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#powerpc

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I am building gcc-15.1.0 on my iMac G4 (Tiger) machine. It is on stage2, which is a good sign.

It will include C, C++, Fortran, Modula-2, Objective C, and Objective C++ compilers.

It will depend on my new PowerPC Mac OS X modernization library, libpcc: github.com/ibara/libppc

I'll write a blog post about how to use it once it is all compiled; my goal is to produce a turnkey solution that just works(TM), including assembler, linker, and other utilities, as recent as possible for PowerPC.

And libppc can be instantly extendable to incorporate more C11 and later features. Hopefully others in the retro Mac community are interested in building that up with me.

My ultimate goal is to build some flavor of WebKit some day and have a modern web experience (even if slow, and possibly using X11). But in the meantime we will probably build a lot of excellent modern software to keep these machines going.

Modernization effort (C11-C23) for Mac OS X PowerPC - ibara/libppc
GitHubGitHub - ibara/libppc: Modernization effort (C11-C23) for Mac OS X PowerPCModernization effort (C11-C23) for Mac OS X PowerPC - ibara/libppc

#TodayInHistory 2005 - At WWDC #Apple announces it is abandoning the #PowerPC in favor of #Intel processors for #Macintosh computers.

The first Intel-based Macintosh computers should be on the market by mid-2006, with PowerPC-based computers phased out by the end of 2007. Reasons given for the switch are the lack of a 3 GHz G5 processor, lack of G5 processors for portable computers, and the Intel processor future looks better for Apple computers.

AmigaOS 4 Monthly Roundup – May 2025

Hi,

Welcome to the AmigaOS 4 Monthly Roundup covering May 2025! Thanks for visiting my blog, and hope you’ll enjoy the read.

At the time of writing it is now June 1st and a new month lies ahead of us. Who knows what it will bring to the world of the Amiga? Will we see development starting on bringing AmigaOS 4 to the Mirari board?

Time will show.

As of now, MorphOS is now booting and working to some degree on it. Whenever I visit Discord or forums, it looks like there are updates on their progress porting it.

I’m very impressed by the work of the Mirari team, and also the MorphOS group, and look forward to following their work in the coming months. It will be very interesting to see what will happen in the AmigaOS 4 camp when boards are available to their developers.

With that said, let us now move on to the news from May. 🙂

Software News

AmigaGPT is a versatile ChatGPT client for AmigaOS 3.x, 4.1, and MorphOS. It is being developed by Cameron Armstrong a.k.a. Nightfox. This powerful tool brings the capabilities of OpenAI’s GPT to your Amiga system, enabling text generation, question-answering, and creative exploration. AmigaGPT can also generate stunning images using DALL-E and includes support for speech output, making it easier than ever to interact with AI on your Amiga. Designed to integrate seamlessly with your system, AmigaGPT delivers modern AI technology while embracing the timeless Amiga experience. Version 2.6.0 is now available for download from OS4Depot.

PolarPaint is an experimental paint program made in Hollywood by Anbjørn Myren. Version 1.057 was uploaded to OS4Depot and became available on May 7th. If you are interested in checking it out, please click here. Another version called PolarPaint Small can be downloaded via this link. A list of changes can be found on OS4Depot.

Video Slot Machine is a game developed by Juan Carlos Herran Martin. An interesting addition is that you can customize the slot machine with your videos and watch them when you earn money from your spins. The latest version, 1.20, includes new background graphics and melodies, bug fixes, and Spanish language support.

Fractal Nova is a real-time Mandelbrot / Julia fractal calculated by the GPU requiring the Warp3D Nova library version 54. It is being developed by Juha Niemimaki and version 1.1 is now available on OS4Depot.

An update to Report+, a ReAction-based utility with nine functions, has been released by James Jacobs. It was made available on OS4Depot on May 19th. This tool can help you with generating Aminet- and OS4Depot-style readme files, performing batch processing on icons, and much more. Recent changes since 8.65 include miscellaneous improvements and bug fixes. More detailed information can be found on OS4Depot.

Kjetil Hvalstrand has been working on improving the Classic Amiga emulation package E-UAE. Version 1.1.1 has been released and includes several improvements:

  • Fixed two issues with bdsocket.library
  • Fixed issue with stretching in 16-bit AGA screens
  • Created accelerator.library

Download is available here.

Maijestro of the Amiga Retro Channel on YouTube gave this one a run:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaCmVbtItOI

RdrPrep is a program that prepares an ASCII file for submission to a Hercules virtual card reader. It reads the input file, and provides a mechanism to include other (ASCII or EBCDIC) files. It is being developed by James M. Morrison.

TMSColor is a converter from BMP to TMS9928 format developed by Oscar Toledo G. Version 3.1 is now available on OS4depot.

Steffen Häuser a.k.a. MagicSN is working hard on bringing RetroArch, a modular emulation system that can emulate a wide range of systems, to AmigaOS 4. On OS4Depot you can now find cores for the soon-to-be-released emulation package.

There you’ll find the following cores:

  • PicoDrive
  • GenesisPlus GX
  • SNES9x 2010
  • MAME 2003

The Amiga Retro Channel follows the development close and has recently published a video of the beta version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJY5gWPYAtQ

On May 29th, DRIDI released version 7.342Final of the Arabic Console Device, which contains a bug fix. It can be downloaded from OS4Depot.

Version 2.5.2 of the WHD-Load front-end iGame was released in May. The AmigaOS 4 port is maintained by George Sokianos a.k.a. Walkero. This is a front-end application for launching WHDLoad games and demos. Changes are as follows:

Fixed

  • Fixed the execution of whdload that broke on v2.5.1 for those that use an old icon library

iGame 2.5.1 – [2025-05-29]

Added

  • Added a file requester in the Properties window, which can be used to set a different WHDLoad slave file for an item. This is useful when a game/demo changed place on the hard disk. (#174)
  • Based on the selected file by the new field, the tooltypes text is updated, enabled/disabled, based if the selected file is a WHDLoad slave one.

Changed

  • Moved the Properties window code to its own files
  • Added the “Open game folder” menu in the MorphOS version, that was missing
  • Disabled the gamepad usage on MorphOS because it was reported giving problems while playing a game

Fixed

  • Fixed starting WHDLoad games in MorphOS using WHDLoadopener (#253)

iGame 2.5.0 – [2025-05-12]

Added

  • Added a new “Information” window that includes the “Released date”, the “Released by”, the “Chipset”, the links to external websites and most of the fields from the properties window.
  • Added the option to use repositories based on assigns (fixes #240)

Changed

  • The “Properties” window has only the tooltypes of the selected item available to change.

Fixed

  • Fixed a potential crash on exit, happening mostly on AmigaOS 3.1 systems (fixes #239)
Screenshot from an older version.

BreakHack is a small, roguelike game. It was developed by Linus Probert. You can find it for various platforms on Steam. This game was ported to AmigaOS 4 by George Sokianos, also known as Walkero. The new version contains the following changes:

[4.2.1r1] – 2025-05-31

Changed

  • Updated to the latest upstream code and now it uses SDL3

FrozenAt is a utility developed by Kjetil Hvalstrand. It is a small command line tool to find out where a program is hanging. Version 1.1 is now available for download.

Michael Trebilcock has uploaded a vast amount of updates to libraries and more to OS4Depot! It is a huge list, so I recommend you visit there and have a look. Here is the link.

Screenshot from an older version.

Version 34.2 of AmiArcadia for AmigaOS 4, a Signetics-based machines emulator, has been released by James Jacobs.

According to the documentation, AmiArcadia supports the following systems:

  • Emerson Arcadia 2001 console family (Bandai, Emerson, Grandstand, Intervision, Leisure-Vision, Leonardo, MPT-03, Ormatu, Palladium, Poppy, Robdajet, Tele-Fever, Tempest, Tryom, Tunix, etc.) (c. 1982);
  • Interton VC 4000 console family (Acetronic, Cabel, Fountain, Hanimex, Interton, Prinztronic, Radofin, Rowtron, Soundic, Voltmace, Waddingtons, etc.) (c. 1978);
  • Elektor TV Games Computer (1979);
  • PIPBUG- and BINBUG-based machines (EA 77up2, EA 78up5, Signetics Adaptable Board Computer, Eurocard 2650, etc.) (1977-1978);
  • Signetics Instructor 50 trainer (1978);
  • Signetics TWIN minicomputer (1976);
  • Central Data 2650 computer (1977);
  • PHUNSY computer (c. 1980);
  • Ravensburger Selbstbaucomputer aka 2650 Minimal Computer trainer (1984);
  • Hofacker MIKIT 2650 trainer (1978);
  • Astro Wars, Galaxia, Laser Battle and Lazarian coin-ops by Zaccaria (1979-1981);
  • Malzak 1 and 2 coin-ops by Kitronix (c. 1981);
  • AY-3-8500/8550/8600-based Pong systems (Coleco Telstar Galaxy, Sheen TVG-201, etc.) (1976-1977);
  • VTech Type-right machine (1985)

It is packed with features, far too many to list here. Examples include ReAction GUI, load/save snapshots, and windowed and fullscreen modes. Other features are CPU tracing, trainer, and drag and drop support. Additionally, it offers graphics scaling, PAL/NTSC modes, and frame skipping, among many other features!

Here is a summary of the changes since the last version:

Changes since V34.31:
Summary:

  • TWIN, PHUNSY, Selbstbaucomputer: added “Settings|Input|Queue
    keystrokes?” toggle.
  • Miscellaneous improvements and bug fixes.

Please click here to be taken to the download page.

Amiga-news.de reports that that “The Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) multimedia library is now available for AmigaOS 4 in versions 2.32.6 and 3.2.14.” More information is available on their website here.

Miscellaneous News

A new issue of Amiga Future has been released! This time it is number 174.

More information is available here. You can order the magazine from your favorite Amiga shops or directly from the publisher.

Trixie of the Rear Window blog has published a new post. It looks at the SATA PCI card from Rabbit Hole Computing.

YouTube

The Norwegian musician Helge Kvalheim has returned with two new songs for us to enjoy! He creates his music on an AmigaOne X5000.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vy6i10WWl3g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGQZvQGPWPM

A video from CLASS 2025 features Robert Bernardo. He is the organizer of the show and leader of the Fresno Commodore User Group and the Southern California Commodore & Amiga Network. The video shows AmigaOS 4 demos running on an AmigaOne 1222+.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_rvKvziBB8

He also did a presentation of the A1222+:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeL2OKtxFLw

Ghettofinger Gaming is back again and this time with a new unboxing video! From Relec in Switzerland comes his second A1222+ in form of The Red One. I must say that this computer looks very, very nice. 🙂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAe5K1K4Qwg

He also made a video showing his two systems:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QMlamwfkkE

Anouk33 has created a video showing a comparison of AmigaOS 4.1 and MorphOS 3.19 on a Pegasos 2 in relation to Petunia and Trance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2L-bYMQvQnI

AmigaWave episode 393 includes a comparison between AmigaOS 4.1 and MorphOS. It is in Spanish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdtLk3bYk-A

TheLostC is back with a new video, this time about updating UBoot on his Sam460cr.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ny0QfSqkgWY

Until next time

You’ve now reached the end of the AmigaOS 4 Monthly Roundup for May 2025.

Thanks as always to all readers and supporters out there. Thanks for visiting my blog and see you in the next roundup! 🙂

Best regards,

Puni

#239 #240 #Amiga #AmigaNews #AmigaOne #AmigaOS4 #PowerPC #PPC

A week ago (mastodon.social/@GamesMissed/1), I failed to resist the temptation to bring home a lovely Power Macintosh G4 tower. Today, with the rains over and some quiet time, I finally took it back out of its box to give the insides a better inspection and blow out the dust bunnies.

(My brain is rebelling against tagging this with "Retrocomputing." The G3 desktop from my relative didn't have that effect, but this absolutely does. Interesting.)

Replied in thread

@justine @gumnos

It's still so wild to me that almost all modern CPUs have hardware virtualization baked-in.

As you well know, home CPUs (especially Intel ones) were not very capable years ago. I recall specifically that VMWare was viewed as something of a miracle, as Intel CPUs weren't even supposed to be capable of real emulation/virtualization. That's something that #PowerPC excelled at.

Now almost every dinky netbook is basically a mainframe. It's amazing, especially when we are smart enough not to give the likes of microsoft even a second of time on our machines! XD

(Life's too short for bloated and user-hostile software!)