Those new fandangled PPC Amigas..?

[stu232]

How do the PPC machines execute classic 680x0 code, do they emulate it?

[FOL]

Originally Posted by stu232

How do the PPC machines execute classic 680x0 code, do they emulate it?

Yes, E-UAE. There is also the new E-UAE JIT available now as beta.

[DDNI]

There is also Petunia for running OS friendly 68k programs in AmigaOS4 without UAE.

[stu232]

Is the emulation seemless or does the emulator have been to executed manually?

[DDNI]

You can use RunINUAE to automatically start EUAE whenver you double click on an ADF or WHDLoad slave. The program or game can then run in a window or fullscreen.

[ajk]

Emulation is seamless for system-friendly programs (=needs only 68k emulation). For example, if you run Personal Paint it will run just like it normally would.

If it's a game or something that needs direct access to the original chipset (not through system libraries), then it will run in E-UAE in one way or another and isn't necessarily quite so seamless.

[stu232]

Hmm, I'm curious now.

Should I spend money and buy an old PPC machine or use an old AMD x86 3.2Ghz PC and run something like Amithon on it?

[ancalimon]

Originally Posted by stu232

Hmm, I'm curious now.

Should I spend money and buy an old PPC machine or use an old AMD x86 3.2Ghz PC and run something like Amithon on it?

OS4.1 is running great on my A4000T (604e@400MHz) It's just that CVisionPPC (8mb) struggles a lot and 128mb ram is not really enough.

Amithlon is like using a very fast Draco. No Amiga custom chips.

[ptyerman]

But again you can use UAE on Amithlon to access ADFs and such.

Just my two cents - Amithlon is great, but it seems like it's constantly locking up for some reason. These days I'd just throw a barebones linux install, xorg, a lightweight wm (openbox comes to mind), and launchers for FS-UAE.

[jPV]

Originally Posted by stu232

How do the PPC machines execute classic 680x0 code, do they emulate it?

Both OS4 and MorphOS do this in the same way. They have OS3.x compatible API and 68k CPU emulator with JIT (Petunia on OS4 and Trance on MorphOS). 68k emulation is always running and it's transparent to user. User doesn't even notice if he's running native or emulated programs. Emulation is so good that you can even use 68k system components on the new operating systems (libraries, devices, datatypes, commands etc). Emulated programs also run very quickly, because whole Amiga isn't emulated. Programs mostly use PPC native compatible components when they run.

Because only CPU is emulated, 68k programs must be coded system friendly way. If they try to hit original Amiga hardware directly they don't work and must be run on UAE then. Games, demos and maybe some older audio applications are the most problematic to run directly without UAE, but some newer of them which are AHI and RTG compatible do work though.

[amiga_fan]

Originally Posted by ancalimon

OS4.1 is running great on my A4000T (604e@400MHz) It's just that CVisionPPC (8mb) struggles a lot and 128mb ram is not really enough.

Amithlon is like using a very fast Draco. No Amiga custom chips.

O$4 does NOT use custom chips either; so both Amithlon and O$4 are on the same boat.


@Stu232:

I'd recommend you to try Icaros Desktop 2 (see here for more details: http://www.icarosdesktop.org );
you can run 68k Amiga programs (under emulation) in "coherency mode", that is to say, seamlessly integrated in the Aros host!

(In case you don't know, Aros is an open-source implementation of Amiga OS that runs on commodity hardware (read: PCs);
Icaros Desktop is an Aros distro).

[ajk]

OS4 does use the custom chips when running on Classic hardware (you get video and audio without a separate graphics or sound card). But only through libraries, not in a way that would allow games to run without emulation.

[jPV]

Originally Posted by amiga_fan

I'd recommend you to try Icaros Desktop 2 (see here for more details: http://www.icarosdesktop.org );
you can run 68k Amiga programs (under emulation) in "coherency mode", that is to say, seamlessly integrated in the Aros host!

What do you mean with seamlessly? Do the 68k programs share same filesystem (you can access for example USB sticks from them), can you use their AREXX ports from main OS? Is the clipboard shared? Do they look the same with window borders&gadgets to native programs?

(In case you don't know, Aros is an open-source implementation of Amiga OS that runs on commodity hardware (read: PCs);
Icaros Desktop is an Aros distro).

But you have to remember that you can't run existing Amiga binaries directly under it, they need to be recompiled or run within an UAE box. MorphOS and OS4 let you do that, and they also run classic PPC software too. MorphOS is the only OS which also runs both PUP and WOS software.

[tero]

@jPV
Have a look at the second screenshot, Aweb and AmigaAmp are 68k.
http://www.icarosdesktop.org/

[stu232]

I'll install IcarOS, looks neat.