It seems that AEON is, similarly to Hyperion, coming to bet on m68k market.

Recent "Amiga 600GS" project seems to pack System 57 or however its called, basically AEON Enhancer minus Radeon drivers on top of AROS. That looks nice, and beside Emotion video player (I would love to see ported to MOS) its one of my very positive experiences with OS4 software (no longer, x1000 sold to kas1e)

Also 600GS comes with fixed Octamed non Studio and Personal Paint updated m68k.

I wonder if these 3 pieces of software became available in 2024/2025,
should I buy them for my MOS machine (since its my only miggy beside AmiKit XE now)

Seems MOS has kept extremely high degree of OS3 RTG applications, way better then its PowerPC Amiga Inc port :D

> System 57 or however its called

It's 54. See there for why that numer has been chosen:
https://wiki.amigaos.net/wiki/AmigaOS_Versions

> Emotion video player (I would love to see ported to MOS) [...]. [...] fixed
> Octamed non Studio and Personal Paint updated m68k. I wonder if these 3 pieces
> of software became available [...], should I buy them for my MOS machine

Emotion/PPC:
Nobody can seriously advise for or against buying it for MorphOS as long as there's no MorphOS version.

OctaMED v8/m68k:
It may run on MorphOS. I don't know whether anyone tried yet. Does it run on OS4?

Personal Paint v7.4/m68k:
The latest test on MorphOS I'm aware of was with v7.3b in 2016 (#73). I don't know if v7.4 has improved MorphOS compatibility.

Quote:
I bought the 68k version of the new PPaint, but it seems that I have 7.3b installed... and I have forgotten to install 7.3c which I have already downloaded back in 2019 :) 7.3b is a bit unstable, at least on MorphOS, and I've been using the original Cloanto's 7.1c mostly. Well, have to install the 7.3c now... even though I planned to replace its use with RNOEffects from now on :P

This 7.4 doesn't seem to be available yet, but I'd expect that owners of previous A-EON's version will get it free.

There was supposed to be a MorphOS native version too, but I don't have high hopes for it anymore...

Quote:

Personal Paint 68k is worst than orignal version from Cloanto, I bought this and still I use the Personal Paint 7.1 from cover disk, because is better than last, it was a take money from fans...

So AEON claims to have gone 3 versions ahead :D

Thank you for advising against buying PPaint.

Emotion is really great player, elegant and Amiga like. I wonder if we could petition
for MOS port, if we have need for it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kp4_-I-NgNs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cld6X3_epb8

Its one of very few pieces of software I felt was really developed to take adventage of new PPC hardware / some OS4 advancements like gfx drivers, and uses Intuition / normal WB GUI.

I hope enhancer software will get MorphOS port. It also contains some very nice updates and classes.

Quote:

Thats something that might sound cool at 1st glance but would be a total s##tshow in reality.

All that stuff needs to be either part of the OS, freely available or ship with every piece of SW using it.

Not that it would matter as noone around here cares about ReAction classes.

> So AEON claims to have gone 3 versions ahead :D

3 revisions, to be fair :-)

> Emotion [...] uses Intuition

Emotion uses ReAction, which in turn uses Intuition's BOOPSI.

https://entwickler-x.de/emotion

Is Emotion better than MPlayer? It has the same codecs as both are based on LibAV.

Quote:

I think it supports hardware decoding on selected graphics cards/drivers on OS4, which makes it better in some setups in that regard. But generally in other situations MPlayer on MorphOS is probably better because AFAIK overlay is better supported on MorphOS. But I don't have better knowledge and experience on OS4 side, so I might be wrong too :)

@jPV:
yes, you are right

Generally, MPlayer is far better than Emotion ( and DVDPlayer ) because of much more options. Emotion and DVDPlayer are just only players
Not to say MPlayer exists both on MorphOS and AmigaOS, the other two are AmigaOS only.

But both Emotion and DVDPlayer has VA.library support ( HW codec decoding on gfx card ), which is useful on slower machines like Sam460. You can play there fullHD videos.

Just now exists effort to implement va.library support also to AmigaOS MPlayer, but not finished yet.

And maybe, after finishing of bigfoot's great graphic improvement there will be the time to support va.library on MorphOS.
It is pure speculation from my side, but in Mophos 3.18 I see Evegreen-UVD and NorthernIslands-UVD in MorphOS/Devs/Firmware/Radeon directory.
Do somebody knows something?

[ Edited by sailor 01.03.2024 - 12:50 ]

> DVDPlayer

DvPlayer ;-)

> VA.library support [...] is useful on slower machines like Sam460.

While it's especially useful on slower machines as otherwise they wouldn't be able to do it at all, it's also useful on machines that can do it in software (CPU) in order to reduce power consumption and not have the fans spin like crazy.

> in Mophos 3.18 I see Evegreen-UVD and NorthernIslands-UVD in
> MorphOS/Devs/Firmware/Radeon directory.

Interesting.

Quote:

I know OS4 utilizes a specific hardware decoder called UVD (Universal Video Decoder) of GCN4 (Graphics Core Next) for 4K Video Playback.

GCN4 cards are not supported at all in MorphOS, so no va.library support.

Max. supported cards in MorphOS are HD6xxx which is some generations before GCN4. While Radeons got this UVD since HD2xxx series (I think), it is not capable of 4K playback. So a specific UVD driver library for each supported generation would have to be written from scratch for MorphOS. Surely nice and of course a bonus for users it is neither critical nor was it part of the MorphOS graphics bounty.

> OS4 utilizes [...] UVD (Universal Video Decoder) of GCN4 (Graphics Core Next)
> for 4K Video Playback.

Just to add that not just the UVD v6 of GCN4-based cards is supported, but since Enhancer v2.2 and RadeonHD v5 in August/September 2022 also the UVD v3/v4 of GCN1-based cards (but not with 4k support, of course, because that only starts with UVD v5).

https://wiki.amiga.org/index.php/Enhancer_Software (RadeonHD_drv_video Library)
https://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2022-08-00034-EN.html
https://www.amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2022-09-00076-EN.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Video_Decoder#Format_support

> Max. supported cards in MorphOS are HD6xxx

MorphOS also supports:
- HD7xxx up to HD7670
- HD8xxx up to HD8490
- R5 up to R5 235X (probably also R5 310)
...which are all TeraScale 2 (...and doesn't support HD69xx, which is TeraScale 3).

> which is some generations before GCN4.

Yes, but TeraScale 2 to GCN1 is just two generations :-)


Edit: added R5 310

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 10.03.2024 - 00:22 ]

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As I have been researching a card to purchase for my PCIe PowerMac I have found:
1. The newer cards aren't always faster that the X1900 I already am using.
2. The PCIe PowerMac's are a lot more of a crap shoot than the X5000. Seems like having 512mb of video memory on the card helps with it.
3. The current video driver for the X1900 PCIe seems to be not fully finished, in that the same card in a PCIX AGP system seems to work faster and better at this point.

In conclusion, no real obvious go to card for me. My use case is productivity and watching occasional videos.

Quote:
Ah, I didn't realize they added support for the earlier UVD generations too. Thanks for mentioning!

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Yea right. I should use generation codenames... The marketing 'number' names are ambiguous and confusing when they sometimes label last-generation cards with latest-generation numbers...

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Yes, marketing names are big mess.
Radeon cards have:
Architecture ( TeraScale 2 ), Generation ( Northern I. ), gfx chip ( Barts ) and marketing name ( HD 6870 ). For compatibility is most important gfx chip and architecture. The other two are misleading.

So in Morphos we can have ( acc. to my speculation only! )
Barts ( Northern I. ) = UVD 3.1
Cypres ( Evergreen ) = UVD 2.3
both with MPEG4, H.264 support. Not bad - wiki.

[ Edited by sailor 12.03.2024 - 09:14 ]

Nice to see continued updates to Octamed and Personal Paint. I wish A-EON would update and/or sell the Amiga/MorphOS/AROS version of Aladdin4D. They acquired the rights to the Amiga version and codebase in 2014, a decade ago! DiscreetFX retained the rights to the non-Amiga versions and has toyed with the idea to recode it in Swift( https://www.swift.org]Swift Programming). That's not in the budget today but maybe one day in the future. The 3D Animation software industry is brutally difficult. Vizrt sold off the rights to LightWave 3D a few years after acquiring it as part of their NewTek™ purchase in 2019. LW3D is way more powerful and feature rich than Aladdin4D but it still had a hard time competing in the rough 3D market.

[ Edited by discreetfx 12.03.2024 - 22:26 ]

> Radeon cards have: Architecture ( TeraScale 2 ), Generation ( Northern I. ),
> gfx chip ( Barts ) and marketing name ( HD 6870 ). For compatibility is
> most important gfx chip and architecture. The other two are misleading.

The "HDxxx" etc. names are completely misleading, yes, but the "Islands" names are of technical use if you know how to interpret them, e.g.:
- Evergreen = RV8xx GPU
- Northern Islands = RV9xx GPU

Evergreen cards are:
- HD... 5xxx, 63xx, 6750, 6770, 73xx, 83xx
- R5... 21x, some 22x

Northern Islands cards are:
- HD... 64xx, 65xx, 66xx, 6790, 68xx, 69xx, 74xx, 75xx, 76xx, 84xx
- R5... some 22x, 23x, 31x

Southern Islands cards are:
- HD... 77xx, 78xx, 79xx, 85xx, 86xx, 87xx, 89xx
- R5... 24x, 33x, 34x, 4xx
- R7... 24x, 25x, 265, 34x, 35x, 37x, 43x, 450
- R9... 25x, 27x, 280, 37x
- (RX...) 52x, some 53x

It would be nice if A-EON or someone else created a 3D Animation program for MorphOS. MorphOS is a great operating system but needs more native applications. It’s great to see the progress on a nice web browser and email client. At least MOS does have some nice native apps, just not enough.

[ Edited by discreetfx 13.03.2024 - 09:03 ]

Hey Bill (discreetfx) - let's not forget PageStream v5.1.2 - Thanks to Frank Mariak (cyfm), Christoph & Sebastien Poelzl (rmsvideo) in those native applications, and not forgetting your generous purchase of several FREE licences for some MorphOS users.

Quote:

MorphOS has a really decent app set. Iris, Wayfarer, PolyOrganizer, Pagestream, all all the native apps are really very mature apps that don't (save PS) have a counterpart on any other Amiga(like) system. They are very productive programs and each will continue to receive updates this year adding features and functionality. Not to mention the OS is much further developed than anything else. To your point a decent word processor and spreadsheet would be welcome for me, but Final Writer and TurboCalc can fill the space in the meantime.

So MorphOS is the exact opposite of other systems, in my mind is good enough to think about a major hardware switch, since you almost don't need Amiga 68k compatibility anymore. This is the exact opposite of everything else where you don't have much for productivity and either use a 30 year old program or rabbit hole to linux/windows and are running on "newer" hardware.

MorphOS has always been about the software and app experience, in my mind was the best way to go.

[ Edited by matt3 14.03.2024 - 05:59 ]

> everything else where you don't have much for productivity and either
> use a 30 year old program or rabbit hole to linux/windows

This is neither: http://schwan-clan.de/amiga/AmiCygnix.php?lang=en

Quote:

Never knew they existed, are they any good? Do they actually work productively, and not crash, and decently complete software?

If yes to above, it would be nice to have a word processor and a spread sheet with modern features...

>> http://schwan-clan.de/amiga/AmiCygnix.php?lang=en

> Never knew they existed

We briefly talked about HomeBank on AmiCygnix in mid-2022.

> are they any good? Do they actually work productively,
> and not crash, and decently complete software?

Yes, yes, yes and yes.

Quote:

Well I certainly remembered Homebank for sure.

But the Gnome based spreadsheet, is new and interesting... TurboCalc is decent but long in the tooth with new standards, do you have any idea if this will be converted to MorphOS?