Hello, first of all sorry for my somewhat poor English. :(

QEmu Helper is a program written in Python3 that provides a config interface to make it easier to configure and start QEmu with Amiga OS 4.1.

The advantage of Python3 is that QEmu Helper runs on Windows as well as on Linux, MacOS and BSD.

For Linux, Python3 must still be installed.

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install python3-full

Unfortunately I do not know for MacOS and BSD.



Download Link

@OneOfNine

Nice,

Im please to see more efforts to improve QEMU AmigaOS4 support, this interested me too,

BBoot
https://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2024-04-00056-EN.html

It be great if we had a more one stop all included solution like a WinUAE kinda setup for just OS4 emulation / virtualization.

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@amigang

WinUAE only emulates classic Amigas with PowerPC cards. Unfortunately only A1200 & A4000 can be emulated with PowerPC cards and unfortunately this is not stable. With QEmu AmigaOS 4.1 runs faster and more stable and can use up to 2GB memory.

The disadvantage of QEmu is that it is only command line based and has no GUI, except for QEmu Helper.


For me, to get AmigaOS 4.1 running, QEmu is the 1st choice

@OneOfNine
Quote:

Unfortunately I do not know for MacOS and BSD.

I got this error message on Mac when I tried to execute QEmu Helper:

RuntimeError: Bad magic number in .pyc file

My Mac has Python version 3.9.6.

Last edited by jap on 14-May-2024 at 12:06 PM.

@jap

These are runtime bytecode files, not python scripts.
Try "python3 file.pyc"

It works for me on this old macbook.

(though with python3.12 from homebrew... oh and you need python-tk corresponding to your python version, python-tk@3.9 in your case)

Last edited by kolla on 14-May-2024 at 11:55 AM.
Last edited by kolla on 14-May-2024 at 11:55 AM.

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@kolla

I just updated to Python version 3.12.3 and now Qemu Helper runs fine on my Mac!

Last edited by jap on 14-May-2024 at 12:07 PM.

New beta 7 available

- English version available
- Hard disk images can now be created with QEmu Helper
- More Code optimizations

Download link in 1st post

@OneOfNine

Thanks for your efforts. So were you the first in the Borg hive?

Just need to turn this into a package. With a name. And nice icon.

So I'm running Linux Mint Una. Package python3-full doesn't exist. Or is too new for the Una repo anyway. I downloaded python3-all but had most of it already. I have Python 3.8.5. I also get the magic error. Does it need the latest Python?

Last edited by Hypex on 26-May-2024 at 02:38 PM.

@Hypex

sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3

@OneOfNine

cool

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@OneOfNine

Yes, had already updated and python installed was latest version. Do you have a list of depends? I suspect the python in my distro is too old or there is a missing depends needed that has flown under the radar.

@Hypex

If anything is missing, python complains, that’s how I figured it needs tk.
So what is your python complaining about?

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@kolla

Same error as jap was getting:
RuntimeError: Bad magic number in .pyc file

I checked and I had python3-tk but didn't python-tk. Installed. No change.

Then it starts looking like incompatibility yes.

The solution (as usual) is to rather distribute the actual python code and let the systems create their own runtime binaries. (I always regarded .pyc files as “on system cache, and not as something to distribute)

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@kolla

That's what I've read. There is little information on these pyc files after a search. Mostly random stuff and hacking them to work by changing the magic numbers. So I can see it as a way to hide source code as it's similar to a binary. But there are decompilers. So it's a very limited format that is tied to the compiler it's generated from. Don't know why they didn't make it broadly compatible. AFAK Java is. At the end of the day, if you like your code to be closed source, just compile a binary. Not even the file command or binwalk even know what it is.

Last edited by Hypex on 30-May-2024 at 01:18 AM.

Right, anyone who can run it can also have the python regenerated.

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There is a reason why this is a pyc file. Unfortunately I have had bad experiences where others have copied my work and put their copyright on it. I have also tested it everywhere before, under Linux (Debian/MX Linux...), FreeBSD, GhostBSD and MacOS. It even ran on a Raspberry PI OS (Raspberry PI 5).

If an old Linux is used, then Python3 should also be installed in the latest version. For the user interface tkinter is required. If this is missing, it can also be installed later.

sudo apt install python3-tk

@OneOfNine

I suppose that's the problem with open source. I don't know what right they can claim but you being the true copyright owner would invalidate any claims they have. I once spent some time porting some code to OS4 and uploaded it with installer. I got an email about it working with OS3. Sure it could, but the guy had taken my installer scripts, then tried to compile a 68K version which failed. I knew why it failed, it needed big endian fixes, and without knowing where it wasn't trivial to fix. He didn't ask me for my permission to use my scripts so I thought it was rather rude to ask why it doesn't work. So I gave a polite enough reply but didn't reveal any secrets.

While my Linux isn't the bleeding latest, it isn't exactly ancient either. It still receives updates. But sometimes I find an older version of software will be in the repo. I can see this being the case here as my Python is 3.8.5. Without compiling and hacking in a newer Python in I can see that my Linux is just too old and unsupported because it isn't the latest one fresh off the bus.

To work otherwise it would need a Python build included. But that's a bit hacky. Perhaps the only other solution is to simply compile as a binary. But then it's not portable across CPU archs. Oh well. It will be useful for other people.

Last edited by Hypex on 02-Jun-2024 at 04:57 PM.