Amithlon VS WinUAE VS AROS question (OS 3.9 related)

[Digiman]

OK so I have these dead tanks (A2000s) and well the motherboards are just not appearing in any decent price level (might aswell just get another A2000) but that's another sticky topic for a different day.

So my plan is X86 inside A2000 chassis and somehow modify the old tank mouse and get the original A2000 keyboards hooked up. And now we come to the tough part, what do I run on the PC X86 motherboards.

One my work machine I have WinUAE and Workbench 3.1 which is fine I guess and atleast I know the serious side of things.

Please can somebody impartially tell me which is the more pleasant experience (after installation that is) and best solution.

1. WinXP + WinUAE + OS 3.9?
2. Amithlon + UAE + OS 3.9
3. AROS + UAE

The machine MUST play OCS and AGA games flawlessly otherwise it's a complete waste of time, at the same time I want to do things people do on OS 3.9 on a real A4000 + 24bit graphics card + 16bit sound card. I would like to do some rendering in VistaPro and be able to do basic internet related stuff. Two things I WON'T like.....

1. not having real joystick ports (I can get a Competition Pro USB I guess for WinUAE setup but can I use such a thing with Amithlon or AROS???)

2. not being able to actually use any of my 100s of original games on the machines anymore (no cure for this)

Also using WinXP is not my ideal choice because I will puke seeing that stinking MS/Windows logo even for a second sitting infront of an A2000 real Amiga's carcass Ideally would like to NEVER see a single hint that Microsoft rubbish is underlying this system from the moment I power it on to the moment I switch it off.

So anyone want to tell me about their experiences from both sides of the coin and offer some helpful advice?

(no I do not want OS4 or MorphOS and I don't feel like taking out a second mortgage to build a PPC A4000 machine before anyone suggests it)

[Digiman]

A big thank you to everyone for their comments.

I have a few machines with WinUAE, which serve my classic Amiga needs 100% but this is for a replacement to other next gen Amiga options specifically. The fastest real Amiga I ever owned was a 4000/030 anyway.

OS 3.9 on x86 is my only option but am unsure of going AROS or Amithlon, but understand I need to pick hardware components carefully, no problem.

What I don't understand is things like.....

Can I run Wipeout 2097 on AROS/Amithlon +OS 3.9?
Can I use a USB Competition Pro joystick?
What can MorphOS/OS4 do that AROS/Amithlon + OS 3.9 do?
How fast will it run serious apps on an AMD XP3000+ CPU etc without UAE?
3D games ie Blizzard Vision compatible graphics card support for Wipeout/Quake?
USB or PS/2 keyboard and mouse required?
A2000 5 pin keyboard + PS2 adaptor will work?
AHI and RTG graphics setup 100% implemented like MOS/OS4 to avoid use of UAE?

Setting it up will be a nightmare for sure but only needs to be done once luckily. XP+WinUAE is a last resort if all else fails for this project as it's too slow for non classic OS friendly apps compared to other options.

[Digiman]

I would suggest to try AEROS but you would need to wait a bit (december).

The future setup on AresOne will be as follows (in Grub)

1. AEROS
2. AROS (distro of your choice)
3. AmigaOS 3.x (minimum 3.1 upto 3.9)

AEROS and AmigaOS3.9 entry will share Amiga Partitions. So whatever you setup in Boot Option 3 will be available in AEROS and vice versa.

EDIT:
3D is possible with http://thellier.free.fr/Wazp3D.htm

But is Amithlon faster or natively more compatible than Aeros+AROS for OS 3.x apps? (ie without any UAE being used) I'm not a fan of Linux apps btw

I am thinking Athlon XP3900+ CPU now. I even have such a motherboard for testing, just need some spare disk drives.

Remember I do everyday stuff on Wintel machines, just tools for the job.

[Digiman]

All this talk reminds me of how much I hope that the Natami and FPGA see the light of day!

They are not really going to help achieve my aim of a super fast OS 3.9 box bang/$ though so not suitable for this project. That's not to say I'm not looking forward to their release.

[Digiman]

Amithlon + OS3.9 is much, much faster than AEROS +68k apps could ever be. Completely different league (especially seeing as AEROS just uses UAE for 68k).

Contrary to how it may sound Im not trying to convince the OP to use Amithlon, Im simply elaborating on the options. For all its additional speed ad other pros there are situations where I might recommend Winuae still. Bu Id personally Id use amithlon vs winuae any day of the week if its for a "serious" machine. For a more casual system, or for someone who predominantely plays custom chipset games Id suggest the Winuae route. For anyone with more of an interst in other things Id recommend Amithlon.

I can always dual boot to XP+WinUAE, but Amithlon has to go on first.

The horrors of installing a fully functioning Amithlon setup await me

[Digiman]

IMHO, if you're running 68k software the speed difference is negligible on current hardware.

Is it 1000x faster or only 950x?  Hard for a human to tell.

I can build a faster UAE system than I can Amithlon though, Amithlon has too many hardware limitations.  UAE runs on anything you can buy.

The real advantage comes with mixed 68k/x86 software which is rare and IMHO, not good for the community unless the OS is moving to x86, which it's not.

But system friendly RTGd app like something like 3D rendering app in OS 3.9 but not requiring UAE to execute it is faster on Amithlon no?

I am buying the hardware from ebay anyway.

Soundblaster 128 PCI, Realtek 8139 PCI yes?
Graphics card...which is best?

One more question, right now I am transcoding 21 VIC20 videos AVI==>FLV and set task priority to lowest and watching Terra Nova on movie player with priority set to high and XP isn't doing a good job as video playback is jerky!!!! Does OS 3.9 suffer like this or does it have true responsive preemptive multitasking ??

[Digiman]

Most of the CPU time will be spent emulating a 68k CPU, so don't expect miracles.

Think of it as a cheap hyper fast Amiga, like a PPC system.  It's never going to be as fast as a native x86 machine, OS and software because it has to spend time pretending to be something else.

Don't get me wrong, I love Amithlon, but you have to like it for what it really is.

I meant from proper loadsharing of CPU resource. My A1000 multi-tasks more appropriately than XP it seems in % of CPU power. The encoding should not have affected AVI playback ever if set to realtime