@pixie

You bring up a great point, and it is very likely true. Cakes sounds good as well :).

For me, I already have a relationship with Jaca, Frank, Fred, etc. As I have donated to all of them over the years and they have been great to work with.

The products have come just so far and it is exciting to see where they are all going. So for me, there just isn't the incentive to investigate that.

I did rabbithole years ago with some flavor on a pc and it was so little I could use from the Amiga side, it was like 20% Amiga and 80% linux. I just thought why not just run it for the remaining 20%?

MorphOS for my uses is the opposite, MorphOS 80% and pc 20%. So it pulls it off for my needs as we moved slowly to grab .5% at a time.

@Kronos
Quote:

I'd say at that point just run UAE on the rPi and stop fooling yourself.....

If emulation would provide me with what hardware provides what would make that wrong. Pistorm gives access to the form factor, which might not be of use to you but to some might, it gives you access to costum chips, and try as I might on emulation I find jitter in scrolling, although I still doesn't know if it has to do with LCD or not. But from emulation why would I pick UAE to EMU68 which is close to metal as it can be and then access the cores available through hypervisor? Why would I waste CPU in emulating the chip set?

_________________
Indigo 3D Lounge, my second home.
The Illusion of Choice | Am*ga

@Kronos

Quote:

I could be the next queen of England

Well, you wouldn't be the first.

I take it from this nonsensical response you don't have a viable technical reason why ABox couldn't be ported to 68K and run well on what you keep referring to as Uber 68K that has no software.

It's ironic that of all groups, PPC "NG" don't see the potential of virtual 68K, given how utterly stuck in it's shadow of the 68K both platforms are already.

_________________
Doing stupid things for fun...

@Karlos

I don't have to have a "viable technical reason" for something that is not for me to decide.

Those that can decide have come to the conclusion that porting from a dying platform to an undead one is not the way to go.

You insisting to beat that zombie horse into oblivion is nothing else but yet another (minor) reason why it would be a bad idea.

_________________
- We don't need good ideas, we haven't run out on bad ones yet
- blame Canada

@Kronos

What's zombie about using 68K (or an especially well suited subset of it) as a binary distribution (and/or execution) format for *Amiga* software? Given that literally nobody has managed to make a compatible replacement that has an expanded address space or uses SMP.

If you are stuck with those limitations anyway, what's wrong with 68K? It runs on basically everything and runs well on x64, ARM and even, god forbid, even PPC.

You talk about zombies, what the f*** do you call PPC? It's less relevant to the everyday computing world now than 68K was when it was introduced. Sure it has some niche uses, out there in the internet of things, or ultra slow radiation hardened versions trundling around on Mars. POWER is still doing stuff in the server world, but everywhere else it's utterly and totally dead. It doesn't have anything like the coolness of 68K in the retro world.

Amiga and NG are part of that world now. Face it. They aren't going to modernise, ever. Sure they might get an API for 3D or an improved USB or network stack, but where it really counts, they are totally stuck in the single core, 32-bit past. NG has had decades on 64 bit SMP ready hardware now and isn't any closer.

Maybe AxRT will but it isn't an Amiga in the sense most people think of.

_________________
Doing stupid things for fun...

@Karlos

Wont LLVM be better idea then using 680x0?

680x0 lacks many features, but LLVM that was designed to be intermediate binary format, should be feature rich.

JIT 68K to LLVM can good idea, as you then have generic JIT compiler. That be used on anything. But even that have huge overhead compared to native binaries.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 30-Dec-2023 at 10:51 AM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 30-Dec-2023 at 10:48 AM.

_________________
http://lifeofliveforit.blogspot.no/
Facebook::LiveForIt Software for AmigaOS

@Karlos

Proper 68k (not counting ColdFire) got it's last update 30 years ago so thats as much a "dead" ISA as it gets. It is now kinda revived via various forms of emulation without any consent or involvement of the original IP owners.
So yeah if an ISA can be "dead" then this is "Zombie", "Frankenstein" or something else about those lines.

Neither PPC nor 68k are relevant outside obscure niches and retro, but talking bout retro I'm not sure you considered the size of the retro Mac community or everything revolving around PPC based game consoles.

But you continue to be extremely thin skinned about people not buying into your fantasy around virtual 68k and somehow insist that those must be PPC fanboys out to get you.

BTW the only CPU that has any general "coolness" in the retro world is the 6502 everything else is just THAT CPU that was used in the HW of your choice.

_________________
- We don't need good ideas, we haven't run out on bad ones yet
- blame Canada

@Kronos

Quote:

Kronos wrote: Proper 68k (not counting ColdFire) got it's last update 30 years ago so thats as much a "dead" ISA as it gets. It is now kinda revived via various forms of emulation without any consent or involvement of the original IP owners. So yeah if an ISA can be "dead" then this is "Zombie", "Frankenstein" or something else about those lines.

Sure it's dead from that perspective but so is PPC. It doesn't matter, because 68K, unlike PPC, is a good low level object code for execution and translation across a wide variety of current platforms. Or at least as wide as it needs to be: x64 and ARM.


Quote:

Neither PPC nor 68k are relevant outside obscure niches and retro, but talking bout retro I'm not sure you considered the size of the retro Mac community or everything revolving around PPC based game consoles.

Lol. I appreciate there are some hardware fanboys but I see things like the SNES and SEGA getting way more attention than any PPC era console. Again, PPC was just "one of the architectures of all time". An exception might be the gamecube, which due to various constraints does get a fair amount of attention from devs, but that pales compared to N64 which (while RISC) isn't PPC.

The absolute vast majority of console gamers just move on with the new and shiny and soon forget the previous generations of kit. They are a different breed. The nearest you'll find in the regular computing world are Apple users.

Quote:

But you continue to be extremely thin skinned about people not buying into your fantasy around virtual 68k and somehow insist that those must be PPC fanboys out to get you.

Oh man, you are so wasted here. You should immediately give up your day job and get into stand-up comedy. You'd be a sensation!

If you interpret my posts as having some sort of "oh noes, the NG bois are out to get me", you need psychiatric help.

Quote:

BTW the only CPU that has any general "coolness" in the retro world is the 6502 everything else is just THAT CPU that was used in the HW of your choice.

It certainly is cool. I recently completed a lunchtime project to implement one in PHP but even that's been done before. Though I like to think mine is more modular.

Look, let's be to the point here and make sure there's no more misunderstanding:

1) I was an early PPC Amiga user and I had a lot of fun with it.

2) PPC stopped being fun the day it became a Hobson's choice between ever more exotic and expensive hardware or scouring auctions of old Apple kit. The latter is certainly more tolerable but was only ever a sensible mid-term solution.

The whole NG premise was that 68K is discontinued and PPC is a path out of total obsolescence. Part of this was having access to "current" hardware and that the OS would evolve for that hardware.

None of that has happened. The PPC went 64 bit and it went SMP. The OSes stayed the same and will stay the same because if it was a readily solved problem, it would have happened by now. Then the PPC went obsolete, just like the 68K.

So here we are, in our second iteration of a groundhog day loop, where we have an OS tied to obsolete hardware with ever decreasing interest. Only it's objectively worse this time, since the OS never managed to evolve past the most basic support for that hardware which makes it an even poorer fit for anything more current.

So NG is no different than 3.x. 31-bit single unprotected address space, single core rocking. But hey, you know what? It's a retro platform so that really doesn't matter.

Why hasn't MOS gone full x64? Is it perchance because - assuming it stuck with ABox level feature set - suddenly looks laughable against Tomy's my first 64-bit SMP OS for the same hardware that some college kid made in his spare time?

None of this matters. We are Amiga enthusiasts and what really matters most is making things accessible to Amiga users. This is what the NG crowd seems to have forgotten, laughable as it is. They are, and always have been, a subset of an already marginalised group but somehow see their platform as better, more capable or more relevant in the modern day when the only thing they do well which isn't done almost infinitely better and for free by *insert almost any modern x64 or ARM operating system here* is run Amiga specific applications.

Give up the pretense and just embrace it. You'll be a lot happier for it.

_________________
Doing stupid things for fun...

@Karlos

I make it simple for you (in case you are really thick skinned...):

- as a user it make no sense to switch from NG to 68k when I only get some extra CPU performance in exchange for loosing performance elsewhere, creature comforts and some key apps

Sure you talk a lot about that could be fixed, but sofar noone has taken on those tasks

- as an app developer it makes no sense to switch when I have to content with even more outdated infrastructure and APIs

Again, could be fixed, but no takers....


Since I have no plans to port WebKitty or Ambient myself I am gonna stay just here where I have those already regardless of someone claiming them to be minor features.

You go on and on how NG is so little more then 68k but somehow fail to realize that thats NOT an argument for 68k but more an argument that both NG (on any given HW) and Zombie68k are 100% pointless.

Do you really think that "I got a fake 1GHz 68k on my rPI" is any more impressive for the outside masses as MorphOS running 31Bit on a single core of whatever?

As for PPC just being "the CPU of the day", newsflash, same was true for 68k and 6502 before that (with some outliers using obscure stuff).

The people behind MorphOS are properly one of the least HW-fanboy groups still active (and one of the fews that really are still active as a group). They are aware of PPC being dead. They are aware of the issues that would come with an AMD port or building a QBOX. They do know what resources they have at hand and they are for sure aware of Franken68k.
Maybe take a hint....

_________________
- We don't need good ideas, we haven't run out on bad ones yet
- blame Canada

@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

So in other word the BlizzardPPC and CyberStormPPC version of AmigaOS4.1 illegal, I do not remember any controversy about supporting the Phase5 hardware.

Well, no. OS4 was developed on a CyberStormPPC. In the least it was developed on Amiga hardware with PPC accelerators that would include BlizzardPPC as well since it was a target.

But my point was about the hardware. They lacked the time, generation and people to develop hardware to bridge from the original. Even those who produced the Casablanca and Draco, after finishing up on the RTG high end Amiga like 68060, didn't even attempt to replace it with a new design based on PPC or any other CPU, they just replaced it with PC hardware.

Quote:

Escena failed to make working hardware, so it got scraped, this why they went with Terron-SE/XE prototypes cards.

Yes I was rather annoyed at that. It seemed like the perfect solution for Amiga aficionados. Plugging into an actual Amiga and providing a bridge from old to new.

Quote:

Its quite funny, Amiga Inc used to run coupon scam, to get people to invest money, so they can buyback the OS that they had license to Hyperion under buyback agreement, of course Amiga Inc was shell company, that tried to hustle Amiga developer into writing mobile application for an unknown OS called DE. With best sellers Planet Z and Snow Man maker, Hyperion was also licensed to make Ami2D for AmigaDE, did anyone get the t-shirts that were promised from the coupon scam? I wonder what had happen if Amiga Inc actually had enquired AmigaOS4.0 prerelease, it was highly unstable and was not running well on hardware Eyetech had chosen. I think they can’t possibly fund the development get to release candidate; they need have run several coupon scams to keep it afloat, more likely they planned to sell an unfinished product, and hope to recap there investment. I think customers had been screwed over big time, if that had happened.

Did you hear about the T-shirt for disgruntled Amiga fans that bought a coupon but got ripped off? It reads:
"I bought an Amiga Inc coupon which included a free T-shirt and I didn't even receive a free T-shirt! "

Yes, I bought a coupon. No, I didn't get a T-shirt either. I did get a box of software once called AmigaDE that didn't even run on Amiga. It has less claim to being an Amiga product than does Amiga OS4. Despite allegedly running on PPC hardware with the Elate/Intent/TAO bytecode loader, I could see no support for PPC on the Amiga or Mac, and could only see support for an x86 PC. If they were targeting Amiga users or proposing it as the next Amiga platform wouldn't they at least out effort into supporting Amiga hardware? Even Amithlon was more relevant, despite not supporting Amiga or PPC hardware, but it didn't claim to.

I ran the AmigaOS4.0 developer pre-release. Despite the developer tag you didn't need to be a developer and it ran fine for the most part. It was a pre-release so some instability would be expected. However most the instability was due to the AmigaOne hardware that suffered random freezes which had some unresolved hardware issues. It ran better with server RAM and a half decent PSU but could never be fully trusted. Unfortunately now, my X1000 is now having random freezes, despite years of solid use.

Quote:

One main differences between AmigaOS and UNIX systems, is that programs are allocated differently memory locations on AmigaOS, while UNIX style, memory locations is same for all exe files, its MMU map that changes, in UNIX world programs can most only talk to each other using pipes or TCP or something like that, of course you use share memory but its also attached to file system, it’s another clumsy thing to use.

For OS4 the ELF has one load address, but of course in the usual Amiga way, is relocated to another dynamic load address.

Quote:

because address space is same for exe files, it manes also fork creates copy of parent task, and all address point to right places, even if variable content is different. Forks on Amiga will kind of almost be impossible, the only why I think it can be possible, is if we use exception handler, to trick the child task into writing and read into offset variable space. Of course, that be really slow.

Fortunately fork() is becoming a thing of the past. Unfortunately threading is still expected and despite the ease of sharing memory OS4 still lacks true threading ability.

Quote:

And also, I think only way solve network problem, is if socket was its own process, then it be easy to do IPC communication between tasks, and connection, so it becomes isolated form everything else.

On AmigaOS sockets need their own process, since opening and using sockets, is restricted to one process per socket.

Quote:

So I do not think fork problem is 100% realistic to solve, but at least, spin up process that talk to intermediate, seems like a possible solution.

I think adding subtasks would be good, that is, being able to truly create child processes or tasks that run code under one parent process. So the threads would just be code blocks. Ran sequentially under a master process context.

Quote:

Anyhow it be interesting to play with virtual networks and middle layer, perhaps it be way bypass the lack of IPv6, and other missing features in the network stack.

The way Olaf described it was something like that even with an advanced Ph.D the intrinsics of the TCP/IP stack would do your head in.

@matthey

Quote:

Michele Battilana has been active in the Amiga community including showing up at many Amiga shows. He is soft spoken and other entities challenge ownership of the Amiga and are Amiga IP squatters. My perspective is that Michele is financially conservative and wants to secure the Amiga IP before pushing forward with goals to further the Amiga. Unfortunately, these Amiga IP squatters are blocking progress even after decades of failure.

What ever the plans are looked to have disappeared as the profile reached from the news link doesn't list anything of any relevance I can see nor even look like Michele's account.

Quote:

The case isn't so important. C= used repurposed cases for the Amiga 2000 and 4000T as I recall but then they had a PC compatible division.

Yes but they at least included a case as part of the product. The AmigaOne boards looked like a hackers computer. Or like an Apple I without a case.

Quote:

Amiga Corporation hasn't been able to do much of anything so far due to IP squatter road blocks. So far they are closer to an IP holding company as all that I'm aware that they have done is license IP.

It looks confusing at first, using the same words, since there is the original Amiga Corporation and now the new Amiga Corporation.

Quote:

THEA500 Mini custom ARM board probably had a similar if not a little higher price compared to a RPi board. They could have used an embedded RPi board in their case. It would be interesting to hear the advantages and disadvantages they considered in making that decision.

I'm not sure if there is any history with the C64 mini or other hardware they produce. It's easy to think Pi but possible they could have found an ARM reference design to customise. They could then mass produce it. I know most routers are based on reference designs. But in the last decade would have seen a shift from MIPS to ARM.

Quote:

Apple let the Mac evolve? More like it was the great exodus as they led Mac to greener pastures over and over again. Old hardware was dead weight and a true Apple fan will upgrade. The Amiga market is different except for the fair weather fans that left. We like our 68k, chipset and compatibility. A blend of enhancement and nostalgia sells in the retro Amiga market. Many of us are waiting for an Amiga rebirth, a worthy successor or a 2nd coming not that we are really expecting it anymore. We are mostly happy with the old hardware but it is getting old and dying like we are. There is no new blood so the AmigaNOne dies with Trevor.

Actually, in a manner of speaking yes, Apple let the Mac evolve. Regarding the move from Mac OS to OSX Jobs is attributed with announcing "because it's about evolution". Although there is no direct evolutionary line for OSX to descend from Mac OS the underlying core OS was called Darwin. So, those Mac users who accepted the evolutionary line from Mac OS to OSX (with artificial selection it could be said), are Darwinists. Lol!

Though my original point was point was hardware there is the above relevance or play of words in software.

Fair weather fans. Ha. Well, the Amiga was in the same predicament as Apple. The 68K was holding it back with no direct descendent. PPC worked for Apple though it was OSX that did the real moving into portability. Once on PPC they replaced the OS, so PPC became bridge hardware, where they transferred to OSX. Like the song line, "First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin', it was almost as if Apple had planned, "First we take the hardware, then we take the OS".

The Amiga remains held back by 68K. And PPC wasn't the worthy successor as Motorola produced. Now PPC holds back a sub-Amiga market.

@Kronos

Look, I don't give a crap if nobody in the position to port NG to another (arm, x84 or Uber 68k) does or does not. That's up to them. They can stay on PPC and die off quietly for all I care as I have no say or sway.

I do think it would be a shame to lose the actual software improvements that have been made, peripheral as they may be, simply because people are under the delusion that it's better to cling to PPC than move to anything else.

Those "Uber 68K" machines (UAE, PiStorm, etc) will still be running when the last PPC dies off. Maybe someone will fire up QEMU to run NG for nostalgia sake. Maybe.

_________________
Doing stupid things for fun...

@pixie

Quote:

Well.. truth be told, try as we might to extract the most we can from the bot, all ppcamiga1 seems able to say is:

Lol. Well, we were already discussing the subject in some other thread, or some were as it's a rotating subject. On here it's more on topic but ppcamiga1 became a catalyst for us to jump on here with.

@Karlos

Quote:

Karlos wrote: Those "Uber 68K" machines (UAE, PiStorm, etc) will still be running when the last PPC dies off.

So 2 weeks before anything "Amiga" will find it's biological end.......


-> both are pointless just in a slightly different way

_________________
- We don't need good ideas, we haven't run out on bad ones yet
- blame Canada

@Hypex

Man, sorry to hear about your X1000 flaking out on you, that just sucks! If you don't own a Mac PPC (2.5PCIe or 2.7PCIX) they are highly reliable and fast performing systems to consider if you want to run MorphOS that it...

Last edited by Matt3k on 30-Dec-2023 at 05:41 PM.
Last edited by Matt3k on 30-Dec-2023 at 05:38 PM.
Last edited by Matt3k on 30-Dec-2023 at 05:37 PM.
Last edited by Matt3k on 30-Dec-2023 at 05:36 PM.
Last edited by Matt3k on 30-Dec-2023 at 05:33 PM.

@Kronos

Quote:

Kronos wrote: @Karlos So 2 weeks before anything "Amiga" will find it's biological end.......

Of course with THAT attitude.

_________________
All the way, with 68k

@agami

What attitude?

The one that predicted the imminent death of any piece of Apple HW 15 years ago?
The one that some new 1 man project not fixing a small not-the-problem will somehow make Amiga relevant again in one way or the other (despite all the other 1 man non fixes of the past)?
The one ignoring that the average Amiga user is closing on 50?

I could go on.

So no my ancient decrepit PPC HW dying with all replacements gone in 2040 or later isn't the issue and it never was.

The issue isn't even that I'll be pushing 70 by that time.

The real issue will most likely be that SW development and thereby the level of HW that can be used will have come to a near standstill since everyone involved in them is also pushing 70.

Noone will need a >2GHz G5 to run a version of Wayfarer that is about as usefull for 2040s websites as AWEB on a 68020 is for todays.
Noone will need a rPI25 to run the 3rd port of a 3rd class 50 years old (by that time) game in the most inefficient way possible.

Now if someone could come up with something even remotely interesting for people to young to remember C= or Amiga we might avoid that fate but sofar I see nothing in that regard and I'm not even sure how that could work while retaining anything "Amiga" in it.

Last edited by Kronos on 01-Jan-2024 at 08:05 AM.

_________________
- We don't need good ideas, we haven't run out on bad ones yet
- blame Canada

@Kronos

Quote:

Now if someone could come up with something even remotely interesting for people to young to remember C= or Amiga we might avoid that fate but sofar I see nothing in that regard and I'm not even sure how that could work while retaining anything "Amiga" in it.

I'd class THEA500 Mini and incoming Maxi version as "remotely interesting". PiStorm/Vampire stuff is interesting for those that catch the bug. For most other people there's Win-UAE or Amiga Forever. AmigaNG seems to be a major hobby investment like having a classic E-Type Jag or something!

I showed my son the Junor Senior- Move your Feet video last night (DPaint animation). It still has an impact. That really is all we can hope for; some inspiration from old software/games!

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@BigD

Running OCS era games on recent HW may "catch" a few, but that required 0 development for the past 20 years.

Running mid 90s PC/console games (or ones clearly inspired by those) on an artificial cumbersome setup? I got my doubts.....

None of this is gonna fix the slowdown in any development unless you get some of the youngster THAT much interested which I just don't see with any of the current offerings.


-> we die, our HW dies, same difference

_________________
- We don't need good ideas, we haven't run out on bad ones yet
- blame Canada

@Kronos

It's a shame that's your point of view. RiscOS got ported to RPi and had a new lease of life. In my view AmigaOS could have made an even bigger splash.

Anyway, 68k development HAS picked up. I don't see any big gesture project like the A600 GS making much difference though the AmiStore function might help developers.

I honestly don't know what more you expect. In my experience the next generation find the Amiga interesting.

Last edited by BigD on 01-Jan-2024 at 12:46 PM.

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios