Is emulation based x86 machines in Amiga cases really a no no? or......

[fishy_fiz]

To each his own, but half the fun of that type of retro thing is doing it yourself. If I was to ever use a uae based "amiga" Id either use a shell from a dead amiga or make the casing myself.
Although I really dont think I would anyway. My amithlon box is much better suited to a tower and my a1200 (in original casing) covers the rest.

The one exception here is that it still appeals to me to use a sff pc inside a cd32 (or cdtv) case to make a more powerful version of the console.

[fishy_fiz]

Actually, this is pure semantics, I dont actually care too much, but a sam, etc. isnt any more an Amiga than an x86 machine dedicated to an amiga based os. Yes, the OS it (a sam) runs the official successor, but the hardware itself isnt an Amiga. It's an AmigaOS machine, but not "Amiga" hardware.

All from a perspective of licensing, legality, etc. Like I said, I really dont care too much, Im more of a mind that its the mindset and what a person does with thier machine that dictates if a person is an amiga user.

[fishy_fiz]

(Incidentally I have no trouble whatsoever with Amiga emulation on my ARM-based OpenPandora).

Youve obviously never done much more than played simple, floppy based ocs/ecs games then     There's *plenty* of software that runs like mud on uae on OpenPandora. Breathless, AlienBreed3d, AB3d2:TKG, quake, quake2, descent freespace, doom1/2/etc, heretic, hexen, napalm, thousands of scene demos, exodus, flyin' high, racer3d, payback, tzero, Myst, Capital Punishment, trapped, trapped2, genetic species and about a billion others that I couldnt be bothered listing

[fishy_fiz]

So what you are saying is that a SAM with OS4 is more Amiga than an x86 machine running something else?

Define Amiga hardware please and don't give me "custom chips" and all that.

My last sentence kinda covers it I thought (ie., from a stance of legality, license, etc.) , but basically what Im saying is a Sam is Amiga OS4 hardware, but not an Amiga. It's all semantics though as I said, I really couldnt care less.
Just the other side of the coin from the often heard, "its not amiga if its not the official continuiation of the sources" arguement. If it works one way (software), then it works the other too (hardware).

[fishy_fiz]

I've fallen in love with virtualisation.  One Box, many operating systems.  May many system has 12 cores running at 3 GHz, 64 GB of RAM and 2 TB of hard disk.  UAE doesn't using even visibly raise the core usage.  Heck I don't think UAE inside a virtual Windows box inside a virtual linux box would raise the core usage much.  I'm not pulled six ways to sunday to try to support ram, video and the like on multiple boxes.  I can split my three screens into three different OSs or allow (some of the OSs) to control all screens.

Plus if I'm doing something in another machine and UAE gurus I can keep doing what I am doing in that machine and just restart UAE.

To each his own, but give me a physical machine per OS anyday. While VMs are good for a few things a lot of the time there's no substitute for a dedicated machine. Performance hit just gets heavier and heavier per extra machine, regardless of cores. Even things like VT-x and AMD-V dont change that. Emulation of hardware hurts performance, not to mention drastic reductions in ram bandwidth. While not the most powerful machine around, my core i7-2600k + gf gtx570 noticably suffers while even running one additional OS concurrently when I do things like play recent games, 3d rendering, etc.

[fishy_fiz]

It runs OS4 then it's an Amiga, sorry it doesn't matter how you paint it.
And you seem to care enough though...

No, if it runs OS4 then it runs OS4, still not technically an Amiga.
My Amithlon box runs AmigaOS, is that an Amiga? (and no its not entirely emulation, only the 68k side)

Legally, technically, license wise,etc. there's been no Amiga's since 68k machines went out of production.
Find me any sort of legal proof that disputes this and I'll happily concede, but you wont (cant).
And no, I really dont care. As Ive said 3 times now, Im simply discussing semantics. Im more interested in that then the actual topic.

Hyperion dont own the Amiga brand, nor do Acube or A-EON, ergo cant produce Amigas. As much as it pains me to say it only A.Inc (perhaps now C-USA, depending on what happened there) can produce computers that are Amigas. Will I buy them, or even support them? Absolutely not, but that changes nothing.

As I said before, if people want to play the "it's official 'cos its the legal successor using the original sources" game then its nothing but hypocricy to try to claim a Sam is an Amiga. Cant have it both ways. It's a vehicle for OS4, nothing more regardless of how you try to paint it.

These days the thing that dictates an amigan is what they do with thier machines, be it a classic user, an emulation user, a mos user, aros user, or an os4 user.