Finally tried AROS

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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.

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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 :-)

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itix wrote:

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.

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) :-)

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Piru wrote:
@uncharted

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.

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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.

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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...