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MorphOS won't be any better than this regarding community and software support. In that matter it is almost dead, to tell the truth. In 10-15 years there will be even less developers working on the system and even less users. I think it will go down in history as an exotic, unknown operating system that will be remembered for its amiga compatibility. OS4 on the other hand has a lot more 3rd party software support and a bigger user base, but the devs and hyperion are lacking competence, who are basically ruining the system in every possible way.
OS3x/classic has the benefit of beeing mainly supported and developed by the community. a lot of users are contributing hardware and software to the plattform. so as long as theres a community the classics will never die.

I dont agree with you on the operating system issue. I think the old AmigaOS is capable enough to do webbrowsing and video playback. YouTube video playback was already demonstrated. I dont know about modern office applications, but that doesnt play a role in a retro system. maybe it'll be an option to port AROS, OS4 or even MorphOS back to 68k.
I think a beefed up Vampire v5 or v6 could be fast enough to run MorphOS smoothly, maybe even the upcoming v4. Would love to see a comparison between that machine and the Efika.

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Yeah. I wouldn't call it that either.
But it seems this is debatable.


Manfred

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What I find really depressing on any of the Amiga Systems is the lack of modern programming languages and development environments.
Really, for how much longer do we have to fiddle with Makefiles etc. and use C/C++. I accept this for driver development, but not for application development.
In FreePascal I found something acceptable. But the core language is still stone old and requires a ton of boilerplate code and it is not type safe, etc.

I don't see how it should be possible to attract new developers if this is the case, except for people who explicitly want to fiddle with the classic stuff.


Manfred

> maybe it'll be an option to port AROS [..] back to 68k.

Isn't m68k already a maintained and supported target architecture of AROS?

Btw, videos of AROS/m68k on Vampire:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCeMIccENk4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V83Az5BrTow

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What do you think of Hollywood programming language? I know it is basically a scripting language, and therefore limited in many ways, but from what my non-programmer mind can tell me, Hollywood allows other programming languages to be inserted within the Hollywood code, and the development of "Plug-in's" makes Hollywood very flexible, and more powerful and easy to use than many/most other scripting languages.

I have been so busy with "real life" issues the past several years, I have not yet been able to devote the amount of time I need/want to learn how to use Hollywood proficiently, but still hope to do so in the very near future. The number and quality of plug-ins for Hollywood appears to be very impressive, and I imagine that we will soon have more and more software developed using Hollywood. The semi-recent addition of GL-Galore (I think that is what it is called), makes Hollywood much more powerful on weak Amiga, and Amiga-NG systems, by allowing the GPU to do a lot of the work that our systems usually require the CPU to do, which should make Hollywood software that takes advantage of GL-Galore much faster, and allow some Hollywood programs, that might not have been possible, or which only performed very poorly in the past, to be written now.

I know that it would be great if MorphOS (and all other Amiga and Amiga inspired platforms), had a fully implemented Java programming language, as well as C# and some of the other currently popular programming languages and tools, but until that happens, maybe Hollywood can give us some new software that performs reasonably well.

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Some losers where fooled by gunnar von boehn, and think that chipset is important.
From developer point of view, it is patetic.
Poor amiga blitter almost not changed from 1983 is as fast as it was in 1983.
Yes amiga blitter was faster than 68000 but is slower than 68020.
Any Amiga made after nov 1992 when a1200 and a4000 production start, no matter who made it, Commodore, Escom, Eyetech, A-Eon, Acube has cpu faster than poor amiga blitter as fast as it was in 1983.
There is no reason to not compare vampire crap with amiga ppc and uae.

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But has not real metal paths between these gates like ASIC.
Only some additional logic which connect these gates depended on software transfered to FPGA.

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Of course you load software to FPGA.

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VHDL is not one and only language used on FPGA, one may also use special version of C/C++ to compile software used on FPGA.
Logic gates are not magicaly "wired". Metal paths on FPGA not change in magical way.
Just addictional logic work in that or other way depended on SOFTWARE loaded to FPGA memory.

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gunnar von boehn has no result, so he fool some people that emulation is not emulation.
The truth about FPGA it is not classical emulator like uae where there is main loop with instruction decoding, but it is still some form of software emulation.
The same FPGA may be today vampire crap, tomorrow may control washing machine.
It only depends on SOFTWARE loaded to FPGA.

> from what my non-programmer mind can tell me, Hollywood allows other
> programming languages to be inserted within the Hollywood code

From what OlafSch told you, Hollywood doesn't allow this :-)

> GL-Galore [...] makes Hollywood much more powerful [...] by allowing the
> GPU to do a lot of the work that our systems usually require the CPU to do

GL Galore requires existing 3D drivers for the installed GPU in the underlying operating system, so it won't allow a system's GPU to do any work that the same system has usually required the CPU to do.

> amiga blitter [...] is slower than 68020.

AFAIK, a 68030 is needed to be faster than the blitter for every task.

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The chipset is what the amiga made what it is. It is the architecture. Its the most important part of the hardware! I dont really get your point. What do you want to tell us? That the old blitter is slow compared to todays standard? You probably dont know what Vampire is all about, how it performs and what the differences are compared to the old classics chipset. Ever heard of SAGA? The Vampire is the next step in classic amiga evolution. Get it? I think you're having some personal issues with Gunnar. Your whole argument doesnt make any sense. Just go out and buy some cheap x86 system running UAE or some crap custom PPC hardware or old Apple products and be happy, if you think that this is amiga...
Neither MorphOS running on a Mac or Pegasos is real Amiga nor any emulated Amiga hardware on some cheap x86.
Amiga was and will always be about its custom chip architecture. Wether you like it or not. And this is what both the community and developers want. No emulation, no PPC.

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As much as I like Hollywood it is probably not what Manfred actually meant. C#, Java or other mainstream modern languages with the according tools. Heck, on MorphOS it's not even a trivial thing to do a C++ MUI Hello world program for a noob as it's full of C heritage and setting up C++ with MUI is not quite comparable to e.g. starting a project in MS Visual Studio.
MorphOS would need better support and more tutorials for up to date and rather mainstream programming. Krashans tutorials were a good first step, but I guess this would need a bit more. I think the team is working on a better development environment - let's wait and see, they probably know about it.
In the meantime we can use Hollywood for this and that and while Hollywood is IMHO more powerful than many may think it is not the answer to all questions.

>> as far as I know, you don't actually load any software into an FPGA.

> Of course you load software to FPGA. [...] Logic gates are not magicaly "wired".
> Metal paths on FPGA not change in magical way. Just addictional logic work in
> that or other way depended on SOFTWARE loaded to FPGA memory.

I stand corrected. There indeed is software loaded into the memory of an FPGA. It's just that this software is used to configure the FPGA hardware, not to statically execute (interpret) or dynamically execute (JIT-compile) the programs like an emulator would.

>> during configuration, the FPGA's logic gates are wired according to the behaviour
>> specified in the HDL file.

> VHDL is not one and only language used on FPGA

HDL simply means 'hardware description language'. This can be Verilog, AHDL, VHDL, M language or any other language suited to describe hardware behaviour.

> gunnar von boehn has no result

Huh?

> he fool some people that emulation is not emulation.

At least my stance regarding FPGAs has nothing to do with him.

> FPGA [...] is still some form of software emulation.

The innards of the FPGA that execute the software are still hardware.

> The same FPGA may be today vampire crap, tomorrow may control washing machine.

Just like Motorola/Freescale/NXP 680x0, which powered the Amiga and other computers and also has controlled washing machines :-)

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I apologize. I was told that FreePascal is statically typed. So that's good. The more errors the compiler can find, the better.

I'm coming from business application development, used to tools like IntelliJ IDEA, Gradle, Scala (language) etc. Mostly in the Java world.
While I kind of like the purity of Amiga. My free time is tight and proper tools and languages are just such a time safer.

Manfred

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I was just wondering what Manfred thought about Hollywood, and if he had ever looked at it, or considered using it for any of his less demanding programming projects.

Since you are a current Hollywood user/programmer, perhaps you can answer the question regarding inserting code from other programming languages "into" a Hollywood program. I was quite sure that I had seen that as one of the advertised abilities for Hollywood, but Andreas pulled up an old quote, which he believes contradicts my opinion on the matter. Can parts of Hollywood programs include "C/C++" code?

I could probably look this up myself, but would rather hear it straight from someone who is actively using Hollywood.

Edit: Looked it up myself, and admit I misunderstood what was written previously. Hollywood can communicate with other programs, and it can "Include" other parts of Hollywood programs (applets), but it cannot use C/C++ code imbedded within a Hollywood program. At least not in any way that I can see.

Edit #2: Now where did I put my popcorn, this argument between Cego and ppcamiga1 should be hilarious!

[ Edited by amigadave 25.08.2017 - 14:58 ]

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I have had a look at Hollywood. But only briefly. I probably should give it a try and program something.
Generally I don't favour scripting languages for serious software development.
Because due to the dynamic type nature they open up for a lot of potential problems that the compiler doesn't detect.
So either you have a very good IDE or a very tight test coverage to detect those.

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I don't know if it can include C/C++ code.
But this would be essential to access the Amiga hardware.
They takle stuff like sound on a higher level, but probably not all the Amiga offers.
But depending on the application that's not required.
Things like HTTP client APIs and other useful stuff is there, so that's good.

I have heard that the binaries are a bit bloated.
The only app I use that I know is Hollywood is AmiCloud. This app unfortunately doesn't have the look of a native app.
But that's probably because RapaGUI wasn't there yet at the time when AmiCloud was developed and needed to have an app that runs on multiple platforms.


Manfred

> I don't visit either site any longer

You might be interested to know that for the last two years, there has been a rather active (one posting every 5.3 days) amigaworld.net user with similar writing style and similar stories to tell ;-)

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Unless someone is being openly disturbing, in which case one might assume a public interest, what would be the value of public speculation regarding which accounts on different forums might belong to the same individual based on writing style or content?

Your post insinuated that a forum member might have lied. Accusations like these can be extremely toxic and negatively impact the style of conversation and general atmosphere on a forum. They should not be posted lightly.

Even if your speculation happened to be correct (please note the conjecture), being 'right' does not trump everything else in social interactions whether they happen online or in real life. In case a young girl appears in front of you and states "Look, I am a pretty princess!", there is a general consensus in society that you should not reply "Actually, 'ugly princess' would be more accurate" even if this may be a more truthful statement, since the potential negative effects from sharing this far outweigh any positive outcomes.

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Chipset was important until 1992. There is no reason to use blitter when cpu is faster.

Something interesting. gvb announce that his vampire is faster than X5000.
Even most optimistic owners of Amiga X500 and vampire which I know think that gvb this time fly to high.

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Metal paths on chip dont change in magical way.
There is no configuration.
Some FPGA block evaluate some values in another way.

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Thats correct - vampire is not old style emulator like uae.

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it doesnt matter and doesnt change the fact, that amiga was and is about its hardware architecture. The Vampire continues where Commodore left with the AGA chipset. They are improving and extending the old architecture. You cant get more real and amiga than that in 2017.

> gvb announce that his vampire is faster than X5000.

...in memory bandwidth performance (LONG access specifically), measured by running an m68k program. Having to go through Trance/Petunia seems to degrade the results of this benchmark to a fraction of the results a PPC-native program would reach, so this is surely misleading.
We also know that compared to X1000 or PowerMac G5, the X5000 is a slouch in memory bandwidth performance, but in this test the Vampire V2 also beats the X1000 and the 2.7 GHz PowerMac G5.
To my mind, these results are not meaningful, because MorphOS and OS4 users primarily run PPC-native software, and with such, the PowerMac G5, X1000 and even X5000 destroy the Vampire V2 in absolute memory bandwidth performance.

Btw, on PowerMac G5 2.3 GHz, 'bustest size=8m fast' gives 350 MB/s for the 'readl' test, which is faster than the X1000.

> Amiga X500

What?

>> this software is used to configure the FPGA hardware

> Metal paths on chip dont change in magical way. There is no configuration.

Let's see (emphasis mine):

"A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturing [...]. The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware description language (HDL) [...]. [...] FPGAs contain an array of programmable logic blocks, and a hierarchy of reconfigurable interconnects that allow the blocks to be "wired together", like many logic gates that can be inter-wired in different configurations. Logic blocks can be configured to perform complex combinational functions, or merely simple logic gates like AND and XOR. [...] Once the design and validation process is complete, the binary file generated [...] is used to (re)configure the FPGA."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Field-programmable_gate_array

"Reconfigurable computing is a computer architecture combining some of the flexibility of software with the high performance of hardware by processing with very flexible high speed computing fabrics like field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs)."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconfigurable_computing

> amiga [...] is about its hardware architecture.

What's "Amiga" is highly subjective, both from user's perspective and the respective trademark owner's perspective :-)