Amiga & AROS Archive

AmigaOS 4.0 New Memory System Revisited

  Submitted by Raffaele Amiga & AROS 50 Comments
"In a previous item, we described how the AmigaOS4.0 memory system works in terms of managing memory allocations from the top. However, there is more to allocating memory than that. The object caches of course work on memory that has already been mapped into the virtual memory space. But both the virtual address ranges, as well as the physical memory has to come from a source, too."
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AROS Update: June

  Submitted by wonea Amiga & AROS No Comments
The AROS team posted its latest monthly update. Foremost, a new version of the hosted AROS-PPC has been released: "This release depends on glibc 2.3.2 or newer. You need to give AROS some more RAM than the default allocation of 16 MB (leaves about 4 MB for applications). Start it using: ./aros -m 64 This will allocate 64 MB. As with all X11 hosted AROS versions you need to add Option "BackingStore" to the Device section of xorg.conf." The other news is that the website has been translated to German.
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WinAros Light Released

  Submitted by John Holmes Amiga & AROS 5 Comments
WinArosLight is a preinstalled AROS on a HD image, that runs under Windows using QEmu. WinAros Light targets developers, using AmiDevCpp to develop AROS programs. WinArosLight in combination with a program like ultraiso is a nice test environment for those programs. WinArosLight uses the latest AROS snapshot. Other than all that, it's just a really easy way of testing AROS. Download it from this page, 'WinArosLight.exe'.
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Hyperion Licenses 3D Technology to Smiths Aerospace

  Submitted by Raffaele Amiga & AROS 12 Comments
Hyperion, the company behind AmigaOS 4.0, has found at least one way to generate revenue from AmigaOS 4.0. "Hyperion Entertainment VOF announces that it has licensed its 3D driver technology for ATI Radeon 9000 chipsets to Smiths Aerospace LLC. Hyperion's 3D driver technology is OpenGL ES compatible and was originally developed for Amiga OS 4, Hyperion's multi-media centric, small foot-print embedded OS."
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AROS January Update

  Submitted by wonea Amiga & AROS 2 Comments
The AROS team has posted their first update of 2006. "Georg Steger has fixed input preferences for mouse, in order to improve mice tracking and pointer precision on the screen. Mathias Rustler has updated documentation for users and developers, adding some nice hints and removing obsolete informations. You'll find signs of his work through this site. Mathias has also commited ExecuteStartup, a little tool that executes whatever application you'll copy in the SYS:WBstartup drawer. Thanks to Nick Andrews and Jack Patton AROS has got IRC and Telnet clients. In order to enable networking on hosted version of AROS, Michal Schulz has commited a .tap interface hidd for all Unix targets."
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Apple Licensing Excess Hardware for AmigaOS4?

Amiga & AROS 21 Comments
Just as the discussion surrounding the Pegasos II and AmigaOS4 is settling down, a new possibility for hardware for AmigaOS4 has arisen. PPCNux reports about an Amiga-branded G5 board- which is basically the motherboard of the iMac G5 without the AirPort slot, but with an Amiga sticker slapped on. Another reason why this is a fake is that the board lacks legacy ports, heresy for Amiga fans. PPCNux speculates that with the switch to x86, Apple might be left with excess stock on PPC hardware, and will be licensing them as Amiga hardware. This is supported by Hyperion's statement that they "are working with several hardware companies that want to provide hardware for AmigaOS4.0." Another possible indication is that Hyperion states that AmigaOS4 runs on the PPC 9xx series-- the G5 is the 970. Speculation, and probably a prank at best, but an interesting idea nonetheless.
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Could Genesi Be the Solution for Hyperion’s Problems?

Amiga & AROS 50 Comments
There is kind of a stir in the Amiga community. As Hyperion employees explained in an IRC chat, Hyperion suffers from a lack of hardware for the development (and thus sales) of AmigaOS4. However, what about Genesi? Genesi is the company behind the ODW, a PPC workstation that could potentially be the solution to Hyperion's lack-of-hardware problems. However, friction between the two companies is preventing them from coming to an agreement. More from the community here, and here. My take: I find this a rather silly situation. It is quite clear that Genesi is one of the few companies capable of offering a steady flow of PPC hardware for the AmigaOS, yet things in the past are preventing a financially interesting cooperation. And who suffer? Exactly-- Amiga fans.
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Hyperion IRC Session Transcripts

Amiga & AROS 16 Comments
Yesterday, Amiga-fans could participate in an IRC Q/A session with Hyperion Entertainment, the company behind AmigaOS4. You can read several transcripts, both edited as well as unedited, here. The main news is that AmigaOS4 will not be released this year; with the main reason for this being the lack of available hardware (which is being worked on). An update will, however, be released in January.
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AROS Updates

  Submitted by 4pLaY Amiga & AROS 25 Comments
"AROS has finally got a new, faster and smarter file system: Michal Schulz has ported SFS to the Amiga Research Operating System, so opening and saving lots of files won't take ages anymore, but just few seconds. Neil Cafferkey has written a Intel Pro/100 NIC driver, allowing support for i8255x family of network adapters. Marcel 'Frostwork' Unbehaun has created an AROS/PPC Live-CD for Pegasos computers."
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Memory Management in AmigaOS 4.0 Explained

  Submitted by dylansmrjones Amiga & AROS 34 Comments
"Back in the old days of the original AmigaOS, the system used to allocate areas of unused memory to new tasks was pretty simple. The old method served its purpose well enough at the time, but with the increased demands of modern computing - and of course the desire to bring this new version of the operating system to the cutting edge - AmigaOS4.0 has introduced a better way of doing things."
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Review: Amiga Forever Premium Edition

Amiga & AROS 84 Comments
The Amiga. A platform with a history. Today, we are reviewing Amiga Forever, which was kindly provided by Cloanto, its manufacturer. The question I tried to answer during the usage of Amiga Forever was: does it have anything to offer to OS enthousiasts today? Of course Amiga Forever offers great functionality for Amiga fans, but what about the rest of us? Can Amiga Forever cater to more people than just Amiga fans?
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AmiZilla Update; GTK+ for AmigaOS 3.x /4, Aros, MorphOS

  Submitted by dylansmrjones Amiga & AROS 19 Comments
Various bits of news from the AmiZilla front. "Firstly, oli has finished his GTK->MUI AROS Bounty. Also, OS4 people have ported the the GTK->MUI emulation layer from AmigaOS3.1 to AmigaOS4." Other than that, the AmiZilla project will be recieving help from a group of students from King's College (London) as part of their practical coursework. "AmiZilla has been split up into individual projects for them- as we have five students, we have added in creating a GTK->Reaction layer to AmigaOS4, and maybe porting AmiZilla to MorphOS and AROS, as well as the AmigaOS 3.1 target."
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