© 1997-2006
Gareth Knight
All Rights reserved
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Amiga OE Classes
The key to Amiga Inc's plans to revolutionise the world was the
level of interconnection between devices. The company realised that
it would be wasteful to create a personal stereo that would use the
full hardware of a personal computer, so two levels of Amiga OE
compatibility were defined, simply called Class One and Class Two.
Class One
The Class One device is limited in its compatibility with the Amiga
OE. It is able to use devices intended for the full Amiga OE
environment and able to communicate and run most Amiga software.
Software designed for Class One devices was planned to be generic
allowing it to be compiled under other operating systems, such as
the standard Linux distribution. It is likely two of the planned
Class One devices would include an x86 version of AmigaSoft as well
as a PPC version for Classic Amigas. These would be limited in
their use unless certain hardware is present on the machine.
Nevertheless the promise of Classic Amiga PPC support did create a
greater confidence in the current Amiga technology, particularly
the PowerPC market that, at one point, looked as if it would be
killed off completely.
Class Two
Class Two will indicate the hardware has full compatibility with
Amiga OE systems, ranging from PDA's to full Workstations. Amiga
Format indicated that any devices offering Class Two performance
will either be built or licensed by Amiga themselves. Class Two
will be able to run AmigaSoft native code that accesses custom
hardware through device drivers. The announced Amiga MCC was the
only product demonstrated that would have been capable of Class
Two.
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