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Operating System Specific Discussions => AROS Research Operating System => Topic started by: cv643d on March 30, 2006, 02:25:23 PM

Title: Finally tried AROS
Post by: cv643d on March 30, 2006, 02:25:23 PM
Hi all,

After years of hearing about AROS I finally tried it today.

I downloaded an iso from http://www.aros-max.co.uk/

Burned it and booted my PC. Worked fine but the mouse did not work so I replaced my USB mouse to a regular PS2 mouse and then it worked fine.

Some comments:

It feels like a real Amiga. If I could unLHA packages from Aminet and run Hippoplayer and other 68mk programs I would set up a computer for AROS right away.

It feels very lightweight and small just like 3.1 felt with a graphics board.
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: _ThEcRoW on March 30, 2006, 02:33:43 PM
You can run 68k programs using e-uae at the moment.
In the future is planned an integration of uae, so 68k programs like games could be loaded directly from the os.
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: motorollin on March 30, 2006, 02:36:12 PM
Quote
_ThEcRoW wrote:
You can run 68k programs using e-uae at the moment.
In the future is planned an integration of uae, so 68k programs like games could be loaded directly from the os.

I hope they implement this soon. I would love to build an AROS machine with a Mini-ITX board and build it all inside an A1200 case, and be able to run 68k games and software on it :-)

--
moto
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: tomekm on March 30, 2006, 03:08:23 PM
the AROS is great! But it lacks binary compatibility with the AmigaOS, hope this`ll be fixed soon - with use of UAE m68k emulator integration, it should behave better than MorphOS - the best idea for graphic screens would ie. be a window on desktop, displaying an AGA screen from the game you just run :)

I recently eMuled the Amithlon - and for now it seems to be the best solution for having an Amiga running on x86, and, until AROS reaches binary compatibility to AmigaOS, it will remain the best x86-Amiga-solution for me, even with it`s no-paula-sound 'feature'
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: motorollin on March 30, 2006, 03:16:14 PM
Is Amithlon binary compatible with 68k software?

--
moto
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: swift240 on March 30, 2006, 04:00:07 PM
Not having so far used AROS but AmiKit with some pretty good results, what would the better be between AROS and AmiKit?

I sitll use a real Amiga towered but all the same as for as my Athlon is concerned I like ot try other systems for an emulated Amiga.

Has any one yet tried the both AROS and AmiKit to see what is what between the two?

Mike.
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: amipal on March 30, 2006, 04:32:19 PM
@motorollin
Quote
Is Amithlon binary compatible with 68k software?

Amithlon is a Linux-hosted emulation, so in a way, yes.
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: vpamicue on March 30, 2006, 05:51:01 PM
Yes it is 100% 68040 compatible. It will run without much problem most software (games that hit the hardware are out as the hardware is non existant). I have Amithlon running on AMD Athilon 1400 clocked at about 1.1 gighz 040. I use Pagestream Imagine ImageFX TVPaint. It uses AHI for sound and Picasso for Graphics. It has limited compatability with new hardware but older hardware it should have no problem. A good Idea would be to have a Creative SoundBlaster live 128 and maybe a cheap NVidia TNT graphics card. You will have to have a linux partition or drive but it will boot directly into Amiga. The CD comes with a normal version of OS3.9 (It will install and run on real Amiga). :-D  :-D
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: Piru on March 30, 2006, 06:01:54 PM
Quote
I have Amithlon running on AMD Athilon 1400 clocked at about 1.1 gighz 040

According to what? If it's some benchmark, the code is JITted and you get way too optimistic result. Several hundred MHz is closer to truth in real life application performance.

Example: I get 9200.93 MIPS from SysSpeed for my MorphOS JIT emulated 68060 (on 7447@1GHz). The actual application performance is far from this.
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: itix on March 30, 2006, 06:09:15 PM
AROS and Amithlon are two different things. Amithlon is 'WinUAE in steroids' i.e. it runs 68k AmigaOS and is designed to run original 68k programs at maximum speed. AROS is meant to run native (i.e. native x86 programs on x86 machine) programs at maximum speed and programs are compiled natively for your CPU.

AROS/68k runs only 68k programs, AROS/PPC only PPC programs, AROS/x86 only x86 programs etc.

And I think 'integrated UAE' to run 68k programs on x86 AROS is bollocks: the concept is not proven to work.

Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: wonea on March 30, 2006, 06:32:44 PM
Emulating old stuff maybe all well and good.  But I think building and supporting native applications is far more worthwhile.  The cross-development tools are now in place, so things are going to get better.
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: cv643d on March 30, 2006, 10:10:48 PM
Yes that is what is missing from AROS right now I think, the ability to start 68k programs. If it is possible to run system friendly apps in the future I think AROS will become much more popular than today and there wont be as much preasure for AROS to have a broad range of software available (although native ported AROS apps are important to!).

It was a bit disturbing that the menu was not fixed at the top of the screen, I would have prefered the meny at the top like on classic Amigas. But all in all it was a fantastic experience...  I look forward to installing AROS on my Mini-ITX computer in the future.
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: DonnyEMU on March 30, 2006, 10:32:02 PM
I find running UAE under AROS just as nice as if apps were running in some integrated emulator. I like AROS for what it is now and UAE for it is just fine as it is.


Okay Big Question: What is so great about Amithlon and Where can I buy it.. That's a loaded question because I already know the answer. People keep mentioning Amithlon which here in the USA I have never had the opportunity to "BUY" anywhere so why keep bringing something up that isn't available to the general populous?? If it's not available why compare it.. Aros is easily downloaded and used by everyone everywhere.  


Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: Piru on March 30, 2006, 10:47:07 PM
FAQ about what went wrong with Amithlon: http://www.umilator.net/faq.shtml

(Yes, this is for the ones who don't know)
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: dammy on March 31, 2006, 01:02:31 AM
Quote
And I think 'integrated UAE' to run 68k programs on x86 AROS is bollocks: the concept is not proven to work.


From the feedback of different AROS developers, it should be doable.  It won't be perfect, but it should satify those who want it intergration.

Donations for this bounty (http://www.thenostromo.com/teamaros/bounty_details_7.html) are cheerful accepted.

Dammy
TeamAROS
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: bloodline on March 31, 2006, 08:03:27 AM
Quote

itix wrote:

And I think 'integrated UAE' to run 68k programs on x86 AROS is bollocks: the concept is not proven to work.



Well, when we discussed the idea, the concept of integration was basically to run a 68k compile of AROS in UAE. The 68k version would be patched so that intuition/graphics/dos library calls would be passed through to the x86 AROS... this would make System friendly apps appear to be running with native apps (though obviously they would really be in a separate environment, not ideal but would not really be a problem). Hardware hitting apps would just run in a window on the AROS desktop. Part of the integration would be to be able to launch 68k apps from the AROS environment. All seems reasonable to me.
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: bloodline on March 31, 2006, 08:05:18 AM
Quote

cv643d wrote:

It was a bit disturbing that the menu was not fixed at the top of the screen, I would have prefered the meny at the top like on classic Amigas. But all in all it was a fantastic experience...  I look forward to installing AROS on my Mini-ITX computer in the future.


Go to the "prefs drawer", and open the "input" prefs control program, you can adjust how the menus function there... I prefer the orginal functionality too :-)
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: itix on March 31, 2006, 09:52:48 AM
Quote

The 68k version would be patched so that intuition/graphics/dos library calls would be passed through to the x86 AROS...


This involves endianess problems in a way it is not possible map functions like OpenWindow() to the x86 AROS... making rendering calls to gfx lib is impossible because struct RastPort is not blackboxed and could have bigebdian pointers like the font, bitmap, layers, tmpras...

It is (of course) possible replace kickstart rom code in UAE by native x86 code but possibilities to co-operate with the host OS are very limited... share filesystem, share settings, maybe even let 68k programs have appicons on Wanderer but I think that is it.
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: bloodline on March 31, 2006, 09:58:12 AM
Quote

itix wrote:
Quote

The 68k version would be patched so that intuition/graphics/dos library calls would be passed through to the x86 AROS...


This involves endianess problems in a way it is not possible map functions like OpenWindow() to the x86 AROS... making rendering calls to gfx lib is impossible because struct RastPort is not blackboxed and could have bigebdian pointers like the font, bitmap, layers, tmpras...


The 68k functions would not pass directly to the the corresponding x86 fucntions, but rather UAE would call the x86 function to perform the function on the x86 side. Taking care of any translation and differences.

Quote

It is (of course) possible replace kickstart rom code in UAE by native x86 code but possibilities to co-operate with the host OS are very limited... share filesystem, share settings, maybe even let 68k programs have appicons on Wanderer but I think that is it.


We wouldn't use a kickstart ROM, but rather a 68k compile of AROS :-) The idea is not to integrate 68k programs into to the x86 environment, but to allow 68k and x86 programs to run in the same GUI space (There would still be two separate installs of AROS) :-)
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: falemagn on March 31, 2006, 12:17:32 PM
Quote

This involves endianess problems in a way it is not possible map functions like OpenWindow() to the x86 AROS... making rendering calls to gfx lib is impossible because struct RastPort is not blackboxed and could have bigebdian pointers like the font, bitmap, layers, tmpras...


There'd be no endianess problem of any sort, as 68k programs would only be able to see the memory allocated for the emulator. It would work by mirroring any visual or otherwise state-changing operation on the native AROS, but still providing the 68k version of all structures to the emulated environment.
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: tomekm on March 31, 2006, 03:19:00 PM
Amithlon runs actually everything written for 68k in a system-conform way. It`s an emulator, like WinUAE, but it is much faster, and allows direct PCI bus handling through it`s powerpci.library and openpci.library.

This means you can use video gards, sound cards, LAN contrlrs, and USB devies as if you had an PCI-expanded amiga and those cards fitted inside it.

And the whole emulation is MUCH MUCH faster than WinUAE because the emulator is actually the only task that is ran in such a PC - it behaves close to a stand-alone OS.
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: uncharted on March 31, 2006, 09:53:35 PM
Just thought I'd weigh in with an opinion. ;-)

This would suit me:-

Being able to launch an application in the emulation by double-clicking an icon (even if it's just an alias rather than the app itself)  Emulated programs could all be run on the emulated screen, they don't have to be in the same screen.

Being able to share the clipboard, could be done through UAE. Pass the emulated clipboard contents to the AROS clipboard and vice versa.

Being able to communicate via ARexx (if UAE could present dummy ports) - Does AROS have ARexx?

Being able to double-click to run games.  That is have a file (either a configuration file or perhaps a package of diskimages+configuration ala OSX bundles) that can be launceh from Wanderer.  This would be so cool, it would have an appeal to the Retro crowd.

More of an enhanced UAE than a change in AROS.
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: Piru on March 31, 2006, 10:18:34 PM
@uncharted
Quote
Being able to communicate via ARREX (if UAE could present dummy ports) - Does AROS have ARREX?

AROS has no ARREX. AROS has no ARexx, either. I think AROS does have Regina though, but it's not really ARexx compatible.
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: bloodline on April 01, 2006, 10:33:19 AM
Quote

Piru wrote:
@uncharted
Quote
Being able to communicate via ARREX (if UAE could present dummy ports) - Does AROS have ARREX?

AROS has no ARREX. AROS has no ARexx, either. I think AROS does have Regina though, but it's not really ARexx compatible.


IIRC, Staf worked on making the AROS Regina implementation AREX compatible.
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: Fats on April 01, 2006, 01:13:07 PM
Quote

bloodline wrote:
[IIRC, Staf worked on making the AROS Regina implementation AREX compatible.


The work is not finished though. Although almost all ARexx specific commands have been implemented and integrated in the regina source some of them are still missing. Also there is no rx executable yet either.

Staf.
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: uncharted on April 01, 2006, 01:16:15 PM
Quote

Piru wrote:
@uncharted
Quote
Does AROS have ARREX?

AROS has no ARREX.


It had been a very long week!  :crazy:
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: uncharted on April 01, 2006, 01:19:39 PM
So aside from crappy spelling, any other thoughts about going for an enhanced UAE rather than full-blown integration?
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: bloodline on April 01, 2006, 01:21:35 PM
Quote

uncharted wrote:
So aside from crappy spelling, any other thoughts about going for an enhanced UAE rather than full-blown integration?


Well, your earlier "wish list" post for UAE in AROS, is basicly what we want to have.
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: uncharted on April 01, 2006, 02:07:46 PM
I meant the idea of putting all the funtionality within UAE rather than making changes to AROS itself.
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: bloodline on April 01, 2006, 02:23:30 PM
Quote

uncharted wrote:
I meant the idea of putting all the funtionality within UAE rather than making changes to AROS itself.


Well, the AROS approach would mean no sharing of 68k and native libraries... message passing between tasks wouldn't really make any sense either as the 68k would be in it's own address space... and it wouldn't really be easy to get exec on the native and 68k to be aware of each other... um... lowlevel things like that really... it would be pretty much like running UAE, except the OS friendly 68k apps would run in such a way as to make it impossible for the user to know UAE was there...
Title: Re: Finally tried AROS
Post by: falemagn on April 01, 2006, 03:35:09 PM
Quote
it would be pretty much like running UAE, except the OS friendly 68k apps would run in such a way as to make it impossible for the user to know UAE was there...


It should be noted that this would be doable with any other host OS other than AROS itself. That is, you could start up 68k AmigaOS application, seamlessy, on any operating system where UAE runs, provided that the part which interfaces UAE with the host OS were adapted to each one of those OS's.