Classic AmigaOS On Modern Hardware - A Critical Analysis

[amigadave]

Oh, I'm looking to get a PowerPC card for my in the mail 3000, but that will be later on once I'm in  better financial shape to afford one. I also would like an X1k but if I ever get the cash for one .......

If cost is a consideration, I would suggest that you NOT bother buying a Phase5 PPC accelerator card for your A3000D.  There is very little software for the Amiga that uses the 603e/604 PPC chip on those accelerators and if you wish to run that small amount of PPC Amiga software, there is another alternative that is much cheaper, and gives you additional options as well.

I am referring to running MorphOS3.6 on a G4 or G5 Mac model that is supported, as MorphOS3.6 has a good deal of compatibility with much of the WarpUp & PowerUp Amiga PPC software and demos.

The cost of those old Phase5 PPC & 680x0 dual CPU accelerators is prohibitively high still, and there is no guarantee that such boards will work much longer (or work at all when you receive it).  Plus, the performance of the 603e and 604 PPC's is far below what you will get from any of the G4 or G5 PPC's in a used Mac.  Lastly, the A3000D is cramped for space and the cooling for your proposed Phase5 PPC accelerator will be limited at best.

Just my 2 cents of advice, as an Amiga user who has owned every model of Amiga made, including a couple of those expensive Phase5 PPC accelerators, regarding you possibly buying a Phase5 PPC accelerator for your A3000D computer.

[amigadave]

What do you recommend I upgrade it to then? You think a less costly accelerator is more cost effective?

Also honestly I'm not too keen on the fact MorphOS barely utilizes the hardware, is 32-bit only and has no SMP support. While none of the other Amiga NG OSes seem to support this I'm honestly thinking my money for computing is better spent elsewhere than on an NG Amiga solution.

Honestly, my favorite accelerator for the A3000D is the Warp Engine 68040 @ 40MHz.  It is not the fastest accelerator you can get, but it is rock solid, has an excellent SCSI controller and fits well into the A3000D with small modifications to provide better airflow through the hard drive and floppy drive shelf.

I can't recommend 68060 accelerators that I have no experience with in the A3000D, but other members may give you some good recommendations.  The 68060 is supposed to run cooler and may be a better choice in the A3000D's small case (small for an Amiga with Zorro slots).

I think your money would be better spent to get an accelerator without the PPC and use the saved money to buy a good RTG video card, like the PicassoIV, or Cybervision64.  The A3000D is a very popular Amiga model, and I hope that you have hours of fun playing around with it.  I suggest that you NOT try to expand it into something it can't do well.  Stick with AmigaOS2.1 through AmigaOS3.9 and software for the OCS & ECS chipsets and you should enjoy it for what it is, and what it was designed to be.

The only reason I mentioned MorphOS, was because you intended to buy a PPC accelerator for your A3000D, and MorphOS will run almost all of the PPC Amiga software much better than any PPC accelerator could ever do it.  Unless you are really interested in NG Amiga inspired systems and software, don't bother buying any hardware to run it.  The NG systems are certainly not for everyone, as they are best suited to only the hard core users who are dedicated to supporting the future of NG systems.  The Amiga NG platforms are not ready for the general computing public, and might never be ready for them.  AROS & MorphOS have one advantage that they can both be "test driven" for free, if you happen to have any of the supported hardware to run them.  From your signature, I see that you have a PPC G5 that might be supported some time in the future by MorphOS, and possibly AROS PPC as well, though I don't know if anyone is working on AROS PPC any more.  Edit:  I don't understand your comment about MorphOS barely utilizing the hardware, unless you are only referring to the Dual CPU or Dual Core & Dual CPU models, like your Quad Core G5 PowerMac, which is not yet supported (and might never be supported).  My single core, 1.67GHz G4, 17" PowerBook is very well supported, specially now that MorphOS3.6 has been released and the internal AirPort Extreme is supported.  The thing that I like about MorphOS is that updates are all free, and they come at a fairly regular pace.  It is improving all the time, and shows its advantages by running some things better than MacOSX 10.5.8, on the same exact hardware.  That is impressive for a tiny development team, in my opinion, who have very little free time to work on MorphOS.  End Edit:

I hope you enjoy your Amiga A3000D.  Did you choose that model because a version of it at one time in the distant past came from Commodore with Unix installed on it?

[amigadave]

Not at all.

My favourite UNIX variant is SGI's IRIX which is very Amiga-like on the frontend - same market, different ends of the market though ( SGIs were 10k USD and up )

I just prefer the setup of UNIX and its philosophy ( Everything is a file, device nodes and commandline tools ) But I like AmigaOS for graphical stuff.

Ideally a UNIX variant like IRIX or DragonFly BSD with a Wayland compositor in the vein of Ambient, Zune or Workbench would be very ideal along with graphical tools for those who prefer GUIs ( I'm perfectly fine with console configurations but I know others arent )

Both these variants of UNIX differ from other UNIX in a few key areas:

IRIX is very optimized for graphical usage and therefore supports console and graphics usage equally. DragonFly BSD is still under heavy development and until it reaches the 5 or 6 release mark it will still not be ready for desktop use ( It works great for servers )

Both are designed to fix what others broke and did wrong.

Unfortunately IRIX has been frozen since 2006, but tha

There was a brief moment in time when the AmigaOS was supposed to be updated with the QNX kernel underneath, and I often wondered how that might have turned out.  There is no way of telling what would have happened, but I believe that we all would have been better off if that deal with QNX would have worked out.  Maybe Amiga could have made a comeback at that time, as it was shortly after Commodore and then Escom went bankrupt, when Gateway purchased the IP and patents, if my memory is correct.  Or was it after Commodore but before Escom?  Maybe this new AmigaOS based on QNX would have been more Unix like and similar to what you would like it to be?

My brother-in-law has his masters degree in computer science and is retired now, but he plays with several SGI systems like the ones shown in your signature.  He has no interest in any Amiga or its variants.