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It's even more sub-divided than that... It's really fragmented.

On the hardware side you have people that want something they will deem as "classic enough". Basically it at least needs to be 68k, possibly with PPC card, and various extents of modern expansions (some of which may not leave much of the original machine in actual use...)

You also have a number of people who care about the architecture for various reasons, but don't care about the actual hardware. There you'll find a number of FPGA projects. There is some overlap here, though.

Then you have the PPC crowd which is split between MorphOS and OS4. OS4 users has been A-Eons primary market given that they are selling actual new PPC hardware (with a second design underway), though they've lately started adding more products for classics, and have been courting MorphOS people too. MorphOS runs on various second-hand PPC hardware.

Then as you say there's the people who are fine with emulation.

Then you have AROS, which is largely hardware agnostic (ports to ARM, PPC, 68k, x86).

Within this there really are a lot of different motivations. E.g. you find classic users who just want to play games, but there are also hardcore classic users who try to use classic Amigas as their main computers.




Out of interest, is Natami still a thing? Anything come of CloneA (aside from that scan doubler that used some of its AGA implementation)?

I haven't followed Amiga developments for a while, last I remembered it appeared the Natami project was parked due to some differences in direction, with the project to create a new 68k FPGA CPU splitting off into a separate project.

I noted that the Minimig AGA core reached v1.0 this year, which is good news, is compatibility fairly good now?

https://code.google.com/p/mist-board/


Who knows what's going on with Natami. Basically they've went off in different directions, and lately the forum for the Apollo core (the 68k FPGA cpu) was wiped. Whether that means they've given up or just decided they don't want to talk to anyone is anyones guess... I would say that at this point any good news from that camp will be a nice surprise rather than something anyone should hold their breath over.

I've not kept up with the Minimig cores. I'm more interested in AROS (though I check in on the FPGA projects now and again because I find them fun to read about), but have had very little time for that too lately.


Oh, how could I forget AROS? I had a few years ago a blast during a week-end while porting NetHack to AROS. The development tools at the time weren't up to current standards but I got a kick out of "programming like it's 1989". For 2 days at least. I wouldn't have to do it on a regular base. :)

AROS is a bit odd, as they are trying to build a full-blown OS although most of the people are probably running it in the hosted version on Linux.

IMO using one of the free unixoid OS as foundation with AROS on top would make more sense. I'm sad that Amithlon didn't work out.

Using classic Amiga as main computers is a hardcore task. I can see that it is not impossible to achieve with PPC Amigas and MorphOS or OS4. But for an 68k Amiga, I don't think it's possible without severe limitations.




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