Amithlon VS WinUAE VS AROS question (OS 3.9 related)

[Lurch]

Also when Winuae crashes (great bit of software, but it does crash a little more often than Id like) youre left with a blank screen if youve replaced explorer with winuae. Any additional hardware manipulation needs to be done through windows, youre at the mercy of Windows viruses, system slowdowns over time, and so on.

If you havent disabled task manager via ctrl-alt-del then you can start explorer or WinUAE in a couple of seconds. Although it's just like any machine even an Amiga crashing just restart :-)

Viruii issues on Windows box is easy to manage, MS security essentials is fantastic. Although the chance you will get a virus on a Windows turned to Amiga box for gaming is very low as most viruii are via the web these days so if you are browsing inside WinUAE it becomes a moot issue.

Not too sure about the graphics modes, I'm very happy playing my games at 1440x900 full screen. The scaling is bang on, better than my old 80's Spring CRT monitor and actually fills the screen nicely. Workbench looks great too, now being able to use 1440x900 wallpaper :-)

OctaMed... tried it, can't find any flaws in it, even using protracker works well :-)

Almost at the point were I'll sell my Amiga collection TBH, I'm getting a better more enjoyable experience out of my WinUAE setup.

[fishy_fiz]

Wipeout2097 amiga vesion is ppc only. You can howver play the playstation version on os3.x with FPSE.
Joypad should work if you have usb hardware supported by poseidon. Additionally you can use a catweasel and use 9pin amiga joysticks/joypads.
As for what OS4.x and MOS do that amithlon/winuae+os3.9 cant, to be honest, not a lot. The main difference is mos/os4.x do more "out-of-the-box" whereas os3.9 needs the user to make lots of modifications. Given similar hardware resources all 3 are similarly capable. The main exception that stands out is web browsing is a a better experience on OS4,aros, and espeically mos.
As for how fast it'll be on an athlonxp 3000+, pretty darn fast. For 68k speed it should give something along the lines of a 1ghz g4 using ppc code. You should be able to run dvd-ish quality movies, but no higher. Faster again when using amithlon native x86 code, but that's more theoretical as so far there's very few amithlon native apps.
As for warp3d/open gl, unfortunately there's only software rendering availbable for amithlon via wazp3d (technically not true, but for conversations sake t may as well be). Its quite fast for a cpu renderer, but obviously nowhere near as fast as 3d gfx card rendered. In quake 1 on my amithlon box I get about 190fps in 640x480 with normal cpu renderer and it drops back to about 50 using wazp3d with all effects enabled @ 640x480 (filtering, fog, mipmapping, antialiasing, etc.). Payback runs fine at 1600x1200 in normal software rendering normally, but I have to drop it back to 720x576 using wazp3d (still looks nicer using wazp3d though with effects enabled).
As for usb/ps2, personally I use usb mouse and keyboard, but I had to enable legacy support in bios as otherwise it'll rely on amiga os usb stack. It's also completely p96 and ahi based. 98% of system friendly apps work fine out of the box.
I think people underestimate just how much software is, or can be system friendly on the amiga too. Stuff like Genetic Species, Flyin' High, Racer, SimCity 2000, can be played without UAE, not to mention the more typically mention things like Trapped, Trapped2, Gloom series, ScummVM, NemacIV, Napalm, Earth2140, Racer, doom, heretic, hexen, seuck (this was a surpise to me atually), Dynamite, mame, snes9x, dgen, quake, quake2, payback, descent1/2, descent freespace, Foundation,  Exodus, Shadow Of A Third Moon, Onescapee, Virtual GP, Tales From Heaven, Nightlong and so on and so forth. There's a heck of a lot of system friendly stuff out there that doesnt require UAE. More apps then games, but still a lot of games too.

[fishy_fiz]

@Lurch

Nah, that's not true. Browsing with an amiga browser inside winuae still exposes the host to any potential viruses you find there, double so if youre using bsdsocket.lib emulation. Just cos you dont see it doesnt mean it's not doing harm to the host.
The point was though that you cant escape the host OS using Winuae, something you yourself just supported (task manager, MS security essentials, impossible to generate custom p96 modes without Windows, etc.).

Im not saying its a bad experience, I too have had systems setup like youve mentioned.

[psxphill]

Browsing with an amiga browser inside winuae still exposes the host to any potential viruses you find there

You'd still be much safer than MacOS.
 
Just because it's possible in theory to pick up a virus through all those layers of abstraction, it would be very complex and little chance of any return on your investment.
 
It's about time winuae emulated a powerup card.

[Digiman]

I would suggest to try AEROS but you would need to wait a bit (december).

The future setup on AresOne will be as follows (in Grub)

1. AEROS
2. AROS (distro of your choice)
3. AmigaOS 3.x (minimum 3.1 upto 3.9)

AEROS and AmigaOS3.9 entry will share Amiga Partitions. So whatever you setup in Boot Option 3 will be available in AEROS and vice versa.

EDIT:
3D is possible with http://thellier.free.fr/Wazp3D.htm

But is Amithlon faster or natively more compatible than Aeros+AROS for OS 3.x apps? (ie without any UAE being used) I'm not a fan of Linux apps btw

I am thinking Athlon XP3900+ CPU now. I even have such a motherboard for testing, just need some spare disk drives.

Remember I do everyday stuff on Wintel machines, just tools for the job.

[XDelusion]

All this talk reminds me of how much I hope that the Natami and FPGA see the light of day!

[fishy_fiz]

Amithlon + OS3.9 is much, much faster than AEROS +68k apps could ever be. Completely different league (especially seeing as AEROS just uses UAE for 68k).

Contrary to how it may sound Im not trying to convince the OP to use Amithlon, Im simply elaborating on the options. For all its additional speed ad other pros there are situations where I might recommend Winuae still. Bu Id personally Id use amithlon vs winuae any day of the week if its for a "serious" machine. For a more casual system, or for someone who predominantely plays custom chipset games Id suggest the Winuae route. For anyone with more of an interst in other things Id recommend Amithlon.

[XDelusion]

Let's not write off the a modded Classic XBOX or Modded 360 for the casual Amiga gamers either! I hate Microsoft (for which reason all my XBOX's were used or free and all games pirated except the one I use to hack them), but I have to say that XPort did wonders when he began to port over to many great emulators to the system. It's like a Video Game Jukebox!

And from what I've heard, the 360 incarnation of UAE is absolutely amazing, though I've not hacked any of my 360's yet to see for my self. In fact I've never anything besides plug them in and made sure they at least booted.


But ya, you are right, Amithlon is an easter egg waiting to be found. It may be a struggle, but once you got it worked out, you are in seventh heaven for the most part, though I do with it could have kept alive long enough for it's second incarnation to have become manifest.

I wish there was a way for someone to pick up that torch.

[Digiman]

All this talk reminds me of how much I hope that the Natami and FPGA see the light of day!

They are not really going to help achieve my aim of a super fast OS 3.9 box bang/$ though so not suitable for this project. That's not to say I'm not looking forward to their release.

[Digiman]

Amithlon + OS3.9 is much, much faster than AEROS +68k apps could ever be. Completely different league (especially seeing as AEROS just uses UAE for 68k).

Contrary to how it may sound Im not trying to convince the OP to use Amithlon, Im simply elaborating on the options. For all its additional speed ad other pros there are situations where I might recommend Winuae still. Bu Id personally Id use amithlon vs winuae any day of the week if its for a "serious" machine. For a more casual system, or for someone who predominantely plays custom chipset games Id suggest the Winuae route. For anyone with more of an interst in other things Id recommend Amithlon.

I can always dual boot to XP+WinUAE, but Amithlon has to go on first.

The horrors of installing a fully functioning Amithlon setup await me

[phoenixkonsole]

@Fishy_fiz
How much faster is Amithlon compared to WinUAE / PUAE(Linux) using JIT?
I don't own Amithlon and had no chance to try it somewhere.

[trekiej]

I think Amikit with OS_3.5 on a Windows machine is not a bad experience.

[Heiroglyph]

@Fishy_fiz
How much faster is Amithlon compared to WinUAE / PUAE(Linux) using JIT?
I don't own Amithlon and had no chance to try it somewhere.

IMHO, if you're running 68k software the speed difference is negligible on current hardware.

Is it 1000x faster or only 950x?  Hard for a human to tell.

I can build a faster UAE system than I can Amithlon though, Amithlon has too many hardware limitations.  UAE runs on anything you can buy.

The real advantage comes with mixed 68k/x86 software which is rare and IMHO, not good for the community unless the OS is moving to x86, which it's not.

[Digiman]

IMHO, if you're running 68k software the speed difference is negligible on current hardware.

Is it 1000x faster or only 950x?  Hard for a human to tell.

I can build a faster UAE system than I can Amithlon though, Amithlon has too many hardware limitations.  UAE runs on anything you can buy.

The real advantage comes with mixed 68k/x86 software which is rare and IMHO, not good for the community unless the OS is moving to x86, which it's not.

But system friendly RTGd app like something like 3D rendering app in OS 3.9 but not requiring UAE to execute it is faster on Amithlon no?

I am buying the hardware from ebay anyway.

Soundblaster 128 PCI, Realtek 8139 PCI yes?
Graphics card...which is best?

One more question, right now I am transcoding 21 VIC20 videos AVI==>FLV and set task priority to lowest and watching Terra Nova on movie player with priority set to high and XP isn't doing a good job as video playback is jerky!!!! Does OS 3.9 suffer like this or does it have true responsive preemptive multitasking ??

[Heiroglyph]

But system friendly RTGd app like something like 3D rendering app in OS 3.9 but not requiring UAE to execute it is faster on Amithlon no?

No, it's very close to the same, in fact most of the code is shared.  Also, WinUAE especially is pretty finely tuned, has many more years of development and can take advantage of drivers that have been optimized by the company that made the hardware.  The Amithlon graphics drivers are reverse engineered and just a little more than a framebuffer, not much hardware acceleration.

I am buying the hardware from ebay anyway.

Soundblaster 128 PCI, Realtek 8139 PCI yes?
Graphics card...which is best?

One more question, right now I am transcoding 21 VIC20 videos AVI==>FLV and set task priority to lowest and watching Terra Nova on movie player with priority set to high and XP isn't doing a good job as video playback is jerky!!!! Does OS 3.9 suffer like this or does it have true responsive preemptive multitasking ??

Most of the CPU time will be spent emulating a 68k CPU, so don't expect miracles.

Think of it as a cheap hyper fast Amiga, like a PPC system.  It's never going to be as fast as a native x86 machine, OS and software because it has to spend time pretending to be something else.

Don't get me wrong, I love Amithlon, but you have to like it for what it really is.

[Digiman]

Most of the CPU time will be spent emulating a 68k CPU, so don't expect miracles.

Think of it as a cheap hyper fast Amiga, like a PPC system.  It's never going to be as fast as a native x86 machine, OS and software because it has to spend time pretending to be something else.

Don't get me wrong, I love Amithlon, but you have to like it for what it really is.

I meant from proper loadsharing of CPU resource. My A1000 multi-tasks more appropriately than XP it seems in % of CPU power. The encoding should not have affected AVI playback ever if set to realtime