> much of the code was so outdated that a complete rewrite was necessary

As is public knowledge, Hyperion didn't get the code from Amiga Inc. but from Olaf "olsen" Barthel who had put the code in shape so that it was compilable by non-obscure C compilers. Thus, Hyperion didn't have to completely rewrite the OS but only the very low-level parts.

> the bigger problem is all the things they have kept. Like TripOS and Kickstart. [...]
> what sense does it make to have Kickstart in a machine without Kickstart?

What exactly do you mean by "TripOS"? If you mean the BCPL code, then no, this was kicked out of the OS (bar aux-handler and port-handler) with v2.0 in 1990, 11 years prior to Hyperion taking over. If you mean the dos.library API, then that's what MorphOS implements (and expands upon) as well.

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=23137&forum=2&start=900#381607
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=de&tl=en&u=http://www.a1k.org/forum/showpost.php?p=861432

Regarding Kickstart in OS4, is it really so different from the components inside MorphOS' boot.img, except that one OS uses several files while the other uses one single all-in-one file?

> I also think this happened because the first version if AmigaOS 4 was supposed
> to be a straight port from 68K to PPC and nothing more, and save all the good
> stuff for AmigaOS 5. So it was imperative that the new AmigaOS resembled the
> old one as much as possible and now we/they have to live with it.

...except that right from the beginning, Hyperion didn't stick to their contract with Amiga Inc. that intended for a straight port ;-)


Edit: added info about port-handler

[ Edited by Andreas_Wolf 27.08.2015 - 10:18 ]