Ameeega (Eee 901)

[Cloudane]

I have an Eee 901 that I've done a lot of hacking around with with Linux From Scratch etc. Had it going as a Hackintosh since (I have a high speed 32GB SSD installed and it boots OS X faster than most real Macs!), but ever since getting an iPad even though the 901 has the full OS X I've had zero use for it. Between selling it, letting it sit and depreciate (expensive SSD included) or putting it to use I quite like the last option.

So that got me thinking on the idea of booting as directly as possible into some form of UAE setup and having a little portable retro gaming system of sorts

Getting time is another matter, but I'll update the thread with any progress as it goes along.

Question is where should I start with a foundation? The most hardware-compatible would be Windows XP and has the advantage of passing the wireless networking through. Maybe run winuae in place of explorer.exe as the shell once it's all set up, add a custom boot logo etc.

Other possibilities seem to be X-Amiga or Amithlon for much better integration but I'm not sure how compatible they are. I'm guessing there'd be no wireless support. I'd maybe be able to hack wireless onto X-Amiga at least, but would never (these days) find the huge amounts of time required for messing with Linux.

I'd quite like to have multi boot options.. I've done OS X, Linux and Windows triple-boot on the weee beastie before and it was great, bit of a juggling act though.

I don't know if this post is a question or a story/blog really. It's just there

[chiark]

Hmm, in my experience the atom / GMA combo doesn't quite have enough horsepower to run WinUAE well, going on experience with an Acer Aspire One.

I'd take the SSD out of it and get it sold, personally.

[Cloudane]

Drat. Thought it'd be ok, based on the fact I had it working fine on ancient systems, but I guess the Atoms are just too underpowered. Was a nice thought anyway!

Maybe I'll wait 25 years and sell the SSD for silly money on fleabay

[Toni Wilen]

afaik Atom is bad CPU for emulation (and anything that needs CPU power) because it is in-order CPU.

In-order CPU may need to wait (doing nothing) when doing memory accesses/etc. out-of-order can already (partially) execute following instructions while waiting. (Pentium Pro was first out-of-order desktop CPU from Intel..)

[chiark]

I never knew that, thanks Toni. That might explain my my libretto u100, with a Pentium M running at 1.2GHz, is a lot better for WinUAE than the Aspire!

[Cloudane]

Hmm, tried Aladdin AGA (which someone was complaining about stuttering on the Eee on here) and it's fine under E-UAE on my OS X installation.

Ironically - for an older and more basic system - NES games certainly do stutter but so far Amiga ones don't. Will see how it goes with a few games. It's just a little tinkering project anyway which is pretty much what I bought the 901 for.

[spud]

Using an Atom motherboard myself in my Amiga 500 PC conversion. The motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-D510UD, which has an Intel GMA 3150 graphics chipset and it runs WinUAE perfectly well. Couple it with the keyrah and it is as authentic an experience as you can get in my opinion.

I run e-uae on an Eee 900A with Ubuntu and haven't had any serious complaints. I tried building p-uae as an update, but lacked something to get it built.