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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: freqmax on November 08, 2011, 01:44:55 PM
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What's the minimum requirements for AmigaOS 4 in terms of chip and fast memory, graphics chipset, CPU, speed ..?
How much ROM/EEPROM does AmigaOS 4 machines need?
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1 mhz ppc CPU
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I vaguely remember it being along the lines of:
128MB RAM (Fast RAM - you only need chip RAM if you wanna use the classic chipset)
AGA is the minimum chipset required, but I'll bet that's painful to use. I dunno what support is like for classic graphics cards...
A supported PPC CPU (these started at 160MHz on the Blizzard PPC I think)
A few GB of hard drive space and an optical drive
ROM / EEPROM? Not necessary. Kickstart is loaded into RAM from the hard drive during boot.
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128MB RAM (Fast RAM - you only need chip RAM if you wanna use the classic chipset)
Significantly more than the 4 MB requirement for AmigaOS 3.
Seems the culture of keeping things slim went out of the window.
ROM / EEPROM? Not necessary. Kickstart is loaded into RAM from the hard drive during boot.
I have still to find the CPU that will load anything from any disc storage by itself. Ie, all computers have some kind of startup "ROM". The only thing close is some ARM CPUs that has a circa 2 kB builtin ROM that will serially download code from I2S based EEPROM.
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Depends on what you want to do I guess. Technically I think it can run on 64meg/aga, and a 160mhz 603e, but simply running an OS isnt much fun :) You'll be able to do very little and will get more mileage from os3.x with such a system.
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The minimum requirements gives a good hint on how much an OS wastes in internal management.
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I vaguely remember it being along the lines of:
128MB RAM (Fast RAM - you only need chip RAM if you wanna use the classic chipset)
AGA is the minimum chipset required, but I'll bet that's painful to use. I dunno what support is like for classic graphics cards...
A supported PPC CPU (these started at 160MHz on the Blizzard PPC I think)
A few GB of hard drive space and an optical drive
ROM / EEPROM? Not necessary. Kickstart is loaded into RAM from the hard drive during boot.
64MB will do although 128MB is very recommended.
AGA isn't the minimum. OS4 will also run on an A3000 with ECS for example.
You don't need a few GB of HD space, it should fit comfortably in a few hundred MB.
My advise would be disabling the os4 themes and going back to plain 3.x theme. Using a gfx card is a very good idea (but I would skip ZorroII ones). If you own a CSPPC you should use SCSI interface. Fit the maximum quantity of ram you can: 128MB on CSPPC, 256MB on Blizzard.
Since scsi is not supported on Blizzard it's advised to send your board to Karlos so he can do a nice scsi driver ;-)
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CPU: 160 MHz PowerPC 603e
RAM: 64 MB
GFX: ECS
HDD: 1000 MB
Does AmigaOS4 support OCS?,
1 MHz PPC is not likely to exist ;)
How much ROM (BIOS) is needed to load the AmigaOS4 ?
Is GUID partition table (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table) supported?
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Significantly more than the 4 MB requirement for AmigaOS 3.
Seems the culture of keeping things slim went out of the window.
Not really sure what you're looking for here. If you stripped it down to the level of functionality of OS3 then it wouldn't need anywhere near 128MB (and yes, I think 128 was recommended - it'll boot in 64 as someone else said). But then why bother with OS4 at all? And, for the record, OS3 (as in 3.0 and 3.1) would happily boot in 1MB.
There are a few modest eye-candy additions in OS4, but most of the memory footprint is pretty legitimate, and it can be reduced by stripping out modules if you're that way inclined. For example, the Kickstart supports a much broader range of hardware, including graphics cards and USB, and so has greatly outgrown the original 512KB ROM. Since the Kickstart is loaded into RAM, there's more memory used already than OS3 needed to boot. Then the larger screenmodes eat memory - a 32-bit 1600x1200 screen takes almost 100 times the memory that a 16-colour 640x256 desktop takes. Then take the integrated TCP/IP stack, new filesystems with much larger buffers for modern drives, CD-ROM support from Kickstart and so on. I think these are all quite legitimate uses of extra memory, and couldn't be considered bloat... It's probably as slimline as you get while still supporting the features it has, and I haven't checked it out, but probably compares well to a Linux distribution with a similar range of support.
I have still to find the CPU that will load anything from any disc storage by itself. Ie, all computers have some kind of startup "ROM". The only thing close is some ARM CPUs that has a circa 2 kB builtin ROM that will serially download code from I2S based EEPROM.
Sorry, I didn't think you were looking for those sort of specs, since it's never an issue. I don't think Windows lists a BIOS as a requirement either... Basically, any machine that an OS4 licence is available for has the required ROMs. On a classic it can be bootstrapped from the classic OS, so whatever Kickstart is in that machine is all you need. Not sure what size UBoot is but it's available for download for some of the platforms so that would give you an idea.
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What's the minimum requirements for AmigaOS 4 in terms of chip and fast memory, graphics chipset, CPU, speed ..?
How much ROM/EEPROM does AmigaOS 4 machines need?
Not really sure if it's relevant, but AROS can be stripped back to need about 4meg.
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but most of the memory footprint is pretty legitimate, and it can be reduced by stripping out modules if you're that way inclined. For example, the Kickstart supports a much broader range of hardware, including graphics cards and USB, and so has greatly outgrown the original 512KB ROM.
Graphics, USB, CDrom, etc.. Can be handled like dynamic modules so that it won't hog the memory. If one care for optimal resource usage.
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Yup, that's what I was talking about. It's easy to strip modules out on AmigaOS4 and have a minimal boot. Bit I don't think anyone's documented a minimum booting machine requirement. The 64MB minimum is based on having all these things loaded. I don't know how low you could go, but it would be much less than 64MB. But modules in Kickstart memory for hardware you don't have aren't used and don't consume "running" resources, so the only waste there is, is in the image of Kickstart itself.
If you're really worried about the 4MB or so that you'd save, it's a trivial task to comment out the Kickstart modules for hardware you don't have.
Personally though, I like having all my hardware available from boot. My OS3 machine does and takes far, far more than 4MB to boot to Workbench...
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My idea is that when device X (like a CD-rom) is used it will be loaded dynamicly. When it's not used for a while it will be flushed and so on.
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I guess, if you really need to be miserly with resources in this age of GHz and GB... But how does the OS know about the CD drive if it doesn't load drivers for it? Do you have to tell it to load it when you want to read a disc, and tell it when you don't wanna read it any more? Likewise for USB - with no stack running, you'd never know a device was plugged in unless you manually start the stack.
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@Daedalus, Easy, load the driver, probe, save result. As for USB load the USB bus driver but treat other sub-drivers like the first one.
Just because there are resources isn't a good reason to waste them. One example is embedded usage where less resources saves equipment and battery etc..
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I guess, if you really need to be miserly with resources in this age of GHz and GB...
That's a pretty poor excuse. If OS4 provides that much more functionality than 3.9 that it requires 60MB more RAM, that's one thing, but the attitude of "eh, why bother being light, resources are cheap" is the kind of thinking that got us Windows Vista. Not cool. Not cool at all.
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@freqmax
Here (http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=1035) is a good place to start.
The minimum requirements are:
An Amiga 1200, 3000(T), or 4000(T) with Blizzard PPC or Cyberstorm PPC accelerator card
Minimum 96MB memory installed on Blizzard PPC or Cyberstorm PPC
Kickstart 3.0 ROMS
IDE or SCSI CD-ROM drive (on Cyberstorm PPC) for installation
1GB hard disk drive on IDE internal port or Cyberstorm PPC SCSI
Amiga 880K Floppy Disc Drive
The actual installation fits in less than 300 MB of disk space. A 500 MB partition will give you lots of extra room if you want to add some programs to your system partition.
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@Daedalus, Easy, load the driver, probe, save result. As for USB load the USB bus driver but treat other sub-drivers like the first one.
Errm - hot plug?
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Kind of, anyway this kind of optimization is possible. And bloat is just the sign of sloppy programming.
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Errm - hot plug?
How do you think hot plug works? The OS needs to be told that something is plugged in. And how would it know that if there wasn't a USB stack running in the background? Say you plug in an external hard drive. The USB stack detects it, identifies it as mass storage and loads the appropriate driver. This driver identifies the geometry and then mounts the drive as a volume. That doesn't happen until you plug in a device, but the USB stack still has to be running to be able to see the hot plug event. That's pretty much as efficient as you can make it, without disabling the stack itself and thus removing hot plug capability.
Edit: Sorry, I thought you were talking to me - were you talking to freqmax there?
@freqmax
@Daedalus, Easy, load the driver, probe, save result. As for USB load the USB bus driver but treat other sub-drivers like the first one.
Load the driver, probe, save the result... That's pretty much what OS4 does though. You can plug several CD-ROM drives into an OS4 machine, but it'll only load drivers for the ones which are connected. If you don't have a 2 CD drives connected, it won't load two drivers. I don't understand your point there...
Just because there are resources isn't a good reason to waste them. One example is embedded usage where less resources saves equipment and battery etc..
That's very true, and as someone who writes firmware for embedded devices, I'm well aware of resource management issues there. But again, I don't see what's being wasted here with OS4. It only loads what it needs, but the powers that be have decided that modern features are needed...
@commodorejohn
Well, waste depends on your perspective. Most of the features are a little more advanced than OS3.9, and so take up more RAM. On top of that, it's all rewritten in C, which is bigger and less efficient, but means easier development. How much RAM does a 3.9 machine with USB, TCP/IP, and all the patches that would bring it to similar functionality use? I know mine uses a sizeable chunk of RAM, and I wouldn't get much change from 32MB... I guess one needs to decide if the OS should use more modern features, or stick with the old-fashioned, bolt-on-what-you-want philosophy...
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Well, waste depends on your perspective. Most of the features are a little more advanced than OS3.9, and so take up more RAM. On top of that, it's all rewritten in C, which is bigger and less efficient, but means easier development. How much RAM does a 3.9 machine with USB, TCP/IP, and all the patches that would bring it to similar functionality use?
I didn't mean to imply that OS4 does or doesn't make justifiable use of 64MB; I haven't used it, so I'll refrain from comment. I just object to the philosophy of "what the hell, we've got RAM to burn" on principle. Code from that perspective, and pretty soon you're going to have a bunch of irritated users wondering where all their memory has gone.
I guess one needs to decide if the OS should use more modern features, or stick with the old-fashioned, bolt-on-what-you-want philosophy...
I don't think those are at all mutually exclusive, if there's a suitably well-defined framework for bolting on or taking off. (Unless you mean OS4 specifically, I dunno whether it has a good framework or not.)
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@commodorejohn
I get what you're saying. OS4 is quite easily stripped out - as simple as commenting lines in a text file if you wanted to boot without things like USB or CD-ROM support. I don't condone bloating at all, which is one of the reasons I like Amiga-ish systems. I just think that an OS which is written for bloody expensive machines, can probably expect to have a reasonable minimum amount of RAM thrown at it too...
As a check, my OS4 machine uses about 100MB at boot, but includes lots of things at startup like SAMBA, SMBFS mounts, a dozen or more commodities, lots of disk caches, and a 1600x1200x32 composited Workbench.
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http://www.hd-zone.com/2011/09/amigaos-4-1-hardware-compatibility-list/
Also good place to check hardware compatibility.
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FreeBSD does more, and can boot within 32 MB using X11. I have even booted it with 4 MB provided there's lot's of swap.
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Yeah, but then you're stuck with X11 ;P
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Just shows that 100 MB is bloat..
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Call me biased these days but I wouldn't run AOS4.1.x on anything less than a 733Mhz SAM Flex with 1 gig memory and a 9250 Radeon...
But just remember I used to be happy with that machine in the last line of my signature for quite a few years! So, been there, done that! Guess I never run it on anything less that that though!
Of course I'm using something a bit more serious in recent months! Whatever you choose good luck with that! :-)