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Building a more powerful 68k/PPC Amiga?
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Hi! I made this account a few months ago, but never ended up posting anything until now. I made a post about this on the Amiga subreddit, but figured it would be worth reaching out here after receiving some mixed responses.

tl;dr: Could you build a classic Amiga that's capable of running Classic 68k software natively on OS3, while also having a PPC processor strong enough to take full advantage of OS4?

I've been fairly interested in trying to acquire an Amiga, both to use as a way to play a variety of 80s and 90s computer games (The majority of what I'm interested in, such as Ultima, Quake, SimCity, Civ, etc. all received Amiga ports) and to use as fun, non internet connected writing computer.

To cut to the chase, I've been very interested in the late 90s Cyberstorm/Blizzard PPC accelerators for classic Amigas. It seems like it would be the most versatile Amiga hardware setup, since in theory you'd be able to run almost all 68k applications and games natively (aside from some old A500 games I would presume) while also having access to OS4 and the various PPC games that have been ported over the years.

The hold up is obviously the extreme rarity of those cards, along with their relatively low power for anything you can actually do with OS4. I'm aware that there's the AmigaOS4 Classic Edition, but from what I can gather almost nothing that's been made for OS4 over the years would work with a 200Mhz processor.

I've been wondering if it would be possible to create a more powerful/modernized version of the classic 68k/PPC setup, utilizing an original or reproduction A1200 AGA motherboard and chipset, but equipped with a much more powerful PPC processor, like a 1Ghz or higher processor similar to what was used in the Power Mac G4. Ideally you'd be able to equip a stronger graphics card to it as well.

I'm not oblivious to the fact that it would be far easier to just build an OS4 computer, and emulate all the 68k software that way (or even emulate OS4 outright) but I'm just not interested in doing it that way. I like to actually use the original hardware as much as physically possible, especially for something like this. That's always been what makes retro gaming/computing interesting in my opinion.

Now, the technological aspects of a project like this are well over my head. I know how to use a computer and generally what certain parts do, but the actual specifics of what you would need to setup something like this are beyond my understanding. Commodore also died about a decade before I was even born, so the minutia of 80s and 90s computing is rather foreign to me. Since I don't know how to properly research this topic myself, I figured I'd see if anybody here had ever experimented with such a setup, or ever considered it a real possibility.


Essentially, I wanted to see if this build is possible to make functionally:

1. An A1200 level board with AGA support, and a 68060 or 68040 depending on what’s easily acquirable. Perhaps a PiStorm or Vampire could be used here but I'm much more interested in sticking with classic Amiga specs.

2. A (relatively) modern PPC processor, in a setup similar to the old Cyberstorm and Blizzard PPC Accelerators. Ideally something with more than a 1Ghz clock speed. A decent graphics card, like a mid 2000s Radeon would be great as well.

3. Capable of dual booting OS3 and OS4, probably installed on different drives. In a dream world this computer would also be capable of booting Classic MacOS via Shapeshifter, as well as later PPC Mac OS's like 8 and 9, but I think that would be massively stretching it.

I apologize if this is a very stupid idea, but it's been in my head for a few months and I want to see if a computer like that is even a possibility, costs not withstanding.

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