Amiga OS4 on old (PPC) Macs

[AndrewBell]

AmiGR wrote:
I'm just saying that Raffaele doesn't always need to go to such extremes.

Considering that this software could help to alleviate the dire shortage of suitable hardware, some may think it's worthy of extreme praise.
________
Marijuana Vaporizer

[dammy]

Considering that this software could help to alleviate the dire shortage of suitable hardware, some may think it's worthy of extreme praise.

For those A1 owners already own a legal OS4 PPC copy, that's wonderful news for them.  For anything else, this is just going to facilitate piracy and obviously someone has violated AI's IP rights.  When you deal with closed sourced software, you have to agree to abide by their rules, like it or not.

Dammy

[A1260]

this is a niche market and a hobby os the companies behind it need to make a living you know, this is not the way to do it. while you other here dont care and think this will be the solution to shortage of suitable hardware. for a little time it may be true but then these few mac's that run this will be old and very popular on ebay, we will again have ridiculous high prices and people start whining. as this aint enough there will not be any new updates of the aos because you killed of the business for these small companies like hyperion. what then? you ever thing of it?... so continue with your greedy ways of wanting everything free and act like children. when aos4.0 is dead its your fault, period!.

  :-x

[HenryCase]

dammy wrote:
No, it should be Hyperion's issue as they authorized Acube access to AI's IP.

But did they break the terms of the contract?

Look at page 31 of this document:
http://merlancia.us/amiga-hyperion/35-5decmcewenexhibit5show_case_doc.pdf

Discussing Moana, Bill McEwan says:
"How do you have access to OS 4 source code?"

Nicola Morocutti replies:
"We don't have direct access to the source... we are working with some Italian OS4 developers and with Hyperion as well."

Nicola goes on to say that Hyperion had only really acted as consultants. Show me the part of Hyperion's contract where this consultation is illegal.

A1260 wrote:
as this aint enough there will not be any new updates of the aos because you killed of the business for these small companies like hyperion.

This is the core of your argument, but it's also the part you've got most wrong. Amiga users (in 2008) understand that a purchase of OS4 would be necessary to keep development going. People will purchase OS4 to run it on a Mac (if we can boot into Workbench). Hyperion makes more money if we can get this working, making future OS4 development MORE likely.

[Krusher]

I'm shure a few people are scratching their heads why they didn't release OS4 for Mac in the first place, considering the  amount of interest the leaked bootloader has gotten. I myself AM very interested in a product like that, I'm even considering buying the G4 Mac the leaked iso runs on (I found the 1.52ghz version)
So no, this is not about piracy (it's officialy an NON existing product anyway) and it's far from finished, but's all about the hobby.

[Colani1200]

A1260 wrote:
so continue with your greedy ways of wanting everything free and act like children. when aos4.0 is dead its your fault, period!

Where did you read that and what does this have to do with topic? I think all Amiga users would be happy if there were products to buy!?

[maffoo]

A1260 wrote:
this is a niche market and a hobby os the companies behind it need to make a living you know, this is not the way to do it. while you other here dont care and think this will be the solution to shortage of suitable hardware. for a little time it may be true but then these few mac's that run this will be old and very popular on ebay, we will again have ridiculous high prices and people start whining. as this aint enough there will not be any new updates of the aos because you killed of the business for these small companies like hyperion. what then? you ever thing of it?... so continue with your greedy ways of wanting everything free and act like children. when aos4.0 is dead its your fault, period!.

  :-x

I really don't understand your logic. The companies concerned are making NO money out of OS4 because there is NO hardware for it to run on, and NO prospect of hardware in the near future. By ensuring that OS4 runs on existing hardware (admittedly a couple of years old now, but that's nothing considering the age of the hardware OS4 Classic runs on) the number of OS4 machines out there will increase, resulting in more development for the platform, creating a market for new (and authorised) hardware.

[dammy]

Quote:

    dammy wrote:
    No, it should be Hyperion's issue as they authorized Acube access to AI's IP.



But did they break the terms of the contract?

Look at page 31 of this document:
http://merlancia.us/amiga-hyperion/35-5decmcewenexhibit5show_case_doc.pdf

Discussing Moana, Bill McEwan says:
"How do you have access to OS 4 source code?"

Nicola Morocutti replies:
"We don't have direct access to the source... we are working with some Italian OS4 developers and with Hyperion as well."

Nicola goes on to say that Hyperion had only really acted as consultants. Show me the part of Hyperion's contract where this consultation is illegal.

Reread what I said please as I didn't say it was illegal contractually for Hyperion to work with OS4 Devs.   Hyperion did have a responsibility to make reasonable and prudent safe guards of their partner's IP when dealing with third parties which seems not to have happened in this situtation.   That is what AI can hammer Hyperion on.

Dammy

[HenryCase]

dammy wrote:
Reread what I said please as I didn't say it was illegal contractually for Hyperion to work with OS4 Devs.   Hyperion did have a responsibility to make reasonable and prudent safe guards of their partner's IP when dealing with third parties which seems not to have happened in this situtation.   That is what AI can hammer Hyperion on.

Dammy, we're not going to agree on Hyperion's responsibility for Moana until we can examine the relevant contract(s). Do you know where we can obtain these documents? I tried to download documents from this website:
http://tinyurl.com/394ump
Keep on getting "500 - Internal Server Error".

[beakster2]

HenryCase wrote:
http://mac-on-linux.sourceforge.net/
Are there any other VM solutions we could use?

PearPC is the one I was thinking of using to have a play with it.  It doesn't have a full Open Firmware implementation, but if it can run OS X, then OS4 should be easy with a bit of hacking.

I for one have been wanting to buy OS4 even since I used a development 68k version back in 2003.  An AmigaOne was out of my price range then, and I sold my BlizzardPPC back in 2000.  I've been waiting over 4 years to buy OS4, enough is enough.  If I can get it working on my PC under emulation, or on an old Mac I'll pay Hyperion for a copy and do it.  Otherwise God know how much longer Amiga Inc will keep us waiting for new hardware.

[dammy]

I for one have been wanting to buy OS4 even since I used a development 68k version back in 2003. An AmigaOne was out of my price range then, and I sold my BlizzardPPC back in 2000. I've been waiting over 4 years to buy OS4, enough is enough. If I can get it working on my PC under emulation, or on an old Mac I'll pay Hyperion for a copy and do it. Otherwise God know how much longer Amiga Inc will keep us waiting for new hardware.

Accept they can not sell it to you.  The only way legally for you to do so is to buy a A1, working or other wise.  Else, your committing an illegal act of piracy.

Dammy

[beakster2]

Why can't I buy the Classic version from Amikit?  Admittedly it will need some playing with, but everything should be there to get it working.

[dammy]

Why can't I buy the Classic version from Amikit? Admittedly it will need some playing with, but everything should be there to get it working.

I'll admit that is possible, although highly remote you would be ever able to get a OS for PPC/68K custom chipset combo to work on a alien G4 system without source code.

Dammy

[Vlabguy1]

Well I would much rather run Amiga OS4 on the macs that I own, including my
G4 PowerBook 17"..now that would be sweet!!

Long Live Amiga
Rich
ny

[Hans_]

HenryCase wrote:

Hans wrote:
The VGABios is great for displaying text-mode graphics, but not much else. Likewise, the BIOS IDE drivers are pretty much the bare minimum needed to read the disks. These drivers aren't Amiga OS drivers at all.

Thank you for taking the time to explain this to me Hans, I've still got a lot to learn about computer architecture.

Okay, so the main focus of our research efforts should be on deconstructing the HAL. Could we use a PC Oscilloscope (such as this one: http://www.picotech.com/highperformance-oscilloscopes.html) to probe the control and data lines of an A1 to construct a picture of how the HAL works, or is there an easier way?

A much easier way would be to use a disassembler on the kernel and loader, and examine the resulting assembly code, comparing it to the hardware documentation. Either way, it would take a considerable amount of effort as disassembled code is much less understandable than the original code. We're talking about thousands of lines of PowerPC assembly here.

Hyperion have stated that they're committed to expanding the amount of hardware that OS4 will run on. I hope that they can deliver, despite the lawsuits. They have the source code and the expertise, and they don't have to reverse engineer anything.

Hans
 

[HenryCase]

Hans_ wrote:
Hyperion have stated that they're committed to expanding the amount of hardware that OS4 will run on. I hope that they can deliver, despite the lawsuits. They have the source code and the expertise, and they don't have to reverse engineer anything.

I hope Hyperion do continue to develop OS4 in the way you describe, but I'm looking for solutions the community can implement to get us out of this legal mess.

How about an OS4 implementation layer for AROS? It wouldn't be as much work as when the AROS team started with OS 3.1 compatibility, as it could be built on top of the existing work. The OS4 SDK has been released, wouldn't an AROS implementation of this be enough to run OS4 apps?

With OS4 support built into AROS we free ourselves from not being able to develop apps for the platform, as well as giving ourselves many more hardware choices. If when the court case is finished, and new OS4 hardware is released, we will have a whole bunch of ready made apps that we wouldn't have otherwise.

Do you think we should start a bounty for OS4 AROS?