[HN Gopher] The next-gen mainboard designed with amigaos4 and mo...
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       The next-gen mainboard designed with amigaos4 and morphos in mind
        
       Author : todsacerdoti
       Score  : 72 points
       Date   : 2025-12-25 00:38 UTC (22 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (mirari.vitasys.nl)
 (TXT) w3m dump (mirari.vitasys.nl)
        
       | riedel wrote:
       | https://mirari.vitasys.nl/the-first-rebirth/
        
       | linguae wrote:
       | As a fan of older Macs, I didn't know there were any 64-bit
       | PowerPC chips made after the Power Mac G5 and the Cell processors
       | used in the XBox 360 and PlayStation 3.
       | 
       | This is cool; it would be cool to play with a modern, hobbyist
       | 64-bit PowerPC board. I will be keeping an eye on this project!
        
         | pjmlp wrote:
         | It is what powers (hehe) many IBM servers,
         | 
         | https://www.ibm.com/products/power
        
         | einr wrote:
         | This board is based on an NXP QorIQ SoC which is designed for
         | networking hardware, not really intended for general purpose
         | computers. It is to my knowledge, and has been for years, the
         | only game in town if you need to be compatible with the PowerPC
         | ISA (IBM POWER processors, while part of the same lineage,
         | cannot run _PowerPC_ code)
        
       | Aurornis wrote:
       | Amazing effort
       | 
       | Be sure to click through to the details page
       | https://mirari.vitasys.nl/the-first-rebirth/
        
       | drbig wrote:
       | As someone who grew up with Amiga... I find it amazing these
       | boards still keep coming (X1000, X5000... anyone?) - they have
       | always been insanely expensive for specs that are decade(s) old,
       | all in the name of... really no idea what beyond "we can".
       | 
       | Or in other words: I wonder what if all that time, money and
       | effort went into say AROS[1] and/or emulation. I can imagine
       | still using AmIRC and HippoPlayer if I could run them as any
       | other software on Linux.
       | 
       | 1: https://aros.sourceforge.io/introduction/
        
         | 2000UltraDeluxe wrote:
         | Yeah, the lack of support for off-the-shelf hardware has been
         | the doom of the Amiga revival since day one.
         | 
         | The refusal to port AmigaOS to anything but dead or near-dead
         | architectures has always amazed me -- had the resources been
         | spent on AROS instead, we'd have a usable modern ecosystem by
         | now, rather than multiple different options that fall back on
         | various ways of running 30 year-old binaries.
         | 
         | All I want is a decent modern version of YAM and universal
         | ARexx/datatype support! :(
        
           | bluescrn wrote:
           | > Yeah, the lack of support for off-the-shelf hardware has
           | been the doom of the Amiga revival since day one.
           | 
           | The Amiga was not just an OS. It was all about the custom
           | chips that added such interesting and powerful capabilities
           | to an otherwise unspectacular 68000. When combined with the
           | OS, it created a system that was truly ahead of its time.
           | 
           | But I don't see the appeal of AmigaOS on modern hardware.
           | Most Amiga fans are more interested in the games and demos
           | that didn't use the OS, and used the blitter/copper etc
           | directly.
           | 
           | And if you just want a faster Amiga, the PiStorm is pretty
           | cool.
        
         | anthk wrote:
         | There's an AROS runtime for GNU/Linux and others.
        
       | einpoklum wrote:
       | I'm not an Amiga'n. When I was a kid in the late 1980s, a friend
       | of mine had some Amiga, and I enjoyed a couple of games he let me
       | play on it, and that's about the extent of my experience since
       | then.
       | 
       | So, I'm finding it difficult to understand what this project
       | actually is: Is it hardware for running original Amiga games and
       | apps, or has there been a continuing user community and SW
       | development effort in Amiga-world that us PC-heads are just not
       | aware of? And that is interesting and different than copycatting
       | advances from non-Amiga environments?
        
         | dizzy9 wrote:
         | The Amiga has become a Ship of Theseus situation. After the
         | 68000 CPU series was no longer developed, third-party expansion
         | boards were developed to add a PowerPC CPU to existing Amigas.
         | AmigaOS 4 was developed to run on PowerPC, and later PowerPC
         | Amiga motherboards were developed which didn't require original
         | Amiga hardware at all. There's also MorphOS, an Amiga-
         | compatible PowerPC OS, and AROS, an open source OS which runs
         | on x86.
         | 
         | There's a substantial Amiga enthusiast community to this day,
         | which is the main market for this stuff. The various "new
         | Amiga" platforms can only run original Amiga games via
         | emulation. There has been plenty of development in the Amiga
         | field, including new games, software and hardware expansions,
         | though it is a niche hobbyist thing and mainly for people who
         | love Amiga. You can find more information on YouTube.
        
       | sgt wrote:
       | It's amazing how much enthusiasm and innovation is still coming
       | from the Amiga community! Also one of the reasons why I follow
       | Amiga Bill on YouTube. Great show.
        
         | derriz wrote:
         | What puts me off the Amiga scene is how little of the 30 or 40
         | year old software has been released into the public domain.
         | 
         | I have no issue with charging for new software for retro
         | platforms in order to support the scene but find it slightly
         | offensive that you have to pay to acquire a legal 1.3 kickstart
         | ROM - released and unchanged since 1988. It just feels like
         | copyright squatting.
        
           | sgt wrote:
           | Yeah but that's probably because the legal blocks are a bit
           | complicated. Most people just pirate it, I'd assume. I find
           | all that stuff on torrents if I need.
        
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       (page generated 2025-12-25 23:02 UTC)