Run Amiga on Intel hardware.

[christoff522]

I've just been thinking how absolutely awesome it would be to have Amiga running barebone on Intel CPUs. preferably no emulation, just Workbench, and native Amiga programs all running nicely. I know it's a pipe dream, but I would love to have those skills to be able to do it - it also fits in nicely with the 'what if Commodore had lasted another year' thread.

I'm currently writing this on an emulated A4000 - granted it has JIT active, but it's memory is only 8mb chip ram and 256mb fast, yet it has a web browser, and IRC client running, while the Win 11 box running it is probably using 3gb alone. How lovely would it be to have a quad core cpu, 16gb ram running AmigaOS natively with no need for windows.
A few questions

1. what would be needed in order to port Amiga to Intel
2. How good is AROS/ICAROS nowadays
3. Would it be possible to run UAE as close to the hardware as possible with say the Linux Kernel dealing with hardware?

...

Wow, an Amiga Linux distro?

Please comment on my ramblings and let me know if any of these ideas are valid, and also let me know what you think.

[Nobby_UK]

See Amithlon

[christoff522]

Originally Posted by Nobby_UK

See Amithlon

Wow no way, taking a look now..thank you!!

[stevelord]

Originally Posted by christoff522

I've just been thinking how absolutely awesome it would be to have Amiga running barebone on Intel CPUs.

These threads pop up every now and again, usually from people getting back into Amigas who spot the 30 year difference since they left. The short version is that running an Amiga native on Intel would be a terrible experience. You wouldn't have native custom chip access, native 68k access (which is what most software is written for) and while it's hypothetically possible to multiprocess on an Amiga, no code (afaict) exists for SMP, so multi-core is a whole new can of worms (not the Team17 kind).

In plain English all the things that make the Amiga an Amiga won't translate without being emulated or lost. Emulation (at some layer) really is the best option for running Amiga on Intel. The good news is you're already using one of the best emulation setups. Amithlon is also good, albeit the emulation is out of date.

Originally Posted by christoff522

A few questions
1. what would be needed in order to port Amiga to Intel

Most of the obstacles are legal rather than technical, sadly. Probably the OS source opening up, or someone with the will and rights to port it. At a technical levels, an ABI (Intel and 68k are very incompatible), emulation layers and a decision as to whether to emulate 68k, 68k and PPC, and what to do about native x86 code.

Originally Posted by christoff522

2. How good is AROS/ICAROS nowadays

Compared to progress on Haiku, MorphOS etc. pretty terrible. Compared to Amithlon and Amiberry, fairly bad. Good in a VM, not great with modern hardware. It's nobody's fault, just a lack of development resources to push it forward at pace.

Originally Posted by christoff522

3. Would it be possible to run UAE as close to the hardware as possible with say the Linux Kernel dealing with hardware?

Yes. Amithlon is good, but it's also worth looking at Amiberry. Also consider the other way around - running real hardware with a modern Pi inside via PiStorm and emu68k.

You already have the best of all worlds with your setup. Play around with it, go bananas. There are no wrong ways to experience Amiga so fill your boots any way you like.

[Daedalus]

There are technical issues to SMP and porting to x86 too, it's not all legal. Introducing either an endianness change or SMP essentially breaks any possible compatibility with existing Amiga software, which is why AROS x86 can't run 68k software without sandboxing it off in an instance of UAE. Which then begs the question: what do you actually want Amiga OS for?

It's a little different with PPC, where a port of the OS can run 68k software as if it was native using just CPU emulation. The 68k software can use PPC libraries and APIs, intercommunicate with native PPC parts (crucially including DOS, Workbench and Intuition), and generally be treated as a first class citizen. This is the approach that AmigaOS4 and MorphOS take, and the tight integration is a huge advantage over AROS.

[ptyerman]

I'm possibly selling one of my Amithlon desktop machines soon if you're needing a pre installed/built system. I have a hospital stay coming up shortly however so it would be after that.

[Retro1234]

It does AROS.

[vk3heg]

See Amilator! A small live linux system with FS-UAE on top.

[Korban]

AROS is pretty good on the right hardware.
There's a heck of a lot of misinformation out there about it though.
While there's not a lot of new hardware it runs natively on it does run fine natively on my 7th gen i7-7700k I bought specifically for it. Plenty of hardware from around that era that it will work on, albeit there's more it wont work on. Still hundreds of times the hardware support of AmigaOS or MorphOS though and it makes their hardware comparitively retro.
In terms of functionality and capability, same ballpark as OS4 or MOS, with some advantages and some disadvantages.

It's the closest thing there'll ever be to a native x86 AmigaOS though and native software 68k Amiga software support is point blank impossible. Recompiles are needed for native versions and there's a type of transparent emulation, but that's as close as it will get for x86.

There's also Amithlon, which toes the line between emulaotr and native, but unfortunately support for the x86 native side is so barren that it may as well not exist (big shame it wasnt utilized though). The potential is still there, but the userbase is so small with pretty much zero developers. About the only useful pieces of x86 AmigaOS 3.x software I have is a version of VICE done by Blacky_Stardust and my port of euae.
There's also an openpci driver for radeon 9200, but that was removed from public consumption for legal reasons.
I still have copies though and am happy to share them with anyone interested.

Long story short, there exists solutions that I suspect you'd be happy with, but it takes a little time and effort in sourcing the right hardware and learning to set things up. Without it the experience will suffer to the point that there ends up a lot of misinformation out there based on a lack of delving.

[Minuous]

Originally Posted by Korban

In terms of functionality and capability, same ballpark as OS4 or MOS, with some advantages and some disadvantages.

It is nowhere near OS3.5 let alone OS4 or MOS, unfortunately; large chunks of the OS are missing completely and what exists is slow and buggy.

[Retro1234]

AROS x86 is lightyears beyond OS3.5 ???

[Minuous]

@Retro1234:

Yes, I'm afraid so.

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Originally Posted by christoff522

I've just been thinking how absolutely awesome it would be to have Amiga running barebone on Intel CPUs. preferably no emulation, just Workbench, and native Amiga programs all running nicely. I know it's a pipe dream, but I would love to have those skills to be able to do it - it also fits in nicely with the 'what if Commodore had lasted another year' thread.

I'm currently writing this on an emulated A4000 - granted it has JIT active, but it's memory is only 8mb chip ram and 256mb fast, yet it has a web browser, and IRC client running, while the Win 11 box running it is probably using 3gb alone. How lovely would it be to have a quad core cpu, 16gb ram running AmigaOS natively with no need for windows.
A few questions

1. what would be needed in order to port Amiga to Intel
2. How good is AROS/ICAROS nowadays
3. Would it be possible to run UAE as close to the hardware as possible with say the Linux Kernel dealing with hardware?

...

Wow, an Amiga Linux distro?

Please comment on my ramblings and let me know if any of these ideas are valid, and also let me know what you think.

https://ae.amigalife.org/index.php?topic=561.0


http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=108451

[Retro1234]

LOL sorry I meant is how can you think OS3.5 is more advanced than AROS x86 ?

[Minuous]

Because it is?! Do I really need to list all the components that are missing from AROS?

[gimbal]

Somewhere there is a miscommunication, because in the last couple of posts both AROS x86 and OS 3.5 were better than the other.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by Minuous

Because it is?! Do I really need to list all the components that are missing from AROS?

Do we REALLY need all component missing in x86 AROS? In the 68k version we might indeed but in the x86 one?

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by Minuous

Because it is?! Do I really need to list all the components that are missing from AROS?

Yes I would llike to have. But of course I use Aros 68k as base so we have a fair comparation there. Perhaps you know (or not I do not know) that I created a distribution and am waiting a long time on that. If you have your list I will of course do my list too

RTG
Network stack
USB Stack
Diskimage device
full packer support includiung GUI
advanced datatypes and improved multiview
AHI
MUI implementation
XAD
XFD
WHDLoad
time syncgronization
advanced desktop

just a few things that come to my mind

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by christoff522

I've just been thinking how absolutely awesome it would be to have Amiga running barebone on Intel CPUs. preferably no emulation, just Workbench, and native Amiga programs all running nicely. I know it's a pipe dream, but I would love to have those skills to be able to do it - it also fits in nicely with the 'what if Commodore had lasted another year' thread.

I'm currently writing this on an emulated A4000 - granted it has JIT active, but it's memory is only 8mb chip ram and 256mb fast, yet it has a web browser, and IRC client running, while the Win 11 box running it is probably using 3gb alone. How lovely would it be to have a quad core cpu, 16gb ram running AmigaOS natively with no need for windows.
A few questions

1. what would be needed in order to port Amiga to Intel
2. How good is AROS/ICAROS nowadays
3. Would it be possible to run UAE as close to the hardware as possible with say the Linux Kernel dealing with hardware?

...

Wow, an Amiga Linux distro?

Please comment on my ramblings and let me know if any of these ideas are valid, and also let me know what you think.

there is not "the Aros"

there are different projects and platforms supported. The platform where it started was X86 (32bit). That still exists and there are a few distributions, biggest certainly is Icaros Desktop. Then there is a experimental 64bit version supporting SMP but currently with not much software. Additionally there is Aros 68k where you can mix both amiga and aros. That is where my distribution f.e. is based on, also ApolloOS (Vampire) and others.

Two new projects that are promising is emu68 (done by a aros developer) implementing a layer to run 68k software on ARM that might end in a standalone solution based on RPi (currently used in PiStorm). And something very cool AxRuntime that implements aros components on linux so that you can combine aros and linux parts and compile it for linux. Hopefully it will even end in a solution where you can combine aros and linux without recompiling.

[Korban]

Originally Posted by Minuous

It is nowhere near OS3.5 let alone OS4 or MOS, unfortunately; large chunks of the OS are missing completely and what exists is slow and buggy.

Lol.


Are you *still* on that tirade?
It's freaking weird.


As someone who uses all 3 who isn't on a tirade, nor someone who spews nonsense because of that freaking weird tirade I'm going to wholeheartedly laugh and wait for you to repeat the same nonsense you've been spewing for years.


Also...... "Amigaforver" and "Cloanto".....
just thought Id mention them too. I know how much you love them.




You *are* aware how people who use this site view you right?
Every time you go to your default nonsense people laugh.
Its very entertaining.