I know there are other people here who will be interested to see this. From EAB, a video of the Umilator (Amithlon 2) Demo CD shown running in a VM.

How different things could've been by now.

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@Karlos

I never understood Bernie’s reasoning behind destroying all copies of the code.

Surely GPLing it all would have hurt the arseholes much more?

@umisef

If you’re still reading this place, would you feel up to talking about the whole affair again now?

@Bosanac

Seems like he thought screwing everyone was better.

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@Karlos

We have the new Amiga, perhaps it could help settling things now, even make a deal with it.... After all it might as well strength Amiga Forever product if integrated

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@pixie

Bernie destroyed all copies of the source.

@Bosanac

Well implemented strategy to never make any money.

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@Karlos

I'm not sure running Quake proves anything useful. Since it runs on native PC hardware better. I suppose I've become like those people that don't see the point of playing a PC game port on OS4 since it already runs on PC and better.

I also recall back then, what I was more interested in, was a Mac version. I saw an early demo of this. To be comparable it would have had to have a PPC JIT running 68K code. It took years for this to happen. If my history is correct Bernie pretty much wrote the book on UAE x86 JIT for 68K. But Almos used Petunia as a base from OS4 68K JIT and planted that into UAE. So until then UAE PPC never had a JIT like on x86.

How things could have been? Well we saw a taste of that with Amithlon. It was pretty much competing with OS4 in the end and beat it to market. Amiga users without Intel hang ups embraced it. I do wonder, if old AmigaOne XE hardware could fetch interest in the market, why wasn't there a market for old PCs with Amithlon installed than ran faster hardware?

While it was good at running AmigaOS and programs (but not real games) as fast as possible for the time, by itself, Umilator didn't push the platform or OS forward. It just ran an old AmigaOS so while it looks fast in demos it also looks old. H&P that produced OS3.9 could have done something about this. Instead, they decided to kill it, and trap the author. The old Amiga devil at work, that uses lawyers to threaten other developers, rather than work together or independently in the small Amiga ecosystem.

OS4 did actually push the OS forward. The problem with OS4 was that it was attached to exclusive hardware that ended up being too expensive to produce. Even though they first used existing designs like with MAI. And also, the AmigaOne made Amiga hardware like Toasters, genlocks and other Amiga specific hardware for video or sound totally useless. Or rather, the AnigaOne was useless for Amiga hardware since it had no Zorro slots.

What I wonder is why no one took the idea and recreated it. I mean, is not the UAE JIT open source? Amithlon would have taken parts from UAE as a base. I don't understand why there are so many hang ups over Amithlon or Umilator when an equally skilled developer could have implemented the same idea. However, these days, the idea would be too limited. The guy above ran it in a VM but would he run it exclusively as Umilator only on his PC? I doubt it. Apart from that is WinUAE or UAE in general. That emulates the whole hardware. Would people be happy to run an AmigaOS on PC hardware that had no compatibility with their A500 game collection? Imagine, if you will, an Amithlon Mini. Lol. Would a small Amiga like plastic box be as popular if it only ran AmigaOS and compatible programs but no games?

So this is where the spike in youtube views came from.

@DiscreetFX : I would argue that Bernd did it to keep his sanity, as the whole thing was giving him a lot of stress, and wrecking with his personal life.

Last edited by LaBodilsen on 22-Feb-2023 at 08:10 AM.
Last edited by LaBodilsen on 22-Feb-2023 at 08:09 AM.

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@Hypex

OS4 pushed forwards... into a expensive niche cul-de-sac, where it has stagnated for how long now?

Let's be realists. There isn't a single feature of OS4 that can't be ported to 68K. The whole OS and almost all software ever written for it has been written in compiled languages, primarily C. Code that depends on AltiVec is a problem but that's also problem for any PPC machine that doesn't have it.

The only problems for OS4/68K are legal and the fact that the system requirements would be higher. There's no dependency on native chipset, but support exists nevertheless. So where is your more powerful 68K on which to run it? We had it in the palm of our hands with Amithlon.

Today there is a resurgence in 68K and we have OS3.2. I don't know the sales figures but I wouldn't be falling out of my chair to learn it's doing as well or better than OS4 in that regard.

With PiStorm, UAE and other high performance 68K systems I suggest there's a bigger market for OS4 than there is clinging to PPC.

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Ive always liked the idea of a big endian x86 build of AROS.
Sure, you'd lose performance vs le, but given that even something like WinUAE, on modern x86 hardware can emulate a 68k cpu at well over 2x as fast as the fastest ppc hardware available to OS4 can run native ppc code this would still result result in performance in a completely different realm, while still offering the option for an integrated 68k emulator.

While I do enjoy AROS, AROS isn't the reason for me liking this idea. It's simply the most plausible option for an out of the box 68k "compatible" Amiga derivative that could be contributed to by anyone without legalities.

@Bosanac

Repeating it doesn't make it any more true.

@fishy_fis

And still you don't have the software to take advantage of all that speed, but you would get at least oll of it under the same umbrella so to speak, for me it would a major win!

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@pixie

This stuff is 20 years out of date. IIRC, it's based on a 2.4 linux kernel, to start with. So, from a technical point of view, it would be a monumental undertaking to update it for the 2020s.

More importantly, what would be the point of it? What market is there, in 2023, for running 68k AmigaOS faster than UAE?

Also, it being 2023 means I am 20 years older now. I am much more protective of my sanity. What little tolerance I have for corporate nonsense these days is completely taken up by my day work, e.g. navigating the patent system.

@umisef

No commercial sense at all. But it would be a fabulous as an open source thing.

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@Karlos

indeed, and it would be like the discovery of the covenant ark! :D

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The Illusion of Choice | Am*ga

@umisef

You didn’t destroy all the source?

Or making it all GPL back then wouldn’t have hurt them financially?

@Hypex

Quote:

What I wonder is why no one took the idea and recreated it. I mean, is not the UAE JIT open source?

No one? Don’t we have good handfull of choices alreade? AmiBerry, AmiDeb… and whatnot, XAmiga..minimalistic Linux with some UAE incarnation have been plenty, from what I recall.

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B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

Vampire makes it redundant anyway. Why have a super fast emulated ECS Amiga with almost no compatibility with classic Amiga games when you have a AAA chipset equivalent 68080 based machine that runs most 68k software and has new exciting releases.

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@DiscreetFX

Excuse me, but no. The vampire is a cool product and I'm not knocking it, but you can't possibly claim that it's fast enough. Who are you to define what is fast enough for someone else?

As for the exciting new features of Vampire they are completely incompatible with every other 68K implementation that exists, real and virtual. And while I like cool new things as much as the next guy, the resurgence of interest in 68K is probably not helped by fragmenting it with extensions that are super niche.

Personally, I would say the PiStorm32/A1200 is fast (and compatible) enough for my needs but I'd still find a use for a modern Amithlon type solution on commodity PC hardware because, frankly... Damn, you haven't seen 68K until you've seen it in person. When I tried an iteration years ago on my PC (which admittedly was harder to set up than I care to admit), it wasn't just fast. It was devastatingly fast. My then A1XE G4/800 running OS4 was utterly defeated at running most of my own performance critical 68K code. Moreover, Amithlon ran the 68K versions faster than the PPC native versions of that code ran on the machine.

I'll just restate that, so there's absolutely no misunderstanding. Code written to compile as optimally as possible for both 68020+ and the G4: Amithlon ran the 68K version faster than the A1XE ran the PPC version. That was years ago when the G4 was still considered a high experience. Picture that gap today.

Last edited by Karlos on 22-Feb-2023 at 06:31 PM.

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@Karlos

Yeh the A1-XE computers where totally fucked up, slow memory, broken DMA, messed up IRQ’s and, what was not wrong with that hardware. most people had to use PCI66 slots, AGA 2x never lived up its speed (and only worked correct if you cut traces and wire strapped it), GART never worked, that computer contained worst of worst technology from PC industry at the time. Its poor measurement of anything.

the only good about it was the G4 cpu, (even that they screwed by using different models, part numbers.) Some high power, some low power versions, even some early CPU’s, where did they find them.

No wonder Alen whet into hiding out of shame.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 22-Feb-2023 at 07:40 PM.

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