Great news, Virtio drivers will let to develop AmigaOS on any hardware at decent speed for many years in future. I hope after gfx drivers will be the turn of sound and network devices.
Missed the whole virtio news on A38. But surprised that it is an official aeon project.
Let's be honest here. A modern PC is superior in processing speed, memory speed, PCIe speed, ssd speed, graphics card support etc. I am convinced that a modern PC with QEMU and virtio drivers will be superior to real hardware. It will run away as well since PCs keep getting faster every year.
I get the point of cross compiling. But what is the point of having such an OS4 environment to develop something for slower real hardware? What is aeon trying to achieve here? What would be the point of having OS4 at all? Wouldn't it then be better to "reunite" again as qemu os3.2+virtio and move virtually forwards together?
Not with the virtio driver. This is basically a bridge between P96+warp3Dnova to the Host APIs+what er modern Gpu you have in your machine. So while we are limited to RX580 atm. A qemu user gets access to the latest and greatest.
The point of amigaos4 was to break the performance chains of a classic 68k+bus and chipset. Qemu with aos virtio drivers will do a better job in any case.
Hence the question: what is the point of the os4 project anymore when you could do the same for the much larger os3.x user base and have the cpu+gfx power to run both old and new software
Maybe you're confused with vfio. Vfio gives the guest OS access to the host hardware. This means that the guest OS needs to have a hardware driver for each specific vfio hardware. Vfio will normally give the best performance. But it is safe to assume that the Host drivers+apis will not be the bottleneck in this case.
We already have very big hardware limitations, see Pegasos2/AmigaOne/Sam460 real hardware where Warp3dNova and newer graphics cards can't be used at all. I don't think they will develop AmigaOs4.1 only for pure Qemu.
All newer ports that require Warp3dNova and gles2 cannot be used on the above hardware. It might break the bridge of the somewhat aged AmigaNG hardware, the x1000/x5000 and also a1222+ will only survive in the end.
Perhaps also sometime the entire porting of AmigaOs4.1 on another architecture takes place over Qemu. This would be possible. We don't know...
It could also encourage people to use AmigaOs4.1 as I already do, or even find new developers for it, Qemu has been usable for about a year and since Qemu is OpenSource we have a "machine" that is continuously evolving and everyone can contribute to it, not everyone is willing to invest in AmigaNgG hardware, that of course won't stop the hardcore Amiga users from buying real hardware, which is fine, but that's exactly the gap Qemu could fill.
@all
More importantly, was anything concrete mentioned about AmigaOs4.x or its further development?
You are incorrect about the sam460. All PPC hardware currently for sale can use at least HD cards and therefore use warp3dnova. Even an obsolete sam440 can do that with a PCI to PCIe bridge.
The point is that custom amigaos4 hardware cannot keep up with mainstream hardware. So I doubt that custom (ARM?) hardware can leap forward in such a way that makes emulation with virtio drivers struggle and therefore justify a €1000+ price tag. I say custom because there no viable arm SBC available that makes sense at the moment. Not counting those Mx Apples here. Remember we're not talking about a 10000+ userbase with hardcore fans like classic 68k. We are talking about 500-1000 os4 users here.
So the question remains. What is the point of NG hardware+OS4 when QEMU+virtio can enable the same kind of power to OS3.3 and beyond. It's not like we are swimming in os4 exclusive applications.
So the question remains. What is the point of NG hardware+OS4 when QEMU+virtio can enable the same kind of power to OS3.3 and beyond. It's not like we are swimming in os4 exclusive applications.
Any AmigaOS 3.x development/improvement is blocked until the owners of AmigaOS 3.x, Amiga Inc./Cloanto as well as several of the OS4 developers like me whose software was illegally ported to 3.x/m68k and included in Hyperion's 3.1.x/3.2.x pirate copies of AmigaOS, have won their court cases against Hyperion. Of course it's similar for a lot of AmigaOS 4.x parts not owned by Hyperion but by the individual OS4 developers, but at least Trevor/A-EON own important parts like ExecSG already and Hyperion no longer has any control over them.
It should be blocked. Fact is that os3.3 was announced on a38. So unlike os4, os3.x is still moving forwards. Legal issues aside. But the point that I am trying to make is that the NG direction becomes pointless when emulation is overtaking NG in terms of performance and access to modern hardware by means of virtual devices. Then why not emulate 68k instead of PPC.
It should be blocked. Fact is that os3.3 was announced on a38. So unlike os4, os3.x is still moving forwards
I read that as well and it's really good news, if Hyperion is stupid enough to still include pirated software from me and they are trying to sell it since that will be the final destruction of Hyperion once and for all I'm currently preparing legal warnings and law suits not only against Hyperion and Olsen, but any dealer selling such pirate software from me as well. I can assure you that such an illegal AmigaOS 3.3 version will never be available to end users.
Quote:
Then why not emulate 68k instead of PPC.
Why emulate anything at all? If you want to use an AmigaOS-like OS on a x64 CPU, which isn't AmigaOS compatible at all and can't run any AmigaOS software though, but there was some work done recently to make it AmigaOS 3.x/m68k compatible at least, use AROS.
@geennaam With the work done recently in AROS, mostly for ApolloOS used for example on the Vampire, you can run old AmigaOS 3.1/m68k software. On AROS/x64 an additional m68k emulator would be required, but that's no big problem either and has been done several times already like in Amithlon, and the most important part of you want to use AmigaOS software sources, a GCC version which automatically fixes the endian bugs of the host CPU like the i686be-amithlon GCC was done already as well.
@geennaam Even with virtio driver, other parts of emulation still slower than my x5k in simple tasks on todays fast PC. Someday, PC will have decent power to emulate x5k in all areas, but that years. Currenly, for me, qemu is another os4 machine which i will use for tests, etc. But that all didnt mean migration: more chooices always better and help fixing more bugs
It should be blocked. Fact is that os3.3 was announced on a38. So unlike os4, os3.x is still moving forwards. Legal issues aside. But the point that I am trying to make is that the NG direction becomes pointless when emulation is overtaking NG in terms of performance and access to modern hardware by means of virtual devices. Then why not emulate 68k instead of PPC.
Qemu does not support 68k emulation and therefore not AmigaOs3.1.x and here too we have the same problems in that there are almost no exclusive titles for it.
Quote:
You are incorrect about the sam460. All PPC hardware currently for sale can use at least HD cards and therefore use warp3dnova. Even an obsolete sam440 can do that with a PCI to PCIe bridge.
A PCI bridge cannot replace a PCIe port, it will only make it slower.
It's also a bit unclear to me why the focus was specifically on AmigaOs3.x, I would have hoped to be able to hear and read something about AmigaOs4.x
It's also a bit unclear to me why the focus was specifically on AmigaOs3.x, I would have hoped to be able to hear and read something about AmigaOs4.x
The AmigaOS 4.x kernel is owned by Trevor now, Hyperion has no licence for it any more, therefore they can't do any AmigaOS 4.x updates which would make any sense. That's why they did the the AmigaOS 3.x/m68k updates instead. The don't have a licence for that either, but they don't seem to care and apparently try to make some quick money out of it, none of the AmigaOS 3.1.x/3.2.x/3.3 developers was payed, until the court cases, which can take several years, are over and Hyperion has nothing at all left anymore.
It's also a bit unclear to me why the focus was specifically on AmigaOs3.x, I would have hoped to be able to hear and read something about AmigaOs4.x
The AmigaOS 4.x kernel is owned by Trevor now, Hyperion has no licence for it any more, therefore they can't do any AmigaOS 4.x updates which would make any sense. That's why they did the the AmigaOS 3.x/m68k updates instead. The don't have a licence for that either, but they don't seem to care and apparently try to make some quick money out of it, none of the AmigaOS 3.1.x/3.2.x/3.3 developers was payed, until the court cases, which can take several years, are over and Hyperion has nothing at all left anymore.
Then further development will probably only take place via enhancer software in order to be able to import AmigaOs4.1 updates, maybe that's better that way. I don't want to go into this topic any further.
If this driver for Qemu is ever released, it will be a bit of a dream come true for me and I have been fighting for it for a year, along with Balaton, who has done and is still doing a great job on Qemu.
The Amiga Cummunity also contributed a lot, ports like MilkyTracker, SDL, LiteXL, ScummVM, BreakHack, MPlayer and and and did not run at all under Qemu AmigaOs4.1. For me it was a very good year that I was able to experience with AmigaOs.4.1 and still do
Afaik, Trevor said somewhere that he is only releasing execsg as part of a new os4 release. So if there will be a new os4 release, I do not see why Trevor would not provide a new kernel.
I have a feeling we might get to know more about the development of Enhancer, AmigaOS 4 etc. at AmiWest the upcoming weekend.
The presentation from Trevor Dickinson at Amiga38 was ok, but not as news orientated as those he usually deliver at AmiWest. I'm sure there has been a lot of development during 2023 that he wants to highlight at that event either alone or with Matthew Leaman.
Steven Solie will be at AmiWest, so hopefully news about multicore?
All speculation from my side, but time will show.
I do find it a bit strange that pre-orders for a full A1222+ system has opened without a mention in Trevor's speech (sorry if I did not catch it if it was indeed announced) or elsewhere for that matter. I managed to place an order (through e-mail, not at the event) with AAA Technology (through Amedia), so eagerly awaiting a new AOS 4 system to play around with.
I managed to place an order (through e-mail, not at the event) with AAA Technology (through Amedia), so eagerly awaiting a new AOS 4 system to play around with.
"An A1222-Plus complete system at the special price of 1600 Euros" - this spoils the party for me
News feed
OS4 Feedback forum
OS4Depot Feedback forum
Amigabounty forum
OpenAmiga forum
AmiCygnix forum
ABC shell forum
AmiKit forum
Cinnamon Writer forum
CodeBench forum
Digital Universe forum
Dopus 5 forum
E-UAE forum
Gnash forum
Ibrowse forum
JAmiga forum
Odyssey forum
OWB forum
Qt forum
SmartFileSystem forum
Timberwolf forum
TouchDevice forum
TuneNet forum
Unsatisfactory Software forum
