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Vampire V2 Is Now AmigaOS 3.1.4 Readypage  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 

Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
12 Oct 2018 15:53


John William wrote:

  OOOOoooh yeeeeeeeeeeeeah! But I am hopin......I am...indeed. No one knows this..but if can push MorphOS to be in the top mainstream OS...MorphOS on it's own would save all AmigaOS in one shot and open LARGER NEWER APPLICATIONS AND GAMES to all Amiga platforms in ways you cannot even fathom.

MOS is great, but has same limits. Current pre-BOX sees 2GB RAM or even 1.5 in some cases, cannot see all modern GPU VRAM, has very limited PCI-E card support etc. In ways where it shines, it shines. It needs to go v4, 64-bit (hopefully PPC64 and AMD64) and became a winner. So long I also wait for this promised A/Box or similar modern MOS where 1-3 apps could be sandboxes.

But it needs Libre Office too, and there forces should join. And Scribus, VLC and few great FLOSS apps. And that would be it.

And Vampire V4 port, khm. Would donate would pay. Hey, older MOS apps will be sandboxed anyway, but please give I pleasure of 1-2 apps like optimized old school ones :-)


Peter Foldesi

Posts 5
12 Oct 2018 20:45


Mmmmh.... the way the MOS behaves, based on heritage on AmigaOS (yeah, the last true AmigaOS, namely the 3.1).
Since, the MorphOS maintains the API compatbility with 3.1 this definitely no surprise at all. :D
The other -red one- is a completely meh.



Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
12 Oct 2018 20:56


Peter Foldesi wrote:

  Since, the MorphOS maintains the API compatbility with 3.1 this definitely no surprise at all. :D

+PowerUp and wOS commpatibility
+Native and improved MUI and AHI
+Improved GL etc. with Warp3D wrapper on selected cards
+Fastests PPC268k JIT

Very well done, while always blazingly fast and well designed in look and feel.

Too bad they have their own Mantra MOS4 should reach:QBox!

EXTERNAL LINK 
  When MorphOS was introduced a good ten years ago, it was designed to use a box system. What we see and experience today as MorphOS is only one box of MorpOS - the ABox. De facto this is currently the only box of MorphOS and hence the following rule of thumb is valid for now: MorphOS = ABox.

But under the hood there is a little more. At least there is the microkernel "Quark" that sets up the machine, starts a few services and then launches a single user task - the ABox. Initially the idea was that MorphOS should get another box, the QBox. But that box was never specified in detail. And while the QBox didn't materialize, it was probably thought to be very similar to the ABox, but updated with a few modern features.

If we now look to the current state of MorphOS we see a few things:
1st: We all know that the current situation of ppc for desktop machines is a bit difficult to say the least. And the desktop cpu marked is dominated by x86 processors.
2nd: MorphOS (i.e. the ABox) is pretty stable and advanced now, but has its inherent limitations like no resource tracking, no symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP) and no up to date/new hardware
3rd: And we further know that the main obstacle in migrating to x86 is the wrong endianess.
4th: We know that the QBox in the form once roughly anounced (or thought of) is rather dead, but the focus is the brilliant ABox. But still Quark is sitting below.

ad 1:
Since Apple switched from PowerPC to x86, the market for PowerPC desktop machines is de facto dead. PowerPC producers like IBM and Freescale put their focus for PowerPC elsewhere (SoCs, consoles, supercomputers). A few PowerPC machines pop up from time to time, but usually they are expensive and underpowered and produced in homeopathic quantities.
The desktop (+ notebook, + netbook) computer market is very dominated by x86. Recently ARM processors are much in discussion to join that market, but yet x86 is by far the dominant architecture.
MorphOS runs on PowerPC only. Hardware supply is warranted through the 2nd hand market of Apple PowerPC computers. For the current situation, this is okay - the hardware is cheap, proven and powerful enough for many tasks. But it is also clear that this hardware doesn't get younger and may break or put to the bin instead of to ebay... While of course it can be that the PowerPC may return to the desktop market, one can hardly rely on this option. Hence, on the long run there must be something else to warrant a future for MorphOS.

ad 2:
MorphOS is really nice and stable now. On a well cared setup there are only seldomly crashes. If a program fails most of the time the system doesn't lock up completely. A failing program can most of the times be removed, but not all resources can be freed again. Also the system is pretty safe, but this is rather a safety by obscurity than a safety by design. And while most target hardware is single cored anyway, there is no way to make use of additional cpu cores yet.
The limitations which are inherent to MorphOS current design are: no SMP, not a full resource tracking, no user management, the netto address space is limited to 31 bit and there is no memory protection.

ad 3:
One design goal of MorphOS is to warrant a high backward compability to old Amiga programs that run on a 68k processor. This is achieved by a build in 68k emulation, but also by providing an according compatible environment. One key issue in this regard is the byte ordering. The 68k processor used by the original Commodore Amiga used the big endian byte ordering. And because the operating system shares structures with the applications, the OS and the applications must use the same data format. In the case of MorphOS that is big endian. The PowerPC provides big endian byte ordering, x86 does not, for ARM the story is not that easy (see below).

ad 4:
Development of the QBox never took off, instead the ABox was improved and advanced and still holds the drivers and most of that hardware hitting stuff. But the foundation for a box system is there.

Using the box system for an ISA switch

Taken all this together, it may be wise to think about an ISA switch to x86 (or maybe ARM, see below). The x86 has one big obstacle though: it has the little endian byte ordering, unfortunately that is the "wrong" one. The question is how to cope with this issue? There is of course the option to run everything with flipped code, but this would lead to some unwanted overhead which would also result in a speed penalty (everything must be flipped by the cpu at run time). But an approach like that seems rather odd for a fast and lightweight OS like MorphOS.

The proposal made here: A relaunch of the QBox as a kind of ABox x86. MorphOS for x86 processors should consist of two boxes: One little endian box for full speed x86 apps (QBox). And another box (ABox) either running in full ppc emulation or (even better) maybe "just" operated in a completely flipped x86 code environment. That box would provide compability to today (ppc) and yesterday (68k). All the IPC stuff and so on would work like on PowerPC and 68k processors within that box. Due to flipping all data (or emulating PPC or 68k) structures there would be some spedd penalty though. The little endian box (QBox) would be for all new compiles and developments. To reduce developement time and to keep MorphOS as much as it is, the QBox should operate maximally as we know it from the current ABox. But while that box wouldn't be binary compatible to the current ABox anyway, the unique chance should not be missed to implement some critical yet not implementable features like full resource tracking, SMP or useage of a bigger addressspace (more than 1.5 GB RAM). Kind of really modernized ABox. Addition of full memory protection is of course debateable, too. It surely offers some benefit for improved security, but comes at a cost (and personally I rather tend to say the cost doesn't cover the benefit, a good resource tracking is enough and MorphOS doesn't need to become the übersafe OS which qualifies for operation of a nuclear power plant).

The big endian programs reside in the big endian box (ABox) and cannot access resources outside of this box. For the little endian box this is not a must be, but probably much easier to keep it rather capsulated, too. Nevertheeless a shared clipboard between both boxes and the ability to launch Abox programs from from the QBox should be warranted to avoid two instances of Ambient. And while old applications will never be able to communicate with the QBox, the ABox itself may get some new functions to communicate with the QBox.

Of course Quark and the QBox would need a lot of virtualization functions and the ABox would require drivers for the virtual devices, but since the ABox and QBox should be very similar, a lot of already existing code should be reusable. It may be a good starting point that current MorphOS supports a virtual gfx driver already.



Peter Foldesi

Posts 5
12 Oct 2018 21:11


Great wall of text for beginnger, but i'm using morphos since the 2.0 release. :D
.... and i've registered more than 10 machines in the years, mainly genesi ones - pegasos1, pegasos2, and even efika - and several powermacs/powerbooks. Thanks for the effort.

And about the speculations... they're speculations... the morphos team - they stated - seeks alternatives years ago. :)




Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
12 Oct 2018 22:26


Peter Foldesi wrote:

    And about the speculations... they're speculations... the morphos team - they stated - seeks alternatives years ago. :)
 

Another great thing is user created Cryssalis pack, which gives soo many goodies at once - what OS4 users would drool to have packed on empty OS4 CDs/DVDs.

And it has REGGAE as sound system :-)
 
  While I must say MOS has really polished and improved over time, advanced sandboxing was promised after 2.0 release many times.
 
  But arhitecture that enables Abox enables other boxes, so I am eager to see PPC64 boxes first and AMD64 ones later (G5 and x5000 are PPC64, Pa Semi too but is not supported).
 
  Other thing is - beside great music player, updated web browser and nicest e-mailer for long time, it desperately needs office, image editor and Emotion OS4/VLC like video player. Not alone in that.


Sean Sk

Posts 488
13 Oct 2018 15:06


Running OS 3.1.4. So I flashed GOLD 2.11 fine with no issues at all.

Power cycled the A600 as per usual then booted with no startup-sequence so I could flash my OS 3.1.4 kickstart ROM using VampireFlash314. Seemed to complete the process with no problem reported. Power cycled the A600 again but now it wont boot up at all. Get a blue screen briefly pop up through RGB but after that both RGB and DIGITAL-VIDEO screens are black with no DIGITAL-VIDEO boot screen appearing at all.
 
Will have to flash using my USB Blaster but will have to do that tomorrow as it is getting late now.
 
Does VampireFlash314 have to be updated or is there an bug with GOLD 2.11? Has anyone else had the same issue? Thanks guys. :)
 
Thanks for GOLD 2.11 by the way. Looking forward to trying it out.
 


Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
13 Oct 2018 15:19


sean sk wrote:

  Thanks for GOLD 2.11 by the way. Looking forward to trying it out.

Happy 2.11 use alongside 2018 m68k AmigaOS



Sean Sk

Posts 488
13 Oct 2018 15:23


Be more specific please. Did you flash KS 3.1.4 using VampireFlash314 after updating to GOLD 2.11?


Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
13 Oct 2018 15:49


sean sk wrote:

Be more specific please. Did you flash KS 3.1.4 using VampireFlash314 after updating to GOLD 2.11?

Sorry, I reacted to a positive first liner. Not a team member, so a bit more patience.


Sean Sk

Posts 488
17 Oct 2018 23:29


sean sk wrote:

Running OS 3.1.4. So I flashed GOLD 2.11 fine with no issues at all.
     
Power cycled the A600 as per usual then booted with no startup-sequence so I could flash my OS 3.1.4 kickstart ROM using VampireFlash314. Seemed to complete the process with no problem reported. Power cycled the A600 again but now it wont boot up at all. Get a blue screen briefly pop up through RGB but after that both RGB and DIGITAL-VIDEO screens are black with no DIGITAL-VIDEO boot screen appearing at all.
       
Will have to flash using my USB Blaster but will have to do that tomorrow as it is getting late now.
       
Does VampireFlash314 have to be updated or is there an bug with GOLD 2.11? Has anyone else had the same issue? Thanks guys. :)
       
Thanks for GOLD 2.11 by the way. Looking forward to trying it out.
       

     
Hi Guys,
     
I see that new versions of GOLD 2.11 have been released but unfortunately the problem with flashing Kick 3.1.4 still persists.
   
Just reconfirming that I am using GOLD 2.11 5846/5848 x11 EXE on a Vampire 600 V2.
   
Thanks heaps for your time.
   
EDIT: I have noticed if I hold down both mouse buttons to get into early startup and select the "Boot" button, it works. If I don't hold down both mouse buttons, it doesn't work.
 
EDIT 2: I have noticed that it doesn't always boot holding down both mouse buttons either.


Shane Stringer

Posts 22
18 Oct 2018 00:56


I can confirm the same problem on a A500 running Coffin v53 and GOLD 2.11. After a successful kick.a500 flash and power off/on, the power LED flashes at about 1Hz, and it's NO SIGNAL on DIGITAL-VIDEO and VGA.

Just for fun, I tried to boot EmuTOS.  It works great!

Also (before flashing 2.11) I had the same problems with the early startup.  Just kept trying, eventually it worked.



Andrew Miller

Posts 352
18 Oct 2018 07:13


Are both of you using the kick file for either a500 or a600?
The recommended one to use is a1200 one. I'll give mine a try after work.


Andrew Miller

Posts 352
18 Oct 2018 07:20


On checking the wiki does say any of the three should work, I'll still try mine after work to check. I think it was the Hyperion faq that recommended the a1200 one.


Sean Sk

Posts 488
18 Oct 2018 08:41


I'm using the A1200 kick.


Andrew Miller

Posts 352
18 Oct 2018 10:36


Ah well I'll just try gold 2.11 without the 3.1.4 till it's confirmed it's working. Anyone had gold 2.11 working without 3.1.4?


Jean-Baptiste Bolcato

Posts 61
18 Oct 2018 14:07


Works!!! Although I had a panic attack when it still said 2.10 at reboot. You need to power off the Amiga properly for it to stick.
I'm in COLORS, very exciting! Thanks team.


Thomas Blatt

Posts 200
18 Oct 2018 16:37


Gold Core 2.11 went well on my Amiga600,but after flashing 3.1.4 Rom, my Vampire doesn't start, get only a black screen


Scoopex 47

Posts 10
18 Oct 2018 17:28


Thomas Blatt wrote:

  Gold Core 2.11 went well on my Amiga600,but after flashing 3.1.4 Rom, my Vampire doesn't start, get only a black screen
 

 
  on my A600 it will work with flashing the Rom

Edit...but work not right. It needs a lot of powercycles to start


Andrew Copland

Posts 113
18 Oct 2018 19:16


What is a QBox?

Googling returns about 50 different things


Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
19 Oct 2018 06:49


Andrew Copland wrote:

  What is a QBox?
 
  Googling returns about 50 different things
 

 
  Never done advanced SMP enabled ABox. MorphOS is Microkernel and Abox is what you know as MOS 3.11 PPC native 68k emulated OS. Qbox should sandbox Aboxes, provide 64-bit memory and SMP. What might be MOS4. MOS has Quark kernel that enables this kind of boxing, even complete switch, unlike OS4 and AROS.
Kernel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark_(kernel)
 
 
Andrew Miller wrote:

    All appears to work ok, no issues booting. Though I needed to copy both the workbench.library and icon.library to LIBS from the modules disk, as it had issues before it would load workbench correctly.
    (had to use UAE to copy the files due to this)
 

 
  Yes, this is clearly stated in WB 3.1.4 FAQ, these libs have been removed from KS 3.1.4 you are using now.
 

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