Amiga.org
The "Not Quite Amiga but still computer related category" => Amiga Emulation => Topic started by: Heiroglyph on June 08, 2011, 03:56:29 AM
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I skipped over Amithons heyday and got into it later, but I'm very interested in it.
Would you still use something similar?
What would a modern version need to change?
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I do not think it is as necessary as it was before.
I do not know if I would use it or not.
I am writing this from Icaros Desktop 1.3.
I would be currios to see how it performed, etc.
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Enlighten me, as I wasn't part of the community for its heyday and can't find a lot of description on just what the heck it is. As near as I can make out, it's an x86-based Amiga emulator that runs on bare metal, rather than inside an OS?
Assuming this is correct: I don't really see why I'd want this. The numbers I've found seem impressive (450MHz 040 on a 1GHz x86? Nice.) But removing it from the context of a host operating system seems to lose the main advantage of an emulator (easily installed and operated side-by-side with a modern operating system) without approaching the coolness factor of custom hardware.
(Also, it sounds like it doesn't support the chipset? That's...pretty weak, really. But that may be old information - like I said, Google isn't telling me a lot.)
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@ CommodoreJohn
There was some stuff about it in the old magazines before they all disappeared at the start of the century, it was basically just another emulator to run on x86 hardware but if I recall correctly at the time the prices you'd have to pay to get all the kit together and up and running put it into the world of La, La Land... :)
Don't even think it could handle the custom chipset emulation very well so almost all games & demos were a no go on it. Always seemed to me from what I read about it, a pretty pointless exercise to tell the truth... :)
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Basically it has a minimal Linux underneath that exposed the PCI bus and many devices to the AmigaOS as real hardware.
You had as direct as possible access to the hardware so it acted much like a Draco in that you could only run OS legal applications with Picasso96, no hardware banging, although at least the CIA's were there.
I'm not sure that the chipset emulation would slow it down by much on todays PC's, but that was some of the justification.
You could also mix and match x86 libraries and executables. For example you could use an x86 native datatype and 68k apps would benefit from them.
Part of the idea was to slowly move more and more of the OS to x86 without having to do it all at once. It also made more hardware available, giving a huge speed boost, more RAM, RTG, AHI and network card at very little cost.
At the time it seemed to be a great option, but the licensing wasn't done properly so it was killed in court.
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I skipped over Amithons heyday and got into it later, but I'm very interested in it.
Would you still use something similar?
What would a modern version need to change?
In answer to your questions, I can only say this...
Would you still use something similar... No, simply because I don't see these "alternative" OS's on x86 hardware or whatever being anything to do with the real Amiga experience... :)
To me if I really wanted to run modern day software then I could just buy such software for my iMacs or buy a PC, either way it would be a lot cheaper than paying for a custom made Amiga like OS and hardware that will most likely not match the equivalent of a modern day PC... :)
As to "What would a modern version need to change?"... again I just don't see why folk would want an Amiga on x86 hardware with all the problems & flaws it would involve and never achieving anywhere close to being like using a real Amiga... :)
The NatAmi with it's extra ports & gfx modes to me is the only real hope we have of ever achieving an Amiga that new stuff can be written for, to bring it that bit closer to "modern day computing" while being the most backward compatible system possible at the same time... :)
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The last time I ran Amithlon, it ran circles around any emulator on the same hardware. I loved it!
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The last time I ran Amithlon, it ran circles around any emulator on the same hardware. I loved it!
But what did it emulate if it couldn't handle the custom chipsets properly... :confused:
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A shit load! Pretty much anything AHI and RTG friendly. Quake for instance absolutely flew on my old Amithlon machine. And considering that there are unofficial updates for it, I have considered building another machine just for it until AROS gets its ass out of the Alpha stage.
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A shit load! Pretty much anything AHI and RTG friendly. Quake for instance absolutely flew on my old Amithlon machine. And considering that there are unofficial updates for it, I have considered building another machine just for it until AROS gets its ass out of the Alpha stage.
That's hardly a sh!t load... :)
Thing is like CommodoreJohn said there isn't much info to be found on the net about it, last stuff I ever read about it was around 2003 on the monthly CD Magazine "100% Amiga", But it's was mostly stuff about it being in trouble and heading for the realms of the land that time forgot... :(
Anywhere on the net where folk can find more info about it and see just how far it was developed before it disappeared.. :)
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@XDelusion:
For system friendly/RTG type software it seems better than my tricked out 4000T.
Considering you can run UAE on it at full speed, the lack of chipset emulation doesn't really bother me.
There are updates that support some newer motherboards and video cards, but it's still very hit and miss. Very hard to get set up with the updates too.
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http://www.hd-zone.com/amithlon/
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=31613
Sad sad story.
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Sad sad story.
Yes it is.
I think what several people are missing is that Programs that ate resources like they were candy on a Classic Amiga FLEW on an Amithalon.
I saw a render at a Amiga Show in Baltimore that tooks seconds, maybe a minute, on an Amithalon compaired to several hours on a Tricked out A4000.
So, it wasn't a good replacemt for games or Chipset banging software, but for production packages that worked off of the OS, it was a God send.
Yes, think Draco for a good comparison in compatability: http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=43
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The last time I ran Amithlon, it ran circles around any emulator on the same hardware. I loved it!
It was beautiful to behold!
I was lucky enough to use one for a demonstration of IFX at an east coast Amiga Convention. I was amazed at how FAST it was! I may not be into speed the way the boys are, but a faster system does make work that much easier.
I know !
Once I had my hands on one this is what opened my eyes to the possibility of getting some kind of portable Amiga. And after Amithlon had it's political problems (arg), I decided to try WinUAE on a regular windows laptop. I did this by buying a Dell, and eventually making it multiboot with Red Hat. So, I had three OS's on it.
worked very well for years.
Amiga OS faster is really really good
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It was beautiful to behold!
I was lucky enough to use one for a demonstration of IFX at an east coast Amiga Convention. I was amazed at how FAST it was! I may not be into speed the way the boys are, but a faster system does make work that much easier.
I know !
HA HA!!! I bet you were the one demonstrating the show I was talking about! That's too funny!
I even remember the video clip you worked on for the class. It was woman blowing out a match and you did some kinda cool background effect and it rendered superfast!
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HA HA!!! I bet you were the one demonstrating the show I was talking about! That's too funny!
I even remember the video clip you worked on for the class. It was woman blowing out a match and you did some kinda cool background effect and it rendered superfast!
Baltimore - yes, that was probably me!
and I had JUST been handed this laptop, so all I had to know was IFX. I think connecting the laptop to the projector was more 'time consuming' only because it wasn't my laptop and I had not done this before. I was VERY impressed.
After that experience I laugh at people who don't appreciate the value of emulation.
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Yeah, as the other friends here posted, the Amithlon emulation for productivity software is amazing. And if you are a person who don't mind custom chipset usage(games or demos) it is a reccomended system. I had it long ago on a pII 266 and it was reaaally fast. So on a 1ghz+ machine that could be a speed demon. Think of it as a draCo type machine.
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Don't even think it could handle the custom chipset emulation very well so almost all games & demos were a no go on it. Always seemed to me from what I read about it, a pretty pointless exercise to tell the truth...
Holding on to the custom chip set, especially at that time, would have been like strapping a horse to the front of your car and expecting people to be impressed. The custom chip set was a means to an end and by the time Amithlon came around, that end was largely achieved. For those of us no longer interested in Amiga games, the chipset was pretty pointless, and for myself, who would have loved to have seen AmigaOS move forward, Amithlon became another means to an end.
As an earlier poster pointed out, Amithlon allowed you to mix and match x86 and 68k binaries and would have allowed for a smooth transition to Intel. AROS, for example, is trying to build smooth 68k emulation into the OS, but is having some difficulty. If they had adopted the Amithlon approach they would have had it already.
All in all, it's a shame it failed. It's quite possible AmigaOS would have been years ahead of where it is now had it not. Que sera, sera...
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So back to my original question, is there still interest?
Is it just the legality keeping it from use?
Is it the fact that it's somewhere between hard and impossible to set up on current hardware?
Maybe it sounds good on paper but you didn't use it?
Has Aros negated the need?
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So back to my original question, is there still interest?
I would say yes, if it were still being updated, tweeked, etc. there would be a BIG interest... But...
Is it just the legality keeping it from use?
Yes and no. The main issue (and an extremely watered down version of it) was that different parts were owned by two people, one of whom became very bitter and refused to work with anyone, AND because the Amiga IP was traded around like a hot potato. So not only were several different entities demanding fees for using Amiga IP, there was also internal strife that AFAIK is still not patched up to this day.
Is it the fact that it's somewhere between hard and impossible to set up on current hardware?
I would say no because you could use it's latest release on "old" cheap hardware and still have a blazing fast Amiga. Anything built up from that would be amazing!
Maybe it sounds good on paper but you didn't use it?
It is illegal to sell or buy it since the big blow up. That is why very few use it, IMHO.
Has Aros negated the need?
Has it? I'd say no, not yet. Will it? Most likely.
I see Amithalon Vs. Aros kindda like Amiga Vs PCs in the 90s. Since Amithalon is not being developed (Like Commodore did to the Amiga) AROS will catch up and surpass it (Like the PC did to the Amiga mid 90s).
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@J-Golden
Thanks for the answers.
In my case, the lack of hardware was a big stumbling block. I just don't have access to that much old PC hardware and it's super picky about what works. My one old compatible PC isn't holding up as well as my long lived Amigas, it randomly doesn't post anymore.
I like to think that AROS will get there eventually, I'm just finding along the way that I'm not enjoying AROS as much as I thought I would. It's largely still just a fast subset of OS3.1 without much software.
Amithlon seems to give me all my old software plus a super RTG Amiga and right now that's what I really want to use.
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.
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Amithlon seems to give me all my old software plus a super RTG Amiga and right now that's what I really want to use.
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.
"Umilator" solved the main problems with Amithlon, had a proper HD installer... Bernd Meyer released some of the improvements as Amithlon updates for example generic drivers for network/audio that used Linux ones.
I think it definitely worths trying out, if you install AfA and latest stuff you'll end up with a nice system. You won't have latest OS4/MOS goodies but it's still a decent and fast way of running Amiga apps.
Amithlon RTG graphics worked (and still works probably) faster than WinUAE IIRC. input.device received the ps2 instructions directly or something like that. It felt very fast. I still keep my original copy but thanks to MorphOS I haven't touched it in ages :-)
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Its an extremely interesting idea. Too bad it got tangled up.
I guess today uae covers it in any event. Particularly since it does have3 chipset compatibility
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Seems from what people have been saying here and from the links XDelusion gave that Amithlon was somewhere along the right tracks when it comes to Amiga emulators (all be it running only "System Friendly software)... :)
Been digging around the old CD magazine "100% Amiga" and there are quite a few interesting reviews/ news items about Amithlon on them, sadly though it seems to have gone (like most things Amiga) belly up... :( which leaves me wondering just what Amithlon could have become had it not been struck down by the Amiga curse... :)
A couple of news items on Amithlon from 100%Amiga CD Magazine (Jan/Feb 2003)
(http://i995.photobucket.com/albums/af79/frankosamiga/Misc/5.gif)
(http://i995.photobucket.com/albums/af79/frankosamiga/Snapshot2011-06-0817-40-40.jpg)
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Bernie got so screwed in that situation.
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?
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Bernie got so screwed in that situation.
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?
Sadly it seems to be the norm for anyone trying to develop either software or hardware in Amigaland... :(
Sometimes wonder why there has been so much of this type of behaviour in the Amiga's history, is it greed or just plain pettiness or do Amiga developers just not like to see someone else producing something better than their own project... shame really... :(
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From what I remember, in this case it was either greed making them think they could avoid licensing costs for the OS they were shipping or believing that they had the right to do so. I won't try to read their intentions, but regardless they were proven wrong.
Bernie got caught in the middle and bailed out to cover himself from the lawsuits.
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Amithlon was simply the best "classic" Amiga and experience on x86. Not being able to emulate native hardware wasn't a problem for me; it was an AmigaOS system for productivity rather than gaming.
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I remember Amithlon before the licensing problems, running on (if memory serves) a 750mHz x86 machine. Display was a 38 inch (yes, that's right) monitor, & it was streaming & playing four videos (using Frogger) from the same HD at the same time. Awesome ! :)
PC users refused to believe it was possible until the case side was removed to prove there was only one HD in the machine. If you had tried to do the same thing using Windows98 or W2K, which were the current Windows versions at that time, then the machine would have either crashed or slowed to slideshow frame rates.
I also recall that it booted straight into Amithlon very quickly, & while you couldn't run games, OS legal software ran at blistering speed. When you'd finished there was no shutdown proceedure, just press the power switch to close down.
Best of all, it really felt like an Amiga. :)
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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
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These old 100% Amiga CD's are a treasure trove of interesting old news snippets... :)
(http://i995.photobucket.com/albums/af79/frankosamiga/100Percent%20Amiga/AmithlonOct02.gif)
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We have AROS now so who cares?
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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.
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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
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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... :(
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Is there enough parts to rebuild it?
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@ 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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@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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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I remember Amithlon before the licensing problems, running on (if memory serves) a 750mHz x86 machine. Display was a 38 inch (yes, that's right) monitor, & it was streaming & playing four videos (using Frogger) from the same HD at the same time. Awesome ! :)
. :)
running 4 videos at the same time is not a miracle
in fact winuae can did it before amithlon
check this screenshot on aminet
http://aminet.net/package/pix/wb/WinUAEs1
according to readme file it was on a simple duron 750mhz and was in 2001
readme file says moovid instead frogger
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@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.
I agree, they've done a LOT, but having followed it since the beginning, I'm starting to feel like their priorities misplaced. I.E. I was psyched to see integrated emulation, but sadly the OS the emu runs upon is itself FAR from stable and highly unpredictable. Maybe I'll have a change of heart when I buy my Aspire One
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@ Heiroglyph:
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.
Well, speaking from my perspective, since you're gaging interest, I would lean towards whichever makes it more flexible for expansion. The thing I liked best about the original Amithlon was that it did represent a way to move things forward.
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)
Personally, I think compatibility is one of the things that is holding back Amiga derived systems. IMHO, AROS is stuck without MP, SMP and useful drivers because it aims at 3.1 compatibility. I feel OS 4.1 and MorphOS are similarly stuck because of PPC compatibility.
That's why, for example, I had no issues with Bernie when he lost the custom chipset compatibility. It just made better sense to do so with all the more modern and powerful graphics cards available at that time.
Don't get me wrong, I don't have an issue with 68k compatibility, but not so that it holds you back from moving forward. Naturally a balance should be struck.
Once again, my two cents, if it's really even worth that. :)
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Of course, thinking on it, part of the problem is that Amithlon was started in 2001 - when the core of Amiga OS was 7 years stale already (I don't consider two shareware bundles "service packs"). The difficulties involving bringing the Amiga back into a modern realm was merely "almost completely" insurmountable. In three more years, Amiga OS - the 3.1 branch - will be twenty years dead. The problems now are not "almost completely" insurmountable, they're entirely insurmountable.
It goes beyond mere hardware support, too. You can write drivers until your fingers fall off to support every video card, every motherboard chipset, and so on, in the book and it doesn't change the fact that your target is possibly 2000 users. Rare and weird strains of Linux have larger dev groups than that, forget user base sizes. Then there's the issue of applications - once you have Amithlon updated to run on new hardware, once you get there, what do you do? Run Aweb? Ibrowse? Or start scratch developing apps or porting apps from scratch from the x86 side? Taking how long with the abovementioned tiny developer's side?
Don't get me wrong: I think Amithlon is neat. Hell, I think the Amiga is neat. I think its awesome that AOS 3.x has USB2 support, that someone can tweak out an A600 to perform like a mid 90's m68k mac (and in fact run MacOS 8.1). When someone shows that their Bodega Bay chassis is still kicking over and they've got a video card, USB controller, CD-ROM etc. etc. that's awesome. Likewise running AIBB on Amithlon and watching that red indicator blast up past the fastest pure 68k (and PPC!) systems just brings a smile to my face.
In a perfect world I'd wake up tomorrow and fire up this PC running Amithlon and type in replies on a ported and running emulated or native and running through an x86 interpretive layer version of Firefox, while the underlying host bits of Amithlon did cool stuff like handled multi-user, MP and VM, sandboxing the parts of AmigaOS 3.1 that would have a fit over such behavior. But this is a far from perfect world. And anyway, what I just described sorta-kinda already exists in having WinUAE - except there's the chipset support if I needed it.
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Personally, I think compatibility is one of the things that is holding back Amiga derived systems. IMHO, AROS is stuck without MP, SMP and useful drivers because it aims at 3.1 compatibility. I feel OS 4.1 and MorphOS are similarly stuck because of PPC compatibility.
I didn't make it clear, but I meant better hardware compatibility, not software compatibility. Beyond OS legal apps isn't something I'm interested in, that's what full system emulators like UAE are for and they are beyond reasonably complete.
I agree with both you and B00tDisk, 3.1 was great 20 years ago, but there needs to be forward momentum. I think the lack of forward progress is one of the things I disliked when I was working on AROS, I felt like I was reinventing a wheel rather than adding value to something.
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I'm bi-polar in that respect. I'm very hungry for the Natami, was sad to see the Coldfire never worked out their compatibility issues, and at the same time am loving MorphOS and have always got my eyes on the other variants. I'll take one of each if they all work well! :)
As for that additional CPU in the X1000, I'm REALLY curious how that might help OS4.x's compatibility with classic, hardware dependant apps. Very Curious indeed!
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I didn't make it clear, but I meant better hardware compatibility, not software compatibility. Beyond OS legal apps isn't something I'm interested in, that's what full system emulators like UAE are for and they are beyond reasonably complete.
Awesome. :) Then you definitely have my interest.
I'm gathering, though, that this is to be a private/personal project rather than an open-sourced one. If it is, you might wanna consider the open-source option, since it there would be less risk what happened to Amithlon happening again. Obviously, you could also recruit some help and engage others in the best way to attack the problems that arise.
What are we up to now? Six cents? :)
Best of luck, nonetheless, on whatever you decide.
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My thoughts on what needs to be done.
1) Remove OS3.9 from Amithlon and replace it with 68k AROS parts.
2) Re-Compile the various parts of AROS in a piecemeal fashion using the 686-BE compiler, until there is little to none 68k code left.
3) Convince Bernie to release the code to Amithlon/Umilator or write a clone from scratch.
4) The community profits! :)
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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.
The Haiku kernel could make an interesting base.
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For those still interested in amithlon, you could join the yahoo groups amithlon open mailing list, as they often post there new kernels and drivers for more gfx chipsets and better compatibility.
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I used Amithlon quite extensively several years before moving to AROS. It's pretty slick. I got it to work on several PIII machines from 800 MHz to 1 GHz. Got the video, audio, NIC and even USB working. My old Amiga Productivity Tools worked well, like ProWrite. And I was able to connect it to my home network which was cool. However, I gave up on it because at the time it had issues with P4 CPU's. Perhaps the new Kernal will fix that. Will have to try that.
I like AROS, because the install is very easy compared to Amithlon. Also, lately there has been a lot of development going on with it. Haiku hasn't had an update since May 10, 2010. AROS has several since that time. It also had multiple distributions, Icaros Desktop and Broadway. I've got it working on a Dell GX280 3.2 GHz HT CPU.
I have a spare Amithlon machine that I would like to give away to anyone who can pick it up. I'm in the Washington, DC area. It's dual boot with Windows XP. In XP mode, its a dog. But booting it into Amithlon, it flies. It's good for fooling around with.
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I used Amithlon quite extensively several years before moving to AROS. It's pretty slick. I got it to work on several PIII machines from 800 MHz to 1 GHz. Got the video, audio, NIC and even USB working. My old Amiga Productivity Tools worked well, like ProWrite. And I was able to connect it to my home network which was cool. However, I gave up on it because at the time it had issues with P4 CPU's. Perhaps the new Kernal will fix that. Will have to try that.
I like AROS, because the install is very easy compared to Amithlon. Also, lately there has been a lot of development going on with it. Haiku hasn't had an update since May 10, 2010. AROS has several since that time.
Nightly builds of Haiku can be found here: http://haiku-files.org/
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Nightly builds of Haiku can be found here: http://haiku-files.org/
Thanks for the correction. Looks pretty neat. Do they have any packaged distributions like Icaros or Broadway.
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My thoughts on what needs to be done.
1) Remove OS3.9 from Amithlon and replace it with 68k AROS parts.
2) Re-Compile the various parts of AROS in a piecemeal fashion using the 686-BE compiler, until there is little to none 68k code left.
3) Convince Bernie to release the code to Amithlon/Umilator or write a clone from scratch.
4) The community profits! :)
:eek: that's one of the very things that has made me very interested and change my view of Amithlon I had at the beginning of this thread, that fact that it runs on OS3.9... :)
It would be crazy to get rid of it for something that's not even finished yet... :(
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@BootDisk:
Not this old crap again about OS3.5/3.9 not being proper upgrades. It's rubbish and you know it, or should do by now. Workbench ARexx port, GlowIcons support, various enhancements and bugfixes to core APIs etc. The fact that some previously 3rd-party apps (eg. ReAction) were also integrated into the package doesn't negate this.
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I also miss UAE for QNX. It was cool to be able to launch QNX apps via Work Bench, though sometimes the screens would screw up, and with no updates on the horizon, I stopped using it. :(
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Removing the original OS would be a bad idea at first.
1. Then why not just run AROS?
2. Compatibility with old apps wouldn't be good
3. You're just going the AROS route again with 3.1 on x86.
I was looking at something more like:
Take a more advanced OS that matches well, say Haiku.
Get Amithlon working on this rather than Linux.
Make use of ClassicWB or other distribution and the users own ROM.
You could start releasing right here.
Amithlon would become more of a UI than the OS, like early Windows or XWindows.
Instead of peeking through a keyhole with special x86 extensions, expose the underlying OS to AmigaOS.
Make use of AROS code to slowly integrate them better making Haiku more Amiga like and AOS more native, eventually negating the need for ROMS, etc that can't be distributed.
Part of my reasoning is that Haiku is more of a spiritual successor than most other OS's, but is far more advanced.
It has SMP, memory protection, virtual memory, datatypes, responsive UI, it's multi-media centric and has a good selection of drivers. It also boots to a usable desktop in 8 seconds. (not counting BIOS crap that can't be helped)
Anyway, that's what has been kicking around in my head.
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Removing the original OS would be a bad idea at first.
1. Then why not just run AROS?
2. Compatibility with old apps wouldn't be good
3. You're just going the AROS route again with 3.1 on x86.
I was looking at something more like:
Take a more advanced OS that matches well, say Haiku.
Get Amithlon working on this rather than Linux.
Make use of ClassicWB or other distribution and the users own ROM.
You could start releasing right here.
Amithlon would become more of a UI than the OS, like early Windows or XWindows.
Instead of peeking through a keyhole with special x86 extensions, expose the underlying OS to AmigaOS.
Make use of AROS code to slowly integrate them better making Haiku more Amiga like and AOS more native, eventually negating the need for ROMS, etc that can't be distributed.
Part of my reasoning is that Haiku is more of a spiritual successor than most other OS's, but is far more advanced.
It has SMP, memory protection, virtual memory, datatypes, responsive UI, it's multi-media centric and has a good selection of drivers. It also boots to a usable desktop in 8 seconds. (not counting BIOS crap that can't be helped)
Anyway, that's what has been kicking around in my head.
That's the right way to go I reckon, don't get why people would want to get rid of 3.x compatibility and go another route... :confused:
Seems from what I've learned in this short time about Amithlon it's whole purpose was to be as 3.x compatible as possible which to me is what would make it so good... :)
I hope you go ahead with this as I reckon your onto something here... :)
PS: I see the usual idiots who lurk around here but are too afraid to say anything have started a thread on PooBunny dissing your idea, gawd what a sad bun of tards some of these tubes are... :rolleyes:
PooBunny Wahoos Gibber About Amithlon (http://moobunny.dreamhosters.com/cgi/mbthread.pl/amiga/expand/196997)
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Amiga + Haiku = My wet dream
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My thoughts on what needs to be done.
1) Remove OS3.9 from Amithlon and replace it with 68k AROS parts.
2) Re-Compile the various parts of AROS in a piecemeal fashion using the 686-BE compiler, until there is little to none 68k code left.
3) Convince Bernie to release the code to Amithlon/Umilator or write a clone from scratch.
4) The community profits! :)
You could take another route:
1) idem
2) idem
3) use 686-BE compiler to compile AROS itself, I would call this AROS with i386be CPU.
4) implement proper bootstrap to run i386be AROS on a i386 machine
5) run amithlon without amithlon :)
greets,
Staf.
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You could take another route:
1) idem
2) idem
3) use 686-BE compiler to compile AROS itself, I would call this AROS with i386be CPU.
4) implement proper bootstrap to run i386be AROS on a i386 machine
5) run amithlon without amithlon :)
greets,
Staf.
But that would not have the benefit of Amithlon's seamless 68k emulation.
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PS: I see the usual idiots who lurk around here but are too afraid to say anything have started a thread on PooBunny dissing your idea, gawd what a sad bun of tards some of these tubes are... :rolleyes:
This may be the stupidest idea ever, who knows. Wouldn't be my first, won't be my last. ;)
It sounds fun though, that's about all that matters anymore.
It's not like I'm trying to make money from it, it's just an interesting challenge with open source code to get a head start from.
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Thats a huge project but I wish you the best. Good luck, please let us all know how it goes.
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While we're on this subject, can someone please post a list of compattible hardware for amithlon? I tried some time ago but it didn't like any machine I tried to put it on, and I tried older era pcs (800-1500mhz)
I think alot like aros, you need a certain video, sound and network card to get it going easily. I have a few old pcs around and I'd be interested in giving it a go.
I have a couple of amithlon iso's around still.
Steven
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While we're on this subject, can someone please post a list of compattible hardware for amithlon? I tried some time ago but it didn't like any machine I tried to put it on, and I tried older era pcs (800-1500mhz)
I think alot like aros, you need a certain video, sound and network card to get it going easily. I have a few old pcs around and I'd be interested in giving it a go.
I have a couple of amithlon iso's around still.
Steven
Nearly-Right already posted a link a few pages back with that info... :)
http://www.garycvl.f2s.com/amithlon.html (http://www.garycvl.f2s.com/amithlon.html)
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This may be the stupidest idea ever, who knows. Wouldn't be my first, won't be my last. ;)
It sounds fun though, that's about all that matters anymore.
It's not like I'm trying to make money from it, it's just an interesting challenge with open source code to get a head start from.
Just getting AROS-hosted to compile and run on Haiku would be a cool thing.
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Franko,
That info is for an updated kernel. First, you need to install and get the system working before you can update the kernel.
I'm interested in what hardware the original amithlon cd supported, which I have a copy of but no docs, or hw supported info for.
Steven
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Franko,
That info is for an updated kernel. First, you need to install and get the system working before you can update the kernel.
I'm interested in what hardware the original amithlon cd supported, which I have a copy of but no docs, or hw supported info for.
Steven
Click on the links on that page and it takes you to compatible motherboards etc.. :)
Thought that was the info you were looking for... :confused:
I'm pretty sure there was quite an extensive review of the original hardware done on one of the 100%Amiga CDs I was looking through yesterday but I think they are in the old magazines format of IFF ILBM files and not the HTML type I posted earlier (which 100%Amiga changed to later)... :(
I'll have a look through the CDs and see if I can convert any Amithlon stuff that will allow me to post them here... :)
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Thanks Franko, that would be awesome to see.
So far I know sb 128 pci will work. Still a bit confused on the network and video cards. Anyone with an amithlon system care to chime in with appropriate parts?
Steven
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Amithlon wasn't so much an Amiga emulator as it didn't actually emulate an Amiga (ie. the custom chips, which to me were what makes an Amiga what it was). Rather it was a way of running Amiga OS 3.x on a x86 machine on top of a barebones linux kernel.
I torrented it several years ago to try out (it wasn't available to buy anymore) and it was very fast. In UAE the customer chip emulation takes 90% of the processor time so the reason Amithlon was so fast is because it didn't bother with any of that, but you had to run hardware-banging apps in E-UAE on top of Amithlon which kinda negated the whole point.
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Franko,
That info is for an updated kernel. First, you need to install and get the system working before you can update the kernel.
I'm interested in what hardware the original amithlon cd supported, which I have a copy of but no docs, or hw supported info for.
Steven
There is a hardware compatibility list here
http://web.onetel.net.uk/~garycvl/amithlon/hardware.htm
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@BootDisk:
Not this old crap again about OS3.5/3.9 not being proper upgrades. It's rubbish and you know it, or should do by now. Workbench ARexx port, GlowIcons support, various enhancements and bugfixes to core APIs etc. The fact that some previously 3rd-party apps (eg. ReAction) were also integrated into the package doesn't negate this.
I agree.
I'm in the process of installing my own 3.1 system on an A4000 68060 with CGX. I have both 3.5 and 3.9, but I'm trying to get the speed of 3.1 with the functionality of 3.9 (3.9 is slower, 3.5 is far less stable, and HATE the doubletriple cold boot, and yes I've tried programmable ROMS and they do Funny Things).
I think I can do it but its taking a long time, and there are quite a few incompatibilies cropping up between different patches that need to be installed. And the result is far less elegant that 3.9. 3.9 deserves more credit than it gets I wish they just sold 3.9 ROMS to go with it as well.
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@ stefcep2
I agree with you that 3.9 is the slowest but curious as to why you think 3.5 is "less stable"...
I run 3.5 all the time and never have any problems with it on my Blizzard060 or 030 boards be interested to know what problems you seem to have found with 3.5... :)
I simply use some small scripts with 3.0 & 3.1 ROM Images and BlizKick for switching between OS 3. to 3.9 and a small script file that switches me to OS4.0 if I want to use it and it only take a quick double reset to do so... :)
Best way I find to do it is to have each version of Workbench stored simply in a separate drawer (ie: 3.0, 3.1, 3.5 and 3.9) and some small scripts that reset the Amiga (with BlickKick if I need to go between the 3.0 & 3.1 ROMS) and a small util I wrote that selects the chosen OS on reset by simply holding down the appropriate function key... :)
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I skipped over Amithons heyday and got into it later, but I'm very interested in it.
Would you still use something similar?
What would a modern version need to change?
I'd use it if it gave me a laptop. For desktops, I already have nearly all of them., no need for emulation there. I use WinUAE, never did get Amithlon to work myself.
It'd be cool to see an AmithlonPPC for OS4.
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You do indeed get some incompatibilities with 3.9. I didn't find it that slow to use, though the boot up process is obnoxiously slow.
3.5 was as stable as 3.1 for me, but I didnt have a lot of other patches in there
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I don't think 3.9 was that much slower, but I think it feels slower.
Feel is a lot of what makes AmigaOS AmigaOS IMHO. OS3.9 has this intangible slowness that certain people are more sensitive to.
The multiple reboots are just inexcusable. I have no idea how that made it out the door.
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Part of my reasoning is that Haiku is more of a spiritual successor than most other OS's, but is far more advanced.
It has SMP, memory protection, virtual memory, datatypes, responsive UI, it's multi-media centric and has a good selection of drivers. It also boots to a usable desktop in 8 seconds. (not counting BIOS crap that can't be helped)
Doesn't Haiku have the same limitation that AROS has in regards to drivers? I assume you'd want to support a limited set of architecture first, but wouldn't the ideal be to ultimately support as broad a range of hardware as possible? Am I missing something here?
I have nothing against Haiku and I'm definitely not a Linux fan, but wouldn't you want to start with something that had a fairly broad foundation?
Just curious.
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Haiku is keen but going from "barely supports any hardware" to "barely supports any hardware" probably isnt the way to go :)
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.......It'd be cool to see an AmithlonPPC for OS4.
Huh?????????
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I agree.
I'm in the process of installing my own 3.1 system on an A4000 68060 with CGX. I have both 3.5 and 3.9, but I'm trying to get the speed of 3.1 with the functionality of 3.9 (3.9 is slower, 3.5 is far less stable, and HATE the doubletriple cold boot, and yes I've tried programmable ROMS and they do Funny Things).
I think I can do it but its taking a long time, and there are quite a few incompatibilies cropping up between different patches that need to be installed. And the result is far less elegant that 3.9. 3.9 deserves more credit than it gets I wish they just sold 3.9 ROMS to go with it as well.
I have a Flash ROM board that I have never properly utilized for one A4000 and a Deneb with Flash ROM functionality in another A4000 and I believe my ACA630 in my A600 has enough Flash ROM room to create a custom ROM file that would be an improvement over what AmigaOS3.9 does, or has. If there is not already a project out there, there should be one or more that suggest the best ROM modules to combine to create the best AmigaOS experience, based on the 3.1 Kickstart ROM's, plus only the best parts of 3.5, 3.9 and later improved ROM modules that were created after 3.9. There should be different recommendations for different CPU's, such as recommended ROM modules for each of the following Amiga models and CPU's;
A500/A2000 w/68000
A500/A2000 w/68030
A500/A2000 w/68040
A500/A2000 w/68060
A3000/A3000T w/68030
A3000/A3000T w/68040
A3000/A3000T w/68060
A3000/A3000T w/68060 & PPC
A1200/CD32 w/68020
A1200/A4000/A4000T w/68030 or 68040
A1200/A4000/A4000T w/68060
A1200/A4000/A4000T w/68060 & PPC
You could also almost double the above selections by adding another variable of RTG graphics card, or no RTG.
It would be nice to have some kind of matrix, or database that would give the best suggestions of not only ROM modules, but would also provide suggestions for optimizing datatypes, libraries and other parts of the system to get the best results. I am sure that this is something like what the un-official BoingBag3 and BoingBag4 projects are doing, but don't know how complete they are, and I don't think they make any suggestions for creating the best custom Kickstart ROM files. There are so many choices to best optimize the Amiga now, that it is quite an art to get all the best options installed. Those that have spent long hours picking and choosing which ROM modules and other OS components to use to get the best results should have a place to share their notes and experiences and discuss what works and what does not.
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Doesn't Haiku have the same limitation that AROS has in regards to drivers? I assume you'd want to support a limited set of architecture first, but wouldn't the ideal be to ultimately support as broad a range of hardware as possible? Am I missing something here?
I have nothing against Haiku and I'm definitely not a Linux fan, but wouldn't you want to start with something that had a fairly broad foundation?
Just curious.
It's not exactly a logical project to work on as much as an emotional one to begin with, but Haiku has surprisingly good hardware support and I like the actual OS.
Haiku is just far more like what I want an updated AOS to be than Linux is. I'd spend all my time covering up Linux-isms instead of weaving the best of them together.
With Haiku, if it shows through the emulation it's still basically a feature. Plus I'd rather give my changes back to Haiku and AROS than Linux.
(BTW, I use Linux a lot, I just don't have an emotional attachment there)
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But that would not have the benefit of Amithlon's seamless 68k emulation.
Yeah forgot a step: integrate m68k emulator in i386be AROS,
Once you have i386be AROS that would not be a big step I think.
greets,
Staf.
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Yeah forgot a step: integrate m68k emulator in i386be AROS,
Once you have i386be AROS that would not be a big step I think.
greets,
Staf.
Has anyone attempted to produce i386be port of AROS before?
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As it turns out, there are plenty of Youtube videos showing off the greatness that was never mean to be. :(
http://youtu.be/EwTW2yqlpzc
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Has anyone attempted to produce i386be port of AROS before?
No, I did not say it was easy :D
Staf.
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Doesn't Haiku have the same limitation that AROS has in regards to drivers? I assume you'd want to support a limited set of architecture first, but wouldn't the ideal be to ultimately support as broad a range of hardware as possible? Am I missing something here?
Haiku can use all of BeOS's drivers, but also includes a source level BSD compatibility layer to allow for network drivers to be recompiled and dropped in.
However, as with AROS, some Haiku forks are looking to include gallium3d as a means to boost hardware compatibility whilst reducing developer overhead.
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Have you decided to do this?
Modern wise, would it use the latest drivers?
The performance looks good.
Would it be called a proper OS or maybe a hybrid?
I skipped over Amithons heyday and got into it later, but I'm very interested in it.
Would you still use something similar?
What would a modern version need to change?
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Technically, under the hood beos/haiku is very awesome, but the look and the gui is so but horrible and ugly. If they made it skinnable and allowed you to modify the interface alot, I think it would be alot more usable. Its so horrid ugly. If the gui looked like/worked like amiga os, I'd use it I think.
The multitasking/multi-threading is better than anything out there. Its smooth and fast and effecient...
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amithlon is quite a neat thing for certain users. the concept is excellent and still is in my opinion. the story is a sad one however and typically amiga cursed like so many others. for me I ran a RTG based A3000, so amithlon is a good thing for me and for what I do on an Amiga. I have new hardware that looks to be totally compatible with the latest kernel4. Should it work, it would be quite the animal. My former amithlon hardware long since dead and I haven't used the software. Time to get back at this though because of much improved hardware support.
In thinking of this further...let's say Amithlon or Umilthlon became the next standard back in the day. That would have been excellent. Obviously everything split into many pieces and remains this way to the day. I don't buy into the theoretical debates about x86 being bad, etc... All I know is that when Amithlon runs, you are running AmigaOS. I never gave a rats *ss about the hardware other than the fact it was very fast and cheap too.
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Technically, under the hood beos/haiku is very awesome, but the look and the gui is so but horrible and ugly. If they made it skinnable and allowed you to modify the interface alot, I think it would be alot more usable. Its so horrid ugly.
R5.1 allowed for skinning. Haiku's interface iirc should allow for the same. Personally I liked the skin that came with Zeta 1.1/1.2
If the gui looked like/worked like amiga os, I'd use it I think.
Without massive modifications, AOS's gui doesn't exactly win any style awards either.
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amithlon is quite a neat thing for certain users. the concept is excellent and still is in my opinion. the story is a sad one however and typically amiga cursed like so many others. for me I ran a RTG based A3000, so amithlon is a good thing for me and for what I do on an Amiga. I have new hardware that looks to be totally compatible with the latest kernel4. Should it work, it would be quite the animal. My former amithlon hardware long since dead and I haven't used the software. Time to get back at this though because of much improved hardware support.
In thinking of this further...let's say Amithlon or Umilthlon became the next standard back in the day. That would have been excellent. Obviously everything split into many pieces and remains this way to the day. I don't buy into the theoretical debates about x86 being bad, etc... All I know is that when Amithlon runs, you are running AmigaOS. I never gave a rats *ss about the hardware other than the fact it was very fast and cheap too.
+1
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R5.1 allowed for skinning. Haiku's interface iirc should allow for the same.
Even R5 came with multiple skins out of the box, Amiga, MacOS and Win98 iirc.
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Technically, under the hood beos/haiku is very awesome, but the look and the gui is so but horrible and ugly. If they made it skinnable and allowed you to modify the interface alot, I think it would be alot more usable. Its so horrid ugly. If the gui looked like/worked like amiga os, I'd use it I think.
The multitasking/multi-threading is better than anything out there. Its smooth and fast and effecient...
BeOS even came with an Amiga theme if you knew how to enable it. That's not in Haiku, but it could be easily recreated like the four it currently includes. (Windows, OSX, BeOS and the standard Haiku theme)
If this project happens I will tweak or replace a lot of things in the Haiku desktop (called Tracker) but not break compatibility with Haiku apps. No sense not taking advantage of existing BeOS/Haiku apps and development.
I'm doing a huge rework of UAE right now while continuing to look at the feasibility and how much I can get away with being native. Janus-UAE, although a very cool trick, isn't what I'm planning. This would be a lot more like Wine or maybe .Net since it needs a VM for the CPU.
Again, don't expect miracles, this will take a long time if it happens.
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Even R5 came with multiple skins out of the box, Amiga, MacOS and Win98 iirc.
Yeah but only as an easter egg. R5.1 was the first to offer them without having to perform the secret dance whilst an attractive woman of the female persuasion pressed their norks into the screen to activate the functionality ;)
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Outside of handcrafting an Amithlon system, I believe Xamiga was next best.
It did not need X but used FrameBuffer. It was said it could boot in about 15 seconds.
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Technically, under the hood beos/haiku is very awesome, but the look and the gui is so but horrible and ugly. If they made it skinnable and allowed you to modify the interface alot, I think it would be alot more usable. Its so horrid ugly. If the gui looked like/worked like amiga os, I'd use it I think.
The multitasking/multi-threading is better than anything out there. Its smooth and fast and effecient...
I remember with BeOS PE, and the official Retail copy of 5.x, one could hold down certain keys on the keyboard, then go into the Tracker and find a hidden set of Themes that had been previously hidden. One of them was Amiga, which coupled with an Amiga Icon Replacement Kit that was on BeBits, you would basically have an OS that ran as smooth or smoother than Amiga OS, looked a lot like Amiga OS, and operated basically like Amiga OS, but with a more Unix based file structure, and a heavily enhanced Lister Menu.
Though, one thing I did not know about until recently, was why did they create those stupid looking tabs in the first place?
Well as it turns out, BeOS has a feature that allows you to connect multiple windows together, not at all unlike how WinAmp works with it's EQ and Song Menu, except with BeOS/Haiku, you can interconnect just about anything!
Of course there was the Multi-Screen option, which again was very Amiga like, though it did not support screen dragging. :/
The Partition Manager reminded me of some partition software that came with an external A600 hard drive I once owned. So that was a very Amiga like experience for me.
The one thing I always wondered, was why in the hell did they choose to target AmigaXL for QNX instead of BeOS or both? I understand that both were being talked about as potential alternatives for Amiga OS and the future of Amiga, but seriously, why QNX? An integrated Amiga environment that would allows you to launch BeOS apps and games from within a wickedly fast virtual Amiga environment would have been bad ass!!!
Ohhhh, I think I can taste vomit in my mouth...
...the things that could have been.
On the topic of Amithlon, I got my system up, though now I can get the SB 128 to produce any sound.
I updated with Boing Bag 2, then installed the Amithlon Update package choosing to use the included NIC and AHI drivers, but this ended up removing Sb128 as an option.
I think I'll format my Amithlon partition, re-install, and have another go.
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Amithlon type systems are likely the fastest emulation based Amiga experience you'll ever get. It's been awhile since I had one, but the speed was simply staggering. Of course, for the purists like Franko that don't consider anything other than a wedge shaped system with "Amiga" on it, it's not desirable. Will run circles around UAE, but will choke on stuff that attempts to hit the native Amiga HW. I'll take fast, quiet and efficient/more modern solutions any day of the week over old native hardware myself, but I certainly understand the purist aspect.
What I would like to see is a more modern "how to" guide and package to run Amithlon type systems. The original Amithlon was sort of a picky little bugger as far as what it would work on. If I understand it correctly, the newer kernels support a wider range of hardware and I hope to try it on this old AMD 4200+ X2 dual core/7800 GTX machine I have here collecting dust soon.
A more modern and up to date guide on Amithlon type machines would be a big bonus to the community if anyone is willing to do one up. I haven't been able to locate a reasonably modern guide on what more modern HW the newer iterations of the software supports, but it did work well on an old 2.8ghz P4 Dell I had.
Last time I tried it I was blown away at how nice of an experience it was, ran absolutely circles around any C= Amiga I ever had and I had both '060 and PPC Miggy's with gfx cards in the "good old days".
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I skipped over much of this thread, but Im pretty well versed in Amithlon. It's quite possible to put together a semi modern system still. Im currently using a core2duo@3.86ghz as my dedicated amithlon machine and it absolutely flies. Unfortunately though a person is more or less restricted to pci for graphics unless they want to use vesa modes for modern machines. There simply isnt really any pci express cards that are fully supported. Quite a few will work, but only using Vesa. I personally opted for a g550 Matrox pci card, which is faster than the gf9600gt I also tried (albiet in Vesa).
Not exactly the point of the thread, but amithlon is for me is still my favorite Amiga based system for modern computing. It has the speed to compete (and often defeat) with any ppc AOS machines (including g4 macs), opening up a world of new capability to OS3.x. Now this isnt to start any sort of vs. type tangen, the "NG" options have thier own pros and cons, but for my tastes the almost d.i.y nature of OS3.x combined with the speed of amithlon makes it a very enjoyable system.
If I had to chose between my a1200+40mhz '040 + 32meg fast and my amithlon box it'd be a tough decision, but I suspect Id keep the amithlon box (being that it can do anything the a1200 can, but the reverse isnt true).
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Not exactly the point of the thread, but amithlon is for me is still my favorite Amiga based system for modern computing.
Ya, I feel the same, so I'm going to go ahead and heckle you for a port of PrBOOM-Plus for Amithlon. He he he. ;)
Seriously though, I can't wait to get the sound working on this, and to catch up to speed on all the updates, such as how to use Warp3D, USB, and so forth...
Tis a shame this never extended into PPC territory. It still saddens me that I can't get sound to work in Shogo under MorphOS. :/ Though, my current sound issues aside, Nemac IV absolutely FLIES!!!!
Oh, btw, has anyone tried the PAULA AHI Output Hack with Amithlon? I'd love to hear what that sounds like, and to see how well it works. Maybe this could be used with OctaMED and other such apps. On that note, is MIDI supported in Amithlon?
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@XDelusion
Im pretty disorganised at the moment (usually happens on days that end in 'y'), hence my quietness of late with ports. Im getting there though, and am looking forward to getting back to some developing. Dosbox and prboom are definately on the cards for 68k though soon(ish). Im also somewhat more confident with my coding than I was last I tried, so Im looking forward to trying some bex86 amithlon compiles too. I really should get in contact with blacky stardust though, he had an amithlon native version of Vice (c64/128/vic20/etc. emulators) for me to try out some time back, but my amithlon box was pulled apart at the time so I never got to try it.
This thread has inspired me, time to get off my but and fix my amithlon boxes dh0: (smegger invalidated on me,... sodding FFS (the filesystem, not the curse :)))
As for sound on amithlon,..... Midi, I think so, but only if using a dedicated amiga ahi driver that supports it (ie. not linux drivers (amithlon sound device in ahi)). In regards to Nuldeh Pal (or whatever its called), I have used it before, but not for many years. It seems to works fine though but you need to set sound back to rtg afterwards or software will continue to try to use paula from then on end. (it's kinda vague in my mind, but I dont recall having any real problems after I read docs.)
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Hmm. Your friend is a Saul Williams fan apparently. :)
What is bex86?
And I look forward to your work! And I'm glad to see you working on something outside of AROS too. Not that AROS is bad. It's just that I like to see all the Amiga alternatives supported. Now I wonder when P.OS (or what ever that alternate OS was called) is going to get revived? :)
I've been working on my Star Wars project for PrBOOM-Plus as of late, and have found a new trick with the MP3 support that will allow me to better tell the story. Well it's an idea I've had kicking around that I finally put to the test.
I've got an interesting level created which takes place inside a pyramid. The central part of the pyramid is open and casts down light upon a tomb in the center of the room. When you enter in, a translucent image of a Spirit manifests above the tomb, and in the background I have an MP3 playing which consists of some ambient effects along with the dialog for the the floating image of the ancient spirit.
Hidden underneath the tomb is a LONG shaft which contains an elevator which is slowly and silently carrying a Talisman up towards the top of the tomb.
The elevator will reach the top at the exact time the Mp3 reaches the point where the dialog finishes, and the spirit tells you to take the talisman for protection. This Talisman will also allow the character to cross the room and exit through a door that could not be opened before you grab the talisman.
I need to add at least 2 or 3 minutes of additional Ambiance to the end of the MP3 though. In this way, unless the player leaves the game running to make a cup of coffee or what ever, they will have exited the door by the time the MP3 loops and the dialog repeats.
I have recently wrote the author of PrBOOM-Plus and asked if he might be able to add in game support to Start, Stop, and Pause MP3's within game. Not something my project depends upon, but surely something that would come in very handy for story telling!!!
While I was at it, I requested Jump support since we now have freelook in Gl mode.
Anyhow it would be great to be able to run my project underneath Amithlon some day too! As a matter of fact I set up my system to allow me to boot into Amithlon, or to boot into MicroXP which I have dedicated to working on my Star Wars project which I keep on an 8Gb USB stick so I can also work on the run. :)
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bex86 = big endian x86. Amithlon native x86 basically. Being big endian makes it somewhat easier for x86 and 68k code to run concurrently.
Not something Id use for original projects, but for open source ones that are too demanding for real 68k hardware I may as well try to squeeze more speed from (or less overhead, either way its good) :)
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I know it`s been mentioned already but an Amithlon-like solution that ran OS4/MOS (a sort of Peg2 emulator) would be utterly killer. Killer. Just think how fast it could be, all ppc hardware would be obsoleted on the day of release and I bet MOS/OS4 sales would benefit too. Everyone wins.
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I know it`s been mentioned already but an Amithlon-like solution that ran OS4/MOS (a sort of Peg2 emulator) would be utterly killer. Killer. Just think how fast it could be, all ppc hardware would be obsoleted on the day of release and I bet MOS/OS4 sales would benefit too. Everyone wins.
If someone managed to merge the QEMU PPC JIT into UAE to provide a virtual PPC card then that would run OS4 at least.
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Amithlon type systems are likely the fastest emulation based Amiga experience you'll ever get. It's been awhile since I had one, but the speed was simply staggering. Of course, for the purists like Franko that don't consider anything other than a wedge shaped system with "Amiga" on it, it's not desirable. Will run circles around UAE, but will choke on stuff that attempts to hit the native Amiga HW. I'll take fast, quiet and efficient/more modern solutions any day of the week over old native hardware myself, but I certainly understand the purist aspect.
What I would like to see is a more modern "how to" guide and package to run Amithlon type systems. The original Amithlon was sort of a picky little bugger as far as what it would work on. If I understand it correctly, the newer kernels support a wider range of hardware and I hope to try it on this old AMD 4200+ X2 dual core/7800 GTX machine I have here collecting dust soon.
A more modern and up to date guide on Amithlon type machines would be a big bonus to the community if anyone is willing to do one up. I haven't been able to locate a reasonably modern guide on what more modern HW the newer iterations of the software supports, but it did work well on an old 2.8ghz P4 Dell I had.
Last time I tried it I was blown away at how nice of an experience it was, ran absolutely circles around any C= Amiga I ever had and I had both '060 and PPC Miggy's with gfx cards in the "good old days".
See my signature. :)
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How could one weigh the differences between Amithlon and Xamiga?
1. Software:Amithlon needs a special version of Amiga OS 3.9 and Xamiga does not. Roms?
2. Hard Drive: How much hard drive is need for both?
3. Installation: Difficulty Level.
4. Hardware Compatability:
5. Screen Modes:
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No need to worry about roms with amithlon. Its different to uae in that you dont need to configure it to your liking. The kickstart rom comes with the package and is dealt with automatically.
Harddrive space: Thats up to to you, but amithlon files total about 3meg. Anything using UAE needs considerably more (although still a negligable amount). OS3.9 I believe is only about 25meg.
Hardware compatibilty: The one area that uae has an advantage. Amithlon is more or less restricted to p2/p3/p4/athlon/athlon xp/athlon64/core/core2duo/core2quad/phenom/phenom2/athlon2 type machines with tnt/tnt2/gf/gf2/gf3/gf4/gf5/matrox g100/g200/g400/g450/g550 for gfx and ac97/sb128/sblive/audigy/audigy2 (plus any hardware that a real 68k machine has drivers for). Other graphics cards are supported, but with limited support. There's also other sound support via linux drivers, but you then lose DMA for that device.
Installation: actually pretty easy to set up amithlon. The entire process, including updating kernel and installing OS3.9 takes about 10 minutes when you know what youre doing (although to be honest it can be a little confusing at 1st).
Compatibility: Amithlon has no custom chipset emulation, so relies on 68k uae for old games, etc.
Speed: No contest. Amithlon is, and probably always will be faster than any other amiga emulation. Not just because of lack of custom chips to emulate, but amithlon gives you direct hardware access, something no version of UAE does. Write to ram in amithlon and ram gets written to directly, no need to emulate memory busses, chipset timing, etc. Same is true with gfx, sound, nic, etc.
Screenomdes: Using Amithlon you can create your own using p96mode. With UAE youre restricted to the modes that come with the p96 driver.
As for amithlon's "special version" of os3.9, its actually pretty similar, just with a few extra files for amithlon devices and so on, not to mention it also comes with BB1.
In a nutsehll if you want a "serious" dedicated amiga os system amithlon is a better option. If youre more interested in old custom chipset games then some form of uae might be a better bet (although 68k uae works nicely using amithlon/os3.9).
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@ fishy_
Great. Have you tried Nicholas' links above?
I have down loaded them but do not have a machine to test them on but this one.
I do not have any discs to burn the images.
Edit:
I guess that leaves Emumiga.
From what I hear it does not emulate the chip set either.
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Is there a dedicated place for me to check up on Amithlon?
I may have some used hardware to build a system.
Has anyone tried any Aros 68K files or roms?
Thanks.