QNX or something different?

Has the code for QNX been leaked of were there only nice screenshots for Amiga?

With modern hardware (Warp 1260 / Vampire) and integrated RTG a new operating system for Amiga hardware that natively supports these capabilities is welcome, as long as it does not, in any way, use the name Amiga or (parts) of its code, its numbering or its API's. QNX comes to mind, it was light and really micro. This made it perfect for the Amiga architecture.

Linux/BSD is bloated so that's no alternative.
Aros uses Amiga API's which puts it at risk and has the legacy of an 30 years old OS, developed on limited hardware.

[Jope]

QNX is still very much alive. Its OS is still shipping on embedded systems, such as car dashboards.

I very much doubt they have given any of their source code to any Amiga person ever. Phase 5 sent their hardware to the QNX folks to get a binary port back.

[pandy71]

If i recall correctly it was time when QNX was tailored as a OS for new Amiga - even some agreement was set on this between Bill McEwen and QNX rights owners, later QNX sources was partially available as open Source and when Blackberry bought QNX everything silenced...
Any modern RTOS will be fine from Amiga perspective... At least real multimedia machine should avoid using generic (non real time) OS's... Windows, Linux etc introduce too much jitter on time critical tasks...

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by pandy71

Any modern RTOS will be fine from Amiga perspective... At least real multimedia machine should avoid using generic (non real time) OS's... Windows, Linux etc introduce too much jitter on time critical tasks...

Frankly, no. Let's be serious: Where is the software for such an exotic system is supposed to come from?

[Jope]

The real world part is what puzzles me too in this equation. Ok, you spend a huge effort to port a totally new OS to the Amiga and get a lean GUI running on it so that it isn't super sluggish.

Now what? Someone has to crank out SDL ports of old PC games? Let's not and say we did.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Syntrax

With modern hardware (Warp 1260 / Vampire) and integrated RTG a new operating system for Amiga hardware that natively supports these capabilities is welcome,

Which capabilities, and why are they welcome?

as long as it does not, in any way, use the name Amiga or (parts) of its code, its numbering or its API's. QNX comes to mind, it was light and really micro. This made it perfect for the Amiga architecture.

QNX is 'perfect' for the Amiga, even though it doesn't have any part of its API? Not for me it wouldn't be. It would be useless.

Aros uses Amiga API's which puts it at risk and has the legacy of an 30 years old OS, developed on limited hardware.

At risk of what? And why is 'legacy' and 'limited hardware' bad?

Warp 1260, Vampire, or any other hardware designed to work with the Amiga is limited by the need to be compatible with legacy Amiga software and hardware. Trying to use it for something else just artificially limits performance and unnecessarily raises the price.

Sounds like you want a machine that won't be an Amiga in any way (OS or hardware). So just put your 'light and really micro' RTOS on any modern platform that can support it (eg. Raspberry Pi), and forget about Vampires etc.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Which capabilities, and why are they welcome?

QNX is 'perfect' for the Amiga, even though it doesn't have any part of its API? Not for me it wouldn't be. It would be useless.

At risk of what? And why is 'legacy' and 'limited hardware' bad?

Warp 1260, Vampire, or any other hardware designed to work with the Amiga is limited by the need to be compatible with legacy Amiga software and hardware. Trying to use it for something else just artificially limits performance and unnecessarily raises the price.

Sounds like you want a machine that won't be an Amiga in any way (OS or hardware). So just put your 'light and really micro' RTOS on any modern platform that can support it (eg. Raspberry Pi), and forget about Vampires etc.

Wow, there are so many assumptions you've made in you're response that I don't even know where to begin.
- you conclude that everything that is not Amiga OS is useless, that's like saying Linux is useless because it doesn't have the Windows API's.
- Modern Amiga Hardware is more powerful, allowing for more modern OS features (like Aros does). From a CPU perspective: if a 68060 used only 1% cpu, a modern processor would only use 0.01% cpu. So you can do more nice things with a faster CPU, but you would have to support this in the OS
- How allowing something to reach optimum performance, drives prices up: I don't know
- How you conclude that I was talking about other ("OS or hardware"), I don't know. Why would I do that on an amiga forum and not a Raspberry Pi or X64 forum because they are available over there.

Cheers.

[Daedalus]

Originally Posted by Syntrax

- you conclude that everything that is not Amiga OS is useless, that's like saying Linux is useless because it doesn't have the Windows API's.

If the software you want to run needs a Windows API, then Linux itself is useless, yes.

- Modern Amiga Hardware is more powerful, allowing for more modern OS features (like Aros does). From a CPU perspective: if a 68060 used only 1% cpu, a modern processor would only use 0.01% cpu. So you can do more nice things with a faster CPU, but you would have to support this in the OS

What features, exactly, are you thinking of that you need to support in the OS so that you can use all that CPU power?

- How allowing something to reach optimum performance, drives prices up: I don't know

His point is that things like Warp1260 and Vampire cards are vastly more expensive than similarly powerful hardware that's not hindered by being Amiga-compatible. Just look as a Raspberry Pi for comparison.

- How you conclude that I was talking about other ("OS or hardware"), I don't know. Why would I do that on an amiga forum and not a Raspberry Pi or X64 forum because they are available over there.

Because you don't want the Amiga OS and you don't want the Amiga hardware. Again, tell us a bit more about what you actually want, because from what you're telling us so far:
- You don't want the Amiga OS
- You want a modern CPU and modern hardware

Where does the Amiga come into this?

Because you don't want the Amiga OS and you don't want the Amiga hardware. Again, tell us a bit more about what you actually want, because from what you're telling us so far:
- You don't want the Amiga OS
- You want a modern CPU and modern hardware

Where does the Amiga come into this?

Where did I say that? Modern technology = Vampire, Warp 1260 with RTG.
From your point of view "Vampire and Warp 1260" is not modern technology, thats fine. Its called communication. Then lets rewrite
A new operating system, that runs perfectly on Vampire or Warp 1260 and other Amiga hardware components while not being held back by original Amiga OS limitations and architecture.

As someone else correctly said: besides the OS, you would also need a community that made software for users, so its futile.

[Daedalus]

Well, they might be modern in terms of parts used, but they're still a long, long way off modern in terms of performance, and that shortfall is because they're Amiga hardware. Putting a new OS on them won't magically make them run any faster - all you get is modern hardware running with 20 year old performance with an OS that nobody needs or wants. The *only* thing that's anything to do with Amiga in that scenario is the creaky, quarter-century-old motherboard that forces the Warp, Vampire or whatever to restrain itself so it can successfully communicate with it at 1992 speeds.

Originally Posted by Daedalus

Well, they might be modern in terms of parts used, but they're still a long, long way off modern in terms of performance, and that shortfall is because they're Amiga hardware. Putting a new OS on them won't magically make them run any faster - all you get is modern hardware running with 20 year old performance with an OS that nobody needs or wants. The *only* thing that's anything to do with Amiga in that scenario is the creaky, quarter-century-old motherboard that forces the Warp, Vampire or whatever to restrain itself so it can successfully communicate with it at 1992 speeds.

Correct, if you want 2021 performance buy 2021 equipment.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by Thomas Richter

Frankly, no. Let's be serious: Where is the software for such an exotic system is supposed to come from?

POSIX compatibility doesn't violate RTOS capability - see no problem in decent software availability... anyway for Amiga OS definitely Windows road is not a good reference...

Btw nowadays i rather doubt that Amiga is perceived as non exotic system anyway - even BSD is considered as highly exotic... From practical perspective seem there are only 3 "non exotic" OS nowadays - Windows (10), IOS, Linux - everything else is affected by problem mentioned by you.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by pandy71

From practical perspective seem there are only 3 "non exotic" OS nowadays - Windows (10), IOS, Linux - everything else is affected by problem mentioned by you.

Even Linux is considered 'exotic' by mainstream developers today.

Today I tried to watch some episodes of my favorite TV programs, which are streamed via TVNZ On-Demand. All I need to view them is a modern web browser running on a modern OS, in my case Firefox on Linux Lite. But not today. You see I have Firefox version 88 installed, which was released in April. But 5 days ago Firefox version 89 was released, and now the video streaming service returns error code 6007 "Unable to access DRM content".

So I did a system update, which is supposed to ensure that the latest versions of all system files and bundled apps are up to date. No dice. Firefox insists that it is already up to date even though it isn't the latest version. Installing it manually is not recommended. It makes me want to scream. I gave up selling PCs 25 years ago because I was sick of this shit, and today nothing has changed.

My brother bought a brand new (expensive!) laptop and paid to have it set up for him at the store. A few days later he called me over to help him out with some problems he was having with it. My first real experience with Windows 10 and man what a POS it is.

I installed Firefox because he is more familiar with it and Edge sucks. But it didn't want to leave - "are you really really really sure you want to change the default browser?" it said. "Yes, go away!". He couldn't print some files because Word kept trying to save them as pdfs, then when he opened them it was back into Word and round and round you go again. So I changed the default program for viewing them to Edge because that's that Windows uses now, but it wasn't on the list of default programs for "open with..."! And of course file extensions were hidden so you couldn't tell what was a pdf and what wasn't. Didn't they sort that 20 years ago? Apparently not.

But I couldn't solve his email problem. He bought Microsoft Office '365' which means 365 days before it times out and you have to buy it again. This was supposed to have been installed and configured with his personal settings at the store. For some reason Outlook is set up to get mail though Microsoft Exchange - except it doesn't. Could I find out where to put his email settings into it? Not a chance. All the help and online tutorials failed. I tried to add a new account but it wouldn't because there was an existing (non-working) one with the same email address. So it deleted it. The computer chugged and whirred for a few minutes, and then... "Program xxx has stopped responding". Thanks Microsoft!

We are 21 years into the 21st century and PCs are still too hard to use, in fact harder than they were 20 years ago. My ancient Amiga will never stream online movies or play the latest 3D games, but at least I can rely on it to do the things it can do. Which is more than what it could a few years ago.

Amazing that we can now access websites with encryption that even PCs a few years old can't - free of all the crap that slows your PC down so much that you give up in disgust. We enjoy playing ports of old PC games that the Amiga 'wasn't powerful enough to run' in the old days, yet mysteriously it now can. We install huge capacity CF and SD cards, load hundreds of virtual floppies from a USB stick, use optical mice with scroll wheels, wireless Ethernet, and accelerator cards with built in RTG and HDMI and speed and capacity unheard of 'back in the day'. We have new OS versions coming out with bugs fixed and the GUI fine tuned for better performance and functionality - not redesigned into a 'modern' look and confusing UI just for the hell of it.

My Amiga is useless for doing something I really wanted to do today - but today so is my PC - because I am not running Windows 10 or IOS. That being the case, why even consider trying to turn your Amiga into a 'modern' machine, if it still won't be able to do what you want?

[robinsonb5]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

So today I tried to watch some episodes of my favorite TV programs, which are streamed via TVNZ On-Demand. All I need to view them is a modern web browser running on a modern OS, in my case Firefox on Linux Lite. But not today. You see I have Firefox version 88 installed, which was released in April. But 5 days ago Firefox version 89 was released, and now the video streaming service returns error code 6007 "Unable to access DRM content".

Oh don't get me started on Firefox and modern Linux. I had a box running a Mint13 (Mate) distro, working so well it hadn't occurred to me that the distro was old and obsolete until.... firefox silently updated itself to something that won't run with the outdated glibc. Worse, there's no easy or obvious way to downgrade to a version which *does* work, and having put a newer distro and up-to-date firefox on a spare HD I can't import anything from the old profile because you have to use their cloud service for that now. Which of course I can't do, since I can no longer run a version that will access the old profile.

So I upgrade to Mint20 and frankly I've been shocked by just how much simply doesn't work properly on the newer distro. I've simply stopped using a dual monitor setup because it's too much of a pain to deal with. One boot in six it won't recognise the sound card. Then occasionaly I'll get two volume control applets. One time in 20 it'll hang while shutting down. Gtkterm now hangs if you try and send a binary file (yes, I need to do that occasionally, yes, I know pretty much no-one else will ever need it.)

So yeah, I'd love to think that some new OS based around QNX could suddenly appear and make mainstream computing not suck - but realistically I know it's never going to happen - on old hardware or new.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Syntrax

- Modern Amiga Hardware is more powerful, allowing for more modern OS features (like Aros does). From a CPU perspective: if a 68060 used only 1% cpu, a modern processor would only use 0.01% cpu. So you can do more nice things with a faster CPU, but you would have to support this in the OS

You said Warp 1260 and Vampire are 'modern' hardware, but they aren't. The Vampire uses an old FPGA that doesn't have a dedicated CPU core. A modern FPGA could potentially be much faster - if it wasn't bogged down having to implement a 68k CPU to run Amiga OS. And Vampire cards are not cheap. They cost more because they are designed to plug into an Amiga. For people who have Amigas and want to keep using the original OS and hardware the price is acceptable - even though they are paying more for lower performance - because it is better than what they have but otherwise works the same. But if they wanted something different (not Amiga compatible) it would not be good value.

Not sure what you mean by 1% vs 0.01%, but even if you don't change the OS you can still do more nice things with a faster CPU. It's the main reason Amiga owners get one. There are plenty of things you can do on an Amiga with 68060 or Vampire that would be too slow or even not work at all with a slower CPU. But you don't need a 'modern' OS for those things. In truth, a 'modern' OS is not really required for any of the things most people want to do on their Amigas. The two main things stopping us from doing what we want are A. lack of raw processing power for things like 3D games, and B. lack of code suitable for lowered powered machines (because modern hardware is so powerful that code doesn't need to be optimized for efficiency above all else).

- How allowing something to reach optimum performance, drives prices up: I don't know

You seem to think that a 'modern' OS could improve the performance of hardware designed for the Amiga, but Amiga OS is actually very lightweight and efficient already - it has to be to work well with with lower powered CPUs. Maybe you could get a Vampire to run faster by wiping the core and putting in one optimized for a different OS, but then it wouldn't be a Vampire - it would just be a more expensive and lower powered alternative to something like a Raspberry Pi.

[Thomas Richter]

Originally Posted by Syntrax

Then lets rewrite
A new operating system, that runs perfectly on Vampire or Warp 1260 and other Amiga hardware components while not being held back by original Amiga OS limitations and architecture.

Why? You then wasted a lot of time writing an operating system but without any software running on it, so it's worthless. Who would use that, and who would develop for it, and why exactly?



It's not AmigaOs or the Amiga hardware or 68K that makes the Amiga the Amiga. It is the software basis that runs on it, and the retro experience users get when running such software.



If you'd rewrite the Os, why bother with an outdated 68K architecture, or an 68K architecture emulator. Let's go for something that is more powerful, like x64 or arm. And while at it, let's probably use an operating system with a bit more support on the application side.


If that's what you want, why not use Linux or Windows to begin with?


If I want an Amiga, then to run Amiga applications on it. And not Linux applications or Windows applications. I already have a PC for doing this.


If I'd like to implement a new operating system, I would surely not use something as outdated as 68K or Amiga hardware as basis.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Today I tried to watch some episodes of my favorite TV programs, which are streamed via TVNZ On-Demand. All I need to view them is a modern web browser running on a modern OS, in my case Firefox on Linux Lite. But not today. You see I have Firefox version 88 installed, which was released in April. But 5 days ago Firefox version 89 was released, and now the video streaming service returns error code 6007 "Unable to access DRM content".

Some time ago i would have said 'this seems to be a case for Chromium' but then lately am experiencing problems with chrome, win 7 and the work firewall [i still have win 7 in this office machine] so had to install myPal - that MOST work for what i need, but not all the time... -_-

[clebin]

Haiku please!

(But why?! Why not... I like Amigas. I like Haiku. Sounds like fun. Especially if you could get it to bang the hardware and have WHDLoad running on it. As usual there’s a lot of intellectualising about what is or isn’t worthwhile, as if any of the stuff we do with 25+ year old computers really makes any sense.)

[stevelord]

Originally Posted by Syntrax

A new operating system, that runs perfectly on Vampire or Warp 1260 and other Amiga hardware components while not being held back by original Amiga OS limitations and architecture.

Try NetBSD or Aros68k. Aros68k is probably more performant but NetBSD is currently maintained (9.2 was released last month, I have it on my A4000). In theory you should be able to run Firefox natively. In practice... run might be a strong word.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by stevelord

Try NetBSD or Aros68k. Aros68k is probably more performant...

Perhaps because of this?

Originally Posted by Syntrax

...as long as it does not, in any way, use the name Amiga or (parts) of its code, its numbering or its API's... which puts it at risk.

Strange that somebody would have that attitude towards Amiga OS, then suggest using 'leaked' QNX code.

Oh, and "BSD is bloated so that's no alternative".