Amithlon2 vs Winuae

[WalkernyRanger]

I am completely new to emulating Amiga's, as I would rather purchase a real Amiga.  However the A1 is taking too long.  So I bought a P4 2ghz machine with the idea of running AMithlon 2.  Well that is still not out, so I bought Amiga Forever (Winuae).  And I love it.  Aside from not being able to use a floppy disk, and not being as stable as a real Amiga, it is great.  

What I was wondering is, should I be looking forward to Amithlon 2?  Does it do anything Winuae doesn't?  Is it any faster?  It cost a lot more, well Amithlon 1 does anyway.  Any amithlon users know?  

[bhoggett]

First, the name "Amithlon2" does not apply. It's been changed for trademark reasons, and the new name will be announced when the product goes on sale.

Now, to take things one at a time:

What I was wondering is, should I be looking forward to Amithlon 2?

Only you can answer that one.

Does it do anything Winuae doesn't?

Yes, a number of things, mainly centered around hardware access from AmigaOS and the ability to run x86 native code.

Is it any faster?

Yes, it's approximately 30% faster, though YMMV slightly.

It cost a lot more, well Amithlon 1 does anyway.

True. "v2"'s proposed price was much lower, but it won't come with a full OS 3.9 disribution, so you may need to add that to the cost. Either way, the cost will remain higher than Amiga Forever, but that's to be expected.

And no, I don't know  when it will finally be on sale.

[kadi]

From experience i have to say that Amithlon is much more stable compared to winUAE and therefore feels much more like a real Amiga.

Granted that the new product from Bernie will be at least as stable as the old one, i would keep an eye on it.

[WalkernyRanger]

Sorry.  I did know it is not called Amithlon 2, I just didn't know
what to call it!  I guess a 30% increase in speed and a more stable
environment.  Might be worth it.  Does anyone know if winuae does
anything Amithlon does not?

[Lo]

"Sorry. I did know it is not called Amithlon 2, I just didn't know
what to call it! I guess a 30% increase in speed and a more stable
environment. Might be worth it. Does anyone know if winuae does
anything Amithlon does not?"

Well, AGA does not work with Amithlon, if your
into old games, better off with UAE.  Apps can
fly on Amithlon.  Here, its more like 300% than 30%.
(I'd better check my UAE setup?)
 :-?

[Thomas]

Ok, let's overplay a little:

If you like WinUAE, you will hate Amithlon. If you like your A500 or A1200 like it was in the 90s you will like WinUAE and hate Amithlon. If you like your Amiga because it is expanded like hell, never ever using any chip ram, you will like Amithlon.

Amithlon does not emulate an Amiga. It does only emulate the 68K processor. Anything else is done by AmigaOS. So everything you want to use must be supported by AmigaOS. You will have difficulties running your graphics card, your sound card, your serial modem, your parallel printer, your network card. You won't be able to use your USB devices, your ISDN card or whatever hardware is there without an AmigaOS driver.

Compared to the Windows/WinUAE combination Amithlon is good for nothing but programming Amiga software. Even this is more funny on WinUAE for the following reasons.

With WinUAE you can combine the benefits of both, Windows and AmigaOS, on the same machine. You can use Windows to connect to your broadband internet provider, you can stream radio using RealPlayer. At the same time, you can fetch your E-Mails using YAM because WinUAE shares Windows' internet connection.

WinUAE does emulate a complete Amiga with any chipsets and lots of expansions. Maintaining different configurations you can use WinUAE for anything an Amiga is good for, from retro-gaming to running modern applications. Amithlon can only do the latter.

Bye,
Thomas

[kadi]

I totally agree with Thomas, but...

I hate Windows on the same machine together with AmigaOS. So i like Amithlon. I like Windoes but i like to have it on a seperate machine.
I have an Amithlon box with a Gforce2mx, its well supported and i use to have a resolutin like 1152x864x24@82Khz and its faast.
I have a keyboard with lots of multimedia buttons and a special speedsensitive scrollwheel. Its well supported by an amiga driver from Aminet (MMkeyboard by Guido Mersmann). The driver is much better than the Windowsdriver at all.
My 5 button scroll mouse works well. Both, mouse and keyboard is PS2 - but who cares?
Under the windows/winUAE combination i never got my serial WACOM Graphire pad working on the Amiga side. In windows the pad works without any flaws of course, but on the Amiga side its just unusable. But it works well on Amithlon/UAE with special AmigaOS drivers.
I have a TV-Card and i can watch TV under AmigaOS3.9. Ok, when you are using winUAE you can watch TV under Windows, but i like it on my Workbench!
I just prefer an amigaOS TCP/IP stack for my ADSL internet connection. No way with winUAE, no problem with Amithlon.
My parport printer works fine with the TurboPront amigaOS driver.
Recently i bought an IDE CDRW (Philips1600) and it works fine with MakeCD (still Demo).
I would like to buy a scanner really soon, but i dont like to buy an expensive SCSI adapter. Currently i'm still waiting for USB support.

This is why i like and prefer Amithlon.

[Desolator]

I'm just curious, is there any game that actually works under Amithlon? I'm really considering getting it to use my nice applications with speed but I also like to play the odd game once in a while.

Someone said that WipeOut and Descent Freespace would work. Would it?

[bhoggett]

No PPC only game will work, so WipeOut, Heretic II, Shogo etc are all out.

Descent: Freespace works fine - though it can only use software rendering - and the frame rate is very good on a half-decent PC. (800MHz or so)

As a rule of thumb, any RTG compatible 68k game should work with Amithlon. Examples would be Quake, Myst, Napalm, Earth 2140, The Feeble Files, Payback etc.

[cecilia]

I have an Amithlon box with a Gforce2mx, its well supported and i use to have a resolutin like 1152x864x24@82Khz and its faast.

right now i'm looking for the right laptop to eventually put amithlon (whatever it's called). because it's a laptop i need and want 3 OS's. windows2000, linux, and amiga. i refuse to use windowsXP (evil spyware, amoung other reasons).

the hard part about this process is getting hardware that will work resonably well with all 3 OS's. and getting windows2000. it seems like most Dells, for example, come with XP (Phut!)

anyway, i've looked at the amithlon.net site for help in the hardware dept, and linux mailinglists. i know nothing about linux except that i like what i've seen so far.

i'll make a note of your post but if anyone has additional info about laptops, feel free to say so. :-D

just to clarify my needs: no interest in games. I need 24bit display for ImageFX. on the windows side I need to run AfterEffects (which is the only reason for windows at all), I need to burn CD's - hopefully from all 3 OS's, web connection would be nice from linux and amiga side mostly but i've heard some laptop modems don't work well with linux and as near as i can figure amithlon uses linux drivers.
I need the amiga side to be able to access the PC side. I've been reading about Fat95 which I happen to use on my real amiga and it works great. hopefully, that will be all i need
I'd like to use a Zip drive (USB?) to transfer files to the laptop. if the amiga side can't see that then i need to have the amiga see the "Fat" windows partition or whatever the right way to do this is. i ain't no teck nerd, just an artist and i'm trying the best i can to understand all this stuff.

[seer]

the hard part about this process is getting hardware that will work resonably well with all 3 OS's. and getting windows2000.

You could always try to get Win2K instead of XP, I'm sure a dealer would be able to do that for ya.. Then again, the laptop could use hardware not supported by win2K leaving you with EG a 800*600 16 color screen or something weird like that (extreem example, but it could  ;-) )...

Then again, maybe a dealer wants to help you, but maybe he can't because of licensing policies he or the manufactor has..

[spihunter]

@cecilia

I would go with a dual boot Win2k/linux setup
with Winuae running on Widows or UAE on linux.
that way your amiga side will have no problem
"seeing" the other OS's and it could share your
network card with Windows. The latest WinUAE
is very fast!!.  Save your self the hassle!!

[DethKnight]

@spihunter

I would go with a dual boot Win2k/linux setup
with Winuae running on Widows

How did you guess my current setup ?
(also the A1200 is serial-linked using BBS software, and the A1200 composite out goes into my TV-card in)

@cecelia Thru my experiences, I'd say ou'll enjoy Win2K far better than other Windozes. Mine has yet to crash.
(but ultimately I find myself back in linux or UAE mostly)

[Effy]

To  emulate an Amiga on a pc is not such a shame since WinUAE has improved and Amithlon came out, but it's still a lot different from a real Amiga. Still there's one thing that makes emulating feel good : speed !!! I'm always used to have an A1200 with 1230/50/50 and when I first ran WinUAE I felt like sitting in a Porsche !! But when I ran Amithlon I felt like sitting in a Porsche with 2 turbo's !!!  :-D
But very soon you discover that Amitlon doesn't allow AGA programs but only RTG which is very extremely fine if you only wanna use those programs, like Genetic  Species for example. But hey, it has been told in advance that Amithlon doesn't allow AGA so there's no reason for complaining. WinUAE on the other hand, at least the legal version, not ForEver that I'm not familiar at, does allow AGA, even at demo's, but the use of RTG programs is limited because of some bugs in drawing pictures. It does tend to draw slower than an A500 at some places. Other than that it's big fun !! It really sits on top of Windows, XP Pro in my case. When I hit the Windows key in WinUAE and step back to Windows while WinUAE is still running, I see that the processor really runs at 100% so WinUAE is taking full advantage of the processor in the pc, a not so bad AMD1700+ in my case. I also do ALL my mails in Amiga mode with Yam. One major advantage : NO problems with pc virusses !!!!!!!!
Amithlon problem. There was told to use or Matrox 450 or GeForce2 chipset. So to assemble my first pc ever I went out and got me the fastest GeForce2 card I could find and that was the Hercules GeForce2 Titanium, not so cheap but I wanted the best for my new born Amiga. Problem is that Amithlon does not seem to support that card for an unknown reason so I'm stuck, as other readers have already said, in 800x600 mode ...
Opinion : Amithlon is mega-fast, but limited ...
                 WinUAE is slower but more friendly to use ...

[spihunter]

@DethKnight

and the A1200 composite out goes into my TV-card in)

Good idea!!. I'll have to do that on my setup. I hate having to use my monitor swithcher all the time.