Hello everyone. Today I did a few fixes on the aiostreams server and fixed the youtube videos to play better than before. You see, YouTube was blocking my server IP, so I found a better way to get the information and the urls I needed.

You do not need to download anything. You just can keep on using the aiostreams, as you used to.

If there is a problem on your system and it fails to work, please let me know.

I tried a few times to build it, but the binary was not working. I also have an open issue in the repo. Unfortunately, it is not maintained any more.

@hotrod
I request that you refrain from engaging in personal attacks and derailing the discussion. Such behaviour is not acceptable in this context.

Back then when the early adopter was announced (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Axrgedh2lrg) was a pre-covid era and I understand why right now the cost is so high, after the inflation on parts. The 400€ price was for the early adopters and I think the rest (after the 100 first sales) would be around 550€ if I recall correct.

And I am sure ACube that worked on the new board did everything they could to have it cheaper for us.

Now, does it make sense in this price tag? Comparing to the 400€ that was announced back in 2019, no it doesn't. It's difficult to justify that the same hardware with the same specs costs more than double. And its purpose was to be the entry point system, but not any more. It's still half the price of the X5000 though, and it's new hardware available for everyone to go and buy it.

We have to be happy that we have new hardware available, either if it's a Sam, A1222 or X5000. I still remember the years when no hardware was available to buy.

So, if you are eager to join the OS4 community with new computers, and you have the money, then I would say A1222 is a fine computer, with its limitations. If you are concerned about the SPE CPU, then look for a Sam460, and if you need all the power you can get, head for the X5000.

Thanks Raziel. We will fix it

@SinanSam460
Why would we do that? What are the benefits you think we would have against ReAction or MUI?

Kas1e is right. I expect that we will have crashes and more to deal with (looking at you pthreads). Maybe it would make sense for a different team to step up and develop the browser, if there is anyone interested doing it, and we keep on maintaining the WebKit, addressing issues and keeping it updated.

Have in mind that even Wayfarer didn't get where it is now in a year. Jacek works on it for a long time, adding new features all the time.

@mr2
I planned to give an update tomorrow, but since you asked, here it is.

For some time now, the port was around 54% of the WebCore library compilation. At that point, I was getting around 10K of errors, and I was trying to figure out why this was happening and where exactly was the problem. Just last week, with the help of Kas1e who discovered what was wrong, he found that the problem was a missing curly bracket I stupidly removed a year ago accidentally. By fixing that, I managed to have WebCore library compiling up to 99%.

What needs to be done as the next step, I hear you asking. Actually, I already started working on a minimal window with a web view that will be able to show just one website. That's the next goal.

I know that this is not much, but it is the next step we need to make. Depending on how hard or easy it is to do, I plan to have more frequent updates on how it goes.

You all can track the development at https://github.com/AmigaLabs/webkitty

As you might see from the link above, we changed the main repository, as it is now moved under our organisation named AmigaLabs. We decided to gather all our projects in one place, so that people can find them easier and track their progress. More on that in future announcements, as it is still quite new for us.

There is one for AmigaOS 3
http://aminet.net/package/util/misc/AmigaGPT

@smf
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I haven't tested that at all. Thank you for your recommendation. I will check this out and report back.

Some update from me on the topic.

I got myself a ZuluSCSI Compact RP2040 https://store.rabbitholecomputing.com/ ... luscsi-compact-rp2040.htm
which is a scsi emulator, using a microSD. It is self powered from the Blizzard SCSI module with no problem.

My Blizzard SCSI module has 8.2 rom for now and booting from it is working fine. SysInfo reports that the SCSI speed is around 4MB/s with nothing else running, and I get something around 3.5MB/s when there is some CPU activity.

Having to deal with hard disk images is really convenient, since you can mount they on FS-UAE and do whatever you want with them, like transferring 3500 WHDLoad games.

I have a few further questions:
1. I use directscsi on it. Should it keep the speed of it standard, even under CPU usage?
2. In the partitions, do you recommend having 24bitDMA enabled on memory usage or keep it on Public (AmigaOS 3.2)?
3. Are there ways to speed it up more? In theory the Blizzard SCSI could reach 8MB/s I think
4. I am using FFS right now because when I tried SFS and PFS they didn't seem to work. For example, I couldn't SFSFormat an SFS partition because the tool either was freezing or crashed the system.

Thank you all for your help.

@Rigo
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I read again users' comments and I haven't seen anyone getting pitch-forks out, pointing you as the enemy. I think that people find your software useful and tried to offer their help.

Furthermore, I am glad you sorted it out, and as others said, I would like to help in any way to get this weight out of your shoulders. I know the pain, as I maintain and host multiple Amiga websites, like this forum.

@Raziel
There is no problem posting it here. I think the place to post issues with smb2fs is at https://github.com/salass00/smb2fs/issues

I understand that all these different bug report places might be confusing.

Great script. Should the disks be unmounted first before the poweroff, to make sure that no data writing is in progress?

@trixie
Absolutely. If no more development is done on the OS and on new software, no matter if you have the real or the emulated thing, the result will be to get lost in oblivion

I remember back in the 2000 that people were fighting the emulation by saying that it will kill the Amiga and destroy the community. Only that the opposite happened.
Running Classic Amiga on RaspberryPis and other systems (A500mini, A600GS etc) is based on emulation. The more hardcore amigans would buy original hardware or will make their own.

12-13 years ago, when the X1000 was released, the OS4 ecosystem was quite different. AmigaOS 4 development was pretty active, new hardware was available and companies were working together for a better future. Unfortunately, that is not the case right now.

I am more optimistic about the OS4 future while we embrace the emulation side of things. The work Balaton did with Qemu and the constant support from his side is tremendous. The work Hans is doing with the virtio-gfx drivers is also exceptional.

I do not plan to sell my AmigaOnes hardware for the Qemu, as I like to have the real thing. But I am delighted that I will have it installed on my laptop and use it wherever I want.

I am glad that there is a pretty good option that will help AmigaOS 4 to be tested by, let's say some random numbers, 100 people and 2 of them stick with it and use it as much as possible. These people might come from the Classic camp or the MorphOS camp. Without the Qemu solution, we would never have them. And that's how you increase the user base.

As I said in another thread, we tried the custom hardware for more than a decade and the user base didn't get that big. At least, let's try a different way and see what happens. We have already seen the results, with people joining our community like Maijestro and White, providing useful feedback and experimenting with it. That feels me with a lot of optimism for the future.

I have mentioned before the problem I have with the emulated pegasos2 I use from time to time. When I start streaming a radio station with amigaamp, after a few minutes the network collapses and this seems to be from qemu side because I can't bring it back by just rebooting the system, but I need to close qemu and restart it.

Today I was experimenting a little bit and I saw on Ranger that the status of the PCI ethernet device changed from "FastDevSel" to "int FastDevSel".

Now I am not aware what this is and what it means, but if I get it right, it proves that something changes on the device itself. Does anyone have any clue on why this happens?

I am using rtl8139.device v53.4

Quote:
That was about everyone reading this topic.

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Having in mind that new hardware is really difficult to be done, and those who make them never get their investment back, I find it extremely difficult to see new hardware with or without having Qemu solutions available. So, if there is now new hardware, I love the idea of having a solution that will keep the OS alive and growing.

Having said that, the only new hardware that we expect to see, supporting the AmigaOS 4, is the PowerPC based laptop motherboard by ACube, which I saw fully populated at the Amiga38. It was not plugged in, unfortunately, but it is a WIP. If I am not mistaken, the work to support it under AmigaOS 4 has already started. Other than that, I am not aware of anyone else making new hardware. I am not sure A-Eon will make new hardware. At least, they haven't announced anything yet.

The other good thing that I saw in Amiga38 was that there were much stronger presence of AmigaOS 4 and PowerPC systems than any other time, in many different tables. I don't know though if this gathered visitors' eyes and how many discussions were there, but it was a good thing, in my opinion.

My feeling was that this year much fewer people decided to visit Amiga38 than last year. But it was a very interesting event, meeting numerous good friends and having an excellent time together.

From my point of view, the Qemu solution can work greatly as an entry-level system for everyone, in a low price range, like 30€ to buy the AmigaOS 4 and install it by himself on any system they own that runs Qemu. This kind of entry-level system is not possible to be achieved with hardware, and since the Mac support was never completed, I don't see how there will be a cheaper solution for anyone who would like to try AmigaOS 4. The A1222+ cost prevents it, unfortunately, from being an entry-level system as well.

Now, if people do not see the differences of having an emulated AmigaOS 4 against an emulated AmigaOS 3, that means that we need to work harder to make more visible the differences and the benefits of the OS4. Possibly, they are not aware of all the different exclusive applications that people can use on OS4 like the Emotion, DVPlayer, Rave, MediaVault, Odyssey etc, the ported applications like Blender, LiteXL, AmiCygnix, mplayer, QT, Python etc, the much better development toolchain and the freedom that OS4 provides. Sure, there are websites and videos out there that demonstrate all these applications, but we probably need to do more.

Most of these are too hard, if not impossible, to be done on AmigaOS 3 for multiple reasons, like the dev toolchain and the low number of users who will need real powerful systems to run them, and they are not the majority of users. So, any comparison of OS4 and OS3 for me doesn't make sense.

With Qemu I see a good opportunity to increase the user base of AmigaOS 4, with the lower cost of implementing needed parts (drivers and generic support, it doesn't need changes anywhere to run it), low cost of setting it up, and it is available for some time now. Also, it can help a lot with application development, either as a testing platform, as a platform for someone who doesn't have the real hardware but wants to implement an application, as a platform to be used in automated tasks in a CI/CD setup.

The virtio drivers will only help the emulated system to gain more performance, supporting better the host hardware. This is a great opportunity to have AmigaOS 4 everywhere we want it, like on your laptop or your main PC.

Will it drive the PPC hardware sales down? I believe that depends on what extra this hardware gives to the user. If the emulated system is superior, and the PPC hardware price remains high, then this might influence the sales. But on the other hand, those that want the real hardware and can afford to buy it, they will do so, no matter what. Also, if the user base will increase, that will make the software development more viable.

For the last 13+ years we tried the model of having high prices PPC hardware and that didn't help to bypass the few hundreds of users. Maybe it is time to try something else and give it a go.

Although I have a lot of PPC hardware available, I am all in for the Qemu solution bringing my beloved OS anywhere I am. Don't you?

@Maijestro
Thank you for testing my latest port. Have fun with it.