Been away from Amiga, OS4? What?

[pappavis]

Once upon a time i used to be a dedicated Believer in the Gospel of Amiga.
About 6 years ago i have traded my Amiga for a Win2000 machine.  Occacionaly i have browsed on amiga.org to see the state of things.

For now my plans are to stay on Windoze, for the plain simple reason that Lock On Modern Air Combat is only available on Windows..  Waaaay back in time Vulcan Software used to have a excellent flightsim Tetfighter too.

Anyways. Are there any Amiga machines, powerPC or other...?

[Maria]

pappavis wrote:

/.../
Anyways. Are there any Amiga machines, powerPC or other...?

I have an AmigaOne, it got a PPC processor running at 800MHz and 256MB RAM, i'm running AmigaOS4 and Debian Linux on it... Works great...

You can find more info about AmigaOne and AOS4 here:
http://intuitionbase.com/
http://os4depot.net/ (programs for AOS4)
http://www.amigaworld.net/
http://www.eyetech.co.uk/ (the distributor of AmigaOne computers)
http://www.hyperion-entertainment.biz/ (the creators of OS4)

[Dan]

Well there is AimgaOne and Pegasos. AmigaOne, the one that runs OS4, is currently unavailable. It´s also of very expensive and of dubious quality, it has DMA-issues etc( Before somebody starts to :flame:  sure you can patch and work around it but its still there).
Pegasos is another PPC-machine with more modern hardware. It seems that they are mainly focused at running opensource OSes at the moment but it also runs MorphOS a OS thats compatible with the previous versions  of AmigaOS.
For red and blue tinted views of the world look at http://www.amigaworld.net/ and http://www.morphzone.org.

If you can stand x86 :-D  then there is always http://www.aros.org/.
See also http://www.aros-exec.org/
Why not try a AROS live-cd. It will work on your regular machine. Great for trying it out.

Edit: I assume you already know about WinUAE/AmigaForever?

[Maria]

@Dan

I have no quality or DMA-issues etc with my AmigaOne, you must be thinking about the first "prototype-ish" XE boards (which can be fixed)? The new Micro AmigaOne have no problems at all.  And i don't think that they are to expensive ehiter... And finally they are the only new hardware that actually can run the new incredible AmigaOS4.0.

[billt]

The DMA issues brought up here really don't affect AmigaOS4. If you have a Micro AmigaOne (Mini-ITX), there doesn't seem to be a DMA issue, and if you have an AmigaOne XE (ATX) there is a PCB mod to make everything happy, or you can use a PCI IDE card and USB hub and avoid the hardware patches. AmigaOne SE (ATX) was the original board which I haven't heard of any PCB mods for, but it also uses an older southbridge revision that may not take the XE mods or something like that.

If you want to use Linux, there is a patched 2.4.something kernel which works as I understand, and someone is working on patching 2.6.something as well for the special DMA considerations to work. All will work fine with DMA disabled in Linux.

There's a couple other things in the works but there aren't many details available yet. ACK is working on a new classic Amiga PPC accelerator, Olegil has a project (and I believe he is capable so long as he keeps the motivation going), and Garry Hare at Amiga Inc. has mentioned there's some other device that he can't say anything more than that about due to NDAs at the moment.

[Rooster]

Not to stray from topic, but where can I find this AROS-LiveCD at??  Looked all over the two related sites..  Aros-exec site only offer movie downloads, and the main Aros site has a bootable cd listed, but not a live, just an install..  Would kind of like to see what Aros looks like, but not necessarily "live" in the environment, thus the lack of desire to go through the install..  That's the main reason I've not tried it yet..  No free HD to risk/use to try it..  But that LIVE intrests me greatly..

  Rooster

[alx]

Rooster wrote:

Not to stray from topic, but where can I find this AROS-LiveCD at??

AROS-Max

[Matt_H]

This is the issue surrounding DMA and the AmigaONE:
1. AmigaONE XE boards will lock up if DMA is enabled and the Ethernet port is in use. This can be repaired by a rework, or can be avoided by using a PCI IDE/SATA controller and is not an issue on the Micro AmigaONEs.
2. The southbridge on all AmigaONE boards is a little weird, and doesn't do DMA in the "typical" way. AmigaOS4 has a built-in software workaround for this, while Linux does not. This means that only special AmigaONE Linux kernels will work. The stable one is 2.4.26, and there's a less stable 2.6.something. The PPC Linux maintainers apparently don't want the Amiga patches incorporated into the main source tree.
3. Additionally, the onboard USB ports of the XE boards don't hotswap correctly. This can be fixed in a rework or avoided by using an external hub.

My opinions are mixed. I think the Pegasos is vastly superior hardware (it's extremely versatile and can run many, many different OSes). But I also think that AmigaOS4 is the better operating system (MorphOS doesn't appear mature enough as a complete system). On the other hand, I think there's more (and more useful) software for MorphOS.

I currently own an AmigaONE, but I'll be adding a Pegasos as soon as finances permit.

[SamuraiCrow]

Keep in mind that AOS 4 is still in prerelease form (the third update to be exact) but will be released later this year.  MorphOS is available for Pegasos and PPC accelerated AGA chipset Amigas but doesn't have drivers for as many devices as AmigaOS 4 beta for A1200/A4000.  There are accelerator boards planned for the A1200/4000 as well as the MicroA1.

[zephar123]

heres the only link you need to find out all you need to know about amiga development =)

http://morphzone.org from there you can goto all the other links. the equipment can be bought from genesis which is where you get an awsome peg2. Sorry, but I love it to much just got mine a month ago and i cannot believe how awsome it is.

[Dan]

Well let´s just say its a hardware patch of DMA in the microA1, but it´s still a patch. Anyway it seems that the workarounds in OS4 works like they should, no problems there.

If ACK comes out with those accelerators I will almost certainly buy one. A G4-accelerator for an AGA-machine with JIT for OS4 would convince a lot of people. :-D
Otherwise I personally don´t see a benefit over UAE and AROS.

SamuraiCrow wrote:
Keep in mind that AOS 4 is still in prerelease form (the third update to be exact) but will be released later this year.  MorphOS is available for Pegasos and PPC accelerated AGA chipset Amigas but doesn't have drivers for as many devices as AmigaOS 4 beta for A1200/A4000.  There are accelerator boards planned for the A1200/4000 as well as the MicroA1.

Escept you forget to mention the small details that OS4 for A1200/A4000 is not currently available, whereas MorphOS for A1200/A4000 is.  It's free too, OS4 for A1200/A4000 will not be free, if/when it gets released finally.

@original poster
All AROS i386 native install CD's are actually live CD's.  AROS-Max is an AROS distro in the vein of a Linux distro, eg, it has lots of software on the disc, but the nightly ISO's from aros.org have the latest features.  A new version  of AROS-Max is planned, and there is always my Windows hosted, emulated version of AROS-Max which is available from the AROS-Max website.

Excuse my spelling and grammar, i'm drunk.

[Dan]

A little link.http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2339
seems like the chances for new AmigaOnes from Eyetech are close to non-existant. Maybe from somewhere else though.

[Maria]

New microA1-C boards are on their way to dealers...

http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2545

[bloodline]

Maria wrote:
New microA1-C boards are on their way to dealers...

http://amigaworld.net/modules/news/article.php?storyid=2545

Possibly the last ever batch of A1s, get them quick!