PiStorm turbocharges vintage Amigas with the Raspberry Pi
FOSDEM 2024 The PiStorm is an ingenious way to make real vintage Commodore Amiga hardware not only run again, but do it over three orders of magnitude faster – using cheap, open source hardware and software.
The PiStorm project has gone through several iterations, and Andrew Hutchings demonstrated and talked about two recent developments: the PiStorm32-Lite accelerator board for the Amiga 1200, running the Emu68 bare-metal 68000 emulator for Arm.
The FOSDEM conference in Brussels is a hotbed of Unix fans, so it's a brave individual who presents a totally non-Unix-like system. Especially when the new iteration removes Linux from the setup. It's even more intrepid if he actually uses the 30-year-old kit in question to present from. Hutchings has prior vintage-kit form, though – he's also the chap behind this Pi-based teletext system.
On the other hand, the Amiga is one of the most cult retro platforms out there. It sold in the millions, defined the state of the art for mid-1980s video games, and it's still beloved by legions of fans today. As The Reg FOSS desk has covered, its unique OS received an update last year, and there are dedicated FPGA-based accelerators that can turbocharge revenant Commodore hardware and bring it to useful levels of performance. You can even buy a standalone model – for a fairly hefty price.
