@NathanH

Today I was thinking what a great old workhorse my uA1 is. I've put it through a lot. It's too bad that its expansion potential is so limited. Using Amiga OS 4.1 is a joy. Going from Windows to OS4.x is like going from a Toyota Corolla to a Cadillac. It's llike a sports car. So smooth and easy. Have fun with your XE.

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X5000 / microA1(OS4.1 FE U2) / CodeBench / Imagine / Blender
Lightwave 2019 / Microsoft Visual C++

@thinkchip

Quote:

thinkchip wrote: @NathanH Going from Windows to OS4.x is like going from a Toyota Corolla to a Cadillac...

Going from Windows 10/11 to AmigaOS 4.x, is like going from a 2022 Toyota Corolla, to a 2001 Cadillac DeVille.

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All the way, with 68k

@thinkchip

Thanks! I installed 4.1 FE yesterday. Today I installed updates 1 & 2. I also am trying to find a USB hub that works so I can plug in things other than USB mouse and keyboard. There's a 4-port KVM on Amazon that I read was purported to work. That will be a space saver too to work with my Linux box.

NathanH

@agami

Going from Windows to Amiga is like going from a Bugatti Chiron to a Ford Pinto with built in spying. Yea the Amiga is the Bugatti.

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Sent from my Quantum Computer.

@DiscreetFX

Quote:

DiscreetFX wrote: @agami Going from Windows to Amiga is like going from a Bugatti Chiron to a Ford Pinto with built in spying. Yea the Amiga is the Bugatti.

You're talking about going from the OG Amiga to Windows 3.x

AmigaOS 4 can in no way be compared to a Bugatti, even one that is a contemporary to its technological age.
And do you really believe that if Her Hermans had it his way, AmigaOS 4 would not be collecting user data and Hyperion selling it for profit?

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All the way, with 68k

@Karlos

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I don't think PPC was a particularly poor choice when PowerUP first appeared. Also, I can't have been the only user salivating over the proposed Blizzard G4 at the time.

I must have missed that. I only recall 600 series like 603 and 604 model. Don't recall anything close to a 7400 or G4. However, the PowerUP PPC was rather compatible with G3/G4, as running Heretic II on an AmigaOne worked fine. On a Sam with embedded PPC it fails. Perhaps the hardware went downhill with the Sam boards as they were barely more powerful than an AmigaOne even with SATA and DDR.

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Ironically, the seeds of my present preference for emulation were started with OS4. Running DoomAttack 68K on my BlizzPPC (yes, on the 603 240MHz) at playable speed at 640*400 resolution under emulation and the thought of that that meant for faster processors. OctaMED interpolated mixing mode was suddenly useful.

Yes, it was fun to try it out. There would be a few PPC Doom ports as well. Which with some work could also run under OS4 at close to native speed which was my experience with the XE only since I never had a PowerUP card to play with.

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My A1XE was, for all it's flaws, in a different league, performance wise again. It was a lot of fun. Some of the performance was down to PPC native OS, no doubt, but when you consider how little of any CPU bound application is spent doing OS calls you begin to realise that the JIT is where it's at. That and the fact that many new PPC applications were ports from Linux/x86 and generally performed less well than they did on those targets. Contrast this to 68K applications which ran like the proverbial sh*t flying off a shovel.

Ha. I did see OS4 run on the classic as friends had PPC cards. But it looked complicated which it was really. I got the impression it was slightly slower compared to an XE but didn't test games and programs like I did on my XE. I found the Linux ports interesting which to me broadened what games and software could run so to me that was a good thing. On 68K there was DOS or Windows version and Amiga version in the good days which was favoured of course so I saw it like an extension of that. Before the XE also my only real experience of Linux was Red Hat Linux which I thought was kind of quirky and weird with funny looking window graphics.

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Then I tried Amithlon and the realisation that PPC was worth nothing on its own except as a vehicle on which to JIT emulate 68K was completely cemented. Not long after this, as if a sign, the A1 died totally. Which is the gloomy warning I have for the OP. The AmigaOne is terrible hardware. All seem to be on borrowed time.

I actually saw Amithlon before OS4 was released. Since Bernie came to my club and showed us what he was working on. Some people, in the x86 crowd, wanted OS4 to be cancelled and for Amithlon to the next AmigaOS platform. They provided two different solutions for moving the hardware and OS forward though had similarities. Obviously OS4 would lose out with emulated 68K speed against x86 eventually though it had the benefit of 68K having access to native OS and interface. Amithlon had the fast JIT with emulated OS and older look but the exclusive ability to run x86 compiled Amiga apps. OS4 did provide a platform for Amiga sources to be recompile into native for full modern speed. But, even if the same app ran fast on a Mac G4, a few Athlons generations later and it's in trouble.

The AmigaOne unfortunately, was a bad board. They would have been better buying a batch of Pegasos boards which were shockingly cheaper and superior, especially the II, slapping a sticker on it and selling that as the AmigaOne!

I was disappointed they abandoned the AmigaOne 1200 board. Which would have provided a transitional solution with access to a real Amiga chipset. The flaws of the AmigaOne became well known. The worse being stability, as it could freeze at seemingly random, though I had improved my board with a better though not top range PSU. However I managed to throw the straw the broke the camels back when I removed my G4 module with a view to an over clocking. I took it out to give it a clean with a plan to install a better fan. However, when I was reinstalling it and ever so carefully despite what was coming, one of the holding screws became too tight and fractured the PowerPC! I could just see it. A hairline fracture was a deal breaker. I must have listened to too much Duran Duran as turned into a view to a kill.

Funny. Long story short managed to replace G4 board with G3 board and didn't screw it up. And my AmigaOne still works to this day! Semi-retired as I don't want to push it. The BSOD Battery Screen of Death is enough. I even managed to get 2GB RAM working. Until I was cleaning the case with my blower vac and one of the ram sticks went flying off! Now I only have 1GB left.

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This was a shame because I was still having fun and was working on a number of hardware drivers for that era of hardware. I'm not a PPC hater (just a pragmatist) and the A1, though pricey (and buggy) was at least a system that stood a chance of being fully utilised by a non-SMP 32-bit OS. I was excited by Moana (running on 32-bit mac PPC hardware), which I felt was a pragmatic move. Except it didn't go there.

That is a shame. I felt a personal lost when mine broke and was lost without it. Plugging my OS4 HDD into my A4000 and seeing how my volumes would not mount just wasn't satisfying. Needing to survive with only 68K and OSX. But, I was able to go back later, where as your loss was permanent. What we didn't see and I read about was a dual core CPU module for the XE. Active SMP 32-bit even? Yes, we has Linux.

I don't know if Moana was an official project. I only know some small details that it was demoed and someone stole the disc which pissed off upper management or something like that. Perhaps an Atari or MorphOS user, lol. It was an obvious solution to the still unsolved OS4 laptop. But the users were punished for it not becoming an end product and it left people repeatedly asking why OS4 doesn't target Mac PPC as a target platform. Which means old computers which looks sad. But that's exactly what they did with the Pegasos II which was a competing board that was now also old so what the difference really?

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Since then I feel that OS4 on PPC has become a parody of a hobbyist system. You pay large sums of money on relatively underpowered (compared to commodity) hardware that you can still barely use the full. All to run a relatively small amount of exclusive software or legacy software. Legacy software that can run better on commodity hardware.

It can't really become much more. The whole AmigaOne ecosystem of OS and hardware really came too late for both Amiga land and world wide. Apple didn't help by dropping PPC as it left PPC in the ditch as well with nothing to directly compare it too. People then compare it with a common PC but the comparison is too uneven and unbalanced. And as expected x86 was going to be developed to be more powerful as years went on making it more worse with every generation. Modern web is big red flag. If the most powerful computers on the desktop need to convert web scripts into native code just to run normally, signifying how complex or perhaps bloated they are, a least powerful machine that can only interpret the script old school has no hope of competing.

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Hobbies don't have to be stupidly expensive. Frankly, the idea of running a bonafide, physical A1200 with Emu68K on a Pi is far more appealing to me now.

Well, as long as you have an A1200 yes, you can buy a new Pi. But if you need an A1200, you can't get it new, so are left tracking down an old expensive computer. Amiga really is like the One.

Regardless, I found what could be comment of the month, with this golden gem providing an easter egg. Last line of the 2nd post in the context of the AmigaOne. Enjoy!

https://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=77934

Last edited by Hypex on 25-Mar-2023 at 02:31 PM.

@Hypex

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Well, as long as you have an A1200 yes, you can buy a new Pi. But if you need an A1200, you can't get it new, so are left tracking down an old expensive computer. Amiga really is like the One

Except the Pi will surely become a standalone solution, Emu68K or similar running somewhat like the Draco, without custom chips but using RTG and AHI.

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Doing stupid things for fun...

@Karlos

Quote:

Karlos wrote: @Hypex Quote: Well, as long as you have an A1200 yes, you can buy a new Pi. But if you need an A1200, you can't get it new, so are left tracking down an old expensive computer. Amiga really is like the One Except the Pi will surely become a standalone solution, Emu68K or similar running somewhat like the Draco, without custom chips but using RTG and AHI.

Until that day when someone has AGA emulation sorted for the Emu68 standalone. Or a special edition of UAE where the CPU part is passed through to Emu68.

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All the way, with 68k

@agami

Something like bare metal UAE. I guess it's possible.

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Doing stupid things for fun...

@Hypex

Quote:

Hypex wrote: I was disappointed they abandoned the AmigaOne 1200 board.

The EscenaA1 was a total brainfart similar to the ColdFire based A4000 card.

Just a bunch of slots and random chips soldered to a board with not even the faintest idea on how to make them work.

And even if it had worked in HW, it would not have been compatible in SW.
And even if it had somehow been compatible in SW it would still be a pointless waste of resources.

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