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Offline AegisTopic starter

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Amiga Forever 2016 with PPC support!
« on: November 29, 2015, 08:06:53 PM »
From Cloanto:

Quote from: Cloanto
If a single, gorgeous image could tell the story of almost two years of work made possible with your past support, it might be here:

http://www.amigaforever.com/screenshots/

The new 2016 Amiga Forever and C64 Forever versions, which have been released in the past few hours, at last merge more than 35 years of Commodore/Amiga computing history into a single player experience, inclusive of stunning high-DPI (4K, "retina", etc.) display support.

And yes, that includes a PowerPC Amiga (with 1+ GB of RAM, preconfigured PCI bridge, Picasso IV, Ethernet and more).

Installing your favorite PPC OS from CD or ISO image (not included) takes only a few mouse clicks.

Instructions for upgraders are here: http://www.amigaforever.com/kb/15-121

And a more detailed list of new features: http://www.amigaforever.com/whatsnew/

You can now also participate in beta updates by enabling the option in the About dialog. Or send feedback directly from the Help menu. We love to hear from you!

Thank you again for your generous support, and feel free to post, tweet or otherwise promote our effort, or let me know directly what we can do to better meet your needs.

Regards,

Mike and Your Amiga & C64 Forever Team

http://www.amigaforever.com
http://www.c64forever.com
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Offline alberonn

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Impressions/experience from a recent purchaser of AF16
« Reply #1 on: December 09, 2015, 10:01:57 PM »
I just bought this and I'm pretty happy with the results. I have been missing my old Amiga since I gave it to my old user's group in 2006. My wife gave me a modest shopping spree for my birthday and Amiga Forever 2016 Premium Edition was my first purchase.

When I bought it, I was immediately given my software key so I could download the Plus Edition archive while I awaited delivery of my DVDs. Installation was really easy and I could jump into the software fairly quickly. AmiKit and AROS required additional downloading but the AF launcher took care of that detail for me--the first time you try to launch it will download the required files for you.

While getting into the preconfigured systems and games were easy, I have been having trouble working out my big, bad, PPC-accelerated system. This is a matter of some trial and error on my part as well as another forum post.

The DVD came much faster than I thought--apparently there is a center in Oregon that filled my order. However, their hard drive hiccuped and I received four copies instead. All had my same key file and when I let Cloanto know about the problem--in case it was a bigger problem for those guys--I received three more software keys and was told Merry Christmas! That is what I call amazing customer support. Disk 0 in one of the sets was bad however and I'm not sure what to do with that one and my other two have new homes allocated already. I guess I could try to duplicate Disk 0 and include the duplicate in the package since I don't expect the company to replace a disk sent in error. The Software key should still be good though.

On my laptop-a Dell N5110 with 8GB of RAM and currently running Windows 10--using the launcher to play the videos does not work. They will play when I use WMP but I notice that disk 2 won't play or popup with a DVD menu in my computer--it does work perfect in my Sony Blu-Ray player. I can delve into the disk with VLC and play the individual tracks. I have no idea where the problem is but I do notice that my laptop has issues with a lot of DVD movies.

Overall, I am very happy with this set--I just need to get deeper into being a little more of a power user. My old CLI skills are rusty but I still feel comfortable playing in the shell. The Amiga is a computer that I was very comfortable with and it feels like I have rediscovered an old friend. While having the original hardware would be nice, I simply don't have a place to put it and as the hardware ages, things will break and stop working. This is not a bad way to keep the spirit of the Amiga alive. I have also downloaded the free C64 Forever edition and I think I'll go for the plus edition of that title too. What is nice is that if you have both installed, your Amiga and C= 8-bit systems will show up on the same launcher, separated into two categories: Amiga Files and CBM Files. This is very handy and gives you easy access to all your systems without too much clutter and confusion.

This was certainly worth it--even if I hadn't been delivered the extra copies.
« Last Edit: December 09, 2015, 10:29:36 PM by alberonn »
 

Offline kreciu

Re: Amiga Forever 2016 with PPC support!
« Reply #2 on: December 10, 2015, 12:07:25 AM »
This is really good news. Now, I'm even more happy I got my copy of AmigaOS4.1 Classic :). My PC will be fastest possible AmigaPPC ever build... I hope they will make a support for some other graphic card, not just Picasso IV. This 4MB memory limit is not the best... Voodoo 3? I hope to see it someday.
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Offline Epsilon_

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Re: Impressions/experience from a recent purchaser of AF16
« Reply #3 on: December 10, 2015, 12:21:20 AM »
Quote from: alberonn;799993
While getting into the preconfigured systems and games were easy, I have been having trouble working out my big, bad, PPC-accelerated system. This is a matter of some trial and error on my part as well as another forum post.

Perhaps my blog post on getting Amiga Forever 2016 up and running with AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition Classic may be helpful (assuming OS4 is what you want to run on PPC)?

http://amigax1000.blogspot.com.au/2015/12/amiga-forever-2016.html

Catcha,
Epsilon

Please check out my various blogs:
Amiga:  AmigaX1000.blogspot.com.au
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[/SIZE]
 

Offline Acill

Re: Impressions/experience from a recent purchaser of AF16
« Reply #4 on: December 10, 2015, 03:18:45 PM »
Quote from: Epsilon_;800008
Perhaps my blog post on getting Amiga Forever 2016 up and running with AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition Classic may be helpful (assuming OS4 is what you want to run on PPC)?

http://amigax1000.blogspot.com.au/2015/12/amiga-forever-2016.html

Catcha,
Epsilon


Great post Epsilon!!
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Offline TheMagicM

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Re: Impressions/experience from a recent purchaser of AF16
« Reply #5 on: December 10, 2015, 03:50:30 PM »
how useable is OS 4 on an emulator though? Meaning, how slow is it?
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Offline eliyahu

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Re: Impressions/experience from a recent purchaser of AF16
« Reply #6 on: December 10, 2015, 04:00:55 PM »
@TheMagicM

it ain't great in my experience. the QEMU PPC emulator used is very slow. that said, it's better than nothing and is a nice way to use an existing PC to test AOS4. i wouldn't use it as my only next-gen amiga, but when i'm on the road away from my X5000 and peg2 it is useful as a backup so i can use things like digital universe, for example.

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Offline nicholas

Re: Impressions/experience from a recent purchaser of AF16
« Reply #7 on: December 10, 2015, 04:36:26 PM »
Quote from: TheMagicM;800030
how useable is OS 4 on an emulator though? Meaning, how slow is it?


About as fast as OS3.x was on PPC UAE before we had a JIT version, so it's usable.  If someone writes a PPC uaegfx driver for p96 and a bsdsocket,library it'll be a lot more usable but Toni only does 68k stuff so it's up to someone else to do it.
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Offline kolla

Re: Impressions/experience from a recent purchaser of AF16
« Reply #8 on: December 10, 2015, 05:18:20 PM »
In stead of "hassling" with WinUAE, one could and should tweak Qemu to emulate something else that OS4 runs on, like Sam4x0 or Pegasos2.
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Offline kreciu

Re: Impressions/experience from a recent purchaser of AF16
« Reply #9 on: December 10, 2015, 07:05:47 PM »
Quote from: eliyahu;800032
@TheMagicM

it ain't great in my experience. the QEMU PPC emulator used is very slow. that said, it's better than nothing and is a nice way to use an existing PC to test AOS4. i wouldn't use it as my only next-gen amiga, but when i'm on the road away from my X5000 and peg2 it is useful as a backup so i can use things like digital universe, for example.

-- eliyahu

I can't say it is slow. It works quite well. I will need to run some benchmarks :). I have to say that my PC will be best AmigaOS computer for me. I can't simply afford $700 mobo :(. This way there will be much more PPC Amiga users.
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Offline nicholas

Re: Impressions/experience from a recent purchaser of AF16
« Reply #10 on: December 10, 2015, 07:23:24 PM »
Quote from: kolla;800035
In stead of "hassling" with WinUAE, one could and should tweak Qemu to emulate something else that OS4 runs on, like Sam4x0 or Pegasos2.


On a related note there was a Hungarian guy making the required changes to the QEMU code that would enable MorphOS to boot on an emulated PowerMac G4 but I think he gave up. This was a couple of years ago IIRC.

http://www.openfirmware.info/pipermail/openbios/2014-March/008183.html
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Offline AegisTopic starter

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Re: Impressions/experience from a recent purchaser of AF16
« Reply #11 on: December 10, 2015, 07:25:27 PM »
I'm really thrilled to see Michael continuing to update Amiga Forever (and of course incredibly grateful for Toni's continuing work on UAE) - I asked Michael a while back (when PPC support was in beta for UAE) if he'd make a version of AF that supported AmigaOS 4.1 and it's great to see it finally come to fruition :)

As kreciu mentions, some of us (myself included) simply can't justify the investment required for a hardware PPC system and and least now we have an officially supported software alternative so we can join in the fun - it's great for OS4 developers and publishers like Amigakit too.
« Last Edit: December 10, 2015, 07:29:10 PM by Aegis »
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Offline amigakit

Re: Impressions/experience from a recent purchaser of AF16
« Reply #12 on: December 10, 2015, 07:27:28 PM »
Amiga Forever 2016 now has arrived in stock at AmigaKit today: http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1196

We have sent out all preorders

We also have AmigaOS 4.1 Classic in stock now:

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1222
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Offline kreciu

Re: Impressions/experience from a recent purchaser of AF16
« Reply #13 on: December 10, 2015, 07:36:49 PM »
Here is manual how to install AmigaOS4.1 using UAE supplied with AmigaForever.

http://www.amigaforever.com/kb/16-127
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Offline TheMagicM

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Re: Impressions/experience from a recent purchaser of AF16
« Reply #14 on: December 10, 2015, 07:43:15 PM »
@ all
thanks for the replies/confirmation on emulating PPC OS4.   I'm sure in time that will be knocked out also.
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