@DiscreetFX

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DiscreetFX wrote: @agami Why worry about ARIX when you already have ApolloOS? What else would ARIX offer?

ApolloOS is awesome, but limited. ARIX will provide better driver support for more hardware flexibility. Moving to commodity ARM or x86 hardware and bridging between the 68k ISA and the next.

I remember when AROS started in the mid ‘90s and I have always been a fan of the project’s mission. Unfortunately, it wasn’t ready at key junctures to be considered in the plans of interchanging Amiga IP holders. Until 2009 that is.

In 2009, when Mr Dickinson was looking to put some money into newer PPC hardware for another Amiga-inspired system, he turned to the “legitimate” successor to Amiga OS 3 so the new system would have the necessary credibility.

He wanted to focus on hardware and have someone else focus on software, but since he didn’t care for x86, ideally he should have put money into AROS-PPC to bring it up to the level of AROS-x86.

The cost of AROS-PPC porting development would’ve been the same as what he spent on AmigaOS 4, but the open source ecosystem would’ve been boosted and A-EON would have had more control over its product delivery.

Alas, AROS entered into a slump over the past 5 years, with most of the activity occurring in AROS-68k and more specifically ApolloOS. This is great for the Apollo 080/SAGA systems but it doesn’t move the needle forward enough.

I’d really love for AROS to have the kind of engagement Haiku OS is having, but the chances of that are getting slimmer every day.
Though with ARIX, I see an opportunity for some forward movement. Perhaps it’s something that the AROS project should’ve seriously entertained in the early 2000s, especially seeing how well it worked for Mac OS X.

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@agami

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I’d really love for AROS to have the kind of engagement Haiku OS is having

Haiku developers…
- don’t have to worry about some owner of Be threatening with legal actions.
- don’t have legacy architecture to worry about - Haiku doesn’t run on BeBox.
- don’t have to worry about competing efforts, greed and soap drama.

As long as Ben Hermans/Hyperion holds any rights to anything AmigaOS, AROS is at risk. From what Olsen has written earlier, any contribution to AROS by anyone who’s ever been involved in AnigaOS development, or even admit they once peeked at the leaked OS sources, risk jeopardizing the legality of AROS as a whole, and Ben Hermans would happily drag AROS to court. And if you exclude the list of people who have at some point taken part in developing Amiga OS, be it 3.5, 3.9, 4.0, 4.1, 3.1.4 and 3.2, there really aren’t many left who can “lift” AROS.

On the other hand - AmigaOS developers are free to lift any code they see fit from AROS and bake it into AmigaOS.

Last edited by kolla on 27-Sep-2023 at 09:47 PM.

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ApolloOS is a mess, it’s not like you can build straight out of the git repo the “distro” ApolloOS (which from what I’ve seen of videos and screenshots, still appears to have lots of OS 3.9 components (??))

The git repo of “ApolloTeam-dev” is rather quiet.

Last edited by kolla on 27-Sep-2023 at 10:08 PM.

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@kolla

Hmm, so what you're saying is that the AROS initiative just needs a really good lawyer.

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agami Quote:

Hmm, so what you're saying is that the AROS initiative just needs a really good lawyer.

Perhaps 68k AmigaOS 3.2 development and sales are hurting AROS development? There were a surprising number of 68k developers working on AROS. Perhaps more x86-64 users chose WinUAE emulation with an updated 68k AmigaOS 3.2 rather than x86-64 AROS running UAE emulating a 68k Amiga. There has been a momentum shift back to the 68k Amiga which seems to be affecting PPC AmigaOS 4 as well. Another catalyst may be THEA500 Mini and resulting increased development of 68k Amiga games as a result. I doubt AROS and AmigaOS 4 development and support will ever return to their peaks. I expect the current 68k Amiga momentum will eventually die back without real hardware too. Amiga emulation will stick around but most computer users don't know what an Amiga is and never will with the current AmigaNOne and AmigaOS 4 for desperate customers who pay criminals business strategies.

@matthey

But you could have AROS 68k integrated into AROS ARM for pi

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@kolla

ApolloOS is constantly updated. It’s best if you own a Vampire V4 though. Perhaps you should join their Discord.

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@matthey

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matthey wrote: agami Quote: Hmm, so what you're saying is that the AROS initiative just needs a really good lawyer. Perhaps 68k AmigaOS 3.2 development and sales are hurting AROS development?

No? Why? There’s no overlap?

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There were a surprising number of 68k developers working on AROS.

What number did you find surprising, and where did that number come from?

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Perhaps more x86-64 users chose WinUAE emulation with an updated 68k AmigaOS 3.2 rather than x86-64 AROS running UAE emulating a 68k Amiga.

What does one have to do with the other? Are you talking about users or developers? Perhaps there are so called x86-64 users (!) who chose OS 3.2 on UAE on AROS? Or maybe a whole lot has moved to FS-UAE? Does it matter? No?

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There has been a momentum shift back to the 68k Amiga which seems to be affecting PPC AmigaOS 4 as well. Another catalyst may be THEA500 Mini and resulting increased development of 68k Amiga games as a result.

Yes, definitely the THEA500 - not the FPGA systems, not UAE on Steam deck, not PiStorms… it must be the THEA500, sure.

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I doubt AROS and AmigaOS 4 development and support will ever return to their peaks.

I doubt AmigaOS 3 development and support will ever return to its peak.

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I expect the current 68k Amiga momentum will eventually die back without real hardware too. Amiga emulation will stick around but most computer users don't know what an Amiga is and never will with the current AmigaNOne and AmigaOS 4 for desperate customers who pay criminals business strategies.

Thank you for stating the obvious - yes, your so called momentum will fade away, it would so even with new hardware - we have had new hardware many, many times over now. Even with new 68k “real” Amiga and OS3, it would still be desperate customers who pay criminals business strategies (?!)

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@matthey

Quote:

matthey wrote: Perhaps 68k AmigaOS 3.2 development and sales are hurting AROS development? There were a surprising number of 68k developers working on AROS. Perhaps more x86-64 users chose WinUAE emulation with an updated 68k AmigaOS 3.2 rather than x86-64 AROS running UAE emulating a 68k Amiga. There has been a momentum shift back to the 68k Amiga which seems to be affecting PPC AmigaOS 4 as well. Another catalyst may be THEA500 Mini and resulting increased development of 68k Amiga games as a result. I doubt AROS and AmigaOS 4 development and support will ever return to their peaks. I expect the current 68k Amiga momentum will eventually die back without real hardware too. Amiga emulation will stick around but most computer users don't know what an Amiga is and never will with the current AmigaNOne and AmigaOS 4 for desperate customers who pay criminals business strategies.

I'd say it's a a little from Column A, B, C, and D. But there is also something else that started back in 2017 when the die-down in AROS x86 appears to have started. While I won't discount legal concerns regarding development of components for the OS itself, there has also been a dearth of new drivers, apps, ports, and even updates to existing software for AROS x86.

I wouldn't go so far to say "it's too late now", but time is running out.

Last edited by agami on 29-Sep-2023 at 04:46 AM.

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@Thread

(Edit)

Sorry I posted my CD32 tribute in here rather than the CD32 thread! These really are all blending into one!

So back on topic: has anyone taken the plunge on a PiStorm or PiStorm32 recently? Care to share how you sourced a Pi especially if it was a CM4/RPi4 model?

Last edited by BigD on 29-Sep-2023 at 06:07 PM.

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@agami

Just found I hadn't replied to this.

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Has English all of a sudden become everyone's second language? Nowhere did I even imply that Hyperion porting AmigaOS 4 to emu68 is what's best for our hyper-niche market/community.

That's the thing. I'm not sure what is meant by emu68. How do you target emu68k? I didn't know there was some special target called emu68k. All I know is the PiStorm engine emulates a 68040 or similar behind the hood. And 68K software runs transparently with no concept of any other hardware layer than the 68K code it is designed for.

If there is a dedicated emu68k target, that perhaps has hooks into native ARM code, like the Amithlon compiler could do. Then that would be a target. But just running faster, because it's running on emu68k yet has no idea about it, I wouldn't consider a target. I doubt Hyperion would accept an emulated target machine. But, most classic OS4 licenses they sold would be for emulation, and as it happens one of the few platforms with digital downloads. So perhaps, in a way, they do actually support this for a crippled release.

@Hans

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Not really. The goal is to be able to use Linux drivers with almost no changes. Getting drivers written is an ongoing problem for AmigaOS, so being able to use drivers written by others (including the manufacturers themselves), would take a huge burden off our backs, and allow us to focus on other stuff.

Well, to really use Linux drivers, the driver would need to run on Linux. And not in the kind of way that OS4 sound drivers like SB128 are ported from Linux to OS4.

But, at that point, shall we throw away the baby with the bath water? Because Exec then deprceciates from being an excluisive kernel to a second class citizen. In some ways this would benefit; although the neat looking Amiga functions in pascal case would be made subordinate to old fashioned looking snake case, it would inherit 64 bit and memory protection in limited capacity. So, at this point, it's exactly where MacOS9 was on PPC.

"It's AmigaOS Jim, but not as we know it."

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My preference would be a bash compatible shell.

Oh no. Okay it's just bash has a few basisms that are inferior to the Amiga. Technically, what irks me is not bash but the terminal emulator itself. What is running a terminal emulator and not simple a native terminal interface? Never mind. So, three I can think of are these. You can't drag an icon in and keep typing, unlke on Amiga, you need to click the window which makes it awkward. It has no history buffer like the Amiga, you can't type some charcacter and press shift up to find commands. And no, the history command doesn't cut it, an awkward command cannot replicate a fluent key stroke. For the last one, well, tab completion bringing up a list would be nice.

However, I really would like to see a proper posix working shell on Amiga. And not ABC shell or similar. But a shell that can run posix (or bash) scripts. With optional dark theme and font to look the part. Somehow, we don't have a proper interpreter. Things like ABC shell seem to have a simple translation layer between posix and AmigaDOS paths. But it needs something more deep that can execute a script. For example, a common construct is "this:that" in a configure script. But ABC shell gets confused, ignores the colon, and thinks it's an Amiga path. I don't know why. It's supposed to be a shell interpreter so why would it think a file name is native instead of converting the foreign path construct down to irreducible parts?

@Hypex

To target emu68 means to target Raspberry Pi, there is also emu68 without PiStorm. (And for that matter, PiStorm without emu68)

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@kolla

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kolla wrote: @Hypex To target emu68 means to target Raspberry Pi, there is also emu68 without PiStorm. (And for that matter, PiStorm without emu68)

I didn't knew that emu68k was working outside pistorm, could you point me in the right direction?
Neither I ever thought that emu68k was anything but a very fast 68k CPU, so in that sense while you may target emu68k I guess it would exclude WinUAE for example, as there's nothing like on Vampire (SAGA AMMX) for example exclusive to emu68k.

Ps- I didn't see the post you were referring to

Last edited by pixie on 30-Sep-2023 at 10:01 PM.

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@Hypex

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Well, to really use Linux drivers, the driver would need to run on Linux. And not in the kind of way that OS4 sound drivers like SB128 are ported from Linux to OS4.

Not necessarily, but there would have to be a partial Linux compatibility layer. IIRC, that's what AROS uses for its Gallium drivers.

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But, at that point, shall we throw away the baby with the bath water? Because Exec then deprceciates from being an excluisive kernel to a second class citizen. In some ways this would benefit; although the neat looking Amiga functions in pascal case would be made subordinate to old fashioned looking snake case, it would inherit 64 bit and memory protection in limited capacity. So, at this point, it's exactly where MacOS9 was on PPC.

Maybe. If I were (re)starting the OS4 project from scratch, then I would be considering using the Linux or BSD kernel as foundation. Just the kernel and the drivers, mind you, not the rest.

At some point backward compatibility will have to be broken, and legacy apps will have to be sandboxed. There's no way to switch endianness (needed for access to drivers), or more modern OS features without it. That could still be done with ExecSG if desired (e.g., by creating a v2 main interface).

We'd also need to use the same ABI as Linux, because some drivers are still only available in binary only form (especially on ARM).

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Oh no. Okay it's just bash has a few basisms that are inferior to the Amiga. ... However, I really would like to see a proper posix working shell on Amiga. ...

Kolla has already pointed out that a POSIX compliant shell would be a better option.

Hans

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@Hans

I've heard a few rumblings that the new RPi 5 will (potentially) work for some things and not others. Any thoughts?

@pixie

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pixie wrote: @kolla Quote: kolla wrote: @Hypex To target emu68 means to target Raspberry Pi, there is also emu68 without PiStorm. (And for that matter, PiStorm without emu68) I didn't knew that emu68k was working outside pistorm, could you point me in the right direction?

https://github.com/michalsc/Emu68/releases/tag/nightly

Notice the build that has “raspi” instead of “pistorm” in the name?
Those are for Raspberry Pi without PiStorm. So what do you get with that? Essentially a 68k Rraspberry pi. What OS supports that? Currently none.

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Neither I ever thought that emu68k was anything but a very fast 68k CPU, so in that sense while you may target emu68k I guess it would exclude WinUAE for example, as there's nothing like on Vampire (SAGA AMMX) for example exclusive to emu68k.

The Pi hardware is exclusive to emu68.

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@kolla

That's fairly specific so I take it such a target would know what's under the hood and optimise for it.

@kolla

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The Pi hardware is exclusive to emu68.

Indeed, from the Amiga POV it doesn't provide anything special that WinUAE doesn't provide, but they have something in common, both can provide AHI RTG and a fast 68k cpu. If you target EMU68 you might as well target WinUAE and sometimes, Vampire even. Regarding WinUAE Emu68k has the advantage of having access to the actual chipsets, but otherwise this exclusivity is moot from what I see.

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@Bifford

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I've heard a few rumblings that the new RPi 5 will (potentially) work for some things and not others. Any thoughts?

No idea. I don't know much about the RPi 5 beyond its announced specs, and what i've seen in Jeff Geerling's YouTube video.

Hans

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