Develop applications for UAE based pc,internet browser

[nikodr]

Since classic amigas are no longer able to keep up with the latest web advancements
-and when i say classic i mean 68k based ones- i figured a solution would be to write
programs that would take advantage of the power of our pc.

In that sense a normal prized pc these days can run amikit and one can have an amiga
that is many times faster than ANY other classic amiga would ever hope.

I know of aros and amibridge system,but aros is not able to run from the dvd in many pc's
i tried to install it.Since an amikit amiga can have so much power wouldn't it be able to run
a special version of a webbrowser like owb netsurf etc.

The next step would be to have  a dvd that would boot and you could have the latest amikit.
Why not aros?I love aros and the idea of amibridge,but a 68k based executable would be good.
But aros has one problem for a novice programmer : It is not so easy to create your own native
 aros applications,while with gcc or any other compiler like sas c or storm c one can easily create
68k applications.

In a way uae is not only an emulator,it could be the future of amiga (in the sense of natami).
By modifying the source code of the emulator one could do things that an original amiga would never do!

2)For Classic amigas i have an idea that could be used either for zorro/usb/clockport based amigas.
Why not create a hardware accesory that could deal with the internet?Since our classic 68k amiga
is not fast enough anymore to follow up with the web advancements why not use something else to
decode heavy sites?That hardware add on could be used for mp3 playing,quicktime/avi decoding,and
any other heavy work like html parsing,that way the 68k will be enough and maybe to have some
onboard ram for buffering and cache for pictures videos.(in the sense a very normal page of firefox on
a pc if you login to facebook could easily eat up to 100mbytes just like that!)

What about a board like VHDL ? What would the cost be for such a thing ? I strongly believe that a
board like this would give much life for any amiga.

What do you guys think?

[B00tDisk]

Since classic amigas are no longer able to keep up with the latest web advancements
-and when i say classic i mean 68k based ones- i figured a solution would be to write
programs that would take advantage of the power of our pc.

In that sense a normal prized pc these days can run amikit and one can have an amiga
that is many times faster than ANY other classic amiga would ever hope.

I know of aros and amibridge system,but aros is not able to run from the dvd in many pc's
i tried to install it.Since an amikit amiga can have so much power wouldn't it be able to run
a special version of a webbrowser like owb netsurf etc.

The next step would be to have  a dvd that would boot and you could have the latest amikit.
Why not aros?I love aros and the idea of amibridge,but a 68k based executable would be good.
But aros has one problem for a novice programmer : It is not so easy to create your own native
 aros applications,while with gcc or any other compiler like sas c or storm c one can easily create
68k applications.

In a way uae is not only an emulator,it could be the future of amiga (in the sense of natami).
By modifying the source code of the emulator one could do things that an original amiga would never do!

2)For Classic amigas i have an idea that could be used either for zorro/usb/clockport based amigas.
Why not create a hardware accesory that could deal with the internet?Since our classic 68k amiga
is not fast enough anymore to follow up with the web advancements why not use something else to
decode heavy sites?That hardware add on could be used for mp3 playing,quicktime/avi decoding,and
any other heavy work like html parsing,that way the 68k will be enough and maybe to have some
onboard ram for buffering and cache for pictures videos.(in the sense a very normal page of firefox on
a pc if you login to facebook could easily eat up to 100mbytes just like that!)

What about a board like VHDL ? What would the cost be for such a thing ? I strongly believe that a
board like this would give much life for any amiga.

What do you guys think?

What about a gumstix based computer, hanging off of an ethernet port on the Amiga (and let's face it, just about any Amiga can have an ethernet port these days) running the apps needed.  Then use VNC or whatever to access the tiny little "cartridge" while it accesses the 'net.

Just an idea.

[nikodr]

My idea is a hardware based solution that would allow 15+ old machine to access the web.Since 68k can't do justice when dealing with the latest web sites (how to decode jpeg/avi/quicktime/java) maybe a vhdl based zorro/usb/clockport card can do that.

The other part is since uae can outperform any classic amiga,maybe applications could be written to take advantage of the raw horsepower of modern pc,now in that sense no need for a port of amiga os to x86.We already have uae that can do that of us.

Aros and uae i think is the future for all amigans that can't spend cash on amiga anymore.

With 400 euros i can get a notebook that is ahead in capabilities of any classic amiga (when i run uae that is or amikit).

But these are all my speculations.I don't know if it is possible.
I know of the mp64 card that can play mp3,now a similar thing could be used for decoding avi,xvid or anything else on hardware.

Now since amikit uses the horsepower of a pc,imagine a 68040 that is 500mhz on amikit.it could easily decode anything!

So why hasn't this been done yet?

[Trev]

You could design a single board computer on a Zorro card (it was done with bridge boards, after all) running an embedded operating system and a custom software interface that autoconf'd to provide bsdsocket.library, a raw SANA-II device, a P96 chip/card library, an AHI device, etc. Ambitious and expensive, but cool.

Another cool option (for people with PCI busboards) would be software support for a Killer NIC, which is basically a PCI-based SBC. Depending on the bus speed, you could host some features (display, audio, etc.) over IP and make the translation transparent on the Amiga side.  At the very least, it would make a nice, fast IP stack for anyone willing to write a bsdsocket.library-compatible interface to it.

EDIT: Much of this was attempted by the Siamese system.

[koaftder]

After a point, with ideas like this, you've moved beyond a expansion upgrade and created a whole new computer and are just using the amiga as a really complicated keyboard and mouse controller.

[Trev]

That's essentially what most of today's add-in cards are, although most of the control code still runs in the host environment.

[nikodr]

Basically as long as we can run other applications on amiga and there is controller software on the amiga then there is no problem.Problem lies how to surf the web practically with a 68030 and open facebook or my space pages,this is simply nor possible right now.

Remember back in the early days of mpeg and dvd appearence there were cards that were used to decode mpeg and dvd videos.Amiga simply does not have the horsepower to do any of that anymore.By using a card like this we can bring an old system back to life.

A simple zorro or usb/clockport adapter or some vhdl code in it and we can bypass the limits of the 68k.

Now if you ask me how this could be done?I have no idea.Maybe some experianced coder or hardware manufacturer could tell us

[stefcep2]

Basically as long as we can run other applications on amiga and there is controller software on the amiga then there is no problem.Problem lies how to surf the web practically with a 68030 and open facebook or my space pages,this is simply nor possible right now.

Remember back in the early days of mpeg and dvd appearence there were cards that were used to decode mpeg and dvd videos.Amiga simply does not have the horsepower to do any of that anymore.By using a card like this we can bring an old system back to life.

A simple zorro or usb/clockport adapter or some vhdl code in it and we can bypass the limits of the 68k.

Now if you ask me how this could be done?I have no idea.Maybe some experianced coder or hardware manufacturer could tell us

i am confused about what you are suggesting.  There seem to be 2 parts, which may or may not be related:

1.  Write a 68k browser like OWB tand media software thats UAE-only because thats the only way to get sufficient CPU power to run it, and

2.  Have a hardware add-on for for classic amigas that does the CPU-intensive stuff like web browsing and media file coding and decoding.

Have i got this right?

i think option 1 would better suit most people, as it will be cheaper ( maybe even free) and will only get faster with time.

[nikodr]

Stefcep2 yes that's what i would like to see.
I think option 2 could be possible too?