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Comment by mark_round | Hacker News Reader

Author here, thanks for posting! Happy to answer any questions or chat Amiga stuff in general. Bear in mind - as I said in the article - I'm more-or-less a total newbie when it comes to all this stuff. I have been involved in the Amiga scene since I got my first A600 in the 90s, but really just observed the coding side of things from the sidelines although I did enjoy a brief stint as a Graphics Artist using DeluxePaint for a UK Scene group. My C code will probably make your eyes bleed, and I'm sure I've got some factual details wrong but diving back into this platform again (and discovering all the little details that made it so advanced for the time) after a long absence has been a lot of fun!

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How do you feel about the Amiga 500 as a platform for teaching systems programming? These are a lot more accessible to kids and the like, than the fully loaded A600 that only a few of us have stashed in the attic/atop the retrocollection ..

Kids really love retro-computing (I'm a curator at such a museum, also) and the #1 request is - how do I get some hardware to get started?

What of the new-school platforms do you consider a viable answer to that question, Amiga systems-hacking wise?

Having done system programming on retro platforms, my recommendation for this specific purpose is to use a great emulator, and the Amiga happens to have UAE which is one of the best emulators around. Debugging will be a lot easier and you deal way less with the grind of using an old piece of hardware. I understand if you want the full retro experience, but the full experience won't necessarily be conducive to better learning.

This. One day I'd like to revisit Amiga coding. I did a fair bit of Blitz Basic and a little bit of 68K ASM back in the day, but learning it was challenging as a teenager in the pre-Internet era.

I'd definitely rather edit+compile/assemble code on a modern PC and do most testing in UAE. I don't need the nostalgia of slow reboot cycles and reloading things from floppy disks when my code inevitably crashes/hangs, let alone editing blurry code on a 14" CRT TV...

Even people targeting the real hardware often compile these days on a Mac or PC.

The tricky bit is deployment to the Amiga. My only way to put files onto my Amiga at present is a CompactFlash card (or 3.5" floppies)

I don't have ethernet hardware on my Amiga (and may not have enough RAM for that approach), but maybe there's a slower-but-simpler solution with a parallel/serial port link?

UAE makes that deployment easy, making a PC folder accessible as an Amiga drive. The downside is the lack of smooth 50Hz (PAL) display. Although I do have a g-sync monitor, so maybe that's a solveable problem these days...

There are lots of options for parallel and serial transfers, check out this article for some good options:

http://www.boomerangsworld.de/cms/vc/amiga_transfer.html

The books are all available now, archive.org and other places including this one which is also hosting the wip RKM https://www.retro-commodore.eu/rkrm-wip.

Modern systems ? I dunno. I wouldn't use anything like Linux, Mac or Windows - there's just way too much indirection and the system as a whole is just too opaque for a beginner. I think the A500 could make a fantastic platform for systems programming teaching. I mean, it's probably going to be AmigaOS 1.2/1.3 so very basic compared to later releases but there's enough in there to hold attention and create something interesting. Plus it's always nice to have something like the original beige "wedge" to hack on, it's a lot more interesting and "real" than working on an emulator.

I think the thing that would hold you back on an un-expanded A500 would be choice of programming language; a C compiler is probably just too heavyweight to use on a basic machine, particularly if you don't have a hard drive fitted. Assembler would be OK, although possibly a little too low-level. Something like AMOS would fit the bill perfectly though: Would run find on older systems and very quick to create something that would hold the attention like a game or demo. Although that's not really "systems programming" as such.

The best way to develop systems software for the Amiga will probably be cross-development from a more modern platform and programming language. LLVM is getting m68k support which ought to make this feasible in the future, including some recent feature updates https://m680x0.github.io/blog/2023/05/may-updates.html . Though some basic pieces are still missing, such as support for the Hunk format in the LLVM linker.

I used to do some systems programming with then M2 Amiga Modula-2 compiler. They had a complete mapping to the systems libraries and I suppose for the general learning experience M2 is more pleasant than C, although that works as well, of course. There was quite a lot of M2 public domain software at that time on the Amiga so that it should be possible to find good examples.

That said, system programming on the Amiga is for good or bad much closer to the hardware than e.g Linux, so prepare to see a lot of guru meditations along the way when you have slightly mishandled a pointer or a data type, and there are a lot of pointers ;-)

Great fun though.

I think it’s perfect.

It’s semi modern, it has everything a modern system has, only less of it. (Except a GPU.) It’s nevertheless very simple, and it’s thoroughly documented.

This means you can treat it as an embedded target and code it without any operating system, or you can take advantage of the OS. (AROS m68k if you are putting together a course, rather than the original proprietary ROM files.)

Thanks for the AROS tip, that makes a lot of sense, have duly noted it for future reference ..

The vampire v4 is great for this as well.

Very interesting article, I've only vaguely heard of the more modern Amiga computers. Looking at https://www.hyperion-entertainment.com/index.php/where-to-bu... the latest versions of the OS run on the 1200+ with an accelerator, I assume then the A500 isn't really supported any more?

I've got an A500 I bought second hand that I need to play with more, it came with some interesting looking software such as AMOS 3D. Just wondering if you have any recommendations to obtain a HDMI output. I just found - https://www.retropassion.co.uk/product/rgb2hdmi_amiga_500/. Also it sounds like I should probably dismantle it to remove the battery?

OS 4.x runs on PowerPC processors, and there are a bunch of dedicated systems like the X1000, X5000 or SAM460EP. You can also run a "classic" OS 4.x version in emulators or on classic Amigas fitted with PowerPC accelerators. You could always snag a used Mac Mini PPC and run MorphOS on it for a similar experience; MorphOS is a sort of "off-shoot" from the Amiga family tree but has very active development including up to date browsers like https://wayfarer.icu.

Hyperion have also released updated and bug-fixed versions of "classic" AmigaOS, and you can purchase the ROM sets and disks for e.g. OS 3.2 to use with an original machine like your A500.

For HDMI output, I use an Indivision card. It's a little fiddly to fit (has to clip in over the top of some other chips) but gives a great stable and crystal-clear DVI or HDMI output. There are also external "flicker fixer" boxes or scandoublers that turn the Amiga 15KHz video output into something useable by modern displays, but in my experience they tend not to give as good quality output or have lag issues when playing games.

To add to the MorphOS option, there's also AROS which aims for more Amiga compatibility, but also runs natively on x86 PCs or hosted under Linux (you get a window with the full AROS desktop) w/out a VM if you want.

(At one point I had a AROS setup that booted straight into FrexxEd with my Linux home directory made available, and Linux-hosted AROS "booted" the entire OS and started FrexxEd faster than my admittedly bloated Emacs setup would start....)

To me the most interesting AROS is the 68000 port of AROS, which enables fully open source Amiga hardware clones and emulators.

Not the cheapest option, but the OSSC (Open Source Scan Converter) may be a worthwhile investment if you're into retro gaming/computing:

https://videogameperfection.com/products/open-source-scan-co...

You'll need an Amiga RGB SCART cable to connect the Amiga to it.

Ok so it's worth noting that the AmigaOS has two completely separate branches in use today: 3.x and 4.x

4.x is targeted to amigas with PPC CPUs or PPC based accelerators (mid to late 90s accelertors and some newer things like the X5000)

3.x is targeted to amigas with m68k CPUS (all the commodore era machines)

Both 3.x and 4.x are under active development today. The latest 3.x is AmigaOS 3.2.2. The latest 4.x is AmigaOS4.1

With regards support, the A500 is still the best supported Amiga. Its install base and current user base dwarves that of all the other models and accelerators. There were just so many more A500s sold than any other type of amiga. I would not be surprised if you told me that there 2 or 3 orders of magnitude more A500s than PPC amigas out there. So if you are developing for the amiga and want your software used by lots of folk then targeting the A500 will get it infront of the most eyeballs.

Today though most people buy some kind of accelerator for their amiga and the Terrible Fire (TF536) or Individual Computers (ACA500plus) accelerator cards seem to be the most favoured modern choices. Neither of these choices are PPC based cards and the amiga community still favours m68k CPUs.

WRT the battery, the standard A500 did not ship with a battery on the motherboard, only the A500+ did. Some RAM upgrade cards do have a VARTA battery and those could still damage the RAM upgrade card and should be removed.

Sidenote: AmigaOS 3.5 and 3.9 are actually a kinda separate abandoned branch but features of these have been backported to the 3.2 branch.

Put in a pistorm and the new roms.

Hm. Your link to the Apollo meanwhile points to something else, I guess?

Try this one? http://www.apollo-computer.com/

Err... this? http://www.apollo-computer.com/v2legacy.php

Do I see there an A1200 with a case that doesn't close properly because you put a 3.5" HD in it instead of the more expensive (and less capacity) 2.5" HD? :)

Edit: Ah, no. I just read the article. It's the accelerator, I suppose.

Ha, good eye :) Nah, you see an A1200 that I am constantly fiddling with, and I frequently take the SD and CF cards out to clone! I do have a set of backup scripts that clone content to a CF card in a PCMCIA adapter but I always feel safer with a full "dd" backup or similar. Because I keep opening it up I just leave the screws removed for easier access and make sure it's kept dust free every so often.

If you're willing to mod the case (or buy a new case you're willing to mod) I can strongly recommend a CF2IDE relocator

https://retroready.one/collections/adapters-interfaces/produ...

Use AmigaE, far nicer than C. Never tried Chris Handley's "Portabl E" compiler.

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