Classic Amiga for Web Browsing

[runequester]

yeah, but browsing the web on your phone isn't as cool

Besides, unless your amiga has USB, it's no use for getting aminet stuff to the miggy.

[rvo_nl]

I've been running Amiga through emulation for ages and would like to return to hardware.

That is a wise decision
 

I'm fond of the old A500 chassis, but I assume it would could not be made powerful enough for something like netsurf even with an accelerator.

That is correct
 

I have not been able to get Netsurf working through emulation without enabling Picasso so I assume any hardware solution will need to support this. Is this something that an accelerator will take care of?

Yes, but it still will be a very slow experience. Ive tried, on my a1200 + 060 + rtg, but I wouldnt call it usable.
 

Cost isn't really an option; I can afford a powerful accelerator provided it can be found.

In that case, get the a1200 + ppc + 060 + bvision. It will fit the 'wedge' case, but its not recommended (heating and power issues). If you are concerned about that, take the a4000 + ppc + 060 + cvision route.
 
like I said, those setups will give you the fastest classic Amiga experience, but it still wont get you a modern, stable, fast webbrowser. Although Timberwolf comes closest. You know about Timberwolf, right?
 
So if that is still not what you're after, you might be better off with a cheaper solution: a1200 + 030/50 and just use Ibrowse. It is a fast, stable browser. But it doesnt support any of the modern web standards like CSS, Flash etc. Basically it will look like it's 1996 again. Not sure if that is a bad thing..

[Bamiga2002]

You could use Remote Desktop on your miggy. Haven't tried it myself though...

[utri007]

Current version of 68k Netsurf is crap It SDL port of Framebuffer version of Netsurf wich is meant to be debugging and no gui systems.

Originally Netsurf requires ARM6 and 16mb ram, wich quite near of 030

[Crumb]

I found my old PPC/040 powered BVision A1200 absolutely unusable for browsing anything, tbh.

Too bad. MorphOS1.4.5+MUI4+updated ambient+IBrowse would work nicely on that setup :-) you could even launch OWB for some webpages.

[chris]

Yes, but it still will be a very slow experience. Ive tried, on my a1200 + 060 + rtg, but I wouldnt call it usable.

We're trying to do something about that.

As utri007 says, NetSurf should be usable on a 68030 with 16MB and AGA.  That'll be the absolute minimum, it might need a bit more than that, but it should be doable.  The current 68k version, however, is rubbish.

This is the Atari 68k version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obDYaWp0wPo
I'm not convinced that is actually an '030 but the uploader hasn't posted a counter-comment saying it isn't.  If it is, there's no reason why an AmigaOS 3 version should be slower.

[amiga-penn-wchester]

I always found Ibrowse x.x to be reasonably fast on an '030 and up. In 1995 you had a 56k modem and was roughly in sync with the decoding speed of the images on native graphics, so it didn't appear to be that slow.

As I expanded to broadband later and also expanded to RTG/060 (1200T), ~ year 1999 I found that again, Ibrowse latest version, SSL plugin, up to date image decoding, Miami Deluxe, 060/X-surf/ Picasso IV was the fastest I've seen as far as web browsing experience on the amiga.

I realize much has changed in the landscape of web content, so of course much of this doesn't hold true today, but as far as "real hardware" was concerned, this was very spiffy indeed and was roughly the same, responsive-wise as say win98/Mozilla.

[Xanxi]

With a 1200 (B1260 50 MHz and AGA) it is not bad surfing amiga boards or plain html websites such as aminet or whdload.de with Ibrowse 2.4. It is a bit better with an A2000 (B2060 50Mhz and RTG) and this one can also use Netsurf for more advanced websites.

Actually, this is still better on the amiga than surfing from a mid-2000's Palm OS device such as the Clié UX50 with Netsurf 3.1. And it is definitly cooler than surfing from an Android or Apple device.

[rvo_nl]

We're trying to do something about that.
 
As utri007 says, NetSurf should be usable on a 68030 with 16MB and AGA. That'll be the absolute minimum, it might need a bit more than that, but it should be doable. The current 68k version, however, is rubbish.
 
This is the Atari 68k version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obDYaWp0wPo
I'm not convinced that is actually an '030 but the uploader hasn't posted a counter-comment saying it isn't. If it is, there's no reason why an AmigaOS 3 version should be slower.

Hi Chris, I have no idea who you are, probably one of the Netsurf guys? Anyway it looks really, really fast on that Falcon machine. If an Amiga 030 even had half of that speed it would be perfect on my 060. Hope this will happen some day!

[anglosaxonusa]

Hi Chris, I have no idea who you are, probably one of the Netsurf guys? Anyway it looks really, really fast on that Falcon machine. If an Amiga 030 even had half of that speed it would be perfect on my 060. Hope this will happen some day!

I, too, have seen the video and agree, what was shown is exactly what would be desired for browsing from a classic Amiga.  Is there a bounty set up for porting NetSurf to AGA?  If so, I would gladly contribute.

Also, would an A1200 with an ACA 1232 accelerator perform similar to the Falcon in the video, assuming NetSurf is ported to AGA from SDL?

[NovaCoder]

I, too, have seen the video and agree, what was shown is exactly what would be desired for browsing from a classic Amiga.  Is there a bounty set up for porting NetSurf to AGA?  If so, I would gladly contribute.

Also, would an A1200 with an ACA 1232 accelerator perform similar to the Falcon in the video, assuming NetSurf is ported to AGA from SDL?

I'm looking into doing a native AGA/RTG port, just don't hold your breath.

[delshay]

A lot depends on the setup what performance you can get out of A1200. The more you overclock the chances are its going to be unstable.

Stability is key to enjoying any computer,and this is what I worked on for some time now and can enjoy web browsing on a very high speed A1200 with no stability issues whatsoever in a standard A1200 desktop.

The bus speed is a important factor here,but a increase in bus speed normally makes the computer unstable, fix this and you have a very fast stable computer.

Here I have 75Mhz bus as standard,but expect for sure a new world record for dram bandwidth on classic amiga, but also expect blizzard card to close the gap to 100Mhz users of apollo card from its current 96Mhz when overclocking is allowed in second half of 2013.

[unusedunused]

I'm looking into doing a native AGA/RTG port, just don't hold your breath.

>I'm looking into doing a native AGA/RTG port, just don't hold your breath.

this sound good, i hope you have enough time and you can add more than 10 good working lines of code average per month. ;-).  to motivate you more there are good news about netsurf.

netsurf is now go to 3.0 in christmas und there is some jave support in too.

http://vincentsanders.blogspot.de/2012/11/another-netsurf-developer-workshop.html

The MUI Version from itix is still very out of date. maybe he get motivate again, when he see working java in netsurf. libnsfb in netsurf have code for 1 bitplane and 8 bitplanes. maybe you test with that on AGA if this can get usefull speed

[NovaCoder]

Ok I'll take a look, thanks for that.

[yssing]

I'm looking into doing a native AGA/RTG port, just don't hold your breath.

Where do we donate?
Seriously, that would be so awesome.

[wawrzon]

in the meantime aros owb (not osyssey by fab but the previous fork) loads already on 68k. on my a4000/060 it currently takes 2 minutes to load. it has taken ages but i removed all ttf font sets from fonts save for one. it doesn display any pages yet thoug , since there are apparently several endiannes problems (one located for what i know).
http://aros-exec.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=7724&forum=4&post_id=75523#forumpost75523