A2080 i.e. Vampire 500 V2 on an Amiga 2000

[wawrzon]

wasting time with ppc whatsoever is not what apollo team is going to do. they told it over and over. and they are right to do so. ppc was an attempted (and failed) solution for lack of further development on 68k front. exactly the gap apollo core is about to fill in. what sense would that make to give up on that (apparently successful approach) and try to repeat some old failed hackery attempt? especially software titles that could take advantage of it is too few even to mention..

[wawrzon]

Oh well. Maybe this might be made some day:

http://ultimateppc.nl/specifications.php

It's for big box Amigas, though. I think Gideon is way too busy with the 1541 Ultimate right now though.  

if you want ppc, this is your choice:
https://github.com/Sakura-IT/SonnetAmiga/
its better and more compatible with warpup ultimateppc would likely ever be. and its real, working and being worked on.

[wawrzon]

I'll never understand why the copyright holders have abandoned the majority of their user base, the 68k users, but perhaps Apollo will give them a reason to notice us again rather than pushing platforms most of us don't own.

lets pray not, we have been prey to those long enough..

[wawrzon]

I hardly call PPC a failed attempt.  It was held its own against Intel hardware for quite some time and it was used in mainstream computing hardware up until 2006.

with apple, perhaps. for the (past) time being, but with amiga it has been a crook and a hack all along, first as a powerup/warpos nonsense, and then as if this hasnt failed enough, with so called ng ppc systems. among those morphos have proven more sensible and competent, with choosing and reaching their goals, and especially with stepping away from trying to design and establish (lol) their own ppc hardware platform. heck, it was their devs, who started it once. nevertheless even them, they have left most of the interested audience behind..

[wawrzon]

So you plan acc cards for old 68k macs and ataris as well?

i think if anyoune came around with an appropriate expansion design, why not. though f i observe right, you can run macos, dosbox, probably atari and soon aros with reasonable speeds on your amiga/vampire box already, let alone potential standalone system. whats wrong with it?

[wawrzon]

Compared to a PPC accelerator or the X-something PPC machines, that's at least a much more sensible option, yes.  Well, provided you can somehow get the power into the system. But it doesn't have to be an i7 for that means. Even a mobile i5 would certainly work.

yeah, x86 expansion running 68k emu under jit emu, is another thing i ever suggested. one thing is, this way it wouldnt give us mmu either as it doesnt work with jit.

[wawrzon]

Oh no, trust me... PPC is junk.  I know it quite well!  I would use an x86 over a PPC any day.

btw. ive heard it before from other hardware designers, but interesting, why do you think that?

edit: ohmm, sorry, youre not actually a hardware designer for what i know, but nevertheless..

[wawrzon]

No, not really.
The 680x0 is just really slow compared to even the low-end FPGAs of today.

Its an Apples and Oranges comparison.

The former started out about 30 years ago.

not long ago, before igor came around and made his first attempts as what appeared to become 68000 decelerator best case, every regular discussion about possibility of an 68k fpga accelerator led to agreement, that it isnt workable, at least beyond 68000 at the speed equivalent of 68030/25, as tg68k was. tg is probably most advanced, at least when it comes to open source 68k cores, and has not seen any more development for years, afair some bitfield instructions have been added, but thats it.

so maybe it is just overall inability and lack of creativity of amiga fans. but in current comparison vampire cards are fast and cheap. i know that you always make bold statements, as when you promissed to deliver an os4 ppc platform within a year, but you are talking here about a real project and people doing actual development. some respect is due, imho.

[wawrzon]

Exactly. And that's precisely the point. My problem is to execute 68K programs. A PPC is not precisely good at it. It requires a software emulation layer, and that makes it comparably slow for the problem I want to solve. I cannot tell you how well it performs. I can only tell you how well my i5 here in the office performs at this problem. With all the emulation layers around it, I'm not very convinced that this is a good solution.

you re feeding iggy

 what concens performance we had made some tests once upon a time, years ago, with mixed up float-integer real life apps, like ffmpeg  and ppc emulated 68k rather well (on os4) afair clock by clock. that means s 604 @ 150mhz was three times as fast as 060 @ 50mhz, but im citing from memory and i wont take responsibility for that now. certainly it doesnt mean much even on a single core in comparison to an intel/amd wit jit today. it night havw in the nineties though. dumb, the artificial ppc ideology is lasting here till today.

[wawrzon]

My guess is that Gunnar can't see what we're making a fuss over.

likely. but the fuss you are making is wasted with the uninvolved. get touch with the team and contribute if you think its worth. however if the problem doesnt show with non dma systems as a600 then it can be ignored for the time being. when vampire becomes available for zorro3 systems and problems appear the core can be adjusted.

However I'd rather see the 68060 replicated warts and all, at least as a fallback option.

you keep telling this. but this is a different construction i fear. you wont make it hapen simply insisting. as you may recall the team delivered most if not all features demanded on forums, such as movep (?) or bitfields in hardware, but they will do this on teir own schedule, i fear.