Clean Room HyperionOS With Emulation

[asian1]

Is it possible for Hyperion Inc. to create a new, clean room operating system with PowerPC and 68K emulation for X86 + FPGA platform?

The OS will run exisiting AmigaOS 4 applications.

In 1980s, MS created IBM-DOS for the original IBM PC with special IBM ROM-BIOS. The IBM DOS use IBM Basic that use the BIOS calls. For the clone PC market, they created MS-DOS with compatible BIOS such as award, ami, phoenix etc. The MS DOS use GW-BASIC that does not use the ROM BIOS calls.

Is the same idea possible with Amiga platform?

Will this violate the agreement between Hyperion, Eyetech and Amiga Inc?

[Lando]

Isn't this why AROS exists?

Starting over again on a legacy-free x86 Amiga-like OS would just be re-inventing the wheel.  Give AROS a 68k JIT emulator and UAE integration and you pretty much have everything you described above.

Bar PPC emulation, which is not really required, nor is OS4 compatibility really necessary - how many OS4-only applications are there?  

I suppose something like MorphOS's OS4Emu compatibility layer could be written (re-oute all calls to OS4-specific functions to the OS's own equivalent).  But writing a PPC emulator for x86 is non-trivial, and since the few Amiga PPC applications that are available are almost all available in a 68k version anyway (which would run faster on a 68K JIT emulator than the PPC version) it's not worth it.

Perhaps Hyperion could work together with the AROS team, and donate their own expertise to the project, along the lines of the MorphOS / AROS co-operation that we have seen in the past.

If Hyperion did go it alone, they couldn't call it 'Amiga OS4' any more, they couldn't claim it as the 'official' next-gen Amiga OS, they couldn't claim it was based on 'The real Amiga Source Code', and so on.  Instantly losing 70-80% of their fan-base.

'The Name' and 'Official' status of OS4 is / was one of the most important factors in keeping people from moving to MorphOS / AROS / MacOS X / Linux / whatever.  Without that, they'd have to rely solely on the OS's merits.

[Argo]

Yes, it is possible. Are you going to pay for the development, licencing, lawyers, etc...?


I have no idea what you are talking about with your second quetion. I think it was Compaq that wrote their own IBM PC BIOS through reverse engineering, thus creating the clone market for IBM-PCs. Microsoft "wrote" MS-DOS, it was based on QDOS, for the IBM PC. Dr.DOS  and others were third pary clones of MS-DOS. Basic has nothing to do with it.

erm, I suppose someone could write their own Amiga compatable ROM code. Thus, eliminating the need for Real legal Amiga ROM chips. I think there is an AROS bounty for something like this. Not to menion AROS is pretty much what you are talking about in using your example of the IBM-PC. It is a clean room implementation of Amiga OS. QDOS was a clean room implemnetation of CP/M, which IBM looked at for an OS first then turned to MS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC

It probably will violate the agreement if Hyperion where to do this. If not violate, at least be beyond the scope of the agreement and licence.

Oh, AROS has a bounty for integrating UAE. As to PPC, I would think that, unlike 68K programs, PPC programs would not run too fast emulated.
You do realize what you are asking is like asking for world peace and has been discussed to death.

 :horse: