Amiga mentioned at the Register...

th4t1guy · 10 August 2002, 18:48

Clicky!

jmmijo · 10 August 2002, 19:15

Do you suppose the Amiga version of UAE will be updated once this new OS gets released?

I noticed one of the feature list is JIT 68k Emulation, I suppose this is for 68k apps rather then games in general.

RetroMan · 10 August 2002, 19:19

Quote:

Originally posted by jmmijo
Do you suppose the Amiga version of UAE will be updated once this new OS gets released?

I don´t think it´s an updated UAE Version, more likely an 68k emu build from scratch especially for OS4

jmmijo · 10 August 2002, 19:27

Probably means don't try to run any legacy software with it, but mostly games

fiath · 10 August 2002, 19:58

Actually I think that I read something about the OS4 68K engine being the UAE JIT one.... I was interested and looked into it, it was a little which ago now though so take this with a pinch of salt.

Afterall, why redevelop something that has already gone through as much testing as the UAE one?

Cheaper to just licence it...

jmmijo · 10 August 2002, 22:37

Yep that it is. Of course I don't think they want to try and market it that way, just a feeling that they won't as this would be a good selling point to legacy Amiga owners

I hope that I'm wrong on this one however

Amiga1992 · 11 August 2002, 00:16

You know, this features list got me more interested than all those awful screenshots....

Korodny to the rescue plese

Will I be able to run this on a Powermac? Id love to load one with the AmigaOS4

jmmijo · 11 August 2002, 04:18

Ditto for me as well, if anyone knows if this OS will be able to or not there's at least two buyers of it right here

fiath · 11 August 2002, 04:31

No, it won't. It will only run on licenced POP (Power Open Platform) - basically what PIOS was going to do...

A very old idea bought back to life. There is nothing *NEW* about it - hardware wise. OS4 is new though obviously.

They will add a hardware ID to this though, so you cannot even use it on other POP boards. You have to buy their expensive version of POP.

Mind you, even if they wanted to support Mac, they couldn't - because Apple keep tight lipped on their specs - one of the reasons why BeOS abandoned them...

jmmijo · 11 August 2002, 04:33

So basically you're gonna have to get that overpriced Amiga1 board and use it instead

Korodny · 11 August 2002, 17:09

First of all, the 68k emulation in OS4:

Yes, this is a JIT-68k emulator. It's called "Petunia" and is not based on the UAE-JIT patch. Why? UAE-JIT is for x86 processors. Porting a JIT emulator to another CPU is next to impossible (no sane person would try to do that). Apart from that UAE-JIT is GPL. The OS4 68k-emu is part of exec.library (AmigaOS' kernel), so that would have to become GPL'ed too. AmigaOS is proprietary software, guess how much the idea of open-sourcing the kernel appeals to Amiga Inc?

The JIT emulator is tightly integrated into the OS. It's only purpose is to run software that is not PPC native yet. It's absolutely useless for retro-gaming. An Amiga port of UAE exists, but this is some very old version.

Next: support for PowerMacs.

This is a bit complicated. Hyperion really want to support PowerMacs - simply because that would give access to pretty decent laptops.

The problem is Amiga Inc.'s licensing scheme. I can't comment the probability of a PowerMac OS4 version (not yet), but the main problem is this:

OS4 will require the presence of a hardware dongle. With the AmigaOne, this dongle is already part of the standard ROM. With other machines (such as the Pegasos or PowerMacs) other solutions would have to be used. An example would be an USB dongle.

Additionally, somebody has to step up and sell OS4 for Powermacs or Mac/OS4 combinations and provide support for end users. This seems to be pretty important to Amiga Inc. - anmd that's good IMHO, we all remember Commodore's customer support.

There are other issues, but these are the main problems.

Somebody used the term "overpriced". I don't think an AmigaOne will be more expensive than a similarly specced Mac. And A1s are produced in extremely low quantities (even compared to Macs). If anything is overpriced, it's the Mac

fiath · 11 August 2002, 18:22

Cheers for the information! That does make a lot of sense...

About the JIT, *technically* they could indeed use the UAE one if it was written to be retargetable (I don't know if it was - I haven't looked at it) but you would need to change the emitted code to PPC...

I also don't think the GPL licensing would be a problem, all they would need to do is get a special license version from the author (obviously they would have to pay them for that

) and they could use it... But I don't know who "owns" the UAE JIT - if anybody.

But it is certainly nice to see one written from scratch - nothing better than doing it yourself

Especially being designed from the start to be embedded deep in exec. I think I have more confidence in a commercially written one, purely due to amount of time and dedication needed not to mention quality control.

Also - apologies to the "expensive" comment that was made by me - I was comparing Amiga's POP to similar specced *PC* hardware - which is not a fair comparison I realise.

So do you know what they plan to do about Apple? I think they feel they got burned opening the Mac platform before, I don't see why they would do it again... Be (BeOS) found it increasingly difficult to get any info from Apple on the hardware, so how is Amiga planning to?

Korodny · 11 August 2002, 19:34

Quote:

Cheers for the information!

You're welcome. It's always good to see people being interested in AmigaOS4

Quote:

About the JIT, *technically* they could indeed use the UAE one if it was written to be retargetable (I don't know if it was - I haven't looked at it)

but you would need to change the emitted code to PPC...

The author of the UAE-JIT patch was asked about a PPC version and the answer was like "uh, forget it".

Quote:

I also don't think the GPL licensing would be a problem, all they would need to do is get a special license version from the author (obviously they would have to pay them for that ) and they could use it...

Correct. But Petunia is in development for about two years now and the author is extremely enthusiastic about AmigaOS4. There was not much of a discussion if a UAE-JIT license should be aquired

Quote:

But I don't know who "owns" the UAE JIT - if anybody.

Bernd "Bernie" Meyer. That's why he could use the same JIT engine for his commercial product "Amithlon".

Quote:

But it is certainly nice to see one written from scratch - nothing better than doing it yourself Especially being designed from the start to be embedded deep in exec. I think I have more confidence in a commercially written one, purely due to amount of time and dedication needed not to mention quality control.

Btw. Here's a page with some Petunia Benchmarks.

(Please keep in mind that the benchmarks are quite old, that the emulator was running under WarpOS when these
benchmarks were compiled (i.e. it was severely slowed down by context switches) and that the processor
running the emulator was a crippled 603/604 with no L2 cache at all and 32bit memory)

Quote:

Also - apologies to the "expensive" comment that was made by me - I was comparing Amiga's POP to similar specced *PC* hardware - which is not a fair comparison I realise.

Right. The AmigaOne is an expansive option, but there's no way to compete with x86 manufacturers.

Quote:

So do you know what they plan to do about Apple? I think they feel they got burned opening the Mac platform before, I don't see why they would do it again... Be (BeOS) found it increasingly difficult to get any info from Apple on the hardware, so how is Amiga planning to?

Hyperion is quite positive that they could port OS4 to the Macintosh without any support from Apple. After
all, the core of MacOS (Darwin) is open source now, most of what you need to know is in there.

This approach may work for an open source/geek OS like Linux, but (and that's a big but) you're
not able to provide the high level of end user support that customers of a commercial solution would expect.

I doubt that anything happens if Apple doesn't want it to happen (i.e. if Apple doesn't hand out developer
documentation). Let's just say there are people talking to other people at the moment , okay

I wouldn't count on it - this way you'll be positively surprised if it happens

jmmijo · 11 August 2002, 19:40

I guess it may not be fair to compare the A1 against PC's in there is really a large price difference. Now you're correct about comparing it to MAC hardware even though Apple has brought out lower priced machines with the older iMAC's and not the new eMAC's

I guess my old PowerCenter 150 will just have to be satisfied with MAC OS 9.xx and/or Linux. Maybe there's even an older version of BeOS that I can locate to run on it

Fred the Fop · 11 August 2002, 21:58

Why in the HELL would you run BeOS instead of aOS 9.xx????

jmmijo · 11 August 2002, 22:16

Quote:

Originally posted by Frederic
Why in the HELL would you run BeOS instead of aOS 9.xx????

Just because you can

Amiga1992 · 11 August 2002, 23:51

Korodny ROCKS

I think you answered the Mac question before, sorry for asing it again!

jmmijo · 12 August 2002, 00:13

I concur with Akira on this one, thanks Korodny

10 August 2002, 18:48	#1
th4t1guy Registered User Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: Kansas City, MO, USA Posts: 683	Amiga mentioned at the Register... Clicky!

11 August 2002, 18:22	#12
fiath Moderator Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: South East / UK Age: 46 Posts: 1,930	Cheers for the information! That does make a lot of sense... About the JIT, technically they could indeed use the UAE one if it was written to be retargetable (I don't know if it was - I haven't looked at it) but you would need to change the emitted code to PPC... I also don't think the GPL licensing would be a problem, all they would need to do is get a special license version from the author (obviously they would have to pay them for that ) and they could use it... But I don't know who "owns" the UAE JIT - if anybody. But it is certainly nice to see one written from scratch - nothing better than doing it yourself Especially being designed from the start to be embedded deep in exec. I think I have more confidence in a commercially written one, purely due to amount of time and dedication needed not to mention quality control. Also - apologies to the "expensive" comment that was made by me - I was comparing Amiga's POP to similar specced PC hardware - which is not a fair comparison I realise. So do you know what they plan to do about Apple? I think they feel they got burned opening the Mac platform before, I don't see why they would do it again... Be (BeOS) found it increasingly difficult to get any info from Apple on the hardware, so how is Amiga planning to? Last edited by fiath; 11 August 2002 at 18:29.

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10 August 2002, 19:15	#2
jmmijo Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: PDX Age: 62 Posts: 2,395	Do you suppose the Amiga version of UAE will be updated once this new OS gets released? I noticed one of the feature list is JIT 68k Emulation, I suppose this is for 68k apps rather then games in general.

10 August 2002, 19:27	#4
jmmijo Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: PDX Age: 62 Posts: 2,395	Probably means don't try to run any legacy software with it, but mostly games

10 August 2002, 19:58	#5
fiath Moderator Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: South East / UK Age: 46 Posts: 1,930	Actually I think that I read something about the OS4 68K engine being the UAE JIT one.... I was interested and looked into it, it was a little which ago now though so take this with a pinch of salt. Afterall, why redevelop something that has already gone through as much testing as the UAE one? Cheaper to just licence it...

10 August 2002, 22:37	#6
jmmijo Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: PDX Age: 62 Posts: 2,395	Yep that it is. Of course I don't think they want to try and market it that way, just a feeling that they won't as this would be a good selling point to legacy Amiga owners I hope that I'm wrong on this one however

11 August 2002, 00:16	#7
Amiga1992 Registered User Join Date: May 2001 Location: ? Posts: 19,645	You know, this features list got me more interested than all those awful screenshots.... Korodny to the rescue plese Will I be able to run this on a Powermac? Id love to load one with the AmigaOS4

11 August 2002, 04:18	#8
jmmijo Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: PDX Age: 62 Posts: 2,395	Ditto for me as well, if anyone knows if this OS will be able to or not there's at least two buyers of it right here

11 August 2002, 04:31	#9
fiath Moderator Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: South East / UK Age: 46 Posts: 1,930	No, it won't. It will only run on licenced POP (Power Open Platform) - basically what PIOS was going to do... A very old idea bought back to life. There is nothing NEW about it - hardware wise. OS4 is new though obviously. They will add a hardware ID to this though, so you cannot even use it on other POP boards. You have to buy their expensive version of POP. Mind you, even if they wanted to support Mac, they couldn't - because Apple keep tight lipped on their specs - one of the reasons why BeOS abandoned them...

11 August 2002, 04:33	#10
jmmijo Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: PDX Age: 62 Posts: 2,395	So basically you're gonna have to get that overpriced Amiga1 board and use it instead

11 August 2002, 17:09	#11
Korodny Zone Friend Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: Germany Posts: 812	First of all, the 68k emulation in OS4: Yes, this is a JIT-68k emulator. It's called "Petunia" and is not based on the UAE-JIT patch. Why? UAE-JIT is for x86 processors. Porting a JIT emulator to another CPU is next to impossible (no sane person would try to do that). Apart from that UAE-JIT is GPL. The OS4 68k-emu is part of exec.library (AmigaOS' kernel), so that would have to become GPL'ed too. AmigaOS is proprietary software, guess how much the idea of open-sourcing the kernel appeals to Amiga Inc? The JIT emulator is tightly integrated into the OS. It's only purpose is to run software that is not PPC native yet. It's absolutely useless for retro-gaming. An Amiga port of UAE exists, but this is some very old version. Next: support for PowerMacs. This is a bit complicated. Hyperion really want to support PowerMacs - simply because that would give access to pretty decent laptops. The problem is Amiga Inc.'s licensing scheme. I can't comment the probability of a PowerMac OS4 version (not yet), but the main problem is this: OS4 will require the presence of a hardware dongle. With the AmigaOne, this dongle is already part of the standard ROM. With other machines (such as the Pegasos or PowerMacs) other solutions would have to be used. An example would be an USB dongle. Additionally, somebody has to step up and sell OS4 for Powermacs or Mac/OS4 combinations and provide support for end users. This seems to be pretty important to Amiga Inc. - anmd that's good IMHO, we all remember Commodore's customer support. There are other issues, but these are the main problems. Somebody used the term "overpriced". I don't think an AmigaOne will be more expensive than a similarly specced Mac. And A1s are produced in extremely low quantities (even compared to Macs). If anything is overpriced, it's the Mac

11 August 2002, 19:40	#14
jmmijo Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: PDX Age: 62 Posts: 2,395	I guess it may not be fair to compare the A1 against PC's in there is really a large price difference. Now you're correct about comparing it to MAC hardware even though Apple has brought out lower priced machines with the older iMAC's and not the new eMAC's I guess my old PowerCenter 150 will just have to be satisfied with MAC OS 9.xx and/or Linux. Maybe there's even an older version of BeOS that I can locate to run on it

11 August 2002, 21:58	#15
Fred the Fop flaming faggot Join Date: Apr 2001 Location: Versailles Age: 55 Posts: 2,808	Why in the HELL would you run BeOS instead of aOS 9.xx????

11 August 2002, 23:51	#17
Amiga1992 Registered User Join Date: May 2001 Location: ? Posts: 19,645	Korodny ROCKS I think you answered the Mac question before, sorry for asing it again!

12 August 2002, 00:13	#18
jmmijo Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: PDX Age: 62 Posts: 2,395	I concur with Akira on this one, thanks Korodny

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