Amiga.org

The "Not Quite Amiga but still computer related category" => Amiga Emulation => Topic started by: Ken86Stang on February 24, 2008, 11:08:01 PM

Title: What if??
Post by: Ken86Stang on February 24, 2008, 11:08:01 PM

What do you think the Amiga world would be like today if Amithlon had never run in to legal problems and was still under development?

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: bloodline on February 24, 2008, 11:18:40 PM

Quote

Ken86Stang wrote:
What do you think the Amiga world would be like today if Amithlon had never run in to legal problems and was still under development?

We would probably have a new Amiga platform by now

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: Ancalimon on February 24, 2008, 11:28:41 PM

with some kind of pci card with AGA or better as well.

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: Tension on February 25, 2008, 12:02:28 AM

Sorry if im a bit slow... but what is Amithlon, and what problems did it run into?   Could it have been Bill McCock??

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: bloodline on February 25, 2008, 12:09:52 AM

Quote

Tension wrote:
Sorry if im a bit slow... but what is Amithlon, and what problems did it run into?   Could it have been Bill McCock??

Amithlon, was a 68K CPU emulator that ran on a cut down Linux kernel. This could be booted on an ordinary x86 machine and then boot into AmigaOS... It gave AmigaOS full access to the hardware an also allowed specially written native x86 programs run as well... It ran into all sorts of problems, which I'm sure Bernie doesn't really want dragged up again... I suggest you google it... :-D

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: Tension on February 26, 2008, 02:21:11 AM

Can you still get Amithlon, then?

Was it ever even released?

Quote

bloodline wrote:

Quote

Tension wrote:
Sorry if im a bit slow... but what is Amithlon, and what problems did it run into?   Could it have been Bill McCock??

Amithlon, was a 68K CPU emulator that ran on a cut down Linux kernel. This could be booted on an ordinary x86 machine and then boot into AmigaOS... It gave AmigaOS full access to the hardware an also allowed specially written native x86 programs run as well... It ran into all sorts of problems, which I'm sure Bernie doesn't really want dragged up again... I suggest you google it... :-D

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: rkauer on February 26, 2008, 05:49:44 AM

Quote

Tension wrote:
Can you still get Amithlon, then?

Was it ever even released?

 Yes, Amithlon was released. Circa 2001. It runs on any AMD or p3/p4 machine, with follow requirements:

 - PS/2 mouse

 - at least 128Mb RAM

 - at least 400MHz clock.

 - a video card capable of 800x600 true-colour.

 It still have third-part development, but not a way to buy it (maybe if you buy a second-hand CD and the rights to use it).

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: Tension on February 26, 2008, 04:24:17 PM

Would this work if I did a fresh install of Fedora (got all 5 bloody cds of it, but never could get it to work) and then installed Amithlon over the top?  Or could I install straight from an Amithlon cd?

I also read somewhere that it only supported certain types of gfx cards.  Is that still the case?

Thanks.  :pancake:

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: swift240 on February 26, 2008, 05:37:53 PM

    Amithlon, was a 68K CPU emulator that ran on a cut down Linux kernel. This could be booted on an ordinary x86 machine and then boot into AmigaOS... It gave AmigaOS full access to the hardware an also allowed specially written native x86 programs run as well... It ran into all sorts of problems, which I'm sure Bernie doesn't really want dragged up again... I suggest you google it...


I was thinking that if that is all it does, then why not use AmiKit?
AmiKit does the same, it literely piggy backs of a 86x system.
Utilising the graphics and sound and HD and any CD/DVD ZIP, USB stuff.

Mike.

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: bloodline on February 26, 2008, 05:49:23 PM

Quote

swift240 wrote:


    Amithlon, was a 68K CPU emulator that ran on a cut down Linux kernel. This could be booted on an ordinary x86 machine and then boot into AmigaOS... It gave AmigaOS full access to the hardware an also allowed specially written native x86 programs run as well... It ran into all sorts of problems, which I'm sure Bernie doesn't really want dragged up again... I suggest you google it...


I was thinking that if that is all it does, then why not use AmiKit?
AmiKit does the same, it literely piggy backs of a 86x system.
Utilising the graphics and sound and HD and any CD/DVD ZIP, USB stuff.

Mike.

I quite agree, in fact winuae would probably offer you much more now. But Amithlon was rather low level, offering little more than 68k emulation in theory offering a speed advantage over UAE with it's full chipset emultion. When it was released it offered a real computing platfrom for future Aos development... Not too dissimilar to Apple's hardware archicture migration... Now UAE is probably better choice for all users

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: Trev on February 26, 2008, 07:01:51 PM

Amithlon would have been quite useful as a device driver development platform, as it was considerably faster than a real 680x0 and supported OpenPCI, among other things. Oh well....

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: bloodline on February 26, 2008, 07:15:59 PM

Quote

Trev wrote:
Amithlon would have been quite useful as a device driver development platform, as it was considerably faster than a real 680x0 and supported OpenPCI, among other things. Oh well....

It would have allowed a steady migration to x86...

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: trekiej on February 26, 2008, 07:30:51 PM

Does anyone know who produced it?  I know that Bernie worked on it.  I believe haage-partner sold it.
What was closed about it?

I heard that a color wheel was a problem with the IP.

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: bloodline on February 26, 2008, 07:35:33 PM

Quote

trekiej wrote:
Does anyone know who produced it?  I know that Bernie worked on it.  I believe haage-partner sold it.
What was closed about it?

I heard that a color wheel was a problem with the IP.

H&P screwed over Bernie.. enough said.

The Colour Wheel was from OS 3.9 was from AROS... no IP issue.

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: monami on February 26, 2008, 07:52:06 PM

you forgot to say it also cost a fortune. back when it was seen as good for the community to pay silly amounts for such things. imho.

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: pVC on February 26, 2008, 07:52:57 PM

Quote

I was thinking that if that is all it does, then why not use AmiKit?

Amithlon runs standalone without any (visible) host operating system.

AmiKit (WinUAE) needs Windows booted first.

Amithlon concept was pretty nice... you could boot PC from it's CD directly to Workbench3.x without any other operating system installed on the PC. And you can of course install it to HD as only OS too. I found it much more attracting than running emulator over other unwanted OS :)

Amithlon CD also came with AmigaOS XL, which is emulated Amiga for QNX operating system.

Amithlon runs great on some PC laptops too, so it's closest thing for Amiga laptop you can have.

There's been constant 3rd party development for Amithlon and there's new kernels, drivers etc available to make it more compatible with different kind of hardware.

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: Trev on February 26, 2008, 08:16:11 PM

You could run WinUAE as the shell under Windows Embedded or a slimmed down retail verison of Windows for a similar effect....

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: monami on February 26, 2008, 08:24:07 PM

x amiga.

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: trekiej on February 27, 2008, 12:11:02 AM

X Amiga is cool.
How is Amithlon closed source?
Did haage-partner distribute it?
Sorry, I do not mean to pester.
 :-?

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: bloodline on February 27, 2008, 02:06:50 AM

Sadly Bernie doesn't post here anymore... I don't know why... umisef hasn't logged in for years...

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: Trev on February 27, 2008, 04:01:49 AM

The Linux kernel bits are open source, but the Amiga-specific bits are not.

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: mdwh2 on March 05, 2008, 12:57:37 AM

Although Amithlon certainly looked promising and had advantages, I agree that UAE can pretty much do the job anyway now. And it's free, most importantly free as in speech, so we don't need to worry about petty squabbles killing the development.

Surely a migration to x86, whether it's just a port or updating the OS, would only be possible with a port of AmigaOS, otherwise you're just running an emulation of 3.9?

I'm not sure what speed differences there were, but considering the how far CPUs have come since 2001, it's not really a significant issue - WinUAE on any PC now will be way faster, and ridiculously faster than any real 680x0 Amiga.

Note that WinUAE allows Amiga programs to run native x86 code too.

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: TheMagicM on March 05, 2008, 05:40:10 AM

I have both AROS and Amithlon.

AROS > Amithlon

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: Seiya on March 09, 2008, 06:28:40 PM

Quote

TheMagicM wrote:
I have both AROS and Amithlon.

AROS > Amithlon

i say amithlon > AROS, now..
maybe later, aros will be > than amithlon

on amithlon you can run many many programs, aros actualy not.

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: dammy on March 09, 2008, 06:35:45 PM

Quote

H&P screwed over Bernie.. enough said.

Was it H&P or just Herald that screwed Bernie over?  IIRC, AI wasn't the bad guy in this at all.

Dammy

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: trekiej on March 09, 2008, 06:44:18 PM

I wonder if Bernie would work on AROS?
If he hasn't already.

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: bloodline on March 09, 2008, 07:01:28 PM

Quote

trekiej wrote:
I wonder if Bernie would work on AROS?
If he hasn't already.

I'm not sure AROS would hold much interest for him... Though I expect some of his work will make it into AROS via the UAE integration bounty.

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: Crom00 on March 09, 2008, 07:34:14 PM

I had Amithlon and a motherboard that ran it. Stunning piece of software. Worth every penny of the $150 or so that I paid.

How anyone could have canned this project is beyond reason.

This could have been worked into a low cost non windows PC computer like the linux Internet PC's sold like in some mass stores a couple years back...

Title: Re: What if??
Post by: trekiej on March 09, 2008, 08:08:37 PM

AROS + UAE + CatWeasel = me buy alot more Amiga software.
CatWeasel not needed for CD software.
Now if I could run OS4.