Review: Aros/Icarus on a P4 (UPDATED)

Justin

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Yo been a while since I have seen any reviews, so here you go....

R0jaws sent me an old 2.4ghz P4 system to donate to a local charity, I had previously set this up as an AROS machine, so I thought before I return it to windows form and give the system away I would do a quick AROS/Icarus review:)

Now then AROS is a free to all multi developer OS for standard PCs based on the Amiga OS but brought up to date a little:nod:

you can download Icarus here http://www.icarosdesktop.org/ and you can run as a Live DVD or via USB pen, it comes in both 32 and 64 bit flavours.

I would say a P4 over 2ghz with at least a gig of ram will be plenty to run this on, however the faster the better as with all things I guess:LOL:

I went for a complete install on a nekkid hard drive(this also means no MS windows to hide), pop in the DVD, following the on screen prompts and soon you will see a lovely Icarus desktop with a lovely shiny new "install Icarus" button, hit that bad boy and again follow the on screen prompts.

very soon a quick reboot and you are up and running(y)

Icarus is very simple to use, there is a nice "start bar" at the bottom with all the handy stuff nicely available.

Internet and email are a breeze with OWB and Simple Mail all pre-installed (no flash support yet) but it does view Amibay very nicely and as you would expect it to look.

All the usual OS things you would expect to find are here, it supports USB, printers, DVD, internet etc...., but the bit we are interested in is Amibridge, this is the bit that lets you emulate an Amiga for all your classic software and it does do it well, you can emulate an 060 with jit if you like, but I decided to stick to an 020 @ 1.5ghz!!:LOL::LOL:

As with OS4 you have the ability to launch ADFs just by double clicking them.

Another feature that I do love is that you have full access to both your System and Work folders on the Icarus desktop, this makes copying or deleting files a breeze and you can change what you want without having to load any emulation 1st!!:eek::D

There are some games included within AROS such as Quake and Doom both look and play great, but as with OS4 I don't see the point, this is a PC being an Amiga being a PC playing Amiga versions of PC games (WTF?)

anyhoo the integration of the classic system is very nicely done (I believe OS4 can only emulate an 020?)

So what is the verdict? If you want OS4 but better and for free (notice free! that is very important!) and you have an old PC just laying about why not give this a go? it is NG amiga for nothing so what have you lost?

10/10 for effort and many many thanks to all the people that have contributed to AROS and Icarus:nod:(y)
 

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a few more images show AROS/Icarus in use
 

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what NIC where you using & did you have wifi ??
 
nice review mate will have to get this going one day
 
great review :) I have a spare P4 would be nice to setup and have some fun :D
 
must get round to trying this one day, got a little optiplex 270 gx or summit, real small pc thats p4 2.8

nice review
 
Dam one day I`ll get wifi supported card for AROS then I be absolutely out of my pond :)
 
Interesting. I recently received an old pentium 4 based computer myself that was supposed to end up recycled. It´s just missing a hard drive. I guess, this should motivate me to find a drive and install this thing on it to play around with. :cool:
 
darn it, i should have also mentioned that it has its own kickstart rom built in now, a nice and fully legal integrated rom(y)

top stuff:nod:
 
Well Icarus desktop AROS has had an update so it is only fair this review has an update as well.

boy has Icarus come a long way!!!

1st of all it was a joy to install, straight from the DVD to hard drive, graphics, sound and network all installed automatically.

there is a lot of stuff on the AROS side that is very NGAmiga, a decent web browser, email, instant messaging, Quake, Doom, Duke3d, a whole array of emulators from Speccy to Playstation. you can actually use this as a day to day machine.

but the real joy? go to the end tab and select workbench and.... yep you guessed it workbench loads up :) i installed my games/demos, the WHDLoad and Kickstarts and lo and behold seamless 68k Amiga action.

so in short NGAmiga/OS4.X style OS that works out of the box and fully integrated classic Amiga gaming fun and the best part? yep it is free:LOL:

i shall continue to watch AROS closely as i truly believe this is the real future of the Amiga, modern, cheap hardware and backwards compatibility all in one, well done Paolo Besser and the AROS team for this truly amazing piece of software

you can download Icarus Desktop here http://www.icarosdesktop.org/


 

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only genuine commodore software for me ! oh wait hang on...
 
Cheers Justin, nice ones (y)

Also got to try AROS out a couple of days ago, though I didn't go too deep using it.
Installed Icaros desktop (native x86 install) on the following hardware:

Motherboard: MSI K7N2 Delta-L
(nForce2 chipset, onboard nForce2 AC'97 audio, onboard nForce2 100 Mbps LAN)
CPU: Athlon XP 2800+
RAM: 1 x 1 GB DDR400 (single channel)
Graphics: GF 5200FX
Storage: 13 GB ATA33 HD, DVD-RW, 1.44 MB floppy
Case: Desktop PC case circa 1996 (gotta keep it desktop style!)
Input: Pretty boring standard PS/2 KB & mouse

No fancy stuff there, installation was pretty straightforward after booting the Live CD (I used the Light version - CD instead of DVD) so maybe some software was missing, will check the DVD version later on too.

Onboard LAN worked fine after selecting the proper driver, the GF 5200FX is well supported too. Onboard sound was supported via the AC'97 driver but (as already commented in the wiki pages) got audio-out only. Fair enough, if the need for recording ever arises there's the apparently fully supported SB Live!. USB worked fine too (Trident) trying out a pendrive.

AROS boots fast and feels very snappy. Well, it ought to, given the heritage :smile:. An isolated OWB crash could have been CPU overheating (initially used a different PC case with apparently horrible airflow properties for an Athlon XP. Lesson learned).

The Amiga feel is there, and the nicest touch is the quite smooth mouse pointer movement. Funny as it may sound, this is what I had missed the most after beginning to use Windows 95! It's 2012 and it still ain't moving smoothly on my WinXP PC!

Well that's all for now, far from a review of course, just a short account of a first acquaintance. I'll agree with Justin, kudos to the AROS/Icarus guys for a job well done and may the future see AROS completed and fully fledged as an alternative OS (y)

PS: Last time I was this excited running something on the PC was about 13 years ago, with BeOS 4.5.2
 
yeah, it really is getting better and better(y)

I agree it's improving and impressive. I could argue about linux, but you can't boot it as fast as aros on the same hardware. I like it for quick boot os for simple forum usage.
 
Cheers Justin, nice ones (y)

Also got to try AROS out a couple of days ago, though I didn't go too deep using it.
Installed Icaros desktop (native x86 install) on the following hardware:

Motherboard: MSI K7N2 Delta-L
(nForce2 chipset, onboard nForce2 AC'97 audio, onboard nForce2 100 Mbps LAN)
CPU: Athlon XP 2800+
RAM: 1 x 1 GB DDR400 (single channel)
Graphics: GF 5200FX
Storage: 13 GB ATA33 HD, DVD-RW, 1.44 MB floppy
Case: Desktop PC case circa 1996 (gotta keep it desktop style!)
Input: Pretty boring standard PS/2 KB & mouse

No fancy stuff there, installation was pretty straightforward after booting the Live CD (I used the Light version - CD instead of DVD) so maybe some software was missing, will check the DVD version later on too.

Onboard LAN worked fine after selecting the proper driver, the GF 5200FX is well supported too. Onboard sound was supported via the AC'97 driver but (as already commented in the wiki pages) got audio-out only. Fair enough, if the need for recording ever arises there's the apparently fully supported SB Live!. USB worked fine too (Trident) trying out a pendrive.

AROS boots fast and feels very snappy. Well, it ought to, given the heritage :smile:. An isolated OWB crash could have been CPU overheating (initially used a different PC case with apparently horrible airflow properties for an Athlon XP. Lesson learned).

The Amiga feel is there, and the nicest touch is the quite smooth mouse pointer movement. Funny as it may sound, this is what I had missed the most after beginning to use Windows 95! It's 2012 and it still ain't moving smoothly on my WinXP PC!

Well that's all for now, far from a review of course, just a short account of a first acquaintance. I'll agree with Justin, kudos to the AROS/Icarus guys for a job well done and may the future see AROS completed and fully fledged as an alternative OS (y)

PS: Last time I was this excited running something on the PC was about 13 years ago, with BeOS 4.5.2

Same mobo as me, everything is supported lovely.
 
Same mobo as me, everything is supported lovely.

Yup, works great (y)
know of any way, by any chance, to enable audio input as well?

(hackintosh setups commonly had this problem - audio out ok but not audio-in - with most ALC codecs, wonder if there's something in common here :unsure:)
 
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