Apollo Team announces the Vampire V4

[ferrellsl]

Please trust me when I say that I really hate being the A-hole in the room, but just as I spelled out on Whyzzat.com, "I don't  get it".

Without a solid, modern OS, hardware is irrelevant.  It doesn't matter  how fast it is, how much memory, or anything else...  That is, unless  the new hardware in question is/was never intended to be a serious  device, but more of a tinker box for hobbyists with money to spend...

Really, I would welcome something different, but unless you've got a new, user-friendly and powerful OS (which AmigaOS used to be, about 33 years ago), what could you possibly use it for that a $30 Kano kit can't already do?

Wayne

Wow, you mean there's someone here who actually understands that Amigas are a hobby, not a religion, and not something to obsess over?  You gotta be sh@tting me!  LOL!

You're a rare breed here.  I honestly think we have forum members here who haven't touched a non-Amiga computer since the 80's and who still believe that the hardware and the OS are relevant in 2017.  Rip Van Winkles of the computer world!  LOL!

That ship sailed around 1991.

[ferrellsl]

Yes, they are indeed crippled in a whole lot of ways. Who would not agree to this?

Yes, I do agree with you on that point.  And I too am waiting for an FPU in the Vampire core, but an FPU isn't what I'd consider an urgent need.  I can wait and use the softFPU until then, or fire up WinUAE and run my FPU apps there.

I'm also waiting for an MMU but I can be patient there too.  These things will come in time.  The Vampire is a work in progress, but I also understand your frustration.  Nothing ever happens quickly in Amiga land.

[ferrellsl]

Oh, you are one of those who don't have a Vampire, yet are full of opinions about it :hammer:

Well, maybe your views change once you have one and realise that it isn't really that much of a big deal after all.

Yes, maybe you're right.  I may find that development even on a standalone is a PITA and go back to AmiDevCPP and WinUAE.  When I was updating the PLPLOT library on my A1200, I kept asking myself, "Was computing really this slow back in 1992?"  LOL!

I guess it WAS really slow but we just didn't know any better.   We've gotten very spoiled these days and I have to keep reminding myself that the last time I was doing any Amiga coding prior to my latest PLPLOT update was 24 years ago.....that's like a couple centuries in dog years or around 12-16 generations under Moore's Law.

The Vampire has motivated me and I hope that once my standalone arrives that my motivation will continue.  For me, Amiga coding is a hobby that helps me stay sharp on my day job (LIDAR software development), not a religious experience or something that I obsess over, although some think otherwise which is fine.

[ferrellsl]

Well, SoftFPU is not an option with legacy software that you cannot recompile, you are stuck with traps and the FEMU emulator.



The MMU is there already, but Gunnar has no plans of exposing it, it is meant to only be used for "internal" stuff (I can imagine, mapping ChipRAM addresses for SAGA and legacy I/O, and many other things)



You don't even get what I am "frustrated" with, at this point I don't care if there is no FPU. I am "frustrated" how the FPU has been (and still is!) marketed as the most glorious piece of excellence for 3 years, without not one single public demo - ever! Then there was the "68882 compatible" FPU that was "really soon now", but just never was good enough. Then it was "no software use FPU anyways!". Then it was "Oh, and I just have this amazing vision about an even greater FPU for a bigger FPGA!".

And still I wonder where one is supposed to find the actual specs of the current Apollo Core, as neither of the two web sites involved in the project have that information, and only tout superlatives (some very exaggerated), and are very eager to point out "potential features" rather than actual features.

I'm not so sure that we will have to wait for Gunnar.  There are still some very talented coders out there.  The softFPU literally came from an unknown, novice assembly coder who wrote the emulator as an exercise to hone his skills.  He just popped up on the Vampire forums one day and offered his code.  We may see more of that in the future.

If you feel you've been cheated, then I suggest you sell your Vampire and just let things go.  You could probably get more out of it now than what you paid for it. It isn't worth making yourself angry over this in the long-term

[ferrellsl]

...they throw out the best debug tools with the inherent design.
 WTF seems wholly appropriate here.

What tools are you referring to and why do you say they were thrown out?

[ferrellsl]

Enforcer and Angel type tools, which are kinda essential to catch many classes of bugs. If you want to use 68080 features then you can't really debug them on a 68060/40 machine either.

"Thrown out" because Gunnar - as far as I understand it and have seen it re-told - does not want to support a Motorola-compatible MMU as it will add slowdowns to memory accesses. A full-blown MMU will have to sit as a filter in-between the cpu and memory, whether it results in slowdowns or not. And it seems Gunnar chose speed.

I don't see myself getting any Apollo powered product without an MMU as I know I'm by far not fault-free enough to do without the tools, and there is plenty enough sw out there that is no better.

Ah, I see.  I'm a C/C++ developer so I wasn't even thinking about assembler tools.  I wonder if Philippe Flype who wrote CPUMon080 used some tools available only to the Vampire team to debug and test his code.  I can't imagine he wrote this tool without a debugger as it was written in 100% assembly.  I know he used DevPac 3.18 and here is his code: http://www.apollo-accelerators.com/files/CPUMon080_summer17.s

The Apollo core has an MMU which is not compatible with current 68K CPUs, but Gunnar hasn't released any info on how to access it.  I'm wondering if he's written or modified some tools to use it?