ARM based Amiga?

[Mrs Beanbag]

@Thorham:

Hang on a minute... first you say Amiga is "hardware (680x0 + chipset)", then you complain that the OS is "stuck in the past!"  With all due respect, the 680x0 and the classic Amiga chipset are obsolete hardware.  Don't get me wrong, I love the classic Amiga, but if you insist that that is what Amiga is and always will be, the Amiga is a relic of the past, a museum piece used only by die-hard hobbyists.  I can sympathise, but this is not a way forwards.

In fact I love the 680x0, and I'm about to code some asm in it this afternoon, but it's possibly the least Amiga thing about the Amiga.  Why?  Because it was a generic part.  It was also in Macs and Megadrives and goodness knows what else.  Even the floppy disk drive was more uniquely Amiga (who else got 880k on their floppy disks?).  The OS and the chipset were specifically Amiga products.  Both of these need updating for the 21st century.

@SamuraiCrow: I'm not talking about having the Bealgeboard and Minimig on the same board - perhaps some kind of serial link could be used at first.  A sort of early proof of concept.

[Mrs Beanbag]

@nicholas

The beagleboard has an expansion port. I wonder if a 68k emulator could be installed on it and an interface made to connect it to an A1200's trapdoor expansion port... 600MHz accelerator card for Classic Amigas, anyone?

[Mrs Beanbag]

I don't think it's impossible to have both backwards compatibility AND 21st century functionality.  Intel-based PCs manage it, after all.  You can still install Windows 3.1 on a modern PC, or even DOS.  You can still run software from 1981.  I'll repeat this: all modern PC graphics chips have legacy support for EGA graphics!  And let's face it, the continuous demand for backwards compatibility is the only real reason we're still using x86 chips at all, it's not because there are any inherent advantages to the instruction set.

[Mrs Beanbag]

No, there are things that are completely impossible to implement in Amiga in a clean way without breaking the Amiga compatibility

Such as...?

You could run UNIX on a classic Amiga so a multi-user environment isn't impossible.  It's not legacy hardware support that's holding us back here.  Obviously Microsoft and Apple have changed their APIs a lot over the years, Windows 3.1 software won't run on Windows 7 anymore, heck even XP software needs to run through an emulation layer.  If we need a new and radical AmigaOS then that's fine by me, but there's no reason it can't run old Amiga software through an emulation layer (although just running UAE on it is kind of cheating, it has to be integrated somehow so it doesn't "feel like" you're using an emulator).  This kind of emulation causes me no ideological problems.

If the hardware at least is backwards compatible then at worst we would be able to dual boot it.  As pointed out, an AGA chipset implementation would take up a small fraction of a modern chipset die, even if it included a 680x0 coprocessor.

[Mrs Beanbag]

@persia: no but I've booted it from a USB stick on an Athlon II...

@takemehomegrandma: and what would be the barrier to that if we were running on a multi-core ARM processor?  I don't see why this should be the thing to break backwards-compatibility.  AmigaOS already multitasks, what difference does it make to an application exactly how it achieves it?

[Mrs Beanbag]

@commodorejohn:
I see your point.  There are two easy options that come to mind.

1. dual boot!  I think we're all agreed at least that compatibility with legacy hardware isn't the problem, but rather maintaining compatibility with legacy software in an up-to-date OS.

2. run all legacy (i.e. 68k) software in a shared virtual address space.  Legacy applications will still be able to interfere with each other, while new software can be completely secure.  Obviously this is something of a compromise, but how much does it really matter and how much effort is it worth?  In fact this should be possible even under Linux with a modified UAE, by which I mean, rewrite the functionality of AmigaOS in C and compile natively instead of emulating it, library calls could easily be trapped and Intuition windows and widgets mapped to X windows.  I might look into doing this in fact.

I don't see why SMP should be a problem.

@Thorham: all your objection seems to come from the way you define "Amiga".  You've defined it dead.  Other people define it differently.

I'd love to see a new Amiga personally because I think of Amiga not as a thing so much as an ideology.  Although it's also because I feel quite strongly that "the wrong side won", maybe it's just loyalty, but I can't accept that Amiga is dead and the prospect of a new market in ARM powered desktop/laptop/HTPCs makes me think that it has a real chance to get back on its feet again.  If you don't want a new Amiga then, well, just don't buy one, fair enough.

[Mrs Beanbag]

And yes, I want a new Amiga, but no one will make one I'll probably get an alternative machine after Amigas die physically (hopefully that won't be for another 10+ years...).

Ahh... ahhhhh... I think maybe you and I aren't quite so different afterall.  The difference is that I never did live in the real world; it's what gives me my edge.

When I have an idea, my thinking tends to progress something like this:
1. WHAT it should be, and WHY
2. HOW it could be done
3. IF it will ever happen... I've never yet got this far.  But the aim is not to back the winning horse.  If the idea is good and possible, "it won't happen" is no reason to refuse to support it, because that is self-defeating.  If nobody else will do it, maybe I should do it.

WHAT in this case is an ARM powered HTPC/console with OS, because I think there is a market for it, and because I think it fits well with the Amiga's original ethos.  (The CDTV and CD32 were blatantly aiming in the HTPC direction, ahead of their time maybe.)

Now we can ask HOW it could actually be an Amiga as well.  Or in the first instance at least, how it could be an "Amiga alternative" or "Advanced Amiga Substitute" if you will;  I don't think we're at the stage of worrying about licensing the name just yet.

[Mrs Beanbag]

A truly integrated hardware platform with consistent multimedia capabilities but lax software restrictions would be the best of both worlds, like the Amiga or the MSX, and I could see that being a good solution for a lot of people.

However! I hope to God that "console-like OS" is not a design goal here. Console software is a glorified control panel at best. The Amiga didn't settle for anything like that, it had a real, full-fledged desktop operating system but booted game disks transparently

I'm thinking more of a sort of "two-tier" OS, a small OS instead of the PC's BIOS that's enough to boot a game straight from disk instead of having to install everything (i.e. Kickstart) and perform basic multimedia functions like playing DVDs and audio CDs.  The real OS (i.e. Workbench) would boot from HDD of course.  Or a live CD.