As stated in the title.

There are lots of AmigaOS apps which aren't native to MorphOS (see: aminet). I also tried to launch OS4 stuff from AmigaFuture CD. Often the result was system halt.

I think it is really important to declare, I mean in the Library section here, WHAT sort of non-native applications are deemed to work under MorphOS. There's Trance but does this have any additional requirements? Which AOS apps? Which chipset should it support and which it shouldn't? What about OS4Emu - are there any known titles or additional prerequisites? I mentioned EUAE for safety reason actually, that's the last outpost, anything Classic should work on it. But I'd be rather using trance wisely.

BTW does UAE support AmigaOS4?

Trance is a JIT 68k emu, which means it can emulate 68k processor for 68k applications and libraries, which *DOES NOT BANG CLASSIC HARDWARE DIRECTLY*, but use standard OS API to access everything. It doesn't emulate an Amiga chipset at all, just the CPU. Practical example: your favourite A500 game won't work with it. But your favourite classic networking app (AmIRC, IBrowse, etc) will work. Basically, it provides a fully transparent way to the user, to run both 68k and PowerPC applications simultaneously, with the possibility to even replace some system parts with 68k components (for example, you can run Directory Opus 5 instead of Ambient). Trance is built into MorphOS, for a looong time now. You shouldn't care about it at all, it will just work, and do it's job transparently. Trance is very similar in concept to what Apple did with Rosetta in their Intel Macs, to run PowerPC applications. (But Trance predates Rosetta.)

OS4emu is a 3rd party package, and provides an API wrapper and an ELF loader, to load and run *SOME* OS4 executables on MorphOS. It's an experimental piece of software, with no warranties, which means, your mileage may vary. You do *NOT* need OS4emu, to run classic AmigaOS 3.x software on MorphOS. There are no prerequisites to run OS4emu, however it might be useful to install the ClassAct GUI package (a 68k package, available on Aminet, i guess), which OS4emu can use to "fake" ReAction GUI for some OS4 apps. OS4emu doesn't emulate any hardware, it's just a hack, to trick some apps to think they're running on OS4, and trick MorphOS to think these apps are native MorphOS applications. :) To use OS4emu efficiently, you really should be a pro user, and know what you do. And it's only a just-for-fun piece of software, as most OS4 software have (sometimes even better) native alternatives on MorphOS.

E-UAE is an Amiga emulator, again, a 3rd party software, which emulates the whole 68k Amiga hardware. You run a whole instance of AmigaOS 3.x inside that emulator, and it can run almost all 68k software, down to your favourite A500 game. But - on the contrary to what Trance does - E-UAE doesn't offer seamless integration of these applications into MorphOS environment. Basically you need this to run your old games or very old applications (Protracker, Deluxe Paint, Brillance, etc) on MorphOS. UAE doesn't have PowerPC emulation, and as OS4 is PowerPC only, you can't run OS4 on it, obviously.

[ Edited by Chain-Q on 2009/12/25 13:42 ]

@Chain-Q

Thanks for clarifying that. It matches my impression on'em.

But

1. I think such statement as your post should be placed as a separate chapter in a library, because an average new user will indeed come accross into this

2. Despite how much clear your answer is, please, give some more characterictic on how to check whether the app (most likely the OS 3.x app) "DOES NOT BANG CLASSIC HARDWARE DIRECTLY". If i knew more, I would both use more Classic apps on my MorphOS but also I would avoid numerous crashes on attempts to do so.

3. Likewise, is there any OS4 apps list that might be used with OS4Emu? I really love that idea.

@Chain-Q

OK I forgot to summarize your definitions.

Trance - JIT m68k emulator, can run any Classic app as long as it doesn't acces custom chipset (OCS, ECS, AGA) directly
OS4Emu - AmigaOS4 API wrapper (like wine in Linux), can emulate some apps as long as Ambient can substitute Workbench in a particular case
E-UAE - a complete classic chipset emulator, but run as an external app (and thus not integrated into MorphOS by any means)

OS4emu has a (partial) compatibility list on its homepage. About a 68k compatibility list, i agree that it would be useful for new users. Want to volunteer to build that list?

Quote:

First I want to build my MorphOS native apps' system So I can't tell now. Say, is this a problem for the MOS Dev Team to make a system-like parser which tries to launch a 68k app and then catches any OS exception? If you iterate such creature thru aminet, I suppose 80% of classic apps would report error (on such test) thus helping other people like myself to do the manual job on the others.

Anyway I suppose OS4EMU plus compatibility list and generally this very Emu theme should definitely be added to the library here.

[ Edited by DiskDoctor on 2009/12/25 18:29 ]

The debug log at least reports unsupported CIA peeking/poking.

Quote:

As long as it doesn't halt the os.

I'm thinking on such kind of low-level script:
Quote:

By running this one could get a long list of unsupported Classic apps (and why).

Only MorphOS developers could do such hack

What do you think?

EDIT*

I just realized it might be done to some extent by placing such iterator in wbstartup, wrapped in arexx scripting.

Provided that any app would respond to kill signal, which doesn't hold I supose.

[ Edited by DiskDoctor on 2009/12/25 18:57 ]

Quote:
Any app has the potential to kill the OS :)

@DiskDoctor
Quote:
For debugging such low level stuff, one always could use a serial, or in case of the Mac mini, firewire logging. Then it doesn't matter, if the OS is already destroyed by the misbehaving app, you can still have the data you want.

> E-UAE doesn't offer seamless integration of these applications into MorphOS environment.

I am playing with UAE a bit on MorphOS and while emulation is superb I cannot seem to make it work in a window nor exit back from it.

I added use_gui=yes and also all fullscreen parameters in the conf file I am using are set to no. Basically I want to kill/exit/windowize the emulator once I am done and return to MorphOS. Right now it takes the fullscreen and, apparently, the whole machine. I looked for a magical key combination to put it into the windowed mode and could not find any. I searched this forum (found this thread) and Googled and looked into the help file but nothing... Basically the only thing I can do in UAE to get back is CTLR+A+A reset.

I downloaded UAE4All too but F11 (full screen switch per readme file) does not switch back from full screen mode either. Although it's closable in the window mode, it really looks silly in the small window. And it's ascetic (floppy has to be always named df0.adf etc...). Also, compatibility is not that good (for example, Obliterator produces a Guru Meditation).

Any hints? I simply want to run old Amiga programs but to be able to get back to the OS. I can do this on OS X UAE and I also remember it was possible on WinUAE so I think I just cannot find it

Quote:

On MOS UAE opens its own screen in fullscreen mode. So it should be possible to go back to the Screen running the default desktop with the system wide hotkeys <leftamiga>-<m> and <leftamiga>-<n>

mihailod

I'm glad uae4all works for you, does it have a GUI? What Amiga games/apps do you run with it?

@magnetic:

uea4all worked fine but I just tried it last night. Obliterator showed the boot intro but the game crashed as I said. Did not try any of the other games I have because Obliterator is my smoke-test.

The reason I did not test it more is that it was much less convenient to use than the uae proper and the F11 thing did not work for me at all. But I can test with 20 or so more games tonight. I can also enlist the games here if you are interested.

Are you involved with the development of it? I am not at my computer and in a hurry so cannot check right now...

@pOS: thanks, will try that.

One thing I am missing in UAE is a visual configurator. Something like Hi-Toro on OS X:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/unix_open_source/hitoro.html

It's almost trivial to write it (at least to anyone who has the dev tools configured, knows how to write a GUI Hello World on MorphOS and a tiny bit of file system API). It's basically a bunch of gadgets to control various parameters and load/save them from/to ASCII txt files...

That could be a nice small project for someone who wants to tryout development on MorphOS... gooseberry, are you reading this?

UAE shortcuts are prefixed with "ctrl+alt" instead of F12 in my builds.

So,
ctrl+alt+q to quit
ctrl+alt+r to reboot the emulation
[shift] ctrl+alt+F<1>...<n> for floppies (shift to eject)
ctrl+alt+s to toggle fullscreen/window mode (but only works in the SDL version, atm).

There are a couple others (some to save/restore memory state and so on).

And starting the emulation in window with non SDL version would be done in config file with:
amiga.screen_type = public ("custom" for fullscreen and "ask" to select screenmode)
amiga.use_overlay=yes would give overlay output and free resizing (and aspect ratio preservation, too)



[ Edited by Fab on 2010/1/22 1:07 ]

@Fab: As always, thank you, exactly what I needed! This helped a lot!!!

Er... khm... now, an obvious question: why is this not more visible? IMHO it belongs to the MorphOS.readme file...

And, also reporting a small issue (bug?): in the sdl mode, if I go full screen it's not a real full screen but the picture is like 1/4 of the screen and the rest is black... Could be that I have to play with the settings a bit, not a big deal (I am still using the default conf files).

Another annoyance (bug? a config issue?) is that the MorphOS mouse pointer is not confined inside the Amiga screen in the full screen mode but is allowed to go off the Amiga screen (left and right) making playing some games (shooters especially) almost impossible because once the MorphOS pointer is offscreen, Amiga pointer gets confused. Is there a setting for this maybe? Will dig more...

@pOS: yes, I can go back to MorpOS with AMIGA+M/N but cannot kill the emulator with CTRL+C in its CLI window, it says "Cannot activate debugger in full-screen mode" and keeps working...

[ Edited by mihailod on 2010/1/21 17:36 ]

Quote:

Huh? How is that?

@Zylesea

Check OHCI1394Mon included with the latest logTool.

Quote:

I don't use the SDL version too often, but i guess you would have to play with the resolution options and gfx_linemode=double, too.

Quote:

Right. With the SDL version there's actually a way to grab mouse cursor with ctrl+alt+g keys.
This is not possible with the non-SDL version, so I suggest running that one in fullscreen.

Also note the non-SDL version is substancially faster and has overlay output option. On the other hand, the SDL one offers runtime fullscreen/window toggle, picasso96 emulation support and mouse grab. Someday I'd need to adapt SDL features in the non SDL one. :)

> Huh? How is that?

https://morph.zone/modules/news/article.php?storyid=1640

Fab, thank you again, that's awesome!

It would be great if that information can also be put in the readme file...

@mihailod
Quote:

I made the UAE4All morphos port, and i think you tried first release, download last version from Aminet or my web. I made some compilation optimizations, now you can select adf files, windowed mode was disabled and the key used to change screen mode hides info bar during emulation.

About compatibility issues, UAE4All was made by Chui, a great developer, for Dreamcast, it isn't as compatible as E-UAE, but it works slighter on slow system as my Efika.

@ golem, A. Wolf

Thanks for the info, totally missed that yet.


[ Edited by Zylesea on 2010/1/22 15:20 ]