This thread is priceless... :lol: :lol:
We need people like lou to put forward ideas like this, because let's face it something's only impossible until it's done. And AmigaOS 4 _is_ possible on the Gamecube.
It's also completely pointless.
The GC has what an OS needs - CPU, RAM, display, keyboard and a disk drive.
It however lacks:
Fast expansion bus (no, 81MB/S is not fast - not when it's your only bus - and that's probably theoretical max anyway)
Read/Write storage medium (SD cards are too slow and small by far to be practical)
A decent amount of RAM - 32MB isn't enough for a modern OS. Not even AmigaOS 4 is comfortable in 32MB, by the time you've added the disk caches etc..
It could work but it'd be so slow as to not be worthwhile. The CPU speed is only a limiting factor, remember. The CPU speed is irrelevant if its being held up by something else.
The biggest problem though is the lack of documentation. If you want to know how the Flipper chip works then you'll probably have to go and raid ATI or something - I can't imagine they'd give you that info free (though I could be wrong I suppose). You'd also need documentation on the workings of the sound chip, memory card, disk drive etc. etc. which Nintendo definitely wouldn't give out. And to say that that info is in the SDK only shows that you've never seen an SDK.
The SDK gives you functions like "ResetZBuffer()" or something, it doesn't tell you
how it's done. It's way way way too little to actually write drivers from.
And incidentally, the PS2 is very like the Amiga, except more so... it's a hideous tangle of chips and busses and timing and interrupts and vectors and ...
. Any other PS2 programmer knows what I mean.
Also - that quote about the internet running on 10Mbit/S... er... I have nothing to say on that.
So nice idea, but really unfeasible. The GC is a games machine, it's specialised hardware, and not at all suited to running AmigaOS 4.
That's my 2 cents - here endeth the lesson.
