Serena: An experimental operating system for 32bit Amiga computers | Hacker News Reader

Serena: An experimental operating system for 32bit Amiga computers

github.com

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This is fascinating. I love the virtual processors dispatch queue concept (new to me) and I think I found my lunch reading for today.

I also immediately went to eBay to see how much old Amiga computers cost, and....

Wow, they are pretty much not available? All I could find was parts listings, and the odd "mainboard as-is" for like $1,000 or more...

I had no idea Amiga computers from the 90s were so rare now.

That ship sailed quite some time ago, it seems. At least for OG, unless you want to spend large amounts. I wish I'd kept my 500+ now too.

Tell me about it! I had both an A500 and A3000 in the 90's. I sold both for a pittance...

My mom gave my Amiga 500 away when I was on holidays.

Oof.. I feel that pain, we had an Apple IIe that I taught myself to program on in the 80s, it was basically the genesis of my life and career, and oddly enough kind of a family heirloom for me..

When I left for university in the early 90s, my dad donated it to a local library without even asking me first. To be fair I had never expressed my desired to keep it, it was just in the basement in a box. So it wasn't that big of a deal but I know he feels guilt for that one to this day, once I explained how I felt.

Ouch. I feel for you both. I count myself lucky... I still have my IBM PC XT in the basement (runs and my son plays Zork II on it) thanks to my Dad not only shelling out for it in 1983 but hanging on to it over the years.

But I empathize for other reasons... my Mom gave away my huge bag of Legos, including all the cool Space stuff, that I wish I still had. ;)

I also have regrets. You know, one time I had a 1084S Commodore monitor - pristine condition. One day it didn't want to turn on, and after a few weeks I just threw it in the trash. So ... incredibly stupid! People like me should get the death penalty.

I left my 1084S in my parents' basement, and they eventually threw it out. It had a fiddly power button but was working otherwise.

They are more common in Europe, since they sold better there. (Except the Amiga 1000.)

There are also several reimplementations, either with FPGA or "real" 680x0 CPUs.

This Serena operating system fascinates me in several ways. I have said it before, but I think one very cool thing about the Amigas is how they are the missing link between "too simple" 8-bit and 16-bit DOS computers and our modern computers.

They are advanced enough to run modern(-ish) software and simple enough to be reimplemented faithfully several times over by various projects.

I have the a1000 I learned on as a kid. And the c64 from before that, but I keep saying here that the 32bit microcontrollers are fairly close approximations that use less power and have more processing. You can't get bloat though because they still have ram constraints tied to the mmu that can only do page protection, just like the amiga... Could even use the DACs to spit out s-video maybe?

The Amiga was my first exposure to a computer with a "real" OS: tasks/processes, memory management, IPC, shared libraries, etc. I first learned C on an Amiga. It also taught me to be careful: a bug in your program with no memory protection would often mean a crash/reboot ("Guru Meditation" error.)

Where does that come from that a fraction of computing history is dismissed as "not a real OS" ? Did "real" OS's exist for the IBM PC?

I put real in quotes. I probably should've said "OS of sufficient level of complexity."

Or name the features directly: "my first OS with multitasking and memory management"

I did name the features directly.

OS/2 comes to mind. Version 1.x was already much more sophisticated than MS-DOS.

And Xenix.

For you two: The IBM PC was the first PC and had a 8088 CPU. OS/2 and Xenix were for the 286 and up.

If you make virtual memory a necessary attribute to qualify as OS, there were no OS for the original IBM PC as the 8088 had no support for virtual memory. That's why my (tricky) question.

Amiga OS didn't have virtual memory either.

My first computer was a Timex 2068, while at the school lab we had Amstrad PC1512 with 5" floppies and no HD...

Naturally when we speak about PC, we don't mean the original IBM PC and nothing else.

If we are being pedantic then what you’re describing are called IBM-compatible PCs. Ie they weren’t made by IBM but were designed to support most other of the same software.

Yes and i said "IBM PC"...

The "IBM PC" was a category of machines, not a model. Many of which had advanced processors with MMUs and 16-bit support:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IBM_Personal_Compute...

If what you're referring to as the "IBM PC" is the classic model 5150 and we follow your arbitrary designation of a "real OS", than no. But, by that same logic, I can say ducks aren't birds "if we consider birds only those with non-webbed feet".

No. Xenix through at least version 2.1 ran on the original IBM PC (and early Xenix was ported to the 68000 (e.g. Tandy model 16), which also lacked hardware VM support).[1] You could also run IBM PC Unix in the form of Venix from Venturecom (Version 7 with some BSD things) and PC/IX from ISC (System III). Both were 'official' licensed Unix ports. In the Unix-ish camp, there was Coherent and Minix, as well as various MMU-less Linux projects (e.g. ELKS). And there are many interesting oddballs like iRMX.

Yes, OS/2 did require a 286 until it required a 386.

If you make virtual memory a necessary attribute to qualify as OS

That would be pedantic and historically inaccurate and we shouldn't engage in that.

[1] https://gunkies.org/wiki/XENIX

Xenix .. that brings back memories of green screens and digicards (digiboards).

There is no reason to get the original unless you're a committed retrocomputing enthusiast or collector (I am a retro games collector and decided against getting an original anyway). You can get an exceptional emulation experience using WinUAE or https://www.amigaforever.com/ (which is also WinUAE based).

> I also immediately went to eBay to see how much old Amiga computers cost

Please note that Serena targets a Motorola 68030, so anything below an Amiga 3000 won't qualify.

would that work with a A1200 equipped with an acceleration board?

Yes it will, I have an Amiga 1200 with a Blizzard 1230IV accelerator board. They were super common back in the day. Its 68030 runs at a whopping 50MHz, so you pretty much have to wear a seatbelt.

I had a Blizzard myself, and I kind of remember it was equipped with a 68EC030, that is a 68030 without MMU. And I suspect the reason Serena requires a 68030 is in fact its MMU.

That's interesting! Didn't consider that.

I checked my board. Says MC68030RC50C - it has an MMU

My A1200 got a blizzard (1230mkIV). Has a 030@50, and definitely has MMU; I run Linux and Netbsd with it.

They specifically mention A2000 as supported. I assume that requires an '030 accelerator card then, but an A2000 with '030 card is probably much cheaper than an A3000 or A4000.

We loved them, a great gaming computer, multitasking, already had sound and graphics chips we could program for, multitasking (although Guru Meditation could happen quite frequently), an extensible OS with plugins, dynamic libraries, scriptable applications.

Meanwhile on PC land, Windows 3.x had just come up into the scene.

As the only PC guy on our group, I really enjoyed the demoscene meetings where I could improve my Amiga skills.

Yeah I was in the same boat, most of my friends had Amigas (a rare thing in Canada) and I had a 286SX at the time.. But it was fun to compare notes and see what they could do that I couldn't (or vice-versa).

Loved the demoscene, I was always blown away by what they released.

Shipping is prohibitively expensive including UPS and just like 15 year old flat screen televisions, sellers will rip out components to cut down on costs. I once saw a horse saddle get shipped to Argentina from Texas for 36 dollars through UPS in 2004 in a flimsy cardboard box. I can’t imagine the cost these days

I’ve been eyeing the vampire v4 standalone. FPGA reimagining of the amiga with backwards compatibility

It doesn't seem like it tries to emulate any of the constraints the original Amiga had. Is it essentially just a way to run newer versions of amigaos on modern hardware?

It still to the metal coding but evolves the platform a bit it seems adding i guess a bit the future that could have been if Commodore had been run well.

Too proprietary, and no ecosystem to speak of. (as a consequence of the former)

I'd look at minimig-aga and other such open hardware efforts.

I have one and it's cool, but doesn't give me the same feeling as the original hardware. Perhaps I'm just old.

Just a quick note that the Vampire may not implement the subset of the 68851 PMMU in the '030 and may not boot this OS (or NetBSD or Linux).

Via http://www.amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2024-08-00046-DE.html (in German)

Now also in English: https://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2024-08-00046-EN.html

Stefany is not advertising them for sale at the moment, but is still working on a 68040/48060 platform in the background. https://c256foenix.com/a2560x/?v=6cc98ba2045f

If you are looking for an audience for your platform, you may want to connect to that community via their Discord. They have some experienced network stack developers.

Heh, that made my morning. I was reading the specs on the cube and grinning like a fool.

Thanks for sharing this.

"The most important difference is that Serena OS is far closer to the POSIX standard in terms of functionality and behavior than the original Amiga OS was. This is most noticeable (from the viewpoint of an app developer) in the sense that Serena OS does full resource tracking. This means that the OS automatically reclaims resources such as memory when an application terminates."

https://amiga-news.de/en/news/AN-2024-08-00046-EN.html

A video or a screenshot would have been nice

YouTube has a lot of videos and screenshots.

Any links? I can’t seem to find it on YouTube

I think it was a jab. Youtube indeed has a lot of videos. Maybe not of this OS, though.

Anyway here is a screenshot: http://www.amiga-news.de/de/news/AN-2024-08-00046-DE.html

I tried unsuccessfully too. It doesn't help that Serena Williams is a famous tennis player and "amiga" is "friend" (female) in Spanish.

The Windows-based build instructions are...interesting.

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