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Are We Just Nostalgic Or Should the Amiga Advance?page  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 

Nsklaus -

Posts 63
30 Jun 2019 08:14


@gunnar,
then allow only certain region of memory to be written.
writing pixels on system kernel in memory shouldn't be allowed for example. apps should be allowed a certain region of memory to write in, and if they try to write somewhere else, then crash the app before the write happens. maybe a 'check location before write" test.
each app should be given a specific memory region allowed and forbid all the rest.
the worst that could happen is that apps write upon each others without killing the system. so users could kill those apps and restart them. no OS crashes. just apps crashing, overwriting eachother's memory.
 


Nsklaus -

Posts 63
30 Jun 2019 08:15


@niding
 
  i was talking about a user set flipswitch.
  if the flip is on, yes some compatibility break could happen.
  but the flip could be toggled back off, then compatibility would be ok again. the user choose between compatibility or stability, on demand.


Nsklaus -

Posts 63
30 Jun 2019 08:22


another idea is to run amiga apps in boxes.
  each app have it own amigaos instance for itself.
  so you have 8 app running, so you have 8 instances of amigaos running.
  and in the middle you have somekind of maestro orchestrating the communication between the various instances.
  so worst case scenario: one app misbehave and it kill that one instance of amigaos with it, without touching all the other instances.
 
  it's a bit of a resource wastefull approach but amigaos is so light it wouldn't matter that much i think.

it like when you do a load balancer, when one cloned server goes down the other are not impacted. the load balancer keep track of which clones are up or down and uses that, forwarding requests only to server that are up, ignore those which are down. the load balancer act as the "maestro" i was talking about. it's an analogy.


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6197
30 Jun 2019 08:29


nsklaus - wrote:

@gunnar,
then allow only certain region of memory to be written.

You need to mind that AMIGA has DMA!
The Floppy data is loaded by DMA.
The Blitter copies the pixel.
The Copper can start and program the Blitter.
The SCSI DMA copies from Harddrive to memory.

Is this concept of AMIGA clear to you?


Nsklaus -

Posts 63
30 Jun 2019 08:33


@gunnar
  all those examples you quote, they shouldn't be allowed to write just about anywhere in the memory, but to certain region only.
  dma ok but to a certain area of the memory only, not full range access. just a specific range / playground.
  wouldn't that be thinkable ?
 
  when the os starts, determine which ranges are dangerous, which range are safe, the make the flip switch act upon those.
  flipswitch on = limited  / specific range access
  flip switch off  = full range access like usual


Nsklaus -

Posts 63
30 Jun 2019 08:43


..back to my "boxes" idea,
  when launching an amiga app, a new instance of amigaos is launched,
  and user could choose how much memory is allocated for the instance.
  it could be set in tooltypes: instance=8mb

morphos did something a little similar to that, in the sense that, when "abox" crashes it doesn't crash the famous "qbox".


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6197
30 Jun 2019 08:44


nsklaus - wrote:

@gunnar
all those examples you quote, they shouldn't be allowed to write just about anywhere in the memory, but to certain region only.
dma ok but to a certain area of the memory only, not full range access. just a specific range / playground.
wouldn't that be thinkable ?

Its not AMIGA OS then.
What you want is Linux.




Mr Niding

Posts 459
30 Jun 2019 08:44


nsklaus - wrote:

..back to my "boxes" idea,
  when launching an amiga app, a new instance of amigaos is launched,
  and user could choose how much memory is allocated for the instance.
  it could be set in tooltypes: instance=8mb

Virtual box basically?

Im sure something like this can be made, but that requires a developer taking on the task. The Apollo Core team have enough on their plate.


Nsklaus -

Posts 63
30 Jun 2019 08:55


@niding,
i'm just discussing ideas.
i'm not actualy asking ayone to do anything of course.
it's more like "what ifs" / "what about.." or "does this track have been explored?"


Nsklaus -

Posts 63
30 Jun 2019 09:09


@gunnar,
   
    you say it's not amigaos i want but linux.
    well, i'd like linux stability with amigaos user experience and desktop, it's true.
   
    but, with the idea of a user flip-able switch,
    couldn't we get a bit of both world ?
    amigaos already had some apps doing things like that with enforcer/grim-reaper, and other watchdogs.
    i was discussing the idea of doing the same but more potent, more efficient form of it. usually using those apps didn't really worked.
    when bad things happened, the requester did show up to warn about a problem going on but the system was already doomed. when grim-reaper shows, it's already too late.  it would be good if it shows up before it is too late, before the bad write happens. (so basicaly a check before write mechanism maybe ? )
   
    also amigaos suffer from other problems:
    it cannot properly kill tasks and free'up the previously allocated resources of the program you kill.
   
    it's seriously bad limitations.
    sure amigaos is beautiful (desktops)
    simplicity of directories/files structures,
    it's small, fast and efficient,
    but it crashes a lot,
    it cannot properly kill crashed tasks
    it cannot free allocated resources.

running amigaos is like doing a jenga game. one bad move and it's all down. and you never know when it will happen. sometimes it already happened but you don't know it yet, and later on the bomb planted earlier manifest itself while doing perfectly fine and stable thing and you're left to wonder why it crashed this time while using only stable apps, well because earlier you used a bad app that silently unbalanced everything.
   
    idealy, someday, some amiga-os clone should adress those problems.
    this is not 199x anymore.


Mr Niding

Posts 459
30 Jun 2019 09:16


@Nsklaus

Im all for brainstorming, cause non-developers like me learn atleast something from the replies from the people with knowledge.

But regarding AOS development and tweaks, I think the actual developers of said OS is the people that should be asked.
Gunnar can come with his views, but actual changes will have to come from those that got the sourcecode;

EXTERNAL LINK


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6197
30 Jun 2019 09:18


nsklaus - wrote:

idealy, someday, some amiga-os clone should adress those problems.

We all look forward to day when we can have flying turtles at the sky.




Nsklaus -

Posts 63
30 Jun 2019 09:21


@niding, discussing anywhere is also ok.
if one good idea is found then it could be relayed, forwarded until it reaches those who can implement it or willing to experiment with it.

even if noone is interested with those specific ones, it's still nice to try to find new ideas. maybe one day someone will find a way to make amigaos clones (because real amigaos is frozen in time) able to kill tasks, do proper resources tracking/freeing, and fully prevent system trashing.



Nsklaus -

Posts 63
30 Jun 2019 09:26


@gunnar,
    well look at aros for example, it got experimental smp.
    it's good.
    why not more experimental stuff that make amigaos-clones able to
    - kill tasks
    - especialy crashed ones
    - free allocated resources
    - make the system immune to bad memory trashing attempts
   
 
  another idea: a system integrity meter UI.
  so user would know when system is already compromised.


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6197
30 Jun 2019 09:44


Your ideas are nice,
actually your ideas are just as good as the ideas of the original AMIGA OS developers.

The original AMIGA OS crew was all aware of this and is the last 30 years this was simply impossible to do.

But if you are more clever than all of them together feel free to do this.
Thank you for your comments good luck doing this.


Nsklaus -

Posts 63
30 Jun 2019 09:53


to answer the thread,
to me (i'm noone, but i have my own personal little opinion),
amigaos is all about user experience.
there's some good things:

- it's small in size
- ui is simple, and customizable (and i like the default 3.1 like one)
- directory structure is simple and logic
- it's fast and responsive (but some of that could be sacrified a bit for gaining stability)

it would be good to see a new OS that look like amigaos, that stays the same on the user experience side of things, but under the hood is able to do modern things.
exactly what apollo cpu is doing to 68k familly of processors,
implementing modern things on on a good old base. the same should be done to amigaos like system. keep the good things, improve on them.
apollo improve the cpu (hardware),
then someone should do the same to the OS (software).

about the concept of dedicated chips to ease the cpu (the other side of amiga specificity as a machine) i'm not sure it's still worthwhile saving with nowdays computing.

imagine if apollo was asic instead of fpga, then maybe all dedicated chips could be run as a specific cpu thread.
so dedicated cpu thread instead of dedicated chips. asic apollo would have enough speed to valid that.

i don't care much about the specificity of dedicated chips, i'm not sure it still make sense today when cpu have so much power.
when dedicated chips were made it was good because 680x0 were slow.
today 680x0 could be made really fast.

 


Nsklaus -

Posts 63
30 Jun 2019 09:56


@gunnar
thank for the compliments.
i'm not skilled enough to make my own os, or modify such intricate parts of existing ones.

at best i can develop small apps and games.
but i can still discuss ideas. it's free. ideas can help change the world sometimes. not necessarily My ideas but well, you know.. discussing is nice.



Mr Niding

Posts 459
30 Jun 2019 10:03


What language do you use making apps/programs?
 
  Its quite encouraging to see Stefan and Gunnar brainstorming to evolve GCC.

And then you got Hollywood.

EXTERNAL LINK 
If there is one app/function I miss on AOS 3.x, its a updated pdf reader/writer.


Nsklaus -

Posts 63
30 Jun 2019 10:41


@niding,
(my coding abilities and language proficiency are a bit offtopic here but java, python and cpp)

@thread
maybe aros should grow a new experimental 'modern / incompatible' branch.
 
  keeping all the goods:
  ui, system directory and file structure, small size os, responsive, while having a stable:
  as in indestructible OS you can ram into a wall with a tank and it still wouldn't crash.
 
  there would be at first only very few apps,
  only those for which the source is available and can get modified and recompiled.
 
  why people insists on keeping the bad sides of amigaos concepts even today is beyond me.
  stability wise it's on par with macos8 and win95-98.
  maybe a bit even less on some areas as those OSes could properly kill tasks and free resources unless i'm mistaken.


Mr Niding

Posts 459
30 Jun 2019 11:03


@Nsklaus

I dont find what language proficiency a developer got to be off topic, given the original title. The Core development team got a long list of what they want to do, so then its up to other developers to patch or develop new software/apps that utilizes the Apollo potential.

If Im not mistaken, Steve Ferrels said in another thread that he isnt inclined to learn ASM to contribute, which is totally understandable given the timecrunch most people have. Work, family, freetime etc vs the time required to be even remoted adapt at utilizing ASM at the level required.

Which is why Stefans intrest in tweaking GCC is so nice to see.
Hollywood is another platform that would be helpful to see use Apollo features, but Im not sure if "softwarefailure" got the incentive to make a 3rd Amiga version.

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