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Author Topic: UAE for A1 / OS4  (Read 1374 times)

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UAE for A1 / OS4
« on: February 15, 2003, 11:20:35 AM »
Hi,

I was just wondering, is there going to be a version of UAE for A1 / OS4?

I haven't been around much lately, and haven't been following Amiga that closely these days.  I just pop in to AOrg now and then to see if A1/OS4 or Pegasos/MOS are out.

My tired old A1200/060 16MB 420MB AGA, in a standard 1200 case is taking a lot of strain.  And I just don't see the point in investing any more money such a (now) outdated and limited platform.  
  :-(

I mostly just play with WinUAE these days, to get my Amiga fix, but I'd love to see a new Amiga platform that's actually WORTH investing in!

If I do get an A1 with OS4, I don't expect that there will be a whole lotta software available for it, in the beginning.  I also don't expect it to run all my old Amiga favourites natively.  We'll need someting to tide us over 'till the new apps and games start flowing.  It would be really cool if I could run some of the old Amiga apps and classic Amiga games, with UAE, on a REAL new Amiga!
 :-D

Anyone have any idea what's happeing in that direction?
 

Offline jumpship

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Re: UAE for A1 / OS4
« Reply #1 on: February 15, 2003, 11:41:48 AM »
In threoy OS4 offers "virtual mapping" or something that would allow things like the AGA chipset to be emulated within the memory map, or better yet to have an actual AGA chipset on a PCI card.

Of course this all depends on if someone were to embark on such a project. I would, but I don't have the technical know-how :-(
 

Offline mikeymike

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Re: UAE for A1 / OS4
« Reply #2 on: February 15, 2003, 11:46:06 AM »
If you're /that/ interested, If I were you I'd read:

Amiga OS4 feature list

There's quite a bit in there.
 

Offline alx

Re: UAE for A1 / OS4
« Reply #3 on: February 15, 2003, 12:22:48 PM »
OS4 has a built in 68K Just In Time Compiler.  This doesn't put all older applications in a "sandbox".  Instead, only the application itself is recompiled, and it then interacts with the new libraries etc.  This won't provide as much compatibility, but it means that you can use older apps just as easily as new ones - there is no difference to the system.

The big problem is of course the custom chips.  Any applications that bang on the hardware simply won't work.  One solution is to connect the A1 to an A1200 to reach the AGA chips, but the company doing that seems to have got very quiet.  The other way would be a full port of UAE to OS4 - doesn't exist yet.

The older the app is, the less likely it will work.  Newer apps supporting RTG and AHI should go fine, while some really old games, and virtually all demos, won't work at all.

Offline uncharted

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Re: UAE for A1 / OS4
« Reply #4 on: February 15, 2003, 12:49:50 PM »
There is a version of UAE for 68K (which is very old IIRC) this would in theory work on OS 4 (but emulation on emulation - nasty).  If it is compiled in GCC then it should be able to be compiled for OS 4 straight off.

I would imagine that UAE would be very popular and therefore well developed for OS 4.
 

Offline alx

Re: UAE for A1 / OS4
« Reply #5 on: February 15, 2003, 12:57:03 PM »
I know that OS4 supports remapping bits of memory to other places, and that if there was an AGA chipset present, this could be remapped as chip ram.

Would it be possible, though, to have a background process which, using parts of UAE, reads this bit of memory and does the custom chipset stuff though software.  If it was somehow possible, it would be able to run old hardware hitting apps (with the 68k JIT) but without having to sandbox them.   That would be great, but I'd imagine it'd be very hard to program.