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Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
15 Aug 2020 15:17


Why ApolloOS?
When Vampire 4 Standalone was launched Amiga resellers approached us about selling Vampire 4. Unfortunately, they insisted on bundling AmigaOS and refused to support AROS. While we adore Amiga OS 3.X and all it’s iterations the current legal climate made it impossible to ship Vampire 4 with Amiga OS 3.X as standard. We wish both parties the best possible outcome for them and the Amiga community.

The overall feedback from dealers was that AROS isn’t ready for prime time and Amigans will never embrace it.

We disagreed and that rejection only made us redouble our efforts to convert AROS into the premiere Amiga 68K OS with a pleasant out of box experience.

Thus, the ApolloOS fork of AROS was born. Our aim is to deliver the best possible 68K experience hands down.
One of the most appealing aspects of AROS is its open nature that puts power in the hands of people who wish to contribute. Since releasing ApolloOS RC1 many users have joined our discord channel and contributed code, performed recompiles, and testing. To us this is perfection and exactly the type of community spirit we want to be connected to.
Aros in its original state added extra layers of abstraction and confusion never before seen in the original AmigaOS. This sort of uncontrolled bloat lowers compatibility with original Amiga 68K programs and slows down the OS. Such abstractions are fun with multi gigahertz PC’s but a headache when run on even the fastest 68K CPU.

In contrast our focus is on 68K and Amiga hardware support in an effort to make the AROS kernel as compatible as possible.
Our forked branch of AROS will focus on Amiga 68k to 100% and will not work on X86 or PPC. To attain the best speed possible, we will tune appropriated functions to take full advantage of AMMX and the 68080.
Of course all our work will be made available as per AROS license mandates and 68k coders are welcome to optimize ApolloOS for any of the 68k family. In this mode of mutual contribution the power is in the hands of coders who get to decide where to focus their time and effort.
We appreciate all the work that came before us from those who spent time, money, and effort to make AROS great. Moving forward our solemn commitment is to make as much 68K software as possible work on our ApolloOS distribution.




Ray Couzens

Posts 93
15 Aug 2020 18:13


It makes absolute sense to have branched off from AROS to create ApolloOS.
 
  I can understand why AROS was originally abstracted as this probably made it easier to write code to cover all supported platforms.  However, as you say, the problem with this is that it adds complexity and bloats the code for the Amiga machines. 
 
  It's great that your focus will now be on optimising ApolloOS, stripping out the bloat, optimising and using the AMMX registers and very important, making more 68K software work.
 
  I have already witnessed big improvement with the current beta core and am sure the next releases will only enhance the Vampires even more.
 
  An exciting journey ahead!


Tim Noyce

Posts 156
15 Aug 2020 19:13


Looking forward to the journey.


Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
15 Aug 2020 20:25


Looks great and finally offers a path to free and optimized AmigaOS child for a Vampire independent of legal mambo jumbo :) Also finally leaves the Coffin dispute argument out of the hand of nag-sayers!
 
  Thank you, cat!
 
  Hope it will be fast and compatible! Hope journey will include some native AROS x86 backports too!.


Mark Mc Fadden

Posts 36
15 Aug 2020 20:32


Will the branch be Vampire compatible only or will the branch work on original hardware?
i.e. Is the branch to benefit Amiga in general or Vampire only?
Dont get me wrong, i realise its a huge undertaking, im just wondering if it will benefit more than vampire owners and if the branch wull be useless for non vampire amigas.


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
15 Aug 2020 21:08


Mark Mc Fadden wrote:

or it will benefit more than vampire owners.

Yes.
Actually Aros users benefit already from our work.

As you might know we improved Aros already in many ways.
The day before yesterday we fixed some bugs in BestModeId
Yesterday we improved Aros GFX operation speed of some function by 100%. And improved several exec functions on 68K.
Today we improved AROS IDE speed by 2 MB/sec.

All these bug fixes we make go back to Aros.
So yes every Aros user benefits from our work.
So yes the branch benefits Amiga in general...



Mark Mc Fadden

Posts 36
15 Aug 2020 21:13


Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

Mark Mc Fadden wrote:

  or it will benefit more than vampire owners.
 

 
  Yes.
  Actually Aros users benefit already from our work.
 
  As you might know we improved Aros already in many ways.
  The day before yesterday we fixed some bugs in BestModeId
  Yesterday we improved Aros GFX operation speed of some function by 100%. And improved several exec functions on 68K.
  Today we improved AROS IDE speed by 2 MB/sec.
 
  All these bug fixes we make go back to Aros.
  So yes every Aros user benefits from our work.
  So yes the branch benefits Amiga in general...
 

Excellent, thats fantastic, thanks for the clarification


Antony Coello

Posts 153
16 Aug 2020 11:19


So is ApolloOS V4SA specific, or will all the Vampire cards be able to use it fully?


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
16 Aug 2020 15:37


Antony Coello wrote:

So is ApolloOS V4SA specific, or will all the Vampire cards be able to use it fully?

 
ApolloOS runs on all Vampire (V500,V600,V1200,V4)
 
ApolloOS might also run on old 68K, but of course old 68K CPU will lack the performance for Aros and lack the performance to play videos with RIVA and run other demanding applications like DIABLO.

Our focus is to improve the stability of Aros and compatibility owth OS 3 as well as to improve the performance.
To improve performance we will make use of AMMX acceleration.
AMMX is great for accelerating games, video, and graphic operations e.g. datatypes.
In the future I can imagine that ApolloOS will be more and more AMMX accelerated.
 


Antony Coello

Posts 153
16 Aug 2020 17:58


Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

  ApolloOS runs on all Vampire (V500,V600,V1200,V4)
   
  ApolloOS might also run on old 68K, but of course old 68K CPU will lack the performance for Aros and lack the performance to play videos with RIVA and run other demanding applications like DIABLO.
 
  Our focus is to improve the stability of Aros and compatibility owth OS 3 as well as to improve the performance.
  To improve performance we will make use of AMMX acceleration.
  AMMX is great for accelerating games, video, and graphic operations e.g. datatypes.
  In the future I can imagine that ApolloOS will be more and more AMMX accelerated.
 

Thats perfect! Thankyou Gunnar and team!


Stefano Briccolani

Posts 586
16 Aug 2020 20:22


I made a short video in my awful English about ApolloOS. Hope you'll enjoy nonethless:
EXTERNAL LINK


Tim Waite

Posts 42
16 Aug 2020 22:58


Your English is fine and I understand you perfectly!


Smartroad 78

Posts 116
17 Aug 2020 22:48


Where can I download a copy?


Andrew Miller

Posts 352
18 Aug 2020 11:57


Is there an image for v1200, or just the hdf?


Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
18 Aug 2020 13:37


Direct link is removed for now, I can just find compiling instructions
EXTERNAL LINK  EXTERNAL LINK 
and 3 parts 16GB source code archive for compiling
EXTERNAL LINK  EXTERNAL LINK  EXTERNAL LINK 
If anyone has better solution, please provide.


Smartroad 78

Posts 116
18 Aug 2020 14:18


Vojin Vidanovic wrote:

Direct link is removed for now, I can just find compiling instructions
  EXTERNAL LINK  EXTERNAL LINK 
  and 3 parts 16GB source code archive for compiling
  EXTERNAL LINK  EXTERNAL LINK  EXTERNAL LINK 
  If anyone has better solution, please provide.

I tried following the instructions for compiling but only ended up with the rom file, how do I make the rest of the OS? All the building instructions say is how to make the ROM file and what to do to make it quicker or if building it goes wrong. So confused!



Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
19 Aug 2020 10:30


smartroad 78 wrote:

  I tried following the instructions for compiling but only ended up with the rom file, how do I make the rest of the OS? All the building instructions say is how to make the ROM file and what to do to make it quicker or if building it goes wrong. So confused!

Sadly, you are right, provided instructions are just for ApolloOS (AROS) ROM.

Seems Pedro Cotter is maintaining it, so its best to ask him.

You Tube EXTERNAL LINK  Twitter EXTERNAL LINK 



Robert Foster

Posts 6
19 Aug 2020 17:21


The AROS files should be found under "bin / amiga-m68k / AROS" (as described in the istructions). And I can confirm that the files are there.


Smartroad 78

Posts 116
19 Aug 2020 18:52


Robert Foster wrote:

The AROS files should be found under "bin / amiga-m68k / AROS" (as described in the istructions). And I can confirm that the files are there.

I saw that part of the instructions but didn't realise that they are also made when you run "./rebuild_rom.sh" as it says after "This should result in a new aros.rom file in the AROS directory." I (wrongly) assumed that this step was only producing the ROM file and was looking for the instruction that would make the files in the folders you mentioned. I checked for the ROM and found it, I didn't think to check the other directories as I assumed these are just left over parts of the building process.


Kamelito Loveless

Posts 260
27 Feb 2021 19:22


AFAIK AROS target is 3.1 OS, since many early games only work well under 1.3 is Apollo OS KS used in that case or do you have to rely on CBM KS 1.3?

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