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Author Topic: Why no AmigaOne/Pegasos emulators?  (Read 4024 times)

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Offline _stet_Topic starter

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Why no AmigaOne/Pegasos emulators?
« on: February 04, 2009, 07:00:37 PM »
Perhaps this is a stupid question, but it's bugging me so I'll just ask:

Why isn't there a full-speed AmigaOne or Pegasos emulator (or virtual machine, whatever) that can be run on fast PowerPC-based computers (i.e. PPC Macs)?

It seems (to a novice like myself) that a fast PPC system with plenty of RAM should be capable of emulating a slower PPC system pretty effectively.

I've read there are issues with drivers, etc. that make it unlikely OS 4 will ever run natively on Apple hardware, but wouldn't a virtual-machine type solution get around that problem?

Is there some technical barrier? Legal barrier? Lack of interest? Or what?
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Offline cv643d

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Re: Why no AmigaOne/Pegasos emulators?
« Reply #1 on: February 04, 2009, 07:08:25 PM »
Great idea!

Someone should inform Hyperion about this idea!
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Offline A1260

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Re: Why no AmigaOne/Pegasos emulators?
« Reply #2 on: February 04, 2009, 07:22:23 PM »
the same reason why there is no window xp/vista emulator....  :roll:
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Offline mongo

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Re: Why no AmigaOne/Pegasos emulators?
« Reply #3 on: February 04, 2009, 07:59:24 PM »
Quote

A1260 wrote:
the same reason why there is no window xp/vista emulator....  :roll:


AmigaOne and Pegasos are hardware, Windows XP and Vista are software.
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Offline brianb

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Re: Why no AmigaOne/Pegasos emulators?
« Reply #4 on: February 04, 2009, 08:10:18 PM »
I think you need a law degree to understand the rift between Hyperion and Amiga...  But here's my uneducated $0.02...

I think legal is the barrier, as there isn't anything too terribly technical that would prevent it.  

Hyperion is on record that they don't want to compete with windows, and they see locking OS 4 to hardware (specifically proprietary and not x86) their only option.  

Hyperion has also stated they believe Aros, and other Amiga "clone" OS's to be illegal.  (at least as far as they are concerned)

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Offline Methuselas

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Re: Why no AmigaOne/Pegasos emulators?
« Reply #5 on: February 04, 2009, 08:10:49 PM »
Open Firmware is the biggest problem. There was a G4 emulator that was being used to run MacOS on X86, under emulation, but last I heard, it wasn't robust enough to even attempt to run OS4. Same problem with the RISC emu.

My thoughts were you would need at least a core duo at 3.0ghz to make it even bearable to run at a decent speed. I'm not sure if that's entirely accurate, however.

Someone out there, with more technical experience could elaborate more (waiting patiently for Piru or Bloodline). Me, I'd much rather go back to my reading on Quantum Mechanics.  ;-)
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Offline _stet_Topic starter

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Re: Why no AmigaOne/Pegasos emulators?
« Reply #6 on: February 04, 2009, 08:43:19 PM »
Remember, I'm asking about emulation on PowerPC hardware not x86 hardware... I'd think emulating a PPC system on a PPC system would be drastically faster than emulating a PPC system on an x86 system.
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Offline Piru

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Re: Why no AmigaOne/Pegasos emulators?
« Reply #7 on: February 04, 2009, 08:50:18 PM »
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Offline Tempest

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Re: Why no AmigaOne/Pegasos emulators?
« Reply #8 on: February 04, 2009, 09:20:38 PM »
Quote

Piru wrote:
http://bigfoot.morphos-team.net/test/qemu.png


[ot]

Very cool, WindowMaker! I've used that for years, nowadays it's Awesome and Fluxbox.

[/ot]
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Offline bloodline

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Re: Why no AmigaOne/Pegasos emulators?
« Reply #9 on: February 05, 2009, 12:45:08 PM »
@ _stet_

I would say lack of interest is the biggest hurdle. In terms of emulating the PPC it makes little difference if the host is an x86 or a PPC... I used MacOS 10.3 in PearPC (an x86 PPC emulator, google it) for a good few months before buying a Mac... OSX was slugish, but usable on my old Athlon64 @2Ghz... The slowest part of PPC emulation is the MMU... Apparently...

Of course, much faster would be a PPC VM on a real PPC chip... But I've not seen or used one...

If someone wrote a suitable BIOS for PearPC, it should boot OS4.1... The same applies to MOS... Driver issues aside.  

The question remains, where does the motivation come from... If you are so desparate to run these systems, just buy the hardware for them, it will be faster, better supported and money will flow back to the devs and help keep the project alive :-)


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Offline spirantho

Re: Why no AmigaOne/Pegasos emulators?
« Reply #10 on: February 05, 2009, 01:57:22 PM »
There is only one reason why there is no A1/Peg emulator:

Nobody's written one.

It's a lot of work, and 99.9999% of the people who have the capability don't need to.
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Offline mongo

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Re: Why no AmigaOne/Pegasos emulators?
« Reply #11 on: February 05, 2009, 02:05:22 PM »
Quote

bloodline wrote:
If someone wrote a suitable BIOS for PearPC, it should boot OS4.1...


No need to write a BIOS, U-Boot is open source. Porting it for use with QEMU would be far better than with PearPC though.

Still have driver issues to deal with though.
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Offline persia

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Re: Why no AmigaOne/Pegasos emulators?
« Reply #12 on: February 05, 2009, 02:17:33 PM »
PearPC is basically abandonware, the principle programmer died and Apple abandoned IBM PowerPC chips.  The project hasn't had an update in 3 years.  The big issue wold be replacing the pseudo OpenFirmware with uBoot and dealing with the video driver issues.  The OpenFirmware code that is in place is ugly but the video poses a bit of programming issues.

All this could be overcome of course, but the only people interested in an Amiga OS4 emulator are Amiga folks, probably numbered in the hundreds, most of whom are not programmers.  We don't have the resources.  The people capable of doing it are not interested, at least not for free...
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Offline bloodline

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Re: Why no AmigaOne/Pegasos emulators?
« Reply #13 on: February 05, 2009, 02:18:40 PM »
Quote

mongo wrote:
Quote

bloodline wrote:
If someone wrote a suitable BIOS for PearPC, it should boot OS4.1...


No need to write a BIOS, U-Boot is open source. Porting it for use with QEMU would be far better than with PearPC though.

Still have driver issues to deal with though.


PearPC provides an emulation of a basic PPC Mac... So any OS than can boot a PPC Mac (i.e. MorphOS) can boot it... Then you are half way there :-)
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Offline Piru

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Re: Why no AmigaOne/Pegasos emulators?
« Reply #14 on: February 05, 2009, 03:57:13 PM »
@spirantho
Quote
Nobody's written one.

Lets try again:

http://bigfoot.morphos-team.net/test/qemu.png
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