Back in 1988/89 I started with an Amiga 500. In 1997 I bought all the parts to build up an Amiga 4000 with CyberstormPPC in a Micronik BigTower.

Now, 19 years later, I'm considering to move on to Amiga NG hardware and OS.

But in the course of the years I collected a lot of Amiga productivity software for OS 3.x - including PowerUp/WarpUp PPC software, e.g. Wildfire7 PPC.

As we all are aware, the biggest disadvantage of the AmigaNG platform is the lack of native Amiga productivity Software, although some say games are more important than native AmigaOS 4.x productivity software.
That's why I'm wondering to what extent I can use my old OS 3.x productivity software on the NG machines, especially the PowerUp/WarpUp PPC software.

I assume I cannot run it natively on NG hardware, despite the software being written to use the PPC chip on CSPPC/BPPC. As this software is a mixture of 68k- and PPC code, I think I'd need an emulator like UAE with PPC support to run this software on NG machines.

But if I have to use an emulator anyway, wouldn't make it more sense to use this UAE on standard x64 PC hardware (from an economic point of view), as this delivers much more performance as even the latest AmigaNG hardware and costs just a fraction of the price for AmigaNG hardware?

I mean - basically I prefer real hardware over emulation.

But back in the days, when the price/performance ratio of the Amiga platform compared to the X86 platform was just the opposite of what it is today, I was also impressed by the possibility to emulate an PC with MS-DOS or an early Win version on my A500 - initially with PcTask and later with the little Vortex AtOnce286 classic hardware add-on. Even later, on my A4000, I used PCx to emulate a Win 3.1 box.

I loved to be able to switch forth and back between the Ammiga and the PC and using both for productive work in one casing in parallel. As Windows became more and more demanding in the course of the years, PCx was no longer an alternative to a real PC with WinXP. So I got one and networked it with the Amiga. This way I could keep up the feeling of running both in parallel - now using Darren Eveland's RDesktop port and smbfs.

I had to accept that today it is next to impossible to emulate a PC running the latest Win version in parallel to the Amiga on the latest AmigaNG hardware, as it offers too little performence for this task nowadays.

Last year my XP-PCs died.

As my house and my workplace are roughly 70 km apart, I have an apartment at my workplaces' location as well and have to commute forth and back every week.

At my house I meanwhile have a 64Bit Quadcore Core i5 PC with Win10 - I still have to get the latest AmigaForever version and to install it (my old AF 2006 version is too outdated now for Win10).

In my apartment at my workplaces' location currently only my Amiga 4000 PPC tower is left after the XP box died. I still have to buy a new PC for that location.

As long as the A4k works flawlessly, I'm fine with it.

But this year the failures started to become more frequently, as there are contact probs in the plug connection between CSPPC and the A4k Motherboard (in the past I just experienced one or two failures per year).

Cleaning the contacts had always helped to get it running again, but now I reached a point where the contacts are worn out and fixing the contact problem is getting more and more difficult with every failure.

I'm afraid I will have to replace these plugs with new ones, if I can get hold of them somewhere, before being able again to use the A4k on a regular basis.

That's why I'm wondering now which way to go...

I nearly had bought an A1X1k, but it was released a few months too late for me.
As I'm nearly 60 years old now, my health started to change for the worse and I had to invest the money I had saved for the A1X1k into my health.

This timing was really bad luck...

Currently I'm flirting with the idea of ordering the A1X5k, but in the face of my health probs I'm not sure if I can afford it.

So I'm looking for alternatives to new AmigaNG hardware now - just in case...

Your suggestions are welcome!

@nbache - #85:

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No problem...

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Yeah - possibly this happened.

Will have to check that, as soon as I succeeded in persuading my Miggy to boot again. Currently it is suffering once more from contact problems in the socket between CSPPC and the A4k mobo.

In the worst case I will have to rip my towered A4kPPC apart, take the mobo out and replace the CPU board connector - and possibly its counterpart beneath the CSPPC as well...

@nbache
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No - I didn't install on "a clean formatted partition". I just reinstalled OS 3.9 and the official BoingBags without formatting my "System3.9:" to get all the ORIGINAL Libs and so back, that had been replaced with newer versions by Grunch.

Obviously I didn't want to loose all the other stuff in LIBS: and other system drawers, that other software installed there in addition to the system files.

I have lots of software in use that do not have their own LIBS: drawer or so in their PROGDIR: and did install such stuff in the corresponding system drawers instead. I think this is valid for most of the software installed on my system.

Formatting my "System3.9"-partition would mean to loose all that and then I would have to re-install all these programs, which is too time consuming for me.

Maybe I should add "a clean formatted partition" - e.g. named "Test System3.9" - and test new stuff with that in future...

@ChrisH

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While I think that keeping the OS "up-to-date" is basically a good idea, I nevertheless would like to point out that this also may cause problems.

Firstly I have to say that I have near to no experience with OS 4.x.
Though I have an "experimental install" of OS 4.0 classic on my A4k with CSPPC, I rarely used it, as OS 4.0 classic does not support my given hardware config as good as OS 3.9/WarpOS does.

Back in October 2011 I read about Grunch.
I thought it is a good idea to have the latest versions of my installed software, including the latest versions of e.g. libraries, dosdrivers etc.

So I installed Grunch and tested it. It worked as advertised and updated a lot of stuff on my system.
Initially I was happy, but then I detected that more and more programs stopped working, which worked flawlessly before.

Why?
The problem was that Grunch updated some components of OS 3.9 with files that were provided by third parties and were not 100% backwards compatible.

As I wanted to avoid such problems, I deleted Grunch frommy system fairly quickly. I tried to track everything that had been "updated" by Grunch and to reinstate the original state - but with moderate success.

I still had some progs that continued to refuse working.

Then, some months ago, I read about Chris's NetSurf port for AOS 3.x.
As I wanted a more up-to-date browser on my system than my AWeb- and IBrowse versions, I decided to download and test it.

But every time I tried to start NetSurf, my system crashed. With the help of Chris I tried to figure out what exactly the problem is. At some point we came to the conclusion it would be best to make a clean re-install of OS 3.9 and the corresponding official BoingBags I & II, to make sure that only the original system components are used.

After that, starting NetSurf still resulted in a system crash, but a bit later. Now I can at least see the splash screen before the system crashes...

So there still are issues - caused by this infamous "Grunch" packet manager.

So now my conclusion is NOT to use "Updater"- or "Enhancer"-software again, unless it is guaranteed that only officially certified and backwards compatible software will be used to replace system components.

It simply is too much work to get back a "clean" system, once the damage is done by some "updates"...

It's a real pity, as it basically is a good idea to have a "up-to-date" system - but only as long as it can somehow be ascertained that the software used to update the system is really compatible with the previous versions.

Does anyone here know of a (good) tutorial for Wildfire7 PPC and can tell me where to find it?

I bought the CD roughly 18 yrs ago and finally wanted to take a dive into Wildfire and find out what it is capable of. As the documentation on the CD just consists of several .txt-files, a good tutorial with screenshots would come in very handy.

There are loads of filters, effects and tools - but just from reading their names in the docs or in the menu I don't know what they do. Screenshots would help a lot. A picture can tell more than a thousand words!

Wildfire seems to be a good piece of classic productive Amiga software and I would really like to get into it.

@K-L

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Before I followed the link I thought this was about "Aegis Sonix" from the good old days.

But then I realised it is not the famous synthesizer software by Aegis, but some sort
of WebCam software.

Can you explain why the name "Sonix" was picked for it?
Is it somehow related to "Aegis Sonix"?

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Yeah - I have a weak remembrance of the Name "Moca".
Although I remembered it as "Mocca".
But the page is now 19 yrs old...

@whose
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Hummm - I do not want to buy IrseeSoft...

@nubechecorre

Thanks for explaining!

@Daedalus
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Hummm - I seem to have a weak remembrance that at some point in history (before the first OS 4 release) someone from the OS4 developers/Hyperion (Rogue?) announced that "CUPS" was meant to become the new printing system of the Amiga NG OS and to replace the 'quasi-standard' TurboPrint.

Does my Memory serve me right?
And if so, what has become of it?

@Draby
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Thanks for this hint, mate. I'll check this out as soon as I got a new printer.

@Chris
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Well, that's not exactly what I'd call easy.
To plug in the printer and to select the proper driver in TP - THAT's what I'd call easy.

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For me the best alternative seems to be to send my defunct Stylus Color 600 to the Epson service and get it repaired, as it actually IS network-enabled and can be connected to my router and can also be used from WinPCs and my A4kPPC with TurboPrint.

If I would buy a new printer I would need TurboPrint drivers for it. On the Linux side TP actuslly HAS those drivers, so the idea came up in me it might possibly, perhaps, with a little bit of luck, be possible to "persuade" those Linux-TP drivers to work with Amiga TP.

I doubt that PostScript offers the same functionality as TurboPrint.
Does it e.g. support printing posters?
Or does it have a brilliant color management like TP?
Or does it have a kind of "snpping tool" like TP?

I own a registered copy of the last Amiga version of TP and I'd like to benefit from TP tools like "Graphic Publisher" further on!

And of course I'm mainly talking about using TP with OS 3.9, but OS 4.x could also benefit from TP. As far as I read it also runs with OS 4.x ... there's "just" the lack of drivers for new printers on the Amiga side.

@eliyahu
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To buy a new computer and to learn Linux from the scratch to be able to download all required components and install them on the new device is not "that hard"?

For me it is too hard and time consuming to be acceptable.

I once tried to download the required Linux components to run Linux APUS on my CSPPC and gave up this idea very quickly after getting lost among all those different bootstraps and God-knows-what else...

Nah - THAT cannot be the solution for my printing needs on my Amiga! That is not acceptable!
I'd rather send my good old Epson Stylus Color 600 to the Epson service and get it repaired so I can easily use it again as network printer to print with TurboPrint from my Miggie...

@nubechecorre
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I'm not sure if I know what the "eprint function" is or if my printer has it.
And how do you print graphics and photos?

@Chris
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Is having to buy another computer the standard method nowadays to be able to print from an Amiga?
I have a weak remembrance that all I needed to do was to select the correct printer driver for my printer in TurboPrint...

@ChrisH

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I did not mean to persuade THEM to resume TurboPrint development.
Chiefly I meant to find out if the new drivers for Linux TurboPrint can somehow be used with the Amiga TurboPrint version.
Or what would be necessary to make them work with Amiga TurboPrint.

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They charge money just for answering some questions???

In the face of the unsatisfactory situation regarding printing on the Amiga platform (classic & NG), I'm dreaming of an update for TurboPrint with support for at least some of the latest printer models.

TurboPrint for Linux is still being actively developed and currently at version 2.40-1. It's printer driver page was last amended on May 26th, 2016, and provides lots of drivers for Brother, Canon, Epson and HP printers.

Given the great amount of Linux (or Unix) software titles that have been ported to the Amiga in the course of the recent years, I really ask myself why noone so far has tried to get the latest "TurboPrint for Linux" printer drivers ported to the Amiga TurboPrint version?

And even if the Linux printer drivers should not be usable for the Amiga version of TurboPrint - why has noone tried to obtain a permission from IrseeSoft to port the latest Linux version incl. drivers to Amiga OS (classic & NG)?

@jaokim

Thanks for the detailed information!

@jaokim

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In your blog I found a hint that you do this work on an NG Amiga:

"...since I actually now use JAmiga to compile Java code when I'm developing JAmiga on my X1000. We kind of almost have a Java implementation so we can build Java ourselves on the Amiga!"

Now I'm wondering if there is any chance that classic Amiga systems (OS 3.x / WarpOS) will also benefit from your work (68k port), or if it will be released for NG OS4.x-Amigas exclusively?

Would JAmiga run sufficiently fast on e.g. a CyberstormPPC with 68060 @ 50 mHz / PPC604e @ 200 mHz and 128 mB Ram?
Or would it only run at decent speed with e.g. AmigaForever on a fast PC?

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Nice!
What is the state of the project today, nine months later?