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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Gaming => Topic started by: Caldrin on June 02, 2003, 06:20:29 PM
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Does anyone know if... Older Amiga Games will be able to be played on the Amiga One/Amiga OS4? It may be a stupid question, but I am an amiga newbie, and I saw a lot of cool games for the older Amigas that I would like to purchase, but I want to make sure they'll work on the Amiga One/OS4. Ofcourse I don't even have an Amiga One or OS4 yet, but I plan to get'em.
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The orginal plan was so.... The AmigaONE motherboard was supposed to have a socket to hook up a a1200/4000 motherboard so the AmigaONE would get access to all its chipset and such, so it would be fully compitable..
But sadly it didnt end up this way... Now eyetech are supposed to make a 1200/4000 addon card for the a.one, but i honestly believe it will never see the light.... :-(
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@Caldrin
You'll probably be able to play them via a UAE port :-)
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OS4 will have built-in emulation for running code for the old 68k line of CPUs on the PPC based A1 and accelerator cards. The problem is that many older games relied on specialised parts of the Amiga's hardware, such as the Copper, and the built-in emulation won't handle this (it's designed for speed, not features). Of course, there's nothing to stop someone porting UAE to OS4; it might seem crazy at first, but UAE has full chipset emulation. Untill then, a lot of games won't work (probably the vast majority of the famous "classic" games).
---edit---
Of course, UAE runs on Linux and that runs on the A1.
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lol, sorry, that really was a bit of a one line answer I gave! :lol:
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You'll probably find that the port of UAE that OS4 gets is too slow to be usable. If it gets one at all, that is.
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You'll probably find that the port of UAE that OS4 gets is too slow to be usable. If it gets one at all, that is.
What makes you think that??
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At first it probably won't have JIT, and will probably be very unoptimised. But surely it'd be usable - UAE without JIT worked fine for "classic" games on a PII 333. It might be unusable on the Cyberstorm cards (but they'll be on a machine with AGA anyway) but I'd imagine it'd be fine on an A1 - you simply don't need Amithlon type speeds for playing all the old stuff.
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The current WarpOS version runs some games fine on my setup (603e@160Mhz), and some slow. With an A1 I´ll suppose that it will run most games designed for an a500, like on the a500.
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At first it probably won't have JIT, and will probably be very unoptimised
Or it could use the JIT in OS4 ? That way, the UAE would "only" need to emulate the OCS/AGA chipset and memory system of the "classic" hardware..
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seer wrote:
At first it probably won't have JIT, and will probably be very unoptimised
Or it could use the JIT in OS4 ? That way, the UAE would "only" need to emulate the OCS/AGA chipset and memory system of the "classic" hardware..
That would be an excellent technical achievement if it is possible.
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Or it could use the JIT in OS4 ? That way, the UAE would "only" need to emulate the OCS/AGA chipset and memory system of the "classic" hardware..
I've said that a few times now, but many people said that either:
a) It couldn't be done
b) It'd somehow make OS4 bloatware
c) There isn't a point
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That would be an excellent technical achievement if it is possible.
Isn't that something Amiga programmers excell (sp?) at ? :-)
I've said that a few times now, but everyone thought either:
Ah, we agree :-D
a) It couldn't be done
IIRC the author of Petunia did say it was difficult/imposible to do, but if history is anything to go by, somehow somebody will make it possible ? A few years back it was said it was impossible to emulate an Amiga on a PC, 12 bit or better sound was impossible on the Amiga..
b) It'd somehow make OS4 bloatware
Hmm.. Wasn't there some feature in OS4 that could make AGA emulation a possibilty ?
c) There isn't a point
Yeah right... The why so many people use WinUAE for the chipset emulation ? If people think it is because we have OS4/MOS native progs by then, lots of people would still love to play the old nostalgia games... Why else would there be MAME and such ;-)
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one word: UAE
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Wain wrote:
You'll probably find that the port of UAE that OS4 gets is too slow to be usable. If it gets one at all, that is.
What makes you think that??
Because the JIT for UAE is only available in x86, therefore UAE will be even slower than AmigaOS's native emulator. On top of that, you'd need to use the PPC UAE or else face "emulator on top of emulator" bottlenecks.
UAE on a $80 AthlonXP 2500/333 would run magnitudes better than UAE on AmigaOS. It can be done, but it'll be no speed demon.
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What about running OS4 on a PPC A1200/4000? Even though the option to add an A1200 motherboard to the AmigaOne may be gone, I presumed it would still be possible for OS4 for access the chipset if running on an AGA machine - or has OS4 for these machines been dropped?
I don't know if the original poster was asking only about OS4 on AmigaOne, or meant "AmigaOne or OS4".. I just thought I'd ask anyway.
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Lol, doesn't matter. You guys are confusing me with all these terms/numbers that I really wish I knew what they meant...
Remember, I'm a newbie, and I wouldn't mind taking the time to learn. Just forgive the stupid questions.
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What is...
JIT
x86
UAE
OCS/AGA
chipset
Fortunately I knew what PPC A1200/4000, those are older Amigas, right?
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In my opinion older Amiga games can be played on AmigaOne. I hope to be that compatibility. Or else, to afford an Amiga 1200 with Fast Ram and an accelerator to play the old games, will not cost that much these days... :-D
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x86
The family of CPU that is found in PeeCees. You probably remember the 286/386/486 CPUs - it's the same architecture. Examples include any Pentium or Athlon. Other chip families include 68k (classic Amiga) and PPC (AmigaONE, accelerated Amiga, Mac, Pegasos).
UAE
The Universal Amiga Emulator. Or the Unix Amiga Emulator. Or, originally, the Useless Amiga Emulator (it couldn't boot). It's the most popular emulator around, with support for tons of stuff and it can run faster than the fastest "classic" Amiga, due to JIT, which brings us to...
JIT
Stands for Just In Time. It's a fancy way of emulation, where instructions are cached, and this speeds it up no end. Newer versions of UAE have JIT, as does ^mithlon. OS4 will have a built in JIT emulator, for running older applications. Note that this emulator will only emulate the CPU, not the...
Chipset
When the Amiga was first made, processors weren't exactly fast. To make a truly multimedia computer, co-processors were used - several different processors for sound, graphics, IO etc. Together these are called the Custom Chipset, and are what made the Classic Amiga so amazing, by taking load off the main CPU.
OCS
Original Chip Set - the first Amiga chipset, used in the A1000, A500 and A2000. Very nice for it's time - could display 32 colours at once in "normal" modes, up to 4096 in Hold And Modify (HAM) mode. OCS was slightly upgraded to the ECS chipset for the A3000/600 and perhaps a few others.
AGA
The last chipset ever produced, used in the A1200 and A4000. Could display 256 colours at once in "normal" modes, and about 260,000 in HAM.
Fortunately I knew what PPC A1200/4000, those are older Amigas, right?
The A1200 and A4000 were made in the early 90's. The CPUs the used topped out at about 70Mhz, so in the late 90's PPC accelerators appeared, adding a secondary CPU, at around 200Mhz or so. AmigaOS4 should run on these.
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@alx
What a comprehensive and well explained answer!
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@alx What a comprehensive and well explained answer!
my thought exactly.
Sincerely,
-Kenneth Straarup.
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Stil noone commenting my statement about the current version of UAE for WarpOS.
Since OS4 should be able WarpOS to run WarpOS programs, then there allready is a PPC version ready for OS4. And - comparing the current speed of the WarpOS version, then I have no doubt, that the A1, should be able to run ALL OCS games...
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Thank you very much.
*sees* The gods bestow you with +1 Wisdom.
Yay, stat-up! ^_^