New A-EON Music Card for Classic Amigas

[wawrzon]

Why does the existence of Vampire make offloading audio decoding from the CPU a bad idea? :confused:

offloading compressed audio streams that only works with certain formats and if software provides support for a dedicated and expectedly rather expensive device doesnt make so much sense f you have a cheap general purpose accelerator.

[Iggy]

Why does the existence of Vampire make offloading audio decoding from the CPU a bad idea? :confused:

Because of the bottleneck created by addressing this card outside of the fpga.

It is actually going to slow accelerators like the Vampire down.

[Iggy]

Hi

We have switched a few months ago to two new developers. Hopefully we will have some updates from their hard work.  

The hardware has been complete and is manufactured for some time.

"Hardware has been complete and is manufactured..."

Scary.
Just how much Aeon hardware is beeing stockpiled right now?
X5000 boards, Prisma boards, Tabor boards....

Instead of throwing more money at hardware development, isn't it time to push software development a little harder?

[amigakit]

isn't it time to push software development a little harder?

Did you read our AmigaDeveloper.com Team announcement?  We have been heavily investing in software development with a team of 17 software developers working earnestly.

[A2666]

Hi

We have switched a few months ago to two new developers. Hopefully we will have some updates from their hard work.  

The hardware has been complete and is manufactured for some time.

So I will be the first one to say again. Sounds like there is no point in waiting.
 Sorry for being "negative" but if you tell people that:
1. You made hardware (but we can't buy it)
2. You have changed developers (which is never a good sign)
3. Hopefully you will have updates (well if only that hardware was made of hopes)
 then that does not encourage customers to wait or even consider buying that stuff.
Well thank you for response. I will consider different options for my Amiga then.

[Niding]

What puzzles me is why Prisma havent been released for sale even if the software aint 100% complete. In todays day and age its no hassle to download updated software via Internet whenever the developers have tweaked issues/bugs.
Since Novacoder demostrated it in working condition back in 2014, it obviously had reached a point where it could be released.
Its a bit like Vampire; its being sold while still in development, with the customer 100% in the known there are aspects that aint working as it should/work in progress etc.

Personally I bought MAS Player, even tho I wanted Prisma. Since Ive already ordered Vampire, Im unsure if I will dish out for Prisma unless it can be shown to me that a Vampire and Prisma combination makes sense.
Im sure Im not the only one.
THAT said, I hope there will be such advantages if you already have stockpiles of hardware lying around.

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

What puzzles me is why Prisma havent been released for sale even if the software aint 100% complete. In todays day and age its no hassle to download updated software via Internet whenever the developers have tweaked issues/bugs.

Exactly.

I would still like to buy one, although I'll admit my enthusiasm has been somewhat dimmed by the long delays.  Hope y'all get your dev problems sorted out soon!  

[kamelito]

What could be interesting is patching OS friendly games so they could use mp3 versions from say CDTV or CD32 or any others CDDA or MP3 versions. This could add more atmosphere to the game, but, it'll be a lot easier to do so under emulation and then test on the real HW. So adding a support for the card under UAE would be great.
Kamelito

[Iggy]

Did you read our AmigaDeveloper.com Team announcement?  We have been heavily investing in software development with a team of 17 software developers working earnestly.

Yes, I am impressed with that.
AmigaKit and Aeon are obviously sincere in trying to promote software development.

It is a pity that they are relying on Hyperion for OS development when Hyperion's primary developers admit to only working on the project "a couple of hours a week".

[kamelito]

It is a pity that they are relying on Hyperion for OS development when Hyperion's primary developers admit to only working on the project "a couple of hours a week".

Let's hope that they're not doing it on purpose.
What all this mean is that if you pay good money to good developers they deliver.

Kamelito

[wawrzon]

Let's hope that they're not doing it on purpose.

what purpose would that be? to alienate the user base? cmon. thats simply the reality of the situation and the question to admit this reality to yourself.

What all this mean is that if you pay good money to good developers they deliver.

i think its pretty incomputable alas. in a real world if someone is not up to task he might be replaced. there are people writing drivers in question of days, but they need to be enthusiastic or at least genuinely interested. also the amiga hardware may have some additional quirks only few people suspect or know about, or even them need yet to discover those. this was the issue with deneb and dma on zorro3 bus. even m.b. who was also in charge of the hardware here, wasnt aware of some corner case/bug in zorro3 implementation until it was debugged in practice with my very modest involvement as an early adopter and tester (among others).

apparently this is not the situation here. according to amigakit the replacement coders have been appointed months ago. at his time novacoder reported unresolved stability issues before he left. bugs like that remind me of the initially apparently random dma lockups with deneb, but it needs skilled people with amiga experience to get hold of such indices. personally i would declare this project dead/obsolete. it likely wont even pay back, the insistance on it is futile. better councel next time and some applicable feedback with the community (not just a symbolic one) would solve a lot, but i doubt can arrive yet.

[Iggy]

Let's hope that they're not doing it on purpose.
What all this mean is that if you pay good money to good developers they deliver.

Kamelito

My guess would be that they are devoting as much time to it as is financially practical.
If they were paid to work on it full time...

[QuikSanz]

What puzzles me is why Prisma havent been released for sale even if the software aint 100% complete. In todays day and age its no hassle to download updated software via Internet whenever the developers have tweaked issues/bugs.
Since Novacoder demostrated it in working condition back in 2014, it obviously had reached a point where it could be released.
Its a bit like Vampire; its being sold while still in development, with the customer 100% in the known there are aspects that aint working as it should/work in progress etc.

I wondered the same way back here:

 02-08-2015, 07:17 PM   Post #222,

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=66147&page=12

Read following post please!

[F0LLETT]

So I will be the first one to say again. Sounds like there is no point in waiting.
 Sorry for being "negative" but if you tell people that:
1. You made hardware (but we can't buy it)
2. You have changed developers (which is never a good sign)
3. Hopefully you will have updates (well if only that hardware was made of hopes)
 then that does not encourage customers to wait or even consider buying that stuff.
Well thank you for response. I will consider different options for my Amiga then.

Obviously it was mistakenly announced early (maybe to much excitement). I said we need everything sorted before announcing anything (or very close to sorting). This is generally the approach adopted now, theres lots of stuff being worked on that isn't announced.

If only the world was perfect, there would not have been any problems and it would have been released already (and this thread would never have existed), to my knowledge there is no release date set as yet.

1. If we didn't say it was made and showed pictures, it would be called vapourware.
2. Why a bad sign, people are only human and maybe there are real life problems.
3. Unfortunately, it can't be helped. We are only telling the truth, no lies and straight up.

[itix]

Why does the existence of Vampire make offloading audio decoding from the CPU a bad idea? :confused:

If your CPU is fast enough you dont have to buy it because your CPU is too slow. Offloading decoding can be still good idea if you need saved capacity for something but advantage of CPU bound decoding is that you can use existing players.

In AmiNetRadio we never supported MASPlayer (similar to this one but it was just simple MP3 player) because it was not possible control output from application or use visualizers. Neither it is possible wrap this hardware to mpega.library because mpega.library is only for decoding while MAS Player and A-eon music card does both decoding and playing and reading back decoded audio data would be too slow. Both have advantages and disadvantages, Amiga audio output is limited to 8-bit only (or 14-bit, but that is sort of hack), while music cards use modern codecs.

[Niding]

If your CPU is fast enough you dont have to buy it because your CPU is too slow. Offloading decoding can be still good idea if you need saved capacity for something but advantage of CPU bound decoding is that you can use existing players.

In AmiNetRadio we never supported MASPlayer (similar to this one but it was just simple MP3 player) because it was not possible control output from application or use visualizers. Neither it is possible wrap this hardware to mpega.library because mpega.library is only for decoding while MAS Player and A-eon music card does both decoding and playing and reading back decoded audio data would be too slow. Both have advantages and disadvantages, Amiga audio output is limited to 8-bit only (or 14-bit, but that is sort of hack), while music cards use modern codecs.

Its one of the reasons why I might find the card enticing even if I get Vampire. Every drop of added performance/offloading from CPU is a good thing.

With regards to not announcing available hardware that is still being worked on software side;
Again, take Vampire. People recive their cards, and programs crash/doesnt work, until a later core update or tweaks done to programs. The difference is that Apollo-Team got a IRC channel where they (and people in general with depth of knowledge) hang out answering questions when they have time.
That way people clearly understand and accept the limitations of the product in its current state.
In addition people keep asking for additional features, which like on forums, sometimes spins off into unrealistic dreams. Other users or developers bring those people back to earth quickly.

Imho this approach defuses the "tension" that comes from waiting for any bit of information about x product.

I realise Apollo-Teams approach to information is kind of unortodox and unsusually open.
But it seems to work

Btw, will the Card work on A600 with 604n that got 2 clockports (and eventually a Vampire)?