EmuTOS for Amiga

[BlankVector]

Hello.

I'm proud to announce that EmuTOS is now available for Amiga.
It is an operating system compatible with the Atari ST original OS.
As a result, you can run clean Atari ST programs on Amiga hardware, provided that they only use the OS and not the Atari hardware.

EmuTOS is provided as a Kickstart ROM replacement.
You can download the latest snapshot there:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/emut.../CVS-20120623/

It runs fine on WinUAE, in monochrome video mode, and with IDE hard disk support.

For the details, you can have a look at the readme.txt inside the emutos-amiga-*.zip archive.

This will probably be useless, but anyway, that's cool

[desiv]

Seems interesting, thanx!!

The other project I was interested in was KickTOS.
Would love to try that on my A1000..
Did that ever get a release of any kind?

Anyway, thanx. Haven't played with the ST too much, but it looks interesting.

desiv

[prowler]

Hi BlankVector,

Thanks for sharing this news with us here.

[XDelusion]

Very cool!

[fishyfish]

Interesting stuff, and thank you

Just curious though, can this be used on a real amiga as well, or is it soley for the emulator realm? I dont mean to discredit your work, but Im not sure I see much point if it doesnt run on real amigas as well (why wouldnt someone just use something like STonX, Hatari, or Steem for example instead?)

[strim]

Originally Posted by BlankVector

I'm proud to announce that EmuTOS is now available for Amiga.

That's really incredible. I'm interested how (and if) it works on a real hardware. Unfortunately, now I am away from my amigas, but I'll test as soon as possible.

I don't know much about TOS internals, but maybe I could help adding support for some Amiga hardware. I wrote a few drivers for the NetBSD .

[frank_b]

Originally Posted by strim

That's really incredible. I'm interested how (and if) it works on a real hardware. Unfortunately, now I am away from my amigas, but I'll test as soon as possible.

I don't know much about TOS internals, but maybe I could help adding support for some Amiga hardware. I wrote a few drivers for the NetBSD .

They need floppy support implemented for the amiga. Colour support would be nice too

[deg]

> That's really incredible. I'm interested how (and if) it works on a real hardware.

I seem to remember that programming TOS on Atari works as follows:

move.w #<parameter>, -(sp) ; push function parameter onto stack
move.w #<function number>, -(sp) ; the function you want to call
trap #21 ; call tos function
add.w #4, sp ; correct stack

the "trap" is like a user interrupt, on both the ST and Amiga you can set a handler for it something like eg move.l #handler, $80

and <function number> might be 1 for open file, 2 for close file, etc in which case a simple tos emulator would look like this:

void handler(int function_number, ...)
{
if (function_number == 1)
{
// put code for open file here
}
else if (function_number == 2)
{
// put code for close file here
}
}
etc

very cool project, with the only problem that most of the worthwhile ST applications would hit the hardware in some way and not be pure TOS/GEM. My guess is that the neochome paint program will not work, however perhaps the "Magic Shadow Archiver" for atari .msa disk images will work?

[frank_b]

Originally Posted by deg

> That's really incredible. I'm interested how (and if) it works on a real hardware.

I seem to remember that programming TOS on Atari works as follows:

move.w #<parameter>, -(sp) ; push function parameter onto stack
move.w #<function number>, -(sp) ; the function you want to call
trap #21 ; call tos function
add.w #4, sp ; correct stack

the "trap" is like a user interrupt, on both the ST and Amiga you can set a handler for it something like eg move.l #handler, $80

and <function number> might be 1 for open file, 2 for close file, etc in which case a simple tos emulator would look like this:

void handler(int function_number, ...)
{
if (function_number == 1)
{
// put code for open file here
}
else if (function_number == 2)
{
// put code for close file here
}
}
etc

very cool project, with the only problem that most of the worthwhile ST applications would hit the hardware in some way and not be pure TOS/GEM. My guess is that the neochome paint program will not work, however perhaps the "Magic Shadow Archiver" for atari .msa disk images will work?

Correct about the TOS calls above however MSA won't work yet because there's no floppy support. What would be cool would be do get Emutos running as a process in Amiga OS in the same manner as shapeshifter.

[fishyfish]

What would be cool would be do get Emutos running as a process in Amiga OS in the same manner as shapeshifter.

That'd be very cool
Im not hugely familiar with atari's 16bit computers beyond playing with them on emulators, so excuse my ignorance, but what's the relationship between tos and gem? Does it parallel kickstart/WB, or is gem more akin to a kickstart replacement?
Ultimately I guess Im trying to find out if the above hypothetical scenario would allow a person to use some Falcon software? (this is assuming the falcom uses, or can use Gem?)

[gibs]

What to do with the .img file ?

[Schlachtwerk]

Originally Posted by gibs

What to do with the .img file ?

The IMG is the Kickstart Replacment.

[gibs]

Yes, I know but how to kick it (on real hw)? I tried with BlizKick without success...

[Schlachtwerk]

Originally Posted by gibs

Yes, I know but how to kick it (on real hw)? I tried with BlizKick without success...

I dont know, i have only test it with winuae.

[Cammy]

This is awesome news, I hope we can run it as a process like Shapeshifter some day too... at the same time as Shapeshifter would be nice. I'd like to show off running three OSs at the same time.

I'm going to try and see if I can get it running on the ACA1230.

[frank_b]

Originally Posted by fishyfish

That'd be very cool
Im not hugely familiar with atari's 16bit computers beyond playing with them on emulators, so excuse my ignorance, but what's the relationship between tos and gem? Does it parallel kickstart/WB, or is gem more akin to a kickstart replacement?
Ultimately I guess Im trying to find out if the above hypothetical scenario would allow a person to use some Falcon software? (this is assuming the falcom uses, or can use Gem?)

TOS is the bios and console mode part of the OS and GEM is the gui.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_TOS

There is an emu tos build for the Falcon too.

[BlankVector]

Originally Posted by desiv

The other project I was interested in was KickTOS.

Exactly! When I saw the KickTOS video 2 years ago, I realized that the ST-High video mode (only 1 bitplane) was compatible with the Amiga Playfield hardware. So I thought that EmuTOS should work... and it does

Originally Posted by fishyfish

Just curious though, can this be used on a real amiga as well, or is it soley for the emulator realm?

It should work on real Amiga hardware, but you will have to replace the Kickstart ROM
Also, the keyboard may not work correctly because I didn't send the acknowledges (not required by WinUAE).

For Atari machines, EmuTOS is also shipped as RAM version, to be loaded from floppy or hard disk without having to replace the ROM. It works fine on ST hardware. We could easily do the same for Amiga, if someones writes a loader.

Originally Posted by fishyfish

(why wouldnt someone just use something like STonX, Hatari, or Steem for example instead?)

Don't search any good reason for the existence of EmuTOS for Amiga. I did it because it's cool, no more

Originally Posted by strim

I don't know much about TOS internals, but maybe I could help adding support for some Amiga hardware. I wrote a few drivers for the NetBSD .

Definitely, you are welcome! Feel free to examine the sources (the Amiga specific parts are really tiny), and you can join the emutos-devel mailing list for further work.

Originally Posted by frank_b

They need floppy support implemented for the amiga. Colour support would be nice too

Yes, floppy support is really a key missing feature.
However, EmuTOS supports only FAT12/FAT16 filesystems, so it is probably not worth supporting traditional Amiga floppies.
And I'm not sure if Amiga emulators support Atari floppy images (similar to PC ones).

About Color video modes, unfortunately I'm not sure if they could work (without additional drivers, of course). The Atari hardware uses interlaced bitplanes every 16 pixels, and I'm not sure that the Amiga Playfield hardware is able to handle that

Originally Posted by deg

very cool project, with the only problem that most of the worthwhile ST applications would hit the hardware in some way and not be pure TOS/GEM.

True. But the latest Atari compatible machines (Milan...) were not so much compatible with the original ST hardware, so clean programs finally appeared. Those ones should work fine on Amiga.

Originally Posted by deg

My guess is that the neochome paint program will not work

It will probably never work. It uses ST-Low color video mode, rasters...

Originally Posted by deg

however perhaps the "Magic Shadow Archiver" for atari .msa disk images will work?

If MSA only uses the BIOS to access the floppies, it should also work on Amiga as soon as a floppy driver is available.

Originally Posted by gibs

Yes, I know but how to kick it (on real hw)? I tried with BlizKick without success...

I don't know BlizKick, but if you explain me what it does I may be able to build a custom EmuTOS for it.

[Galahad/FLT]

Converting the Atari ST screen mode in realtime can be done, its not exactly speedy, but if someone wanted to run GEM in colour, it isn't a problem.

Obviously on base 68000 systems it'll be slow, but on faster machines, its not really a problem at all, its a very simple routine to write and you simply wait for the main routine in TOS to finish writing to the ST screen, and then convert in realtime to an area set aside in Amiga chip ram to display a 16 colour screen.

[XDelusion]

I was trying to get Magic to run under Shape Shifter some months ago with no success.

This may well be the solution to that problem. No Magic OS per say, but access to Atari apps, yes!

[frank_b]

Originally Posted by BlankVector

About Color video modes, unfortunately I'm not sure if they could work (without additional drivers, of course). The Atari hardware uses interlaced bitplanes every 16 pixels, and I'm not sure that the Amiga Playfield hardware is able to handle that

The VDI should already support contiguous bitplanes. It probably wouldn't be a huge lot of work to make the destination screen use contiguous planes or interleaved line by line. This is just a guess however. The Amiga blitter couldn't be used in an ST style screen mode either. It lacks a programmable x increment. Not that emu tos has blitter support in the VDI yet

[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.