To buy or not to buy...

[motorollin]

Now I'm only in Uni 3 days a week instead of 4, it's cheaper for me to buy tickets each day than the season ticket I bought in September. I've worked out that if I surrender the season ticket I'll save the best part of a £1000. So now I'm thinking of two options: put it in the bank for a rainy day, or spend a fair chunk of it on a CSPPC (if I can find one) so I can actually run the copy of OS4 I've got coming my way.

Any opinions on how good OS4 actually is on a classic Amiga (compared to OS3.9), and whether it's worth doing this, would be very much appreciated. Also, I have no idea how much CSPPCs are going for these days, so some guide price would be good.

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moto

[spihunter]

If you bought a CSPPC and sold your CSMK3 you would probably just come short a few hundred $

Good luck finding a CSPPC though......

Or you could just put it in the bank and see if OS4 gets some new hardware sometime.

[HammerD]

OS 4 is a HUGE improvement over OS 3.9.  IMHO if you enjoy using the classic and want to continue to do this...if you can secure a CS PPC that would be cool.  I am sure you will like OS 4.

If you aren't so tied to the classic you may want to try and hold out for the possibility of new hardware to run OS4 or a used AmigaONE.

For me I enjoy using the Classic hardware...there is a certain feeling about it that you just don't really get with the new hardware.  If the underlying hardware isn't there it really isn't the same experience for me - even though the same OS may be running.

Amithlon and of course the MicroA1 I have are pretty good, though  MicroA1 is very speedy on OS4!

[motorollin]

@spihunter
Oh yeah, I forgot I would have a MKIII to sell :lol: A £150 difference sounds like more of an upgrade and less of a massive investment.

@HammerD
Yes I do like the classic hardware. But if OS4 was able to run on non-Amiga hardware, I would still do that as a reliable, modern OS4 machine and keep my MKIII A4000 for classic usage.

A couple of questions which will sway my decision. Is OS4 100% backwards compatible? Put simply, if I run a 68k WHDLoad game from OS4 classic, will it work?

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moto

[SamuraiCrow]

A couple of questions which will sway my decision. Is OS4 100% backwards compatible? Put simply, if I run a 68k WHDLoad game from OS4 classic, will it work?

It might.  You may have to disable Petunia using a blacklist and run it under an interpreted mode or try EUAE to get it to work.  If it does work on the first try it should scream!

There are a few gotchas involved in using the Petunia JIT compiler.  I don't think it supports vector base relocation like WHDLoad requires.

[motorollin]

I'm guessing Petunia is the OS4 68k emulator? How does it perform compared to a real 060/50? And I'm also assuming that blacklisting it will make it run using the real 68k CPU instead of the emulated one? Are there any issues with custom chip access from OS4?

If someone with OS4 classic could try a WHDLoad game and report back it would be great.

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moto

[bloodline]

motorollin wrote:
I'm guessing Petunia is the OS4 68k emulator? How does it perform compared to a real 060/50? And I'm also assuming that blacklisting it will make it run using the real 68k CPU instead of the emulated one?

I doubt it, I can't see how OS4 could use the real 68k... I expect it falls back to an interpretor, which probably supports more CPU features!

[Fixer]

This is assuming you find a CyberstormPPC in working order which also doesn't competitively go through the roof on eBay.

It's annoying I've got the A4000, the Mediator 4000Di and the PCI cards all ready but no CyberstormPPC.

Is it not possible to upgrade the Cyberstorm you've already got I wonder?

[Akiko]

@motorollin

I read somewhere WHDload doesn't work under OS4, the easiest solution to setup a dual boot partition for OS 3.9, OS4, I believe Amigakit is developing a dual boot loader too  :-)

[motorollin]

@bloodline
Why shouldn't it? OS3.x is a 68k OS and can access a real PPC processor, so why shouldn't a PPC OS be able to access the real 68k processor?

@Akiko
Hmmm, that may affect my decision about whether to upgrade, since I use my Amiga mainly as a classic games machine.

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moto

[Fixer]

Why shouldn't it? OS3.x is a 68k OS and can access a real PPC processor, so why shouldn't a PPC OS be able to access the real 68k processor?

I thought it was common knowledge that OS4 classic doesn't use the 68k CPU on the accelerator - I don't know why they did it this way but I can definitely tell you THEY DID. Sorry.

[motorollin]

Maybe common knowledge, but I didn't know :-) So how does Petunia compare with an 060/50?

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moto

[TiredOLife]

Stunned.
I can't believe there is something Moto didn't know.
 :-o  :lol:

[motorollin]

Heh, that's kind but my knowledge is tiny compared to some people's here :-)

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moto

[Faerytale]

Its time for the whdload team to make wdload os4 freindly
If its possible