Amiga OS 3.9 or 4.1 for PPC (and is it worth it?)

[Aegis]

I was tempted to pickup a sonnet 7200 to start cheap, but sadly they are now insane to pick one up for the limited update they give.  Spending north of 1k for a PPC should really be worth it if I'm going to go the Cyberstorm route.

The Cyberstorm/Blizzard PPC cards are pretty slow - WinUAE running OS4.1 on a modern PC is faster - in fact, if you ignore 3D performance, WinUAE even beats a SAM460 on a fast i7.

I've been tinkering with OS4.1 a lot under emulation (testing the latest WinUAE beta) and it's nice - I've been running TVPaint, PPaint, SketchBlock, Cinnamon Writer, Ignition and AudioEvolution and you can do *a lot* with an OS4 system and yes - it's much quicker (on a fast PPC) than say an '060.

What it isn't (so far as hardware's concerned) is good value for money - and the Vampire recommendation is a good one (since OS3.9 is still very capable and supported by Amiga devs).

If you really want to tinker with OS4 (and you've got access to a decent PC) I'd suggest picking up Amiga Forever 2016 and a copy of 4.1 FE for classic as the cheapest way to test the waters.

[Aegis]

Here's a video I did a couple of weeks ago of the (then) current WinUAE beta running OS4: https://db.tt/MCdrDiNW

[Aegis]

Have you got a good tutorial for setting up the latest winuae? I already have OS 4.1FE and a second pc to run it on?

I'm actually putting together an optimization guide for when 3.3.0 is released

[Aegis]

Please post in this thread when you post your guide.. wouldnt wan to miss it!

That's Great let me know when your done

Don't worry - you won't miss it I'm toying with the idea of putting together a PDF for it since it's going to be quite extensive - it'll cover:

New features in WinUAE 3.3.0 + how to configure them
How to tweak OS4.1 on WinUAE to get a good balance of free memory/usability
Applications I've tested that work really well with OS4.1 on WinUAE plus any tweaks necessary to get them running perfectly.

I'm really impressed with Toni's work on this update - it's a whole new ball game with OS4 now - there's still some significant limitations though and this guide is about helping people make the most of 3.3.0