Beyond the curtain
AmigaOS Development
Argueably one of the Amigas high points, 1992 was a great year for
the machine. The next generation AGA (or AA for Americans) chipset
had been demonstrated and new high and low-end systems were
introduced that used these features (A4000 & A1200). At the
World of Commodore 1992, they announced the future plans for the
Amiga operating system by version number, giving an idea of the
Amigas development. These become interesting by the fact that
Commodore never fulfilled their promise, going into liquidation
before they could release AmigaOS4. The feature list of OS3.1 shows
how Commodores finances had affected their development targets and
hints at the path the AmigaOS would have taken if Commodore had not
entered liquidation.
OS 3.1
- Network API Extensions
- File & Printer Sharing
- DSP support
Please remember that these were only projections of the development
of the Amigas operating system and do not indicate that any of
these tasks were completed. In contrast to a number of other
projects AmigaOS 3.1 was released just before Commodore went into
liquidation, but as the feature list shows very little of the
projected improvements were included. The Network API Extension was
sold seperately and was quite difficult to find for the average
user. File and printer sharing is possible under the AmigaOS but
still requires third party software. Support for DSP also hints at
the development of the A3000+ prototype, but remains unobtainable
for the 68k Amiga.
Even more interesting was the announcement of Commodore
AmigaOS4. This promised a number of new features, symbolising the
same technological leap from Workbench 1.3 to version 2.
OS 4
- Retargetable graphics
- Full Postscript support
The inclusion of retargetable graphics and postscript support
indicated that Commodore were finally taking the AmigaOS seriously
as a power operating system, and the embracing of industry
standards. RTG could indicate that a new Amiga would have moved
onto standardised graphics.
Both of these OS enhancements were promised for the 1993-94
period but would have inevitably fell behind if they were to be the
major improvements they promised to be. If Commodore had not had
their financial situation the present AmigaOS may have followed the
development of the MacOS, moving onto the HP RISC processor and
incorporating industry standards that were being developed at the
time.
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