Pros and Cons of Amithlon type systems

[nicholas]

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!

[nicholas]

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.

[nicholas]

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/

[nicholas]

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.

[nicholas]

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.

[nicholas]

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?

[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.

[nicholas]

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.

[nicholas]

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.