Amiga OS 3.9 or 4.1 for PPC (and is it worth it?)

[matt3k]

Kicking around the idea of going PPC if it is really worth it in day to day living.

I'm not a big gamer these days so I primarily use simplemail, turbo calc, art department, tv paint, listening to MP3s, etc.

I'm looking to make workbench snappier and programs like simplemail faster when dealing with large files.

Is PPC really the ticket?

Is 4.1 really that much faster than 3.9 using the PPC?

I was tempted to pickup a sonnet 7200 to start cheap, but sadly they are now insane to pick one up for the limited update they give.  Spending north of 1k for a PPC should really be worth it if I'm going to go the Cyberstorm route.

I do have a mediator 3000Di with a radeon 9200 and a CS MK 3 with a SSD SATA and it still isn't fast enough ...  The relentless pursuit of speed for the last 30 years...

[Niding]

My intial thought is;

For what you want to do, the Vampire FPGA accelerator is what you want to consider.
At the moment the Vampire is only available for the A600. The A500 vampire is in development (soonish to be avaible)
Im unsure when the Vampire will be released for Amiga 3000 since development is a ongoing process. A wild guess, half a year from now, but thats a stab in the dark. The Vampire will restrict you to OS 3.9 tho.
The features of the Vampire core is also constantly in discussion and being expanded. There are "strong pressures" from the people in their IRC channel to develop a more modern ethernet feature, but the Apollo Team has to be careful about "feature creep" and cost.
So wether or not that becomes a reality is uncertain.

Anyhow, list a few Vampire videos and you can judge for yourself. IF it looks intresting you could join their IRC channel, and ask questions directly to the development team. If they dont respond there, the channel got quite a few knowledgable persons that will be able to explain the features much better than I can;

irc.freenode.org  port 6667  channel #apollo-team

Atm the Vampire only got 128 megabyte of ram tho (for the moment).

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=803680&postcount=34

Comment by one of the developers.

Review of Vampire II https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEjtc6JWlsk

About 1 minute 53 there is a Sysinfo test, altho its probarly not the best method of evaluating the performance

http://www.apollo-core.com/index.htm?page=performance

More detailed info.

And then a few Workbench videos;

https://vimeo.com/152867182

https://vimeo.com/152180575

https://vimeo.com/153413790

Ofcourse you will be "restricted" to OS 3.9 and 680x0, but then you will have hardware that is being developed and produced, at a reasonable price.

I realise you mentioned PPC and OS 4.1 too, but figured Id mention Vampire too, incase you havent paid attention to its development.

[Aegis]

I was tempted to pickup a sonnet 7200 to start cheap, but sadly they are now insane to pick one up for the limited update they give.  Spending north of 1k for a PPC should really be worth it if I'm going to go the Cyberstorm route.

The Cyberstorm/Blizzard PPC cards are pretty slow - WinUAE running OS4.1 on a modern PC is faster - in fact, if you ignore 3D performance, WinUAE even beats a SAM460 on a fast i7.

I've been tinkering with OS4.1 a lot under emulation (testing the latest WinUAE beta) and it's nice - I've been running TVPaint, PPaint, SketchBlock, Cinnamon Writer, Ignition and AudioEvolution and you can do *a lot* with an OS4 system and yes - it's much quicker (on a fast PPC) than say an '060.

What it isn't (so far as hardware's concerned) is good value for money - and the Vampire recommendation is a good one (since OS3.9 is still very capable and supported by Amiga devs).

If you really want to tinker with OS4 (and you've got access to a decent PC) I'd suggest picking up Amiga Forever 2016 and a copy of 4.1 FE for classic as the cheapest way to test the waters.

[kolla]

In reality, OS4.1FE does not really give you much over OS3.9, except maybe a more modern browser. An emulated OS3.9 environment is much faster than emulated OS4.1FE environment, and no memory limitations. So it really boils down to what applications you are using, and for productivity software, I take OS3.9 on WinAUE/FS-UAE any day.

[Iggy]

I am, obviously, a big advocate of moving to PPCs, but current PPC options for legacy Amigas are too expensive, hard to find, and are not powerful enough.

I'd second Niding's comments about the Vampire board.

Once that is available for the 3000, if I were you, that is what I would buy.

[Aegis]

Here's a video I did a couple of weeks ago of the (then) current WinUAE beta running OS4: https://db.tt/MCdrDiNW

[Bennymee]

Kicking around the idea of going PPC if it is really worth it in day to day living.

I'm not a big gamer these days so I primarily use simplemail, turbo calc, art department, tv paint, listening to MP3s, etc.

I'm looking to make workbench snappier and programs like simplemail faster when dealing with large files.

Is PPC really the ticket?

Is 4.1 really that much faster than 3.9 using the PPC?

I was tempted to pickup a sonnet 7200 to start cheap, but sadly they are now insane to pick one up for the limited update they give.  Spending north of 1k for a PPC should really be worth it if I'm going to go the Cyberstorm route.

I do have a mediator 3000Di with a radeon 9200 and a CS MK 3 with a SSD SATA and it still isn't fast enough ...  The relentless pursuit of speed for the last 30 years...

I would sell the Mediator setup and buy an a600 +Vampire card for the 68K software and a Samflex for the PPC route with 4.1.  The Vampire could replace your Mediator setup a lot cheaper, if the RTG drivers are ready.

[matt3k]

I would sell the Mediator setup and buy an a600 +Vampire card for the 68K software and a Samflex for the PPC route with 4.1.  The Vampire could replace your Mediator setup a lot cheaper, if the RTG drivers are ready.

Thanks for the advice, but I already have a Powerbook 1.67 running MOS, so I have my fix of NG Amiga.

I want to push my 3000 to the next level if you will and if these Gents release a FPGA that fits the Amiga 3000/4000 cpu slot some day, I will gladly wait until then.  Kinda partial to my 3k ...  

Interestingly the only Amiga I have never owned is a 600.

[matt3k]

OK Niding and Iggy, you win!

I will wait until/if their is a version for the 3000/4000.  I assume they would use the cpu slot???

These guys may be the first to offer a real big box (3000/4000) Amiga accelerator for the Amiga in decades.  I was hoping for the Ultimate PPC to come into being but wasn't meant to be.

@Aegis and Kolla
Not looking to purchase 4.1, Since I'm happy with 3.9 and MOS.  Looking for more speed in my 3k and I hit a wall really.  Sad even with all the boxes check for maximum performance for it, it still stalls when loading a huge email...  

I'm pretty happy overall though, the MP3 playback via the Mpegit, and dvi out via the Radeon 9200, all on a nice big led make for a real nice experience. Sadly the Cyberstorm 060 just doesn't have the juice to keep up sometimes.  

I will ask the developers about a big box version.  

Perhaps they will setup a poll to see how many 3000/4000 users would buy one.  

My intial thought is;

For what you want to do, the Vampire FPGA accelerator is what you want to consider.
At the moment the Vampire is only available for the A600. The A500 vampire is in development (soonish to be avaible)
Im unsure when the Vampire will be released for Amiga 3000 since development is a ongoing process. A wild guess, half a year from now, but thats a stab in the dark. The Vampire will restrict you to OS 3.9 tho.
The features of the Vampire core is also constantly in discussion and being expanded. There are "strong pressures" from the people in their IRC channel to develop a more modern ethernet feature, but the Apollo Team has to be careful about "feature creep" and cost.
So wether or not that becomes a reality is uncertain.

Anyhow, list a few Vampire videos and you can judge for yourself. IF it looks intresting you could join their IRC channel, and ask questions directly to the development team. If they dont respond there, the channel got quite a few knowledgable persons that will be able to explain the features much better than I can;

irc.freenode.org  port 6667  channel #apollo-team

Atm the Vampire only got 128 megabyte of ram tho (for the moment).

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=803680&postcount=34

Comment by one of the developers.

Review of Vampire II https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEjtc6JWlsk

About 1 minute 53 there is a Sysinfo test, altho its probarly not the best method of evaluating the performance

http://www.apollo-core.com/index.htm?page=performance

More detailed info.

And then a few Workbench videos;

https://vimeo.com/152867182

https://vimeo.com/152180575

https://vimeo.com/153413790

Ofcourse you will be "restricted" to OS 3.9 and 680x0, but then you will have hardware that is being developed and produced, at a reasonable price.

I realise you mentioned PPC and OS 4.1 too, but figured Id mention Vampire too, incase you havent paid attention to its development.

[nicholas]

If you are feeling brave you could always try overclocking your 060.

http://members.iinet.net.au/~davem2/overclock/csppc.html

[carvedeye]

Here's a video I did a couple of weeks ago of the (then) current WinUAE beta running OS4: https://db.tt/MCdrDiNW

Have you got a good tutorial for setting up the latest winuae? I already have OS 4.1FE and a second pc to run it on?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

If I wanted to make the fastest possible 3.9/classic system (excluding the Vampire cards), I'd get an '060/PPC card and then chuck on as many PPC-enhanced tools as possible.  For example the PPC versions of the WarpDT's, AmigaAMP with PPC support, etc.

I wouldn't run 4.1 for classics on an actual classic system, too slow.  Even though I own a copy, LOL.  That's for if I ever set up an emulator!  

Just my .02 cents.  

[nicholas]

If I wanted to make the fastest possible 3.9/classic system (excluding the Vampire cards), I'd get an '060/PPC card and then chuck on as many PPC-enhanced tools as possible.  For example the PPC versions of the WarpDT's, AmigaAMP with PPC support, etc.

I wouldn't run 4.1 for classics on an actual classic system, too slow.  Even though I own a copy, LOL.  That's for if I ever set up an emulator!  

Just my .02 cents.  

MorphOS 1.4.5 is probably the best thing to run on a CSPPC for speed but there's no support for the mediator iirc.

[LukasSid]

Or if you really want's PPC hardware, get Mac Mini G4 and try MorphOs. I just bought mint Mac Mini G4 1Gb Ram for £40 shipped. Nice machine.

[Aegis]

Have you got a good tutorial for setting up the latest winuae? I already have OS 4.1FE and a second pc to run it on?

I'm actually putting together an optimization guide for when 3.3.0 is released