Pros and Cons of Amithlon type systems

[haywirepc]

Seemed like the best way forward for amiga at that time. I think the lack of amiga chipset did kind of leave alot of people out though. Games was such a huge part of the amiga experience.
 
Today, you can install winuae on top of windows, remove windows shell and other things and get the same functionality along with the games. It won't boot or render as fast as an amithlon system, but I think being able to run any games is worth a few more seconds at boot time.
 
As I recall, amithlon was a bitch to get working on some hardware. You had to use a supported sound,video and network card I think.
 
Someone should post a list of the supported graphics, sound and network cards. I think I still have a couple of isos of amithlon around.
 
Steven

[Franko]

These old 100% Amiga CD's are a treasure trove of interesting old news snippets...

[Digiman]

We have AROS now so who cares?

[trekiej]

Could anyone provide a block diagram of what they think an Amithlon system might look like?
I still have some interest in it. Even if it is for nastalga.

[Nearly-Right]

Anywhere on the net where folk can find more info about it and see just how far it was developed before it disappeared..

Take a look at: http://www.garycvl.f2s.com/amithlon.html

and: http://amithlon.sourceforge.net/

and: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/amithlonopen/

The main Amithlon Kernel is still being developed by milanca

and the main Kernel files are here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/amithlon/files/

and there's even info about Amithlon on the web archive: http://web.archive.org/web/20011117042413/www.amithlon.net/

Pages load a lot slower, but the information is better having access to than not being availlable

[Franko]

Take a look at: http://www.garycvl.f2s.com/amithlon.html

Thank's for that...

Just had a quick look and I'll read it all later. Been quite interesting finding out about Amithlon (especially some of the stuff on the old 100% Amiga Cds)...

From what I've learned about it so far it was a very promising system that met an untimely end...

[trekiej]

Is there enough parts to rebuild it?

[EDanaII]

@ Heiroglyph:

Long story short, that's why I'm looking at reviving Amithlon without the IP problems but I was curious as to what people liked/disliked about the original.

You have that skill set? If so, then I'm impressed.

I'm no expert here, so I may be talking out my S, but... if you can do this, consider two options: first, use what AROS has already got and just build a workbench that can behave like Amithlon. I doubt it's as simple as that, considering the issues that Emumiga is having.

Probably the better option, however, is to parallel Bernie's work. This creates something closer to Anubis, which I personally favor, because of the driver and memory protection issues.

But, like I said, I'm probably talking out my S.

It's a shame, he's an awesome developer and has great ideas. Plus he's just too nice to have that happen to him. Where is karma when you need it?

I remember Bernie from his Comp.Sys.Amiga daze. He had quite an attitude back then and I, Aram Iskenderian and Luca Diana, among others, got into many a heated argument with him. I think he was, as with many, pretty disappointed over the that state of things back then. I'm certainly glad he decided to use his powers for good and not evil with Amithlon and, yea, it's a shame everything ended up the way it did.

[Heiroglyph]

I can do it, I write more complicated things for a living, I'm just seeing if it's really worth the time investment.

The main missing bits are the glue between the emulation and AmigaOS that give you native x86 code and direct hardware access.  Luckily those are pretty straightforward after seeing the headers you compile against and the patches to UAE and the Kernel.

The things I'm still weighing out are how much to emulate vs. pass through to the Amiga side (all PCI? SCSI? USB?) and which OS to use as a base.

Bernie was already rethinking how devices were handled for v2 and seemed to be going more emulated to increase compatibility. (No special Amiga side drivers to write)

Linux is a proven host but isn't interesting IMHO.  The big benefit there is that Bernie already patched the kernel so that you could get a lot of the memory mapped to the correct locations for a speed increase, but is that even needed with multi-core computers with memory faster than the CPU's Amithlon was designed to run on?

There are just a lot of variables to take into account before I decide to commit to it so I thought I'd gauge interest.

[B00tDisk]

I can do it, I write more complicated things for a living, I'm just seeing if it's really worth the time investment.

The main missing bits are the glue between the emulation and AmigaOS that give you native x86 code and direct hardware access.  Luckily those are pretty straightforward after seeing the headers you compile against and the patches to UAE and the Kernel.

The things I'm still weighing out are how much to emulate vs. pass through to the Amiga side (all PCI? SCSI? USB?) and which OS to use as a base.

Bernie was already rethinking how devices were handled for v2 and seemed to be going more emulated to increase compatibility. (No special Amiga side drivers to write)

Linux is a proven host but isn't interesting IMHO.  The big benefit there is that Bernie already patched the kernel so that you could get a lot of the memory mapped to the correct locations for a speed increase, but is that even needed with multi-core computers with memory faster than the CPU's Amithlon was designed to run on?

There are just a lot of variables to take into account before I decide to commit to it so I thought I'd gauge interest.

Bernie has mentioned that you can compile and run x86 apps on the Amiga emulated by Amithlon - I'd always hoped that meant (back when Amithlon was active, mind you) that someone would tackle some of the "must have" applications and we'd get the best of all worlds: an Amiga OS and killer, modern apps.  

If somehow someone managed to revive Amithlon and make that again possible...wow, that would be neat.

[XDelusion]

We have AROS now so who cares?

Because Aros has shown no signs that it is going to move past alpha stage any time soon. Amit lon like MorphOS brought smiles to my face where as Aros has brought sadness. give it another 10 years and we'll see.

[Heiroglyph]

@B00tDisk:
If I remember correctly, there were native versions of ImageFX, Aladdin 4D and a few other Amiga apps, but not a lot of new ports.

@XDelusion:
I agree that Aros has been going pretty slow, but you have to give the guys a LOT of credit for starting from nothing.

Toni and Jason get a lot of credit recently for giving the Amiga version a huge boost, but they all deserve a lot of recognition.

[HammerD]

Speaking of Amithlon, I just finished updating my pages on Amithlon over at http://www.hd-zone.com/amithlon/

It includes the latest information on Kernel 4 and the new drivers and hardware support.

[amigadave]

If you have the talent to seriously revive Amithlon, then why not use that talent to improve AROS instead?  I am sure the AROS community is always looking for more talented programmers to help them out.

[haywirepc]

Also remember that os3.x is closed sourced. Amithlon loads the os 3.x system files on top of its emulation/translation to x86 layer.
 
This means you won't likely get far with ox3.x closed to your development and improvement efforts.
 
In short, without os3.x sources, its a dead end.
 
Steven

[Heiroglyph]

I'm on the AROS mailing list and have source code access, but this is my fun project for after work and for some reason working on AROS just isn't interesting to me.

I've even made donations because I believe in it, but it just doesn't pique my interest.