EmuTOS for Amiga

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by BlankVector

Also, the keyboard may not work correctly because I didn't send the acknowledges (not required by WinUAE).

Required since 2.4.0.

[gibs]

Originally Posted by BlankVector

It should work on real Amiga hardware, but you will have to replace the Kickstart ROM

It should...
IMO no. I would be able to reckick it no ?

[BlankVector]

Originally Posted by gibs

IMO no. I would be able to reckick it no ?

Sorry, I'm an Amiga newbie.
Is "reckicking" the ability to test another ROM without physically removing (or flashing) the current ROM?

[desiv]

Originally Posted by BlankVector

Sorry, I'm an Amiga newbie.
Is "reckicking" the ability to test another ROM without physically removing (or flashing) the current ROM?

Yep.

Basically, say you have an Amiga with a 3.0 kickstart ROM and you want to use 3.1.
You boot the computer, it loads the 3.1 into memory and then you re-kick the machine and it starts from the new (or in some cases older) ROM.

desiv

[BlankVector]

Originally Posted by desiv

Basically, say you have an Amiga with a 3.0 kickstart ROM and you want to use 3.1.
You boot the computer, it loads the 3.1 into memory and then you re-kick the machine and it starts from the new (or in some cases older) ROM.

Excellent! Well, it should work with emutos-amiga.img, too.
The keyboard will not work due to missing acknowledges (will be fixed), but everything else should work.

That would be great if someone could try that.

[gibs]

I tried if you read my previous message. It doesn't work with BlizKick (an utility delivered by Phase5). Cammy is also trying with the ACA board...

[BlankVector]

Originally Posted by gibs

I tried if you read my previous message. It doesn't work with BlizKick (an utility delivered by Phase5).

Sorry, I'm not familiar with those tools. If they can run on WinUAE, I could have a look.

[desiv]

I wonder if it's possible/likely that the rekick tools in question are looking for an Amiga ROM specifically somehow and are failing on this image...

desiv

[Twiggy]

I used ACAtune and got something loaded up (on a A600). As the documentation says, the keyboard doesn't work. Other than that, I just got a trashcan and a set of menus that didn't do much.

[BlankVector]

Originally Posted by twiggy

I used ACAtune and got something loaded up (on a A600). As the documentation says, the keyboard doesn't work. Other than that, I just got a trashcan and a set of menus that didn't do much.

Excellent, you are the first one running EmuTOS on real Amiga hardware

You went to the EmuTOS desktop, there is not much more (it is a minimal OS).

You didn't get any drive icon on the desktop because no mass storage was detected. Currently, only IDE drives (or CompactFlash) cards are supported on A600/A1200 hardware. They need to be connected as Master device. EmuTOS has limited partition support, it requires a PC-like partition table and one or more FAT16 primary partition. Basically, if you format an IDE hard disk or CompactFlash card on a PC, carefully using a FAT16 (2GB max) partition, it should work immediately on EmuTOS. Then you can run external Atari programs, etc.

About the keyboard issue, I reproduced it using WinUAE 2.4.1 (thanks Toni for the hint). I will look at that acknowledge issue.

Many thanks for your test

[desiv]

Originally Posted by twiggy

... I just got a trashcan and a set of menus that didn't do much.

..

Sounds like an ST to me..

ba dum dum...

:-)

desiv

I'll have to try that on my 1200...
I wonder how much work it would be to get it to recognize the Amiga floppy controller?

[BlankVector]

Originally Posted by desiv

I wonder how much work it would be to get it to recognize the Amiga floppy controller?

I have a few notions about the Amiga floppy interface, so I have a rough idea about that.

First, reading Amiga floppies will be useless because the filesystem will not be recognized by EmuTOS. And EmuTOS is not designed to support alternate file systems.

To read Atari/PC floppies, it would require reading a whole raw track, split it into sectors, decode the MFM... Nothing impossible, but it requires some amount of work. And write support will probably be a bit more complicated. I know this was supported by PcMountAll long ago, and probably by many other modern AmigaOS tools.
On the EmuTOS side, the interface is minimal and easily implementable. You just have to write a routine which takes a drive number, track and sector, and you're done.
I'm not going to dig into that myself, but if someone wants to write such routine (or already have it), your support will be welcome.

[Twiggy]

@BlankVector - Thanks for the information and advice. I may give that FAT16 thing a go when I get a moment. At the moment I have two 4GB CF cards, one with SFS and the other with whatever NetBSD uses, so I doubt that'd be detected, ha. Cheers again, I look forward to further developments.

Out of interest, what are the "killer apps" and games that would be EmuTOS compatible (on a Amiga)?

[gibs]

Mmmmmm none.

[Toni Wilen]

Originally Posted by BlankVector

To read Atari/PC floppies, it would require reading a whole raw track, split it into sectors, decode the MFM... Nothing impossible, but it requires some amount of work.

WinUAE (and uaeunp sources) and aros m68k trackdisk.device has PC MFM to sectors decoder included that should be quite easy to use. (no, I am not going to bother, sorry)

[BlankVector]

Originally Posted by twiggy

Out of interest, what are the "killer apps" and games that would be EmuTOS compatible (on an Amiga)?

I'm afraid that gibs is right
Old word processors or monochrome games running in a window may work, but certainly no exciting stuff.

[desiv]

I was wondering about an "EMUTOS format" that would work more easily with EMUTOS and the Amiga, but not necessarily compatible with ST or Amiga formats (ALA A-Max format), but then I read:

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

WinUAE (and uaeunp sources) and aros m68k trackdisk.device has PC MFM to sectors decoder included that should be quite easy to use.

So, it sounds like it would be better to just go for MFM...

Also, as for applications, if you could get an Amiga serial port MIDI device to look like an ST MIDI device, it might be nice for people to play with the MIDI software, which I always heard was pretty good...
(I never used MIDI, so I'm not sure..)

desiv

[BlankVector]

Originally Posted by desiv

Also, as for applications, if you could get an Amiga serial port MIDI device to look like an ST MIDI device, it might be nice for people to play with the MIDI software, which I always heard was pretty good...

For sure, in EmuTOS we could redirect the MIDI BIOS functions (that's dumb character I/O) to the Amiga serial port MIDI device. That will work with software using the BIOS, but not the ones using direct hardware access. However, most Atari MIDI software are designed for the ST-High monochrome mode (the one which works on Amiga), that would be worth trying.

[Twiggy]

I have a MIDI device. I don't suppose you'd know which MIDI software packages are system friendly? Cubase?

[BlankVector]

Originally Posted by twiggy

I don't suppose you'd know which MIDI software packages are system friendly? Cubase?

I don't know, each software has to be tested. Recently I tried Devpac2 and Degas Elite, both worked perfectly.

Also, note that EmuTOS may not be 100% accurate compared to the original TOS, even on Atari hardware. But it is Free Software, so any bug can be fixed.