MiniMig + PowerPC = OS4 Hardware for all

[Hans_]

AndrewBell wrote:
Interesting idea. Probably wouldn't count as a classic Amiga as far as the license goes.

Here's a prediction: I bet Piru will say it's impossible, pointless, too much effort, or all 3.

It wouldn't matter about the license, as it's not an OEM version. If you managed to adapt the MiniMig design to add a PowerPC, you could just buy a copy of OS4 for the classic and use it. AFAIK, you won't need to prove that you have a classic Amiga to buy it.

One issue would be getting a PowerPC chip that's compatible to one of the existing ones that Amiga OS4 runs on.

Hans


Hans

[Hans_]

mrmkl wrote:
Minimig doesn't count as a "Classic Amiga", so it won't solve the hostage situation with Amiga Inc.
And it is good that Minimig isn't a "Classic Amiga", because Amiga Inc would otherwise jump in and say that Minimig is their property.

Unlike the A1 version, the clasic version is not OEM, so you can just buy it, without having to buy the hardware. Once you've got it, who's going to stop you using it in whatever way you wish?

BTW, isn't it absurd that we have to go to such lengths to run our preferred OS? I really wonder why ACube couldn't secure a license for OS4. Bill McEwen stated at shows prior to it coming out that he was working with them; the court documents suggest that ACube just suddenly walked away from the table and partnered with Hyperion. Maybe they felt like they weren't getting anywhere. Writing up an agreement and signing it shouldn't take months, let alone years.

Hans

[Hans_]

downix wrote:
I say, run the classic AmigaOS in a sandbox, much like OS X runs the classic MacOS, and build a new platform.  But, the time to market scares away everyone, and nobody seems willing to take the risk.

That's exactly what Hyperion want to do (or should I say, the OS 4 dev team). Even if they use a similar API, based on the same principles, they have to break compatibility in order to implement things like memory protection and multiprocessing.

Hans

[Hans_]

downix wrote:
Indeed.  My main worry is in hardware, namely the complete lack of forward thinking.  You either have purists that insist on sticking to Mot (PPC or Coldfire or m68k), or genericists that want to go x86 (equally a dead-end in my view).  I truely want the community to tell these corporate morons to shove off and carve our own path, independent of corporate overlords dictating the direction we can go in.  That's why I'm heavily for licenseable CPU architectures.

AFAIK, PowerPC is licenseable as well. IBM and Freescale own it (I think that IBM may have more say), AMCC and PASemi are licensed to use it, as is Xilinx, for their Virtex-4 FPGAs. I have no idea what the licensing costs are.

In the end, the actual CPU won't matter too much. The old OS will be sandboxed either way. So long as we make the jump to 64-bit, it's all good. However, a 64-bit PowerPC CPU would make the transition easier as there's no emulator to write. Forget buying PowerPC chips from Freescale; there are other vendors with better implementations.

Hans

[Hans_]

HenryCase wrote:

Hans_ wrote:
However, a 64-bit PowerPC CPU would make the transition easier as there's no emulator to write.

Can you please explain what you mean when you say there is no emulator to write? Is it because OS4 already runs off PPC, or are you talking about running 68K native code on the chip? Not trying to be rude, just looking for a bit more information.

Amiga OS 4.0 is PowerPC (32-bit), so running it in a sandbox on a 64-bit PowerPC means that you don't need to write an emulator for Amiga OS 4.0 programs to run in. Switch to a different CPU, and you need to write an emulator on top of writing the sandbox.

Hans