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Damnit I slipped and (mostly) built an Amiga 500

adrianchadd.blogspot.com

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Re: Damnit I slipped and (mostly) built an Amiga 500

#21

Post by icedchai »

tralarpa wrote: post #13
Jupe wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but any programmer of modern systems could learn lots from seeing firsthand how incredibly efficient Amigas are. Agreed. Much of the Amiga's OS was quite elegant in my opinion. Everything was reachable by a linked list. Start with AbsExecBase (0x00000004) and traverse the linked lists from there to find virtually anything/everything. (Intution objects included). If it wasn't for bit planes and lack of memory protec…

> oh, and if not for C= incredibly horrific management Thanks to that horrific management, the future of the Amiga was dead the moment it was released. No significant update of the OS for five years (KS1.0 in 1985 to KS2.0 in 1990). No significant update of the hardware for seven years (Amiga 1000 in 1985 to Amiga 4000 in 1992). And that was while the IBM-compatible PCs and Windows were going through those years that…

I remember upgrading to an A3000 from an A500. 1.3 and 2.0 were like night-and-day. The 3000 was a pretty big hardware leap in terms of integration, but you are right, it was still incremental. The chipset, which is what made the Amiga an "Amiga", barely changed.

The 1200/4000 AGA machines were too little, too late. By that time, everyone was getting 386's with SVGA and Soundblasters.

Re: Damnit I slipped and (mostly) built an Amiga 500

#23

Post by datpiff »

snvzz wrote: post #7
johnklos wrote: post #2

This is an excellent way to preserve classic machines. There are lots of projects out there for new PCBs, new accelerators, new replacements for Amiga custom chips and so on, just as there are new updates to AmigaDOS (up to 3.2.1, which was released last year). For example: https://github.com/endofexclusive/deniser https://github.com/LIV2/Bluster https://github.com/jbilander/ReAgnus https://www.tindie.com/products/bo…

>deniser GPLv2, OSH, great. >Bluster CERN OHL 1.2, OSH, great. >ReAgnus CC-By-SA. Not the best license for hardware, but technically OSH. Good. >A500++ I understand directly based on A500+. Might be legally dodgy. But it is good that it exists, for preservation. >TerribleFire Mix of licenses in their projects. Some of them are OSH (great). But some of them are not, due to restrictions on commercial use and/or derivat…

>From the above, I gather the one remaining big item that's not yet covered is the PAULA chip.

I think Minimig has had a GPL'd Paula implementation for like 15 years.

Re: Damnit I slipped and (mostly) built an Amiga 500

#24

Post by snvzz »

datpiff wrote: post #23
snvzz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>deniser GPLv2, OSH, great. >Bluster CERN OHL 1.2, OSH, great. >ReAgnus CC-By-SA. Not the best license for hardware, but technically OSH. Good. >A500++ I understand directly based on A500+. Might be legally dodgy. But it is good that it exists, for preservation. >TerribleFire Mix of licenses in their projects. Some of them are OSH (great). But some of them are not, due to restrictions on commercial use and/or derivat…

>From the above, I gather the one remaining big item that's not yet covered is the PAULA chip. I think Minimig has had a GPL'd Paula implementation for like 15 years.

Sure, it has. And minimig is great.

But minimig is a standalone whole-amiga replacement. It is not a replacement for each individual chip.

Paula has many functions, but some of them involve interfacing the analog world (floppy controller, UART, Audio). While a starting point, I don't think minimig's Paula is ready to go.

Re: Damnit I slipped and (mostly) built an Amiga 500

#25

Post by snvzz »

icedchai wrote: post #21
tralarpa wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> oh, and if not for C= incredibly horrific management Thanks to that horrific management, the future of the Amiga was dead the moment it was released. No significant update of the OS for five years (KS1.0 in 1985 to KS2.0 in 1990). No significant update of the hardware for seven years (Amiga 1000 in 1985 to Amiga 4000 in 1992). And that was while the IBM-compatible PCs and Windows were going through those years that…

I remember upgrading to an A3000 from an A500. 1.3 and 2.0 were like night-and-day. The 3000 was a pretty big hardware leap in terms of integration, but you are right, it was still incremental. The chipset, which is what made the Amiga an "Amiga", barely changed. The 1200/4000 AGA machines were too little, too late. By that time, everyone was getting 386's with SVGA and Soundblasters.

When the original Amiga team left Commodore, the next generation chipset, Ranger, was finished and ready.

But CBM management decided to discard it. But that wasn't, by far, the only time they went directly against the architects' judgement. Like how they later forbid the A3000 team from using a DSP, or the fate of AA+/AAA.

Re: Damnit I slipped and (mostly) built an Amiga 500

#26

Post by snvzz »

zozbot234 wrote: post #16
Jupe wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but any programmer of modern systems could learn lots from seeing firsthand how incredibly efficient Amigas are. Agreed. Much of the Amiga's OS was quite elegant in my opinion. Everything was reachable by a linked list. Start with AbsExecBase (0x00000004) and traverse the linked lists from there to find virtually anything/everything. (Intution objects included). If it wasn't for bit planes and lack of memory protec…

The Amiga was ultimately tied to its m68k architecture. No matter what Commodore did, it would have become unviable as the m68k died and was no longer developed. There were other very interesting computers back then, including the ARM-based Acorn Archimedes. But they weren't the Amiga; if anything, they didn't have anything like its huge software library.

>The Amiga was ultimately tied to its m68k architecture.

>No matter what Commodore did, it would have become unviable as the m68k died and was no longer developed.

AROS, Amithlon, MorphOS very much demonstrate in practice how untrue this is.

Re: Damnit I slipped and (mostly) built an Amiga 500

#27

Post by Thorham »

snvzz wrote: post #26
zozbot234 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Amiga was ultimately tied to its m68k architecture. No matter what Commodore did, it would have become unviable as the m68k died and was no longer developed. There were other very interesting computers back then, including the ARM-based Acorn Archimedes. But they weren't the Amiga; if anything, they didn't have anything like its huge software library.

>The Amiga was ultimately tied to its m68k architecture. >No matter what Commodore did, it would have become unviable as the m68k died and was no longer developed. AROS, Amithlon, MorphOS very much demonstrate in practice how untrue this is.

Not to mention Apple with the Mac: 680x0 -> PowerPC -> X86/64 -> Arm

Re: Damnit I slipped and (mostly) built an Amiga 500

#29

Post by kjs3 »

LightG wrote: post #6

Love this. Kind of inspired me to take another look at my Atari ST... good times.

I've been kinda-sorta watching eBay for an ST to come along that's not to outrageous since I figure soon enough I can get a "new" Amiga. 68k hacking was good times, and it's nice to occasionally bang out some code on something relatively simple and understandable.
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