Even better support in emulated environments

[Elowan]

hello,

is there a chance, to see some kind of "kernel-update" to dramatically improve our favorite AmigaOS?
Right now, it´s limited to the 128MB RAM of the emulated accelerator board... which gives us around 40MB, when OS4.1FE has booted. "Not too much", right?!

So - will there be something in development, to overcome this limitation?

Other than that - OS4.1FE is a great experience for me! Thanky you, all of you!


Cheers!

[ssolie]

is there a chance, to see some kind of "kernel-update" to dramatically improve our favorite AmigaOS?
Right now, it´s limited to the 128MB RAM of the emulated accelerator board... which gives us around 40MB, when OS4.1FE has booted. "Not too much", right?!

You are running an emulated Classic Amiga in WinUAE and it is doing exactly what it is supposed to. The classic hardware is what it is.

So - will there be something in development, to overcome this limitation?

What you are asking for is a "new" Classic Amiga which uses all the available address space which can then be installed in WinUAE. Such a Classic Amiga never existed and would need to be created. Then WinUAE may or may not need changes to run this new virtual hardware platform.

I don't know when/if Hyperion will develop such a virtual hardware platform for WinUAE users.

[Elowan]

hello Ssolie,

thanks for quick reply.

From what I get, the "problem" is, that OS4.1 won't accept any other memory than accelerator RAM which can not be expanded above the 128MB.
If this could be changed in OS4.1, more (other than accelerator RAM) memory could be assigned during emulation. Maybe ZorroIII Mem or somehing else.

(I understand, if this is maybe too much to re-code or develop)

OS 4.1FE runs really responsive and even games, like Freespace Demo, Heretic II demo are working great, without any stutter...

But on the other hand, you can not use Odysee browser, because you run out of memory, then

I´d really like to develop for OS4.1, but beeing limited to emulation with such low memory resources, keeps me from doing that.

best regards


Cheers!

[Daedalus]

I suspect it's unlikely to ever happen - a decision was made somewhere along the way to disable the use of Zorro-III RAM that isn't accelerator-mounted on classics due to speed, which is perfectly legitimate. But the RAM itself is recognised and supported as it can be used as swap space (check for ZoRAM cards for details), so it's a case of a feature that has been turned off with no known possibility for reactivating it.

Such a feature (perhaps a kernel argument) would be pretty simple to implement, however WinUAE isn't an officially supported platform so Hyperion aren't interested, despite the numerous sales of the OS that are a direct result of WinUAE's PPC emulation. Perhaps there's a legal reason it can't be done, i.e., licencing of the AmigaOS name forbids its use on emulators or something, but even in that case it would be possible to have the capability to enable Z-III RAM boards for anyone who wants to watch their real hardware crawl with massive pools of RAM.

Anyway, the request has been made before more than once... http://forum.hyperion-entertainment.biz ... =36&t=3331

[Elowan]

hmmm - ok - what a pitty, so we emulator folks have to live with just 128MB...

You mentioned swap - can you tell, how to configure it? I think there is a swap partition anyways, hidden on the DH0: Workbench hdd-file, if I remember right.
Maybe it´s not working, because when startin Odysee Webbrowser, the system is not responsive any more, when the browser is launched.
I guess it´s because all memory was taken by it...

Are there some other workarounds, to have more spare RAM or getting swap to work?

[Daedalus]

You can assign a partition on your hard drive as swap, the instructions are included as part of the original installation guide. This swap can be used for virtual memory, though in my experience it's not 100% reliable. OS 4.1 Classic has the option to use ZorRAM boards as swap space instead since they're too slow to use as main system fast RAM, yet should be much faster than hard drive swap over the old classic interfaces. In WinUAE you should be able to set up a partition easily enough. You'll need to check if WinUAE supports emulation of ZorRAM board hardware as generic Z-III RAM probably won't work.

[Elowan]

hey Daedaluls,

maybe you can help me out on that one...

Right, I was thinking, that the ZorRAM option should be faster, than swapping to a SCSI harddisk(file) system.

How to re-assign swap to a ZorRAM board in Os 4.1(FE) Classic?
I´ll check, if WinUAE let me emulate such a board.

Cheers!

[Elowan]

Ok - WinUAE can emulate ZorRAM board with 128 or 256 MB RAM, that could be used as Swap - but how to change the "path to swap" in OS4.1FE?
Is there a way with Media-Tool? If so, how does it work?


kind regards

[thomasrapp]

You don't need to configure it, it just works. If you put a ZorRAM in, it is used as swap. Use the memstat command to check.

[Elowan]

hello thomas,

so it´s just a matter of configure WinUAE:

RAM -> Memory Settings -> Z3 fast (crank up the slider) ???

kind regards