Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Amiga Forever

amigaforever.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 158 posts

Re: Amiga Forever

#141

Post by scrame »

rbanffy wrote: post #20

At the time Commodore made PCs, it could have been worthy to port AmigaOS to x86 (8088 was a bit too puny, but 286 and 386 could compare to 68K). An earlier lost opportunity was when Sun approached the offering to market the 3000/UX as a low-cost Unix workstation. The world could be a lot different had Commodore management been so boneheaded. OK. I'm being harsh. At the time, with the information they had, those deci…

Workbench 1.2 (?) had an easter egg that said "We made it, Commodore fucked it up".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omMOuyTLmyg

Re: Amiga Forever

#142

Post by rasz »

amiga386 wrote: post #78
Cockbrand wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Built-in MIDI and the excellent 100Hz monochrome screen were very strong selling points for the ST back then, for different niches of the market. Especially given the strong audio capabilities of the Amiga, including a MIDI interface should have been a no-brainer for Commodore to position it in the music production industry. On the other end of the market, the always slightly flickering 1081/1084 color monitor made t…

Something I always thought odd; why would just _having_ MIDI ports make the ST popular with musicians? Getting an Amiga MIDI adapter was super cheap and easy... although most early Amiga MIDI and stave-notation software (Sonix, Music-X, DMCS) fell out of favour as trackers stormed on the scene; most Amiga musicians preferred to use the Amiga as a sample sequencer than as the controller of other MIDI devices. Is it re…

640x400@70Hz monitor (not 100Hz as OP claimed) was the second part of the puzzle. You want as much readable non headache inducing (interlaced Amiga) text on the screen for music sequencing. Not to mention Atari ST _with_ that monitor was still substantially cheaper than naked Amiga 1000.

Re: Amiga Forever

#143

Post by lproven »

zozbot234 wrote: post #65
rbanffy wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, a 286 would cause some breakage and some OS-level APIs would need more complicated code, and some programs would be difficult to port due to HGA, VGA, and SVGA graphics being very different from Amiga modes (although somewhat superior). Still, would be fun to have a 386 version of the Amiga OS.

ISTM that if Microsoft had managed to add preemptive multitasking to Windows 3.x in a backward-compatible way, this would've given us as close to an Amiga-like OS as one could ever hope to run on 8086 and 286 hardware. Perhaps even more so, if hardware could be expected to have multimedia capabilities as a standard, without relying on 3rd-party drivers - PC had this on the PCjr, and later Tandy.

> add preemptive multitasking to Windows 3.x

Just for accuracy: Win3.x had pre-emptive multitasking. However, it could only preempt DOS apps. Win16 apps could not be pre-empted.

This compares quite closely to the FOSS RISC OS for Arm machines, which can preempt CLI apps in a "task window", but GUI apps only multitask cooperatively.

Co-op multitasking is faster and more memory efficient. That's why Acorn and MS chose it. But it's very vulnerable to a single app failing to relinquish control, locking up the OS.

Re: Amiga Forever

#144

Post by lproven »

rbanffy wrote: post #20

At the time Commodore made PCs, it could have been worthy to port AmigaOS to x86 (8088 was a bit too puny, but 286 and 386 could compare to 68K). An earlier lost opportunity was when Sun approached the offering to market the 3000/UX as a low-cost Unix workstation. The world could be a lot different had Commodore management been so boneheaded. OK. I'm being harsh. At the time, with the information they had, those deci…

> it could have been worthy to port AmigaOS to x86

No, it could not, and this is why:

AmigaOS is sometimes called a microkernel, but it's not really, inasmuch as one of the biggest problems in microkernels is efficient communications between the kernel (in supervisor mode, i.e. x86 ring 0) and the servers running in user space (x86 ring 2 or 3 depending on OS).

AmigaOS did not have that. It ran on a 68000 and everything was in the same, flat, shared memory space. This makes inter-process comms easy, but it also has a cost: a rogue program can trample all over other processes' memory, including the kernel's memory.

Thus bringing down your system, the famous Amiga "guru meditation".

You can't do this on an 80286 because it doesn't have a flat memory space, even in Protect Mode. You need an 80386 running in 32-bit mode: what we now call x86-32.

But AmigaOS has that total absence of memory protection. You can implement that on a 386, no problem, but it makes your OS unstable. This is why a rogue NLM could bring down a Netware 3 or 4 server: a flat memory space.

This is why many alternative OSes of the late 1980s flopped: they couldn't use the memory-management hardware that appeared in the 386, and in Motorola's 68030 (in the 68020 it was an external MMU chip, IIRC.)

This is also why CBM couldn't take advantage of the MMU in the 68030 and 68040. If it rewrote AmigaOS to use the MMU, all the legacy code would have broken and failed to run, because the mechanism it used to communicate with the kernel would have gone away.

(This is aside from the issues of 68000 assembly code conversion and register starvation and all the other things others have brought up later in the comments, which are legitimate and valid.)

So, while it might have been technically feasible to port AmigaOS to the 386 -- I mean, today, AROS shows it's possible -- you'd inherit all the limitations of the original, but on much more expensive hardware.

This would make it un-competitive.

This is why OS/2 flailed and then failed. This is why Windows 3 evolved into Win9x but then had to die: it was replaced by a true 32-bit OS that used the MMU: Windows NT, derived from bits of Portable OS/2 and some of the design of DEC VAX VMX, because MS hired the lead programmer of VMS and his team.

It's why MacOS couldn't fully exploit the 68030 and 68040, and indeed, the PowerPC. It's also why Apple's Copland project failed. This stuff is really hard. Apple ended up moving to UNIX.

Re: Amiga Forever

#145

Post by lproven »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #124
MagerValp wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they had to do _something_, staying on the 68k wasn’t an option. It couldn’t compete with the Pentium and Motorola had effectively abandoned the series, focusing their efforts on the PowerPC. Apple made a lot of bad decisions in the 90s, but I don’t see how the switch to PPC was one of them.

I don't think it was a bad decision, it was inevitable they had to switch as Motorola left 68k customers in the lurch. The actual bad decision was not investing in better OS development in the 80s. Put it this way: the Lisa had an MMU, memory protection, and an OS with better multitasking. Yes it was expensive to make, but they could have scaled it down instead of building a whole other, competing system that was tec…

> the Lisa had an MMU, memory protection, and an OS with better multitasking. Yes it was expensive to make, but they could have scaled it down

Yes and no.

I mean, the Mac is a cut-down Lisa. But you're right, cut down too far.

(Aside: the Lisa was a 68000 as well, I am fairly sure. No MMU, but it did have multitasking.)

I think the problems were in scaling it down far enough to get the price down to vaguely reasonable.

That meant:

• 128kB RAM (same as the Sinclair QL, which launched 2 weeks earlier)

• No hard disk. Keeping a full multitasking OS when running from 400kB single-sided double-density floppies -- indeed, from one floppy -- would have been significantly hard.

Before an outraged Amiga fan jumps in: yes, I know Amiga did it, but that was 2 years later, with 4x as much RAM and floppies holding 2x as much data. Tech was moving fast in the 1980s.

A 512kB original Mac with 800kB floppies was technologically doable in 1984, I suspect, but instead of costing $2500 when it launched (~1/4 of a Lisa), it would have been $5000 or something, and I strongly suspect it would have flopped too, as a result.

Re: Amiga Forever

#146

Post by lproven »

rbanffy wrote: post #137
amiga386 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I say this with respect, but I don't think it would. The x86 architecture had an absolute paucity of registers, the mixture of MMIO and PMIO was insane, and it just didn't have any PC-relative addressing modes. Relocation for a flat address space would be an annoyance. Prior to PCs becoming about a billion times faster and the compact encoding coming into its own, x86 code is not fun to write. Saying "some programs w…

> that coupling became the downfall when the computer hardware moved faster than Amiga software could be brought along. Both hardware and software moved ahead while Commodore invested in the wrong things. Amiga was late to adopt VGA monitors and PCs quickly surpassed its capabilities. When I mentioned porting AmigaDOS and Intuition to 2/386's, it would be to keep the OS compatible at the C source level as much as pos…

> compatible at the C source level

I don't think most of it was originally implemented in C.

> at OS API level

That's the problem. Keep the original non-protected-memory APIs and you can't have memory protection; add memory protection, and it can't be API-compatible.

It's catch 22.

Re: Amiga Forever

#147

Post by lproven »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #73
Aloha wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont think the platform move was.. a cause of Apple's troubles, it was mostly poor product planing, marketing and OS related issues (which were not really made better or worse by the ISA move)

I don't think it was a unitary cause, sure. But I think in retrospect it's clear Apple could not afford this kind of ISA move in addition to all the crazy OS work they were doing (and never finishing). It was half-baked until OS 8. In 1996 I helped administrated a group of MacOS boxen, all PowerPC. At that point in time only half the applications were running native PowerPC, and it was buggy as hell. If I recall, eve…

> But I think in retrospect it's clear Apple could not afford this kind of ISA move in addition to all the crazy OS work they were doing

You might be surprised. Apple did an x86 port of Classic MacOS, based on DR-DOS.

https://lowendmac.com/2014/star-trek-apples-first-mac-os-on-...

That is not the problem. Even emulating the apps isn't the core problem.

Drivers, and support for the vast range of x86 hardware, was the problem, and secondarily, using the underlying hardware and supporting an MMU, memory protection, and preemptive multitasking... those were the big problems, and in the end, all Apple's attemps to solve them failed, and it moved to UNIX.

That worked, but it needed to happen when it became viable to run the entire "legacy" OS in a VM, and that didn't come until around the turn of the century. That was not feasible in 1992.

Re: Amiga Forever

#148

Post by rbanffy »

lproven wrote: post #146
rbanffy wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that coupling became the downfall when the computer hardware moved faster than Amiga software could be brought along. Both hardware and software moved ahead while Commodore invested in the wrong things. Amiga was late to adopt VGA monitors and PCs quickly surpassed its capabilities. When I mentioned porting AmigaDOS and Intuition to 2/386's, it would be to keep the OS compatible at the C source level as much as pos…

> compatible at the C source level I don't think most of it was originally implemented in C. > at OS API level That's the problem. Keep the original non-protected-memory APIs and you can't have memory protection; add memory protection, and it can't be API-compatible. It's catch 22.

> I don't think most of it was originally implemented in C.

IIRC, AmigaDOS was written in BCPL and later moved to C.

> Keep the original non-protected-memory APIs and you can't have memory protection;

Kind of - you can always give the process the illusion it's running alone (or alongside the processes it started).

Re: Amiga Forever

#149

Post by bni »

dark-star wrote: post #76
richrichardsson wrote: post #43

I find it somewhat curious that they bundle demoscene productions in their PAID for software, even offering more demos when you pay more. This is completely against the demoscene ethos. A lot of demos even had notices forbidding the commercial PD libraries of the time from distributing their wares.

that's just one of the reasons why Cloanto has kind of a bad reputation among Amiga enthusiasts. Don't use them unless you want that warm and fuzzy feeling of having legally obtained the Kickstart ROMs instead of just grabbing them from archive.org...

Also Cloanto say they own the ROMs, but they can't prove this.

I think Gateway, and then Acer owns it, but who knows.

I used https://aminet.net/package/util/misc/GrabKickDisk to grab ROMs from my Amigas. But you can just as well grab them from random internet site, check the checksum and be happy and guilt free about it.

Re: Amiga Forever

#150

Post by Cockbrand »

rasz wrote: post #142
amiga386 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I always thought odd; why would just _having_ MIDI ports make the ST popular with musicians? Getting an Amiga MIDI adapter was super cheap and easy... although most early Amiga MIDI and stave-notation software (Sonix, Music-X, DMCS) fell out of favour as trackers stormed on the scene; most Amiga musicians preferred to use the Amiga as a sample sequencer than as the controller of other MIDI devices. Is it re…

640x400@70Hz monitor (not 100Hz as OP claimed) was the second part of the puzzle. You want as much readable non headache inducing (interlaced Amiga) text on the screen for music sequencing. Not to mention Atari ST _with_ that monitor was still substantially cheaper than naked Amiga 1000.

Whoa, I was very sure that the SM124 did 100Hz, but you're right. I stand corrected! And I agree that the combination of the great monochrome monitor and the built-in MIDI made the ST much better suited as a music production machine.
Post reply on HN