Eon Technology is bringing the AmigaOne
X-1000 to market, which is the very high-end, high-spec and ‘bulletproof’
computer system that the OS itself is growing into. Check them out at www.a-eon.com.
Alternatively there’s
the not-quite-so-high-end AmigaOne 500 from Acube Systems, which also has Sam
motherboards, so you can put your own system together (the Sam 460ex is the
board in the AmigaOne 500). Check them out at acube-systems.biz
Of course, the best way
of getting hold of either is to go through Amiga Kit at www.amigakit.co.uk.
Software
The main repository of software on the
internet for Amiga computing is Aminet. Offering filters so you can easily find
classic Amiga, PPC AmigaOS 4.x, MorphOS, and AROS software, the packages go all
the way back to 1992. Aminet can primarily be found at aminet.net but is
mirrored profusely.
AmigaOS 4.x has its own software site in
the form of os4depot.net, which itself is eight years old. It’s where you would
go to get Timberwolf, the Mozilla port to AmigaOS 4.x
There’s plenty more out there, so jump in
and I’ll bring you some of my favourites another time!
Amiga news sites
There are still several Amiga news sites
and forums running around the net. There are three main sites to pop to.
Amigans.net is the site primarily aimed at
AmigaOS 4.x and classic Amiga users and enthuiasts.
Meanwhile, a broader cross section of the
Amiga and Amiga-like OS sectors is found at Amigaworld.net or that site that
you could argue is the progenitor of the other two, Amiga.org.
You might also want to check out
amiga-news.de/en, which often beaks news before the others.
