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Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: guest20738 on July 23, 2017, 04:08:02 AM
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Hello! I'm kind of new to the whole Amiga thing, but I've been using Amiga OS FE 4.1 in Winuae for about 2 - 3 weeks now and I've been having a lot of fun playing with it. I'm someone who loves learning about other Operating systems and hardware.. anyways I need some opinions and help before moving forward so I can continue to enjoy the Amiga world.
1. What is the cheapest way I can run Amiga OS FE 4.1 on real hardware? I build PCs quite a lot in fact it's pretty much my job, but looking at hardware for Amiga..Jesus..I may need to rob a bank! parts also seem pretty damn hard to find it seems..motherboards are out of stock every where.
2. I've seen MorphOS and have been looking into it, but the OS has a much larger paywall. I think the OS cost $80 vs the $26 I paid for Amiga OS 4.1, but finding hardware for it is pretty damn easy I can go to goodwill and find a G5 Powermac for $50 USD.
Would that be a better way to go if I'm on a budget? I know it isn't the same as Amiga OS FE 4.1 but it does seem to be sort of similar (correct me if I'm wrong just please don't fan boy on me..) Also I hate Aros so...yeah.
2.1. Side question.. why doesn't Amiga OS 4.1 work on g3-g5 mac hardware? Just seems like that would help everyone I'm new to everything so maybe there is a technical reason just seems odd! loads of unused mac g3-g5 hardware laying around.
3. Should I just stick to Winuae and save my time and money?
Thank you for reading and your help! :^)
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2.1. Side question.. why doesn't Amiga OS 4.1 work on g3-g5 mac hardware? Just seems like that would help everyone I'm new to everything so maybe there is a technical reason just seems odd! loads of unused mac g3-g5 hardware laying around.
First... welcome to Amiga.org! :) This will start you into a long, endeavoring and never ending quest to realize the ultimate Amiga experience!
But, it'll have to wait till tomorrow.... :lol:
As far as Q2.1, I'll leave you with this google search on "The Moana Project" :evil: You'll soon understand the political realm of Amiga!
https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=amiga+moana+project&btnG=Google+Search&gbv=1
As for your other Q's... they're good! And this could turn into a very long post so, I leave you to our panel of experts and bid you goodnight.... (cause I gotta go to work :razz:)
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Welcome! It's always nice to see someone new getting involved. The Amiga can be a strange beast, but I hope you're having fun with it so far.
1. Unfortunately it's very expensive to get OS4 going on real hardware. The cheapest option available now is probably one of the boards from ACube. Odds are that you'll need to order it from abroad, if anyone has them in stock. Have a look at dealers like Vesalia, Relec, Alinea, and Amigastore (in Spain). There are others dealers out there but I can't recall them off the top of my head.
There is a new board in development called the A1222, aka Tabor, that should be in the mid-hundreds range when it comes out. Not sure when that will be, though.
High costs are due to the low production volumes for the small market.
2. MorphOS is Amiga in everything but name. A short history: in the mid 90s official Amiga OS development was stagnant. Various developers came up with new standards to extend the existing operating system. In most cases, there ended up being two different standards for similar functions (GUI tool kits, graphics APIs, file systems) When PPC accelerators for the old Amigas appeared, some developers started a full reimplementation of the OS to run natively on the PPC (as opposed to the PPC being used as a coprocessor under the old OS). This reimplementation became MorphOS. Later, formal AmigaOS development started up again and the result was two Amiga-like operating systems descended from the original OS. Generally speaking, MorphOS ended up with one set of the late-90s APIs and AmigaOS4 ended up with the other. Point being, both can trace their roots to widely accepted - but different - Amiga standards.
MorphOS has a higher software cost than AmigaOS, but given that the hardware is cheap and easy to find your whole investment outlay will probably be a lot less. MorphOS has a very generous demo mode. You can install and run the OS as much as you like, but the system will slow down to be effectively unusable after 30 minutes of uptime. With a quick reboot (~5 seconds) you can continue working. Registering removes the time limit.
2.1. Politics. We don't know why AmigaOS was never ported to Macs. It would have made a lot of sense, although a few of the more... eccentric members of the Amiga community railed against it as corrupting the platform or some nonsense like that. Thankfully the MorphOS guys did it, though, which has made it far more accessible than OS4 (although that has finally started to change now that OS4 can be run under WinUAE). There was an AmigaOS port to the Mac Mini in development, but an alpha got leaked/stolen, a bunch of people got mad and that was the end of it :(
3. WinUAE would be your cheapest and most space-saving option :). But only you can decide whether you want to play with real hardware. My recommendation would be to continue with WinUAE for AmigaOS and get a little Mac Mini for MorphOS. There's also AROS, an OS reimplementation for x86, but I know almost nothing about it, especially recent developments.
Hope this helps! Keep asking questions!
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Well if you take into account the price of your PC, then emulation is not always the cheapest option.
Kamelito
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Hmm, Macs and OS4...
That would be advantage to Hyperion, as they would be able to sell to one of the markets MorphOS serves.
It would NOT be a good thing for Aeon though.
And there are more than rumors floating around that this just might happen.
But I'm not waiting, and an extra $60 or so wouldn't have dissuaded me from buying MorphOS anyway. At present, I have three MorphOS systems.
Also, as mentioned, there is the trial mode.
So you could just obtain a supported Mac., install the standard distribution, and give it a try.
BTW rebooting is really quick, so the 30 minute limitation isn't that bad.
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@gmizmo: Sucks with what happen with that moana project I really feel it'd get more people into this stuff if you could use the Mac hardware.
@Matt_H: I've Seen word of that a1222 board, but dang it still pretty pricey!
I actually like the looks of Amiga 4.1 better than morphOS it has a nice retro vibe and feel to it. Also great post and information!
@Iggy I may be going to goodwill today to grab one of those G5 Powermacs to trial morphOS they cost just as much as a mac mini would off ebay.
Also Is Winuae slower than higher end Amiga 4.1 builds? I would assume it is but by how much?
Please keep opinions and thoughts coming!
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Matt_H gave a pretty good answer, so I'm not adding anything to that, but couple notes:
I actually like the looks of Amiga 4.1 better than morphOS it has a nice retro vibe and feel to it. Also great post and information!
Looks can always be changed :) Check this out http://library.morph.zone/How_to_Make_MorphOS_Look_Like_OS4
@Iggy I may be going to goodwill today to grab one of those G5 Powermacs to trial morphOS they cost just as much as a mac mini would off ebay.
If you have that kind of opportunity, just go for it! But be sure to get a supported system, more info for example here: http://library.morph.zone/Supported_Computers
Also Is Winuae slower than higher end Amiga 4.1 builds? I would assume it is but by how much?
Depends how beefy PC you have (probably still slower with any PC today), but WinUAE also misses 3D acceleration support (you have to emulate old 2D graphics card under WinUAE). So you are missing gfx speed and also eye-candy features.
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@Iggy I may be going to goodwill today to grab one of those G5 Powermacs to trial morphOS they cost just as much as a mac mini would off ebay.
Just make sure that the G5 has a supported video card.
These include the Radeon 9600, 9800, and X800XT.
All are more than adequate, but the last two do offer a performance advantage.
Under the latest versions of MorphOS you can also use a PC Radeon X1950PRO AGP card, but as that card incorporates a PCIe to AGP bridge chip (that slows it down) it doesn't offer any real advantage over the other two above.
And yes, MorphOS looks different than Amiga OS, and I rather like it (as Ambient presents a pretty cool desktop).
But everything works like it does under AmigaOS, all the controls, the presence of a RAMdrive, the major folders...
If you are familiar with Amiga, you'll have no problem using it.
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1. What is the cheapest way I can run Amiga OS FE 4.1 on real hardware? I build PCs quite a lot in fact it's pretty much my job, but looking at hardware for Amiga..Jesus..I may need to rob a bank! parts also seem pretty damn hard to find it seems..motherboards are out of stock every where.
Upcoming A1222 has been promised to cost less than 400€.
You could get second hand aCube mobos for very economy prices. I would suggest you to get Sam 460 as it would be most future proof, because it has PCIe slot for Graphics cards.
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If you really want the look and feel of the classic Amiga try Amiga OS's 1.x through 3.x. You can try them out in WinUAE. (You can legally get the ROMs from Amiga Forever http://www.amigaforever.com/ ).
Classic hardware (Amiga 500, 2000, 1200, etc..) systems are rare but cheaper then buying a new Amiga OS 4.1 system. Once you have a classic system the options to expand and enhance them is plentiful. Personally, the only way to get that retro nostalgic feel is on the classic systems.
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Anytime anyone finds one of these, let alone at 'economy prices', let me know as I've been looking for one for a long time.
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...Personally, the only way to get that retro nostalgic feel is on the classic systems.
Yep, definitely a personal opinion.
And the more 'painful' option, as the by the time you buy it, and upgrade it, you're still going to find that everyday tasks like web browsing are a PITA.
If you're fixated on OS3.X, I'd suggest WinUAE.
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@Matt_H: I've Seen word of that a1222 board, but dang it still pretty pricey!
I actually like the looks of Amiga 4.1 better than morphOS it has a nice retro vibe and feel to it. Also great post and information!
Glad it was helpful! FYI, you can make AmigaOS "look" like MorphOS (and vice versa). The core GUI elements are identical and can be reconfigured and skinned for a variety of appearances. For example, I have my MorphOS system using a skin that makes it look like AmigaOS 3.x. I've configured my AmigaOS 4.1 system similarly. I like the classic look :). The icons can be used interchangeably on each system as well.
Also Is Winuae slower than higher end Amiga 4.1 builds? I would assume it is but by how much?
WinUAE emulates a CyberstormPPC board, an accelerator for the A4000/A3000 that uses a ~233MHz pre-G3 chip and which is limited to 128MB of RAM. With the latest OS4 update, RAM from the Amiga's Zorro III (expansion bus) slots can be used as well, which removes the practical memory limit, and WinUAE supports this in emulation. But on a real Amiga, Zorro III RAM is slower than accelerator RAM. (But better to have slow RAM than no RAM, I say.)
If you've used WinUAE to emulate a classic 68K Amiga, you'll know that the emulation can be made to be a lot faster than the real hardware. I don't know if that's also the case for PPC emulation. The dedicated OS4 motherboards (and MorphOS-capable Macs) are considerably faster than the original hardware that WinUAE emulates, but perhaps the emulation overcomes some of the original bottlenecks.
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Yep, definitely a personal opinion.
And the more 'painful' option, as the by the time you buy it, and upgrade it, you're still going to find that everyday tasks like web browsing are a PITA.
If you're fixated on OS3.X, I'd suggest WinUAE.
Yeah the older systems are a no go for me I think because I do want to web surf and listen to tunes. Timberwolf seems like a nice firefox port!
Keep in mind this is going to be something I'll use for daily normal tasks such as reddit surfing, docs, youtube etc. I think it'll work for that. I had 720p video playing in winuae pretty well in mplayer. I did have some slow down but it wasn't bad.
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@ir0n,
Timberwolf is a very old port and needs updating, don't hold your breath. Try OWB or Netsurf.
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@ir0n,
Timberwolf is a very old port and needs updating, don't hold your breath. Try OWB or Netsurf.
Yep, OWB is available for all NG flavors.
I make use of it all the time.
And its ability to spoof other devices can come in handy (for some reason, some sites that don't allow you to force an html5 rendering will default to html5 if they think you are using an iPad, which OWB can pretend it is).
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Interesting. Does owb have extension support? Also this mac pro has a quadro in it, all of them did. Which is the best card to slap in these? I've read the x800 xt is, but That seems awful low to watch videos!
Thank you.
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Also this mac pro has a quadro in it, all of them did. Which is the best card to slap in these?
Hmmm.. for what use? Mac Pros aren't supported by any amigaish operating system.
I've read the x800 xt is, but That seems awful low to watch videos!
"Low to watch videos", what do you mean? Videos don't exactly require that much from a graphics card... or maybe if you mean hardware decoding capabilities, but none of amigaish systems support those. So in practise it doesn't matter which card you have.. until it supports overlay which makes video scaling fast. So, for G5 machines something like Radeon 9600 is still as fine as the more newer/powerful cards. It's more like if you want 3D stuff run faster with expense of power consumption, then you might consider X800XT etc.
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Hmmm.. for what use? Mac Pros aren't supported by any amigaish operating system.
"Low to watch videos", what do you mean? Videos don't exactly require that much from a graphics card... or maybe if you mean hardware decoding capabilities, but none of amigaish systems support those. So in practise it doesn't matter which card you have.. until it supports overlay which makes video scaling fast. So, for G5 machines something like Radeon 9600 is still as fine as the more newer/powerful cards. It's more like if you want 3D stuff run faster with expense of power consumption, then you might consider X800XT etc.
Forgive me, I meant powermac. all the ones from the goodwill i visited had quadros in them. No radeons sadly, but they did lower the price! They gave it to me for $30.
And I was mostly talking about higher resolution video playback from mplayer and such. I don't think I'll be doing anything using a ton of 3D, but i'd like to upgrade it as much as possible with supported hardware. From the little research I did the x800 xt would be the best, But Just making sure.
It's this model.
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g5/specs/powermac_g5_dual_2.0.html
How ever I don't think it will work it doesn't seem to have AGP slots. I could be wrong I haven't taken it apart or anything yet.
I'm also building a PC from extra parts I have laying around just for winuae to compare them since i've already paid for Amiga OS 4.1 FE.
If that's something you guys would be interested in I could make a video from the view point of someone who is new and just wants to use an amiga type OS and what I think is better personally to get started.
I believe I'm all sorted out now and have a game plan. I'd like to think everyone who helped me. I'll continue to check back here for any extra bits of advice anyone may have. :^)
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Well, MorphOS also supports the use of PC Radeon X1950Pro cards, but that card doesn't display firmware prompts and it incorporates a pcie to agp bridge that slows it down.
I'd stick with the Apple X800XT.
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And I was mostly talking about higher resolution video playback from mplayer and such. I don't think I'll be doing anything using a ton of 3D, but i'd like to upgrade it as much as possible with supported hardware. From the little research I did the x800 xt would be the best, But Just making sure.
Higher resolution playback with MPlayer would be fine with lower spec cards too. MorphOS drivers for lower end cards is pretty fine and movie playback is a lot better than for example with OSX or Linux in the same setup. Most work is done by the CPU, but overlay is pretty optimized on MorphOS. I don't think you'll notice much difference between the supported cards with video playback on a such setup.
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g5/specs/powermac_g5_dual_2.0.html
How ever I don't think it will work it doesn't seem to have AGP slots. I could be wrong I haven't taken it apart or anything yet.
Yeah that model (11,2) isn't currently supported by MorphOS, support is available for 7,2 and 7,3 models, which are dual processor models, not dual core models.
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Yeah, it would be nice if the PCIe dual and quad core models were supported.
Not only do they have more modern expansion slots, but their DDR2 memory is faster.
But the 2.3, 2.5 and 2.7 GHz AGP models are still pretty damned quick (especially in comparison to the G4 hardware we had before - and particularly in comparison to Tabor).