Pros and Cons of Amithlon type systems

[Fats]

Has anyone attempted to produce i386be port of AROS before?

No, I did not say it was easy
Staf.

[the_leander]

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.

[trekiej]

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?

[haywirepc]

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...

[Rodomoc]

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.

[the_leander]

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.

[nicholas]

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

[nicholas]

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.

[Heiroglyph]

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.

[the_leander]

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

[trekiej]

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.

[XDelusion]

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.

[Duce]

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".

[fishy_fiz]

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).

[XDelusion]

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?

[fishy_fiz]

@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.)