A1200NG motherboard appears at AmigaKit

Hi everyone,

Stumbled upon some news posted by amigang at amigaworld.net this morning. Seems like the A1200NG motherboard suddenly was up at AmigaKit!

Wrote a small blog post about it here:

https://oldschoolgameblog.com/2024/12/ ... rom-the-amigakit-webshop/

Here is the link to AmigaKit:

https://www.amigakit.com/a1200ng-motherboard-p-91333.html

Could someone explain what exactly this is. As in, is it just arm linux running some uae variant or is it something completely different?

@orgin

It's a backplane board for an R Pi 3 that fits into an A1200 case.

@ferrels

Quote:
Isn't RPi3 a bit long in the tooth? I'd expect an RPi5 instead.

@ferrels

I'm asking for an explanation on what it does. Not what it physically is (which is explained on the page).

As in, is it just an arm board running linux with uae or does it achieve the amiga emulation in some other way.

@orgin

It is mostly the same as the A600GS, but suitable for an Amiga 1200 case and with more expandability.

Like the A600GS, you'll get the full menu system at startup where you can launch games, programs and demos, as well as launch AmiBench, the new OS which has a lot of content from Enhancer.

Software through the main launcher/menu of the A1200NG is done through emulation (Amiberry).

@AmigaOldskooler

I see, Amiberry, alright then. Thank you.




Would be a nice platform to run a native arm os4 on. To get away from the ridiculously expensive ppc hardware that we are stuck with now. Oh well.

@orgin
Quote:Or at least any ARM native OS ...
Except for some tiny parts like ARMgraphics.library it just seem to be emulated m68k versions of AROS, SystemV46 and AmiBench instead.
As long as not even exec is ARM native the support for running ARM native code is probably as limited as it was for x86 code on Amithlon.

They did say, that one of the goals is moving more and more of the libraries and OS to ARM. They already include some libraries that can access the ARM.
I doubt it will ever be OS4, but it will be a move in the direction of new, cheap and available hardware.
This A1200NG board is, IMHO, a really good move in the right direction.

If this can boot and run OS3.2 it's a great idea to ressurrect a ton of Amiga 1200's which are currently nto being used due to broken components etc.

I think it is very good that Amiga goes ARM, it is the future. Only some old Baron on there PPC Hardware hate it. PPC is years dead, 68060 is years dead, there will never be a New Motorola or PPC Chip ever.

The Hardware is all 30 years old and it will never get in better condition. There must be a solution anyway there are no new PCMCIA 16Bit cards coming. Plus it is very Expensive, when you are a Dev for Amiga. You need to spend tousends of euros in Turbocards, Ram, USB, Lan, Graficboards, etc etc etc.

Then you have to dev for all this selfmade diffrent Amigas with that or this chip.

ARM is cheap, Powerful, Modern. It is one Device to Code and test for.

New Amiga Users will come becouse Modern New Hardware at a cheap price with all this things like Wlan, HDMI, USB. They dont need to invest a CAR for a full powered Amiga.

People that dont see the Future in this new a600gs and 1200NG can tell us please how the future should look else ? and dont come with 1200euro SAM boards.... Nobody, really nobody (non Amiga Guru) spend price of a new Mobilephone for an Computer that cant open Youtube. I dont hate it! just there are small nische people that are willing to invest and enjoy. It is not Mainstream product but this cheap Boards can be a Mainstream revival of Amiga.

I saw a video of somebody get OS4 running on Pi5, i mean this would really be a step. When there comes a distro to flash a sdcard, and enjoy os4 with everything working.

@manga303

Quote:

I just did, and im not a amiga guru, just a very normal long therm amiga enthusiast going over til NG when i was looking for something new. And it made it easier for me to buy by thinking that the machine only cost what many people pay for a mobilephone which is obsolete in a few years anyway and will lose all value.
But of course it would have been an huge advantage if PPC NG was cheaper.

I personally don't think there's any point in stressing about making the amiga future-oriented. It will forever be a platform for long therm amiga enthusiasts and I think most of the people who come back now after 25 years are just looking for a nostalgic quick-fix before possibly putting the machine on the shelf again after a while. Otherwise, they would have returned 10+ years ago when the hardware was cheaper

I have a vintage car that I enjoy. The model was discontinued several decades ago and is a dead end. IT will not be faster or better. But that doesn't mean I can't enjoy it for what it is. I have the same feeling about the PPC NG amiga. I enjoy it for what it is and what limitations it has. I think the Amigaos4.1 environment is cozy and enjoy it. I think it's cool that the hardware is rare and "exotic". Part of the fun for me is getting the software to run as best as possible with the limitations and seeing how enthusiasts develop drivers for new video cards with video acceleration and support for 3d shaders etc.

If the machine had suddenly gained an abundance of cpu and gpu power, then part of the charm would have disappeared and one could just as easily buy a raspberry pie as an alternative to PC and Mac. Yes, PPC NG Amiga is a dead end in terms of hardware in the future. But we only have to hold out for a couple more decades before we're all dead or senile and nobody cares anymore. Let's have fun with what we have. Nobody else cares.

its god to have new hardware EVEN better to have new CPU
but in order to be "official" shouldn;t somehow create specifications in HOW an ARM and misc other underneath hardware will be used ?

i listen about "arm libraries" from a600gs but no clear target exists

if they decide to go that way, its MANDATORY to create specifications and guidelines in
- how an underneath cpu will be used
- how other underneath hardware like gfx card/networkcard will be used

ideally using some modular /driver way , so new hardware can be created and used by new apps nativelly

if specific guidelines exists, other hardware (e.g PiStom etc) can be adapted to that, opening new frontiers :)

@yssing
Quote:In a similar, unusable way Amithlon failed more than 20 years ago aleady.
Amithlon and A600GS/A1200NG: m68k emulator -> m68k exec -> everything is m68k by default and using native code only a limited hack. You are stuck with a m68k based system forever.
AmigaOS 4.x and MorphOS: native exec -> everything is native code by default and the m68k emulator only used when required, for old m68k code.
Edit: An usable ARM native AmigaOS, using ARM native code by default and compatible to AmigaOS 4.x, not only to AmigaOS 0.1-3.9/m68k, would require a PPC emulator as well, not only a m68k emulator.

Quote:Why not? A-EON owns ExecSG as well as several other key components of AmigaOS 4.x, or at least has exclusive licences for them, incl. nearly everything from me Hyperion isn't allowed to use since about 10 years anymore, incl. diskboot, diskcache, SFS and a lot of other parts.

Quote:IMHO the A1200NG board is useless junk.
All serious A1200 users installed their motherboards into Micronik, Elbox, etc. tower cases with ZorroIII and PCI slots for gfx, audio, USB, Ethernet, etc. and for them it would be a downgrade since the A1200NG doesn't support neither ZorroIII nor PCI.
The only thing the A1200NG might be usable for is removing the AmigaKit AROS/m68k and SystemV46/m68k software and install QEmu and the AmigaOne XE version of AmigaOS 4.x on it instead.
Compared to real PPC hardware like the X1000 and X5000, or even just a Sam4x0, running AmigaOS 4.x with QEmu on a Raspberry Pi is unusable slow, however it's a replacement board for the A1200 and even QEmu emulated AmigaOne XE/PPC AmigaOS 4.x on it should be faster than the classic Amiga AmigaOS 4.x on real hardware (A1200 with BlizzardPPC), and with 4GB you have enough RAM for running AmigaOS 4.x software, compared to the BlizzardPPC with max. 256 MB which is way too few. Additionally the RAM access speed on the BlizzardPPC is extremely slow, which was the main reason AmigaOS 4.x was unusable on the A1200/BPPC.

The A600GS makes much more sense.

@joerg
Quote:
The only developer working for real on ExecSG still is Thomas, and i doubt he will make ARM version of it. More of it, i think there just no "political wish" from AEON to concetrate money and force to make it reality. It needs some basic components rewriten from scratch (not only kernel, but also graphics.library, other modules, drivers, usb things, etc, as they have no control over it). And i fear, it all will be the same buggy as those few simple commands they tried to rewrote before. So.. it needs some really skilled developers, and few years of work, to make some "barebone working arm version of very limited and basic arm based os4". Plus PPC emulator is another big issue which we have no developers for to deal with.

Quote:

IMHO same as this 600gs. I really surprised that some of us find it interesting because it just another emulator with aros on it. WinUAE deal with everything years ago, dunno what else there needs for. But seems there someone willing to play with and pay for, so it even cover years of working on.

@kas1e
Quote:Even if the hardware of the A600GS/A1200NG is about 10 years old (it's supposed to be a "NG" "Amiga" after all, therefore you can't use current hardware but have to use something obsolete instead 🤣), and a bad joke compared to any current custom built Raspberry Pi, the overpriced hardware isn't a big problem IMHO, but the unusable software (AROS/m68k, etc.) used on it is.

Quote:You have to buy Cloanto's AmiagaForver for it as well, if you want to run ancient Kickstart 1.x/AmigaOS 2.x-3.,x games on it, after about 35 years of development AROS/m68k still isn't compatible enough for those ancient games, which seems to be the main target of the A600GS/A1200NG.
The only "advantage" of the A600GS/A1200NG compared to AmigaForever/WinUAE is that you have to buy custom hardware, and maybe wrongly think you'd support any AmigaOS development that way.

@joerg

Quote:

yeh.. read the changes logs, it steams they try adapted Enhancer to work on AROS, instead of making AROS compatible with Enhancer. So AROS intuition is not going get more compatible with that approach..

I have been thinking that AROS 68K might be more compatible then AmigaOS 68K actually sense it has to work without chipset (on x68/x64/arm). But the software library is not big, can be nice to support loading AROS 68K ELF files.

Quote:

Can maybe be added to EUAE, And execute native PowerPC code instead. I don’t hate the idea, I think it would be better to call it something else something more generic, maybe UAEgraphics.library or something like that.
What if they go x86 later are they going to call it x86graphics.library, this will just create a mess (The only difference will be the name).

My main problem with it, is none of the old games will use it, and the demo coders will ignore it, as they continue to bang hardware and write OCS demos.

@LiveForIt
Quote:x86/x64 is dead, even MicroSoft dumped it and switched to ARM for the customer versions of Windows.

@joerg

Well you do you I guess. I think I might just support AmigaKit by buying a board. I personally like the idea of a real company making something new.. Now I like all the clones as what not, like ReAmiga and so on, but I do prefer to do business with a registered company. Ofcourse that is just me... Again, you do you, I do me..

@yssing
If you want to use AROS/m68k with Amiberry on custom ARM hardware the A600GS is a much better choice than the A1200NG.