PowerPC accelerator - how does that work then?

[wawrzon]

oyeah! karlos provided an answer in depth i was hoping for.
i d like to mention that even i now own one, i have considered and still consider the ppc accels too complicated, too clumsy, too expensive and in the long run not dependable enough a solution as it was worth to copy. at its time they mark a point when i decided to finally turn my back on what was going to happen to amiga and i am very happy i have been not aware of the whole ppc tragedy.

[psxphill]

Exact reason why OS 4 and MOS are seen as natural progression of Amiga PPC Cards. Unlike CUSA trolls that try to explain it was meant to be x86 way.

Bernd Meyer would disagree with you.

[Karlos]

Let's be clear about one thing. Commodore (the original) never produced any PPC hardware for Amiga at any time and future PPC compatibility was not on their radar. They did, however, produce x86 boards but they were designed to run x86 operating systems (typically MS-DOS) for business use. They weren't integrated with AmigaOS to any extent.

The PPC boards were entirely third party aftermarket expansions. However, their intent was to augment the host machine and allow AmigaOS to run applications that would otherwise be too processor intensive for 68K.

[vox]

Let's be clear about one thing. Commodore (the original) never produced any PPC hardware for Amiga at any time and future PPC compatibility was not on their radar. They did, however, produce x86 boards but they were designed to run x86 operating systems (typically MS-DOS) for business use. They weren't integrated with AmigaOS to any extent.

The PPC boards were entirely third party aftermarket expansions. However, their intent was to augment the host machine and allow AmigaOS to run applications that would otherwise be too processor intensive for 68K.

Surely, because PowerPC wasn`t avail at time Commodore died.
And yes, they made PC clones, but that didn`t do well.

They also did Sidecar AT/XT expansion boards to make Amiga hardware compatibile with PC, but only up to 286 or 386. On original Amiga 1000 1985 presentation PC Task or similar was demonstrated with machine.

So there is no trouble Commodore wanted soft or hard x86 compatibility to utilize the bussiness software, but AmigaOS never went x86 in any part.

However, there were many PPC related projects
http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/ppchistory.html
out of which only MOS and OS4 (and AROS PPC) survived

Amiga DE / OS 5 was supposed to support both PPC and x86 but never went real.

pOS, a WB enhancement that was independent idea of ProDAD was made beta 68k and also supposed to become PowerPC
http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/pos.html

[vox]

Let's be clear about one thing. Commodore (the original) never produced any PPC hardware for Amiga at any time and future PPC compatibility was not on their radar. They did, however, produce x86 boards but they were designed to run x86 operating systems (typically MS-DOS) for business use. They weren't integrated with AmigaOS to any extent.

The PPC boards were entirely third party aftermarket expansions. However, their intent was to augment the host machine and allow AmigaOS to run applications that would otherwise be too processor intensive for 68K.

Note that Phase 5 wanted to move AmigaOS to PPC
http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/prebox.html

So Phase5 card was a transition.

Even with OS4 / MOS times, first a G3/G4 card for A1200/A4000 was planned first before amigaOne board, but manufacturer failed.

Only x86 system that bare Amiga name was Amiga Inc improvisation
that had nothing to do with AmigaOS
http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/os4dev.html

So surely there was much more effort in AmigaOS + PPC ways

[vox]

Bernd Meyer would disagree with you.

UAE and Amithlon are emulation boxes that provided like AmiKit, AmiSYS and AmigaForever later way to emulate the OS 3.x but not an inch way forward (like PowerUp, WarUp, MorphOS and AmigaOS 4 did).

Dammy and Baron would surely disagree too.

[fishy_fiz]

That's not true. Yes amithlon does emulate a 680x0, but its not an amiga emulator as such and shares little in common with uae. Amithlon is more a way to get os3.x running on the metal on pc hardware as opposed to emulating an amiga.

Amithlon also lets a person run x86 AmigaOS3.x code under AmigaOS. You could compile 68k components to x86 code and run then in tandem with 68k.
While the OS itself makes only minor changes its not really accurate to say it didnt move forward and shares next to nothing in common with 68k "distros".

Perhaps you should learn about what it is youre typing before you type it?

[Karlos]

@vox

What about AROS on x86? The first versions of that go back to mid to late 90's. I may be wrong, but I'm sure it appeared before there were any PPC boards on sale.

Also, regarding Amithlon, see the "big-endian x86" target. You could compile code for x86 with the automatic modification that all memory accesses are swapped (according to their size) to ensure interoperability with the OS. It was clever stuff.

[vox]

That's not true. Yes amithlon does emulate a 680x0, but its not an amiga emulator as such and shares little in common with uae. Amithlon is more a way to get os3.x running on the metal on pc hardware as opposed to emulating an amiga.

Amithlon also lets a person run x86 AmigaOS3.x code under AmigaOS. You could compile 68k components to x86 code and run then in tandem with 68k.
While the OS itself makes only minor changes its not really accurate to say it didnt move forward and shares next to nothing in common with 68k "distros".

Perhaps you should learn about what it is youre typing before you type it?

OK, I know all about Amithlon, tested it at the time, yes its only x86 recompile of AmigaOS 3.x not new OS or any way forward. Yes, some apps in it are x86, some could be recompiled. Its not emulation and that is why its fastest of all x86 toys. Sadly doesn`t support much hardware and there are no x86 apps to run it. It dead ended quick even for some time it was considered as way forward. But didn`t produced any new code in terms of OS advancement. And is only AmigaOS related product that was taken out of sale as illegal.
http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/emulators/amithlon.html

And in fact it isn`t progress, it was just straight port. Layers like PowerUp, WarUp, PPC supported new apps and games, and later MOS and OS4 brought real progress ahead (In early stage that never made it to public OS4 was also just an OS 3.1 PPC port. But it took 30 months before it was public with many improvements in libs, execSG etc.). MOS approach was also great and innovative, first to make 68k emulation within the new OS! To bring new MUI, optimize everything and bring first completely native PPC apps - no coprecessing! 68k off and retired!

About AROS x86, yes it first appeared in 1997 but only recently did it implement most of AmigaOS 3.x features and went ahead.

OK?
So x86 Amiga developments, beside AROS, didn`t went much. With AROS I appriciate realy its multiplatform and open source, only one to be, so its kind of different.

This was most infamous anti x86 speech by Hyperion.
http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/emulators/hyperionblast.html

Surely, many things changed since then.
MOS was supposed to be first choice for next gen AmigaOS, but eventualy decision was make to do PPC port of AmigaOS 3.1 and from there go to today.
http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/aros.html
It was idea to make open AmigaOS
http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/oafaros.html
and they made it - my salute!

But its not that x86 tied at all, and now it returned even to 68k!

So most of the OS progress was done on PPC in those terms, apart from AROS.

[nyteschayde]

Ok, please don't kill me. I know this has been beaten to death in one way or another. I also know OS4 is very anti-x86 right now (for now) as is MOS with their reuse PowerPC hardware drive (which I appreciate as I own both old PowerMacs as wells a A1200T/PPC).

My question is wouldn't something like a x86 SOC with a 68K emulation layer be a good fit? A trapdoor expansion for the A500/A1200 style machines could offer up SATA, Ethernet, possibly even a RTG driver for the SOC graphics driver and much faster performance than any 68K.

Intel CPUs haven't been very good at emulating PPC hardware to my knowledge (aka PearPC and what not) but that could simply have just been the software and not the chips fault.

It seems as long as the Amiga thinks it's getting a 68K CPU, it really doesn't matter what the architecture of the accelerator is. And if it comes with lots of the features provided by a SOC style solution and perhaps a DDR3 (not for speed reasons but rather availability reasons) RAM slot then woohoo!

I'm guessing this isn't viable only because nobody would spend the time to invest this type of development on the Amiga community.

Thoughts, please, not angry flame war comments.

[commodorejohn]

My question there would be, why make an expansion at all? If you're going to replace every component, you might as well just put a picoITX x86 board in an Amiga case, load 'er up with WinUAE, and call it a day - you'll save a lot of time, money, and hassle.

[vox]

Ok, please don't kill me. I know this has been beaten to death in one way or another. I also know OS4 is very anti-x86 right now (for now) as is MOS with their reuse PowerPC hardware drive (which I appreciate as I own both old PowerMacs as wells a A1200T/PPC).

My question is wouldn't something like a x86 SOC with a 68K emulation layer be a good fit? A trapdoor expansion for the A500/A1200 style machines could offer up SATA, Ethernet, possibly even a RTG driver for the SOC graphics driver and much faster performance than any 68K.

Intel CPUs haven't been very good at emulating PPC hardware to my knowledge (aka PearPC and what not) but that could simply have just been the software and not the chips fault.

It seems as long as the Amiga thinks it's getting a 68K CPU, it really doesn't matter what the architecture of the accelerator is. And if it comes with lots of the features provided by a SOC style solution and perhaps a DDR3 (not for speed reasons but rather availability reasons) RAM slot then woohoo!

I'm guessing this isn't viable only because nobody would spend the time to invest this type of development on the Amiga community.

Thoughts, please, not angry flame war comments.

No prob. Well, idea is overall good: but that is exactly what Natami does with FPGA and 68k emulation (or what Blizzard card offered with SCSI connector, faster RAM and faster 68k onboard beside PPC). We all wanted Natami on PCI card for our PeeCees and AmigaOnes, but its not planned so far. A Zorro version of it would fit all your dreams. However, all A1200/A4000 expansions advance the Classics to some high end (USB boards like mediator, Blizzard cards etc.) but still system has some remaining limitations (except completely Zorro based design like DraCo
http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=43

But again, 68060 has its limits (and is exactly reason why Motorola - now Freescale moved to PowerPC) and it would limit performance of SATA, DDR3 etc. Natami designers are trying to overlap this limits to the max by designing "68070" softcore, but again, they plan to reach about 100Mhz PPC performance at all.

If something is dead, sadly its 68k since 1997 or so when 68060 production stop. ColdFire and similar follow ups are not compatibile enough even they bring 300Mhz performance.

Maybe a port of AROS to ColdFire could be possible as way ahead and ColdFire PCI accelerator for Natami board in the future, or similar.

I believe Natami is right chioce for you :-)

[Boot_WB]

Amiga DE / OS 5 was supposed to support both PPC and x86 but never went real.http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/pos.html

lol!

and was "Better than OSX"

I assume "never went real" should translate to "Never existed".

[nyteschayde]

I believe Natami is right chioce for you :-)

Well it's certainly on my shopping list. Whenever the damn add to cart button appears I'll be pressing it

The design and implementation of any new hardware expansion for classic Amigas is a massive undertaking with no real profit gains to be had. So, yeah, I totally understand there are more reasons to not do it than to do it.

@commodorejohn - I run UAE too and it's not quite the same thing. I was pointing at the relatively "free" nature of all the features of most SOC style chips. All the things I spoke of would be additions to the Amiga chipset.

Assuming someone were to undertake a new classic expansion, it seems like a big bang could be had for fewer dollars going with a SOC style chip only because of what you get for free with the chip alone.

There may be some life in the idea only because it could offer for non-towered systems what a mediator style setup would for big box and expanded A1200s (namely ethernet, sata, graphics, etc...)

I know it's a pipe dream but it was a fun thought.

[vox]

lol!

and was "Better than OSX"

I assume "never went real" should translate to "Never existed".

In best tradition of Amiga Inc claims believe CUSA claimed they will kind of beat Apple, Dell etc.

And promised Workbench 5.0
http://www.commodore-amiga.org/en?start=15

"Workbench 5 will also be 100% Commodore compatible, able to run classic 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit era software via emulation. Our next generation Commodores and AMIGAs also provide optimum software flexibility by providing the option to run Windows software either from a dual boot menu at start up, or seamlessly integrated within Workbench 5 itself."

Fun never ends

[ciento]

OK, I know all about Amithlon, tested it at the time, yes its only x86 recompile of AmigaOS 3.x not new OS or any way forward.

It was the way forward, McEwen knew it, and rejected it. Perhaps an act
of big-corporation tampering. All other things you mentioned about Amithlon,
would have turned out quite different, with some minimal financial support for the project, which was on the precipice of greatness.