I picked up a Mac Mini G4 (2 of them actually) and played around a bit with MorphOS. I haven’t decided yet if it’s worth the license price, though having a 30 minute “use” window between reboots makes comparing it difficult. One of the Mac Mini’s is 1.5 Ghz, 1 GB, WiFi/Ethernet while the other is 1.42 Ghz, 1 GB and Ethernet. The faster one however refuses to read any burned DVD’s or CD’s…..well occasionally it will but not reliably. I had to install MacOS on it using Target mode along with the use of the other Mac Mini.. I’d much prefer testing on the 1.5 Ghz system as it provides both slightly faster performance and WiFi. Need to either repair/replace the drive or see if I can get it to boot it from an external firewire DVD drive.
What does this mean for Amithlon? Not much, but I hope to do an “AmigaOS” comparison between an A4000T (with 060), WinUAE (i7 Win10 machine), MorphOS and Amithlon.
I’m a firm believer that AmigaOS had a possible future had it moved to the x86 architecture instead of the PowerPC path it’s currently on (Amiga OS 4.1). Amithlon was the stepping stone to that end which unfortunately was crushed by legal issues.
As for Amithlon, not really a lot to discuss as there hasn’t been any advancements yet in moving the kernel forward. My Amithlon machine is running blisteringly fast and extremely stable. I do want to wipe it clean and start over again from scratch as there are a few things I want to change (proper PFS3 setup being a biggie). I’ve also discovered the kickstart in my smallird.gz is a little more modified then the original Amithlon and I’d like to start with that and patch it myself. Mine reports in as an A1200/A4000 3.5 ROM (according to AmKick on my Win10 PC) and stock it should be an A500/A600/A2000 3.1 ROM (with a few extras). I need to rebuild it with the original smallird.gz and patch appropriately. When completed I may list my “startup-sequence”, “user-startup” and break them down including links to all the patches or extras I’m referencing.
WinUAE, MorphOS, A4000T, Amithlon…..should I toss in AROS as well?