Amiga38 Germany

@MartinWQuote:

This driver is certainly made available as a paid version, I suspect through Enhancer Software, but I have no information about it.

As announced by Trevor, Hans de Ruiter is personally taking over the development of this driver and A-Eon is financing the whole thing. For me it's okay to have to pay for such a driver in order to have the best possible experience with AmigaOs4.1 under Qemu.

And if this AmigaNG a1222+ doesn't sell well, we can still use AmigaOs4.1 to its full extent like on real real machines.

I really have nothing against real Amiga hardware but I see zero potential with the a1222+. Then it's better to go for the x5000/040 as @kas1e has already written, in my opinion the x5000 has enough power to remain competitive with new hardware that is being developed for AmigaOs4.1 for the next few years. Especially since we know that the x5000 is not yet 100% optimized (dual core support) but for reasons of space I won't be able to buy such a device and as already mentioned I don't like this clunky "desktop PC".

Maybe at some point the entire further development of AmigaOs4.1 and its hardware will be stopped, we don't know what the future has in store for us, but no matter what happens with Qemu, this system will continue to exist. So I'm happy that this driver is being developed and that with Qemu we get an alternative to real hardware through which developers can also be paid to provide the software for this system. In this case, by providing this Vitio GPU driver.

We already know the packages Amikit, AmigaForever, FLOWER POT, they are all based on WinUae and serve the Classic and Classic PowerPC areas and here too money is made with the sales of the individual packages. So why not offer something similar for Qemu, we have nothing to lose....

@Maijestro

Just to be clear here, I'm not for a second suggesting that it should not be paid software. People have to eat! All I'm saying is that if it's something I have to spend money on then it won't be an instant buy, just like there are other bits of OS4 software that I haven't bought.

Having said that, if it's supplied as part of Enhancer then I'm good anyway given Trevor's statement that the next version of Enhancer is a free update for existing users. I think it's more likely to be a standalone driver like the HD / RX drivers.

Anyway, this is all a little off-scope. I was just curious really where it was said that it would be included in the next enhancer and I think we've established that as no more than a guess at the moment.

@MartinWQuote:

You are probably right, I can well imagine that one makes it so and it would also make sense. But this is all pure speculation....

As @AmigaOldskooler already wrote we might get more information this weekend at AmiWest about the future plans of hardware/software around AmigaOs4.1.

..Anyway if I was Trevor, as I already said some month ago, the best possible choice I could do was contact Zoltan Balaton and stipulate an agreement about the creation of an Amiga virtual machine under QEMU.
I intend a complete and full working virtual machine with Nvram, Bios and all chipset hardware registers.
Once you have a stable system on this type of machine you can try to migrate to a new cpu and come back to a real machine just like RPi5 o any X86/64 or anything else.

My 2 cents.

@flash

And what would this migration look like? A kernel with PPC emulator?

The OS is not owned by Trevor but by Hyperion.

And I have said it many times. Except for Mac Mx hardware, there is no desktop ARM platform. A platform is more then just a SoC. And this means custom hardware.

@geennaam
Quote:The kernel is owned by Trevor, and some AmigaOS parts were replaced by A-EONs SystemV54 already.
For the rest of AmigaOS about half of it is owned by Amiga Inc./Cloanto and the other half by individual OS4 developers like me who did licence their OS4 parts to Hyperion in the past, but for everything from me, and several other OS4 developers, Hyperion has no valid licences any more and never will get any again.
Hyperion owns next to nothing of AmigaOS, neither 4.x or 3.x.

Quote:Get an old A500, A2000, etc., attach a PiStorm to it and you have a desktop ARM platform
Unlike your nonsense suggestion to use QEmu m68k for AmigaOS 3.x, which wont run any more old AmigaOS 3.x/m68k software than AmigaOS 4.x does because the old AmigaOS 3.x software not working on AmigaOS 4.x is software depending on the classic Amiga chipset, such a system will run such ancient AmigaOS 3.x/m68k software without problems.

@TheMagicSN

Hi! Congratulations on Heretic II! Do you know where (and when) it will be available for purchase? Looking forward to playing it!

@joerg

If you want nonsense then don't get me started about your broken record about pirated stuff and legal action. You know it is just empty threats for years now.

And of course you would need to emulate a complete machine in qemu. Not just the 68k. Just like you need to emulate the pegasos2 marvell Northbridge (and a sm501 currently) as well. Not just the powerpc. But you knew that already.

The point is that if the future is emulation then the powerpc cpu is irrelevant. Better continue with a 10k+ user base then keep on struggling with 500+ users. Don't stop with virtio but port the complete enhancer to 68k. You can count os4 exclusive apps and games with one or two hands. The majority are ports from other platforms anyways.

@geennaam
Quote:Why do you want to reimplement UAE with QEmu?
WinUAE does exactly that, it emulates a complete classic Amiga machine, can run both AmigaOS 3.x/m68k and AmigaOS 4.x/PPC, has virtual drivers for gfx (uaegfx.card) and network (UAE bsdsocket.library) using the host hardware/drivers since a long time already, etc.

@AmigaOldskooler:

Thanks. I cannot tell you when exactly but production
should soon start (the version showed was the final
version, the presenters had the final version install ISOs).
I don’t know exactly how long such a production takes
but it cannot be so long.

As to where you might try Alinea Computer who also
presented it. They definitely will sell it.

@trixie

As to that qemu driver do not
forget a company can do several
things at once. Developing a driver
does not mean they give up ppc hardware.

It means they sell both ppc hardware and things
the emulator crowd wants, getting money from
both.

@joerg

If you want to restrict yourself to windows then that is an excellent idea.

We can justify it to ourselves as something entirely different but both winuae and QEMU are just emulating a machine.

And let's face it. If Toni Wilen (or winuae users) was interested in os4 and put more effort in the emulation of powerup boards, nobody was talking about QEMU and virtio today.


Edit: corrected the winuae maintainers name

@geennaam
In whole, I think it's all not worth of worry. Emulation for those who in interest in OS4 just help to develop things and fix bugs and make life easier. Many of us will not sit on emulation, because it makes no sense and of no big interest. But, have fast and good emulation (with support of 3D and stuff), will help for sure. And maybe will add some more users on board. And that, still, not mean that everyone giving up on real OS4 hardware in favor of emulation.

Emulation will grow up with all of us, some of us will die till emulation will be on the x5k level even on today's PC. And, as WinUAE (if take OS3/classic only emulation) show, 68k users who like emulation, use WinUAE, ones who not, use real things and made new hardware/add-ons and co. It's not like one exclude another, both emulation and real hardware can happy live together helping each other.

Quote:

And that only mean, that emulation not for everyone, but for some. So, ones who want – will use it, ones who don't and want real things – welcome to the club :) Imho of no problems.

@TheMagicSN
Quote:

Exactly. IMHO, absolutely correct thing to make money on all fronts, and not restrict ourselves.

I remember how long Hyperion was against of WinUAE support of OS4, and weren't in interest to fix some bits in kernel to be able to have more Z3 memory in winuae which it needs. Then, after years, someone realize that why not, and , everyone happy : ones who need use WinUAE for OS4, ones who do not want : do not use it. But everyone happy in end. And as i aware, they sold some more copies of OS4 because of winuae users.

@kas1e

Came here to correct my mistake but you were faster

Current QEMU ppc emulation speed is already on par or even exceeding my X5000 on my 3 years old mid level PC.

Make the puzzle complete with virtio and I can put my X5000 in storage next to the sam440, a600 and a1200.
Buy myself the latest and greatest PC. Kids happy because they can play Fortnite during daytime. And I can play around with qemu in the evening.

Even the slow (re)boot is fixed with qemu .

You can wake me up again when os4 is running natively on hardware that exceeds qemu speed.

@geennaam
Quote:

Last I checked, still not. In some tasks it still pretty slower. Will see how it changes with new driver, but, even if it will be all faster and co, it's not changed the fact that some of us like to have real things, and not because of its speed :)


And as always not forget emulation specific bugs and issues, they all need to be sorted out first, it will take lots of time too.

@kas1e

Quote:

Did you check it with recent hardware? Because I can recall that you were using a "5 years old notebook, with 3GHZ one core CPU". And this gives a totally different experience compared to todays 5 GHz+ (single core speed) desktop CPUs. Not to mention the benefit of memory perfomance.

Quote:

True, true. But personally I draw the line when the emulator is faster than the real thing. That's why I left my a1200+bppc behind and went for a sam440 instead.

My questions are not to be confused with criticism on this virtio driver. Emulation is here and cannot be ignored. And if someone sees the opportinuty to make some money then be my guest.

The question that I like to raise is if this will benefit our situation. Or if it will be the final nail to coffin of OS4 hardware.

During Amiga38, there was chatter about the fact that we need lower cost entry level hardware. In the range of $500. The a1222 clearly doesn not fill that gap. Who will give it try now when an emulator rivals the top of the line hardware for virtually free.

At the moment I cannot justify a purchase of the X5040. It will bring me only 10% more raw CPU speed compared to the X5020. (and let's ignore the 30% performance penalty in games for now). This might change if Multi-CPU support is introduced.

If my X5000 breaks down, will I spend $3000+ on an X5040? Or will I spend $xx on a virtio driver? That new PC is needed anyways and I will not settle for less speed like an a1222 or sam460.

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?

@walkero

Quote:

Not sure who the "you" is here. But since I'm reading it, it might as well be me

I'm just being honest here. Like I wrote above. I will probably go for a casual QEMU experience when my X5k breaks down. Maybe even sooner. My personal motivations to develop for OS4 will be fully met with such a solution (access to modern hardware).

In my case, OS4 is not suitable for daily use. I'm also not a software developer. So personally I have no real desire to take OS4 with me on the road at the moment.

Now everybody will have their own personal considerations. And it will surely result in a lot of different opinions and desires.

I'm just curious what the net outcome will be. And how it affects the development of new hardware.

Quote:
That was about everyone reading this topic.

Quote:
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.

Quote:

This depends on how you approach such an endeavor. But that was not the point. The point was if it makes sense at all considering the end result.