How to Run Python on the Commodore Amiga

[kudos]

20 years ago, I was using a commodore Amiga. Last night I asked myself; could Python be run on such a computer?

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I browsed python.org, and found the first relase of a Python for the Amiga to be Python 1.4.

http://www.python.org/download/releases/

When I look at:

http://www.python.org/download/releases/binaries-1.4/python1.4-amiga.README

I see that this release need 2MB of RAM, Kickstart 2.04 and a motorola 68020 CPU

My Amiga computer is long gone, so I do not really need to be too strict on the specifications. I plan to run Python on an emulated Amiga with the requirements specificed.

A nice Amiga emulator is:

http://www.winuae.net/

To run the Amiga, you need two things; The Amiga 2.04 Kickstart ROM and Workbench 2.04. These are still copyrighted, and you can get them from here:

http://www.amigaforever.com/

When you have aquired the rom and the Workbench file, download the .lha file from:

http://www.python.org/download/releases/binaries-1.4/python1.4-amiga.lha

You might wonder, how to extract a .lha file? I use the 7zip:

http://www.7-zip.org/

Extract this to a directory (and rememeber the path to this directory for later)

To test Python on the Amiga I wrote the following test program:

for i in range(5):
 print "hello amiga!"

I saved this in the Python-1.4 directory as test1.py

I selected the computer to be an Amiga 500+ in WinUae:

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I made sure the system had 2MB of memory...

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...and that it used a 68020 CPU:

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I select the Kickstart 2.04 file...

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...and I set it to use the Workbench 2.1 operating system:

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Finally, I sat the directory of Python1-4 to be the harddrive directory. You can call it "python" and the volum name as "p":

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To start the Amiga you click "Start"

It takes some time to load, at least compared to today.

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Once the operating system is loaded, click on Workbench2.1 icon, then on System and then on "Shell" (which is the command line tool in the Workbench)

Select the harddrive with python by typing:

p:

then:

cd Python1-4

Here you can run the Python interpreter by typing:

Python_020_IEEE test1.py (to run the test1.py program)

or just : Python_020_IEEE for the normal Python shell.

That's it! It is slow, but then again, it is an old computer.

[hemmerling]

Python 1.4 probably lacks of everything in its language features which makes it "awsome" today.

For comparison, there is a Python 2.4.2 for DOS-386, while Python 2.5.4 ist the latest for Win98ME :-)

Nevertheless, you did great work to explain us howto.

I am good old ATARI-ST and ATARI Falcon user, and such jewls like Python are not available there...

Sincerely
Rolf

[kudos]

Does a MINT-like OS run on for instance the Atari Falcon? In that case, you could run Python on an Atari Falcon, although you would not experience the "Atari feeling".

I have been planning to try to run Python on an even "worse" device than an Amiga. For instance, could something like Pymite be compiled to run on an old device with very limited memory?

[hemmerling]

Hello Kudos,

For X86 platform, there is a free OpenSource C-Compiler WATCOM-C

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watcom_C/C%2B%2B_compiler

.. just to give you a clue with what to compile for 16-Bit and 32-BIT MSDOS, and of course Win 3.1 :-)

Indeed, there is Python for ATMEL MEGA CPUs :-), as you already know:

http://code.google.com/p/python-on-a-chip/

http://wiki.python.org/moin/PyMite

.. but it is a mess on ATMEL Mega, as all RAM space is used for the interpreter, and no RAM space left for the applications, and it would just load on the biggest newest ATMEL Mega CPUs, at all...

How about discussing this on a Python forum?
Are you on any of the forums ?!

I would love to run Python on a 640K computer :-).

Sincerely
Rolf