This is cool; it would be cool to play with a modern, hobbyist 64-bit PowerPC board. I will be keeping an eye on this project!
Be sure to click through to the details page https://mirari.vitasys.nl/the-first-rebirth/
Or in other words: I wonder what if all that time, money and effort went into say AROS[1] and/or emulation. I can imagine still using AmIRC and HippoPlayer if I could run them as any other software on Linux.
The refusal to port AmigaOS to anything but dead or near-dead architectures has always amazed me -- had the resources been spent on AROS instead, we'd have a usable modern ecosystem by now, rather than multiple different options that fall back on various ways of running 30 year-old binaries.
All I want is a decent modern version of YAM and universal ARexx/datatype support! :(
The Amiga was not just an OS. It was all about the custom chips that added such interesting and powerful capabilities to an otherwise unspectacular 68000. When combined with the OS, it created a system that was truly ahead of its time.
But I don't see the appeal of AmigaOS on modern hardware. Most Amiga fans are more interested in the games and demos that didn't use the OS, and used the blitter/copper etc directly.
And if you just want a faster Amiga, the PiStorm is pretty cool.
Today is a different matter, of course. Personally, emulation is more than enough for me.
So, I'm finding it difficult to understand what this project actually is: Is it hardware for running original Amiga games and apps, or has there been a continuing user community and SW development effort in Amiga-world that us PC-heads are just not aware of? And that is interesting and different than copycatting advances from non-Amiga environments?
There's a substantial Amiga enthusiast community to this day, which is the main market for this stuff. The various "new Amiga" platforms can only run original Amiga games via emulation. There has been plenty of development in the Amiga field, including new games, software and hardware expansions, though it is a niche hobbyist thing and mainly for people who love Amiga. You can find more information on YouTube.
I'll try to look this up on YouTube, and thanks.
If you're no longer running a 680x0 and the custom chips that defined what an (original-series) Amiga was, and you can't plug in any of the historic peripherals (I don't even see a 9-pin joystick/mouse socket!) why bother with PowerPC in $current_year?
I can sort of see the story for projects like the "Denise" board where it's basically a way to create a new hardware 68k Amiga (although modern replacements for the Commodore silicon might be desirable, so we aren't just desoldering/desocketing the same 30-year-old chips again and again).
But if you've already given up the main aspects of classic Amiga hardware and chosen emulation as the road forward, cheapest commodity x86-64 or ARM products would be fast enough to emulate pretty much any mainstream 680x0 option and the custom chips. I could see a small niche for a PPC coprocessor accelerator for the small sliver of "PPC-native" software if the current emulation isn't fast enough.
I have no issue with charging for new software for retro platforms in order to support the scene but find it slightly offensive that you have to pay to acquire a legal 1.3 kickstart ROM - released and unchanged since 1988. It just feels like copyright squatting.
The AmigaOS world needs to move to common hardware; PPC is no better than 68k in practical terms.
riedel•1mo ago