@fishy_fis

80-bit seems like a very poor fit for the vector unit. I'm pretty sure they deal with float32 and float64. Maybe float128 on some newer AVX implementation.

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@umisef

Quote:

Honestly --- this came up because Lasse found his old demo CD, and got nostalgic. Then I got nostalgic. Then Karlos caught nerd-nostalgia... And as far as I am concerned, that's "what we are left with" --- an opportunity to catch up on some nerding-out which should have happened 20 years ago, but didn't.

This is 100% what happend.

I found the old demo CD while cleaning, and thought to test it on some of my hardware, just for nostalgic reasons. Found it to boot on nothing but a very old laptop i had (Pentium 4D, 512MB). but got interested in Amithlon, so followed a guide by SnkBitten. posted a question on EAB, and mentioned i had an Umilator DemoCD, and things took of from there.

But what fun it have been, and seeing umisef posting here and explaining things again, as he did in the past, is just pure joy.

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Toni has been working hard on WinUAE for eons. Much much longer than the limited availability of Amithlon. Hasn’t it made this old code completely redundant by now?

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Sent from my Quantum Computer.

@LaBodilsen

I am honestly really happy that you've been able to mess around with a demo of Amithlon 2. However, it is obviously the community's dream to preserve these Amithlon builds for the future as very few users got to experience this unique and amazing fork to AmigaOS development before the 'fun police' destroyed it all!

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

@DiscreetFX

WinUAE and Amithlon are different. Very different.

WinUAE is a full machine emulator that you run as an application whenever you want. It's a guest application on another OS you use for your everyday use.

Amithlon is not an emulator in the same vein. It exists to basically transform a PC into something like the Draco: a high performance workstation for system friendly Amiga applications.

You may have missed the technical detail but the Linux kernel running on Amithlon exists only to serve the CPU and hardware emulation. It's reduced to a sophisticated HAL. AmigaOS is directly able to use the hardware and react to things like input pretty much directly. This is what sets it apart from UAE.

Last edited by Karlos on 28-Feb-2023 at 12:15 PM.

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@DiscreetFX

Quote:

Toni has been working hard on WinUAE for eons. Much much longer than the limited availability of Amithlon. Hasn’t it made this old code completely redundant by now?

Yes, the Demo CD would be completely redundant, but if an up-to-date version was to be conceived, it could bring a very fast and responsive AmigaOS experience on PC hardware, with no perceivable OS underneath.

But the Demo CD is only interesting for historical reasons, and nothing else.

btw: you seem determined to talk this down, which i don't fully understand?

Last edited by LaBodilsen on 28-Feb-2023 at 01:33 PM.

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@LaBodilsen

Quote:

btw: you seem determined to talk this down, which i don't fully understand?

A creature or the night, your typical Vampire is afraid of the blinding light of day that is 68K performance on a high end, mature JIT implementation

Last edited by Karlos on 28-Feb-2023 at 01:36 PM.

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@Karlos

Quote:

@fishy_fis 80-bit seems like a very poor fit for the vector unit. I'm pretty sure they deal with float32 and float64. Maybe float128 on some newer AVX implementation.

Sorry, I suspect you're right.
I should know better than to have even semi-technical conversations before shaking the cobwebs clear after a snooze.

@Karlos

I hear they are also afraid of Emu's and 3.14 kilometer/s Storms... is there any thruth to this?

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@LaBodilsen

Could be. Could be. An irrational fear you might say...

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@LaBodilsen

We had a war against emus here in Australia in 1934.
We lost.
People should have learned not to underestimate emus by now.

@fishy_fis

Rod Hull had the same problem.

@Bosanac

Loooooooooool!!!!

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@LaBodilsen

Linux+Bernie’s JIT on x86 vs Quark+Trance on PPC.

What’s the practical difference really?

Other than on one the entire OS is recompiled for the host CPU.

But people still have this “Amithlon is useless, it’s just an emulator” attitude. Insanity!

@LaBodilsen

I’m all for this but is the creator of Amithlon? Doubtful unfortunately and the Amiga scene has moved on. Imagine where we would be if we would have had native x86 versions of Amithlon for the past 20 years. It would have been nice. Woulda should coulda but didn’t wana.

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@DiscreetFX

You presume to speak for people a lot, it seems.

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@Karlos

I don’t want to and am not trying to, he’s free to chime in of course.

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@DiscreetFX

Quote:

Toni has been working hard on WinUAE for eons. Much much longer than the limited availability of Amithlon. Hasn’t it made this old code completely redundant by now?

Different goals, I suppose.

Last edited by pixie on 28-Feb-2023 at 09:57 PM.

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

In my maybe not so humble view - good riddance!
Interesting concept, but apparently a nightmare to maintain… and Linux was perhaps not the best choice for a commercial product that essentially waa a modified (“fork”) kernel with an emulation shim on top. Picking a BSD might have been a better option, OR go GPL from the start.

Emu68 doesn’t have this problem and neither does ARIX.

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B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

@kolla

I don't know how practical a bare metal solution like Emu68K would've been for that era of PC hardware. Not even sure it's a feasible proposition for today's, for that matter. Using an existing kernel to manage the hardware layer and run the emulation still seems like a logical approach to me. Whether Linux was the right one or not is a different question.

I like potential benefits of using an established kernel, primarily they you can get good hardware coverage and you can create a nice low level bridge between the hardware and the guest OS that removes many inefficiencies from indirection.

Obviously you can do that with Emu68 on the Pi too, but only because the hardware is pretty fixed. On a PC, not so much.

Last edited by Karlos on 28-Feb-2023 at 07:24 PM.

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