Masjsta's A500 Vampire

[SpaceMonkey]

Yeah, so it's neither compatible with the 68040 or the 68060. Gunnar has a different idea of compatibility than I do. He appears to only be interested in running golden software, I want to be able to run anything that you can run on a 68060. If I want to write software that relies on 68040 instructions trapping then I should be able to. If he allowed it to be configured, or even open source it then we'd have a choice. I don't think he has the right personality for that though.

On the FPU & MMU things get worse. He thinks that we can just write new MMU software and ignore anything like existing debug tools, virtual memory and BSD distros. At one point I think he was talking about using a different precision model for the FPU. With some vague hope that just because it's floating point, that nothing will rely on getting the same results as an 060 FPU would give. Which may be true for golden software that he's deemed worthy, but if you don't meet his requirement for worthiness then good luck.

He may have changed his mind on all of this, in which case a vampire would be a worthwhile purchase. But for me I'd rather not buy something where the source isn't available and he's not committed to 100% compatibility with real chips rather than only being interested in the ego trip of inventing a new one.

As far as i can see it supports all of the 040 & 060 function plus been more efficiency while adding mmx, with FPU and MMU support to follow. The biggest advantage each fix, enhancement is just a re-flashing away.

I guessing some people don't like progress, and think the Amiga 1000 with Workbench 1  256 kb and a 68000 was the pinnacle of the Amiga story.

The vampire is reason why i bought an Amiga 600 after selling my 4000 around 15 years ago.

[SpaceMonkey]

i'm sure that has the same argument for when the FPU was first released or a 512Kb memory expansion for the Amiga 500

As for the MMX, datatype is the most obvious first choice

[SpaceMonkey]

It is software, by every definition. It's not a sequentially executed language like you feed CPU's & DSP's.

Apollo is software and more importantly it's an emulator, it happens to be a not very accurate one but that is by design.



That is the standard line, it Apollo can't run exec.library then someone can just patch it or write a new one.

So which of the instructions, address-modes do you believe are flawed.

http://www.apollo-core.com/index.htm?page=instructions

Or specific programs which don't work.

[SpaceMonkey]

Sure it's better running some software, it unfortunately doesn't run the software I want to run so I won't buy one until it does. It would run 0 hours with Amiga BSD, Amix or Shapeshifter with TurboEVD video driver.



No, paper is neither software nor hardware. But thanks for the straw man.



Actually no discussion is allowed by people here and the issues are denied, the fanboi's won't let anything be said that isn't 100% positive. It's not just me who shares the same issues with Apollo.

Ok lets discuss.

Lets start with a simple question. Which Amiga do you own.

So which specific part of the Apollo-Core do you believe to be defective or feature missing.

[SpaceMonkey]

Given the mission statement:

"Apollo Core 68080 is the natural and modern evolution of latest 68000 processors. It's 100% code compatible, corrects bugs of 680x0 designs and adds on top most of the cool features which were invented the years after."

I can't see why the MMU & FPU would be any different when released, base on what has already been delivered.

So unless you have a Crystal Ball an know how the MMU implementation will perform, how can you comment? Please deal with facts not rumour or interpretation of the facts.

I can see why the MMU is towards the bottom of the priority list as the things in the Amiga world which require it are small.  
Enforcer
Gigamem
Fusion and Shapeshifter emulators (TurboEVD 618 downloads in 19 years Aminet)
Amix or NetBSD    
kickstart to fastmem type tools

Your analogy for the "popular side is not the same as being on the right side" is flawed, so does that make members of Nazis & religious fundamental groups are they on the right side?

Is anything 100% perfect. No but does software 680000 run on the 010,020,030,040,060 in the main yes.

Are BigGunn, Kipper2k and majsta Evil Overlords, that's a bit on the harsh side. Just because someone does agree with your vision of how the universe should be doesn't make them bad people.

I would like to see the 600 vampire V3 with a newer cheaper Cyclone FPGA, SODIMM memory slots, USB, Ethernet & Mini-PCIE. but I understand its not Lego to design and requires time and money which as this is not a commercial business this is not likely the happen any time soon.

The Vampire is the only reason why after 15 years of selling my Amiga 4000, I bought a 600 and wait for that golden ticket (email) from Kipper to purchase one.

[SpaceMonkey]

Not really. The problem is to find a way to handle the vampire *despite* the copyright situation of exec. Actually, if you look back, it was also possible to support the 68060 on AmigaOs, even though exec does not support this CPU.

Hence, if done correctly, there is no need to fiddle with the exec sources at all, or to provide alternative exec sources. A processor library is all it takes - provided the CPU has the necessary properties.

so would be a case of replacing the 040 & 060 libraries with Apollo specific or a new 080 lib

[SpaceMonkey]

You are completely unaware of the reality...

Users want a computer easy to start = plug & play, all in rom...

When you use a car, you don't want to add some stuff into the motor to drive away... You want only a turn-key & start...

Your sort of right, as an end user i just want to get in my car and drive from Manchester to London and I don't care how my engine work, but if my Sat Nav wants to go via Edinburgh then I would be interested in the reasons why.

I think the Apollo Team and Thomas could have a long discussion, off line on the merits and pit falls of each method.

[SpaceMonkey]

Do these games crash on a real 040

[SpaceMonkey]

Hard to find EC model which can run extreme speed for comparison.

"extreme speed" not a game i recognise, are you saying it doesn't run on a real 040 \040ec

[SpaceMonkey]

I found the 28mhz 68000 was pretty good for old games. Although the switch on the back which could instantly slow it back to 7mhz was useful when there was an issue. Some demos were improved by running at 28mhz, at some point I need to resurrect that system. Of course the benefit is that it's using 68000 exception frames and instruction decoding. If you could switch between different cpu compatibility then it would be awesome. Is move sr privileged on the Apollo core?

Old games would usually be running from chip ram, so they shouldn't be running drastically faster anyway. Unless it's not waiting for the caches to be enabled.

Doesn't whdload solve all the issues running on an 040 though, how well is that running on Apollo?

I believe was talk of turn off the vampire but its was all (cpu,mem,vid)on or off