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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: freqmax on May 10, 2009, 03:46:05 AM

Title: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: freqmax on May 10, 2009, 03:46:05 AM
Is there any free AmigaOS clone for classic m68k Amigas?
Say for an A1200 etc..

The current alternatives AtheOS, Syllable, AROS are all for the x86 arhitecture asfaik.
Title: Re: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: Matt_H on May 10, 2009, 04:23:52 AM
Technically, yes: AROS 68k
Practically: no. AROS 68k hasn't been maintained for almost a decade now, I think, and was nowhere near usable when it was.

What's wrong with regular AmigaOS? It's easily and cheaply acquired from Amiga Forever...
Title: Re: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: bloodline on May 10, 2009, 09:47:34 AM
It wouldn't take too much time to get the 68k AROS flavour going... There is a bounty for it, someone on the mailing list is preparing to take it on too!

There was quite of bit of talk about using an ST emualtor to run 68k Linux and then start by getting AROS hosted on that first (which should be really quite a straight forward process), and then get the OS running native from there!

Would be great to have a free 68k Amiga OS :-)
Title: Re: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: Karlos on May 10, 2009, 11:49:45 AM
Quote

bloodline wrote:

Would be great to have a free 68k Amiga OS :-)


Is there a classic PPC flavour at all?
Title: Re: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: bloodline on May 10, 2009, 12:28:46 PM
Quote

Karlos wrote:
Quote

bloodline wrote:

Would be great to have a free 68k Amiga OS :-)


Is there a classic PPC flavour at all?


No, I don't think any of the AROS devs have enough documentation for the PPC boards... There are a few PPC flavours though!
Title: Re: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: Karlos on May 10, 2009, 12:38:53 PM
Isn't there a classic PPC linux port that could be dissected to glean the relevant information?
Title: Re: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: bloodline on May 10, 2009, 12:47:12 PM
Quote

Karlos wrote:
Isn't there a classic PPC linux port that could be dissected to glean the relevant information?


Well honestly I can see any motivation to do that... If you want a decent OS on your classic PPC machine MOS do a free version... Or you can buy OS4...

A royalty free 68k AmigaOS for UAE would on the other hand be rather good :-)
Title: Re: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: McVenco on May 10, 2009, 12:54:50 PM
Quote

freqmax wrote:
Is there any free AmigaOS clone for classic m68k Amigas?
Say for an A1200 etc..


You could give p.OS a try if you can lay your hands on a copy.
Title: Re: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: Karlos on May 10, 2009, 12:54:54 PM
Quote
Well honestly I can see any motivation to do that


By your own admission, the amiga as a platform is dead. Why, then, is there any motivation to develop AROS at all? Whatever that motivation is, it is presumably applicable to any hardware that is capable of running it.

AROS for the BPPC could theoretically run a lot faster on my classic machine than AROS for the 680x0. Getting more speed out of the hardware used to be motivation enough for the majority of amiga developers :-)
Title: Re: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: freqmax on May 10, 2009, 01:26:44 PM
The motivation is that a free AmigaOS 68k clone can be supplied with an equal free hardware clone.
Title: Re: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: bloodline on May 10, 2009, 08:02:36 PM
Quote

Karlos wrote:
Quote
Well honestly I can see any motivation to do that


By your own admission, the amiga as a platform is dead. Why, then, is there any motivation to develop AROS at all? Whatever that motivation is, it is presumably applicable to any hardware that is capable of running it.

AROS for the BPPC could theoretically run a lot faster on my classic machine than AROS for the 680x0. Getting more speed out of the hardware used to be motivation enough for the majority of amiga developers :-)


I didn't mean to belittle your idea... I too have a BPPC and would love to have AROS running on it... But realisticaly, compared to 68k AROS for UAE and AROS for the x86... I can't see many devs getting very excited (BPPC boards are slow and dying)... If you want to give it a go... There are a lot of AROS PPC devs on the dev list waiting to give you advice... I guess the hardest is just setting up the BPPC hardware... Everything else is ready to go :-)
Title: Re: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: wawrzon on May 10, 2009, 08:14:34 PM
from my pov it would be great to have "classic" (phew!) aros distribution. bernd rosch ported some of aros functionality back to os3.x but i dont think it is going any further. then again allthough i have a ppc card in one of my a4000s too, i do not see any advantage in supporting these rare hw. i would rather aim for a wider common denominator and this is 68k.
Title: Re: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: dammy on May 10, 2009, 08:43:25 PM
Quote
from my pov it would be great to have "classic" (phew!) aros distribution. bernd rosch ported some of aros functionality back to os3.x but i dont think it is going any further. then again allthough i have a ppc card in one of my a4000s too, i do not see any advantage in supporting these rare hw. i would rather aim for a wider common denominator and this is 68k.


Then support the kickstart replacement bounties.  Apart of the Kickstart Replacement Phase I (no, I have no idea if the bounty is still assigned or is in the process of being relisted as open) is to reactivate AROS-68K branch in the AROS SVN.

Title: Re: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: wawrzon on May 10, 2009, 09:08:00 PM
sure i would, the problem is paypal:(
Title: Re: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: dammy on May 10, 2009, 09:15:36 PM
by wawrzon on 2009/5/10 16:08:00

Quote
sure i would, the problem is paypal:(


Contact Power2People and ask them for an alternative to PayPal.

Title: Re: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: wawrzon on May 10, 2009, 09:23:52 PM
will look into that. is anybody seriously looking into it? the 1 part of bounty was assigned afaik, but somehow there is no news on progress nor any other feedback.
Title: Re: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: Belial6 on May 10, 2009, 10:48:01 PM
I'm with you.  I would really like to see AROS ported to MiniMig.  This would be a huge boost to the MiniMig platform.  I suspect that it would also bring a lot more attention to AROS.
Title: Re: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: wawrzon on May 10, 2009, 11:13:30 PM
i suppose so. i believe, from psyhological pov (lol) it is from the beginning on a major publicity disadvantage that there is no 68k aros. a link is missing. people like me just do not comprehend what it has to do with amiga running third party os on third party hw (and which system still needs uae to run legacy sw). it has nothing to do with reason.
Title: Re: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: freqmax on May 12, 2009, 02:05:42 PM
One could start with by only implement those library calls that are actually used just to get a CLI prompt. And then continue from there on..?
Just to get started.
Title: Re: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: Piru on May 12, 2009, 02:26:53 PM
@freqmax
Quote
One could start with by only implement those library calls that are actually used just to get a CLI prompt. And then continue from there on..?

That's a lot of stuff I'm afraid. Laymen often don't quite understand how much stuff is required to get to the CLI prompt. That's pretty much the whole OS minus Workbench and disk based files.

There's an earlier post about amiga startup procedure which should give you an idea (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=20698) how many things are going on during the process. And this doesn't even account for graphics.library, layers.library, intuition.library, console.device, shell etc which are required to display the "CLI".

The trouble with AROS is that it isn't fully binary compatible with AmigaOS anymore. It would be quite some work to find out the incompatibilities and fix them.
Title: Re: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: HenryCase on May 12, 2009, 02:56:32 PM
Quote

wawrzon wrote:
will look into that. is anybody seriously looking into it? the 1 part of bounty was assigned afaik, but somehow there is no news on progress nor any other feedback.


There has been some feedback. The feedback is that the developer is still interested but hasn't got enough documentation (Kernel Reference Manuals and suchlike) to do the job. So if anyone here reading this has some books that might help please contact bheron.
Title: Re: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: wawrzon on May 12, 2009, 05:00:40 PM
then hes not very determined about the job it seems. is that material so difficult to come by? on natami forum someone was even offering to supply these if need be.
Title: Re: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: HenryCase on May 12, 2009, 05:27:12 PM
Quote

wawrzon wrote:
then hes not very determined about the job it seems. is that material so difficult to come by? on natami forum someone was even offering to supply these if need be.


He has asked for documentation before, I can't help it if you haven't noticed before. If someone on the Natami forums offered to help then that's all good, but to say he's not interested is completely bloody false.

Anyone else have RKMs and suchlike they can donate to the Kickstart Replacement cause?
Title: Re: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: jupo42 on May 12, 2009, 05:41:58 PM
Hm. I've got several RKMs from the 1.3 era, and I think a couple from 2.0 as well. Come to think of it, didn't the 3.x RKMs come on a developer CD at one time? I am going to have to do some digging when I get home...
Title: Re: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: HenryCase on May 12, 2009, 06:36:22 PM
Quote

jupo42 wrote:
Hm. I've got several RKMs from the 1.3 era, and I think a couple from 2.0 as well. Come to think of it, didn't the 3.x RKMs come on a developer CD at one time? I am going to have to do some digging when I get home...


Excellent. If you do manage to find these documents please e-mail bheron (real name Gregory Casamento) using the address greg_casamento AT yahoo DOT com, to see if they will be useful. Thanks jupo42. :-)
Title: Re: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: hardlink on May 12, 2009, 06:42:48 PM
Quote

freqmax wrote:
Is there any free AmigaOS clone for classic m68k Amigas?
Say for an A1200 etc..

The current alternatives AtheOS, Syllable, AROS are all for the x86 arhitecture asfaik.


I'm surprised - yes, NetBSD! Where are all the famous BSD fanboys?

Title: Re: AmigaOS m68k clone?
Post by: freqmax on May 12, 2009, 06:45:29 PM
Time to make pool documentation at some location ..?