Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: xaccrocheur on November 28, 2005, 05:26:21 PM
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Hi
Some months ago I received a command for a work, a SCALA presentation to display Dpaint Anims for friend's art project. With Octamed-made music & bleeps. I sketched a lot, then fired up my 4000 and started DPaint'ing, adpro'ing, and now it's looking&sounding good enough to be shown to my friends, and that was yesterday night. To summarize, they loved it. But they also added a lot to the storyboard, in fact we blew it up, keeping some sequences& modules, trashing most.
In the meantime I got a job. Don't worry, everything will make sense in a minute.
[color=ff0000]I want a new Amiga. [/color][/b]
No so much because the ones I already have (My Old 1Meg A500, a 8meg 1230/50 w/o FPU and a 24meg SCSI'd 4000d) are not doing the job, they do, but I'm very afraid about one of these machines failing on me, I mean a part that I could'nt replace, I see prices skyrocket on ebay, and the 68k line slowly but surely entering the "vintage" aisle... And really, I could use a little speed boost. I never, in my living life, even SAW a '060 Miggy run.
So I want a new Amiga. A fast one. I got money. Just give me the thing.
What I want is a fast A1200, and I'm considering a mediator, or any other PCI bridgeboard, to expand it. But.
# What good is this solution really, when you only have a 060 CPU to power it ?
# I understand that once you use a graphic card other than the AGA chipset, your choices of graphic apps are reduced, but to what exactly ? What apps can be used on such a machine to do 2D anim, like DPaint&Brilliance do ?
# Can the TV-Out that I know the Voodoo3 has (I had one AGP version on a PC) be used to output 16b color animations to a TV ?
Thank you for any info that you can give me. Oh, and Amigakit rules. Thank you very much, M.
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WinUAE (http://www.winuae.net/) is the most obvious cost effective solution.
Faster than any 060 system available, you can use both AGA and RTG screen modes (huge resolutions if you need to), and can get TV out easily.
Just my .02 eur.
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Question:
How did you get Octamed MEDs to play on SCALA?
it only Plays MODS.
Would love to see your presentation, as I am a SCALA freak!
EDIT:
@Piru
Um....if I am not mistaken......the fastest Amiga WinUAE can emulate is a 68040, and even thats not as slick.
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leirbag28 wrote:
Question:
How did you get Octamed MEDs to play on SCALA?
it only Plays MODS.
Would love to see your presentation, as I am a SCALA freak!
EDIT:
@Piru
Um....if I am not mistaken......the fastest Amiga WinUAE can emulate is a 68040, and even thats not as slick.
Yes, but 'Med outputs MODs happily.
As for UAE, I'm not sure about what is said here. I was wondering, among other things, if there are users, here, using PCI bridgeboards *without* a PPC accel..?
In fact, I'm happy with what I have now, I mean the AGA chipset and it's 15Hz TV-Out. But the framerate can be improved, and maybe the number of colours ? I'd love to put real 16bits sound samples as well, but I'm really wondering how those PCI cards are "blending" in the Amiga environment ?
And leirbag28, well, when the Visual it's finished you'll see it, I promise. On TV. But maybe not prime time. :-D
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@leirbag28
Um....if I am not mistaken......the fastest Amiga WinUAE can emulate is a 68040, and even thats not as slick.
You are mistaken. WinUAE might be limited to 68040 CPU in the emulation, but it easily runs circles around any real M68K, overclocked or not. It's like several hundred MHz 68040, not to mention the ultrafast hdd, fastmem and vmem access.
This was the case 3-4 years ago already, by now it's ever faster...
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@xaccrocheur:
In fact, I'm happy with what I have now, I mean the AGA chipset and it's 15Hz TV-Out. But the framerate can be improved, and maybe the number of colours ?
The problem with adding a graphics card is that the software you're currently using (Scala, DPaint, Brilliance) will not support it.
There are of course quite some gfx and multimedia packages that will run on a graphics card, but most of them are targetting a somewhat different audience - they're mostly intended to be used for manipulating (static) 24 bit images. I'm told that DPaint and Brilliance are still unmatched as far as creating animations is concerned.
A good DPaint clone is PPaint, which is now freeware and available here (http://main.aminet.net/package.php?package=biz/cloan/PPaint.lha). It is limited to 256 colors, but it supports gfx cards. Everything else available for gfx card users is more or less a photoshop clone (I'm exaggerating here, but don't expect anything in the style of DPaint or Brilliance).
Same goes for Scala: There's now a replacement called Hollywood Designer, which is pretty powerful (but not yet as intuitive as Scala) - using a commercial plugin, it can even play Scala presentations (on gfx cards aswell). However, it is a completely different package, albeit with a similar concept. And it needs as much horsepower as you can get.
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leirbag28 wrote:
Um....if I am not mistaken......the fastest Amiga WinUAE can emulate is a 68040, and even thats not as slick.
JIT emulation of even the 68020/68881 combination on any half modern x86 simply murders *any* real 680x0 CPU in performance terms. Even my old K6-II 500MHz (and the old AMD systems were very badly implemented in terms of support chipsets etc) ran 680x0 code in UAE far faster than my real 68040 could ever conceive of.
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i think what gets confused with uae is speed of emulation compared to what is emulated. but what it really comes down to is that with any modern pc uae can emulate any 68k cpu many times faster than any real 68k.
many people (me) want real classic silicon to put out fingers on.
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Piru wrote:
@leirbag28
You are mistaken. WinUAE might be limited to 68040 CPU in the emulation, but it easily runs circles around any real M68K, overclocked or not. It's like several hundred MHz 68040, not to mention the ultrafast hdd, fastmem and vmem access.
This was the case 3-4 years ago already, by now it's ever faster...
68040 is not even a limitation in terms of instructions. Isn't that why an 040 and 060 is in need of some software aid to emulate missing 68000 opcodes.
Not being able to emulate the 060 is not an issue. The P4@2.6GHz machine will run circles around the real 060@50MHz.
Edit: thought I might as well add some on topic opinion.
Create a souped up towered A1200 only if you really like the hassle, don't care about the money and like the alternative software it can run.
Because other than that I think an amiga that is souped up like that is just too expensive for what it becomes and what you can do with it.
Think of the architecture: You toss overboard all that Amiga hardware is about and use an 060 or even a PPC to interface via PCI with a GFX card or even a soundcars or NIC.
The only thing amiga about that machine is probably the motherboard that is only in use for the keyboard interface and as PSU for the rest of the system.
Take it one step further then; Use a PC + UAE. Faster cheaper and probably 1% less amiga then the other config.
I just don't see the fun of it.
From my own experience; I have an 060@50 in my A1200. It is faster than the 030@50 I had before but not by that much.
Afterall it was just the desire to obtain the hardware. Now that I have it I realise I just run WHDLOAD on my system. No need for horsepower when vintage gaming.
Ask yourself what you are after and if it is worth the hassle.
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Not being able to emulate the 060 is not an issue.
Except for demos/apps that explicitly check for 68060, even without actually using any 68060 specific features.
There's Make060 (http://www.aminet.net/package.php?package=util/sys/Make060.lha) for these, though.
PS. I am well aware that the emulated system is pretty much equally fast, regardless of the CPU type you choose.
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In the past I had run WinUAE on my AMD Sempron PC and the performance seemed to be about 3-5x as fast as my A2000 w/ 68030. After reading this thread I went and had another look and found out about the JIT option... it is true that UAE running on a cheap PC blows away any real 680x0.
Although I usually like to play around with real hardware more than an emulator, I would still say that UAE is a great alternative to the expensive "high-end" classic Amigas.
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Karlos wrote:
leirbag28 wrote:
Um....if I am not mistaken......the fastest Amiga WinUAE can emulate is a 68040, and even thats not as slick.
JIT emulation of even the 68020/68881 combination on any half modern x86 simply murders *any* real 680x0 CPU in performance terms. Even my old K6-II 500MHz (and the old AMD systems were very badly implemented in terms of support chipsets etc) ran 680x0 code in UAE far faster than my real 68040 could ever conceive of.
Heh, even my old bag o {bleep}e 300Mhz K6 (Overclocked 266) runs 68k code faster than my 040 does. :-)
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Piru wrote:
@leirbag28
Um....if I am not mistaken......the fastest Amiga WinUAE can emulate is a 68040, and even thats not as slick.
You are mistaken. WinUAE might be limited to 68040 CPU in the emulation, but it easily runs circles around any real M68K, overclocked or not. It's like several hundred MHz 68040, not to mention the ultrafast hdd, fastmem and vmem access.
This was the case 3-4 years ago already, by now it's ever faster...
Indeed. Sysinfo with WinUAE on my 2ghz P4 reports back that I've got a fourteen gigahertz 68040! :-D
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Piru wrote:
@leirbag28
Um....if I am not mistaken......the fastest Amiga WinUAE can emulate is a 68040, and even thats not as slick.
You are mistaken. WinUAE might be limited to 68040 CPU in the emulation, but it easily runs circles around any real M68K, overclocked or not. It's like several hundred MHz 68040, not to mention the ultrafast hdd, fastmem and vmem access.
This was the case 3-4 years ago already, by now it's ever faster...
Indeed. Sysinfo with WinUAE on my 2ghz P4 reports back that I've got a fourteen gigahertz 68040! :-D
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timing istnt accurate under uae for sysinfo a 2ghz 32 bit cpu with software overhead obviously cant emulate anouther 32 bit cpu with additional software overhead at 14ghz.
trhe best thing to do is take an amiga and a pc side by side and perform a cpu intensive task like rendering a trace in povray. something that can be done in duae winuae windows and amiga native and compare those results.
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Yet another classic hardware upgrade thread taken over by WinUAE talk....
@xaccrocheur
If you want to keep true to your A1200 desktop, a Blizzard 1260 or BlizzardPPC with a 68060 is a nice add-on. You may run into power supply issues but you can adapt a pc power supply to solve that. For 16-bit audio you could try adding a Melody 1200, Delfina or other 'clock-port' sound card inside the original A1200 desktop case. You'll still be limited to AGA for graphics, but you'll free yourself from the limitations of Paula for sound and a 68060 is a nippy cpu for everyday use on a classic amiga.
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Accurate or not you can't deny the evident.
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Argus wrote:
Yet another classic hardware upgrade thread taken over by WinUAE talk....
The topic is about the fastest 680x0 amiga, UAE is a perfectly good 680x0 system that truly is faster than the real thing.
Don't get me wrong, there are no less than four 68040 powered amigas and a pair of PPC powered machines within 3 metres of me right now, but I *still* use UAE and use it a lot. Hell, you have to get some fun out of a PC if you are unlucky enough to have one.
The fastest hardware amiga 680x0 implementation right now is the CSPPC/68060 or CSMK3 68060 to the best of my knowledge.
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KThunder wrote:
timing istnt accurate under uae for sysinfo a 2ghz 32 bit cpu with software overhead obviously cant emulate anouther 32 bit cpu with additional software overhead at 14ghz.
Well you might be able to emulate a 68000 at 14GHz. The original 68000 could only do 2 MIPS at 20MHz. If we assume that performance scales in direct proportion to clockspeed (it doesn't) a 14GHz would only manage about 1400 MIPS which with an efficient dynarec would probably be within reach of a 2GHz Athlon 64. The 040 managed to squeeze more MIPS out of the same number of MHz so a 14GHz 040 is out of reach.
Anyway to answer the OPs question.
Can the TV-Out that I know the Voodoo3 has (I had one AGP version on a PC) be used to output 16b color animations to a TV ?
I don't think the PCI version of the Voodoo 3 has TV-out, I know mine doesn't.
What I want is a fast A1200, and I'm considering a mediator, or any other PCI bridgeboard, to expand it. But.
# What good is this solution really, when you only have a 060 CPU to power it
Even on my 040 A4000, using my Voodoo 3 through a Prometheus is a lot faster than AGA so there's definately a benefit with an 060. Even workbench redraws are noticeably faster. Keep in mind that the bandwidth available to the A1200 Mediator is kind of limited though and that only 8MB of RTG memory is seen at a time. If you can afford a BPPC a BVision or GRex will probably yield better performance (though from what I hear the latter can be a pain to get working) as they connect to the PCI bus built into the accelerator.
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I would've gone for a towered and powered A1200. But I ended up just running the odd whdload game on my 040ed 1200 making the accelerator and extra RAM largely superfluous exept for the occasional demo. The fact that the accelerator reduced my software options was an annoying side-effect too.
Now I use WinUAE, I wouldnt go back to real hardware for highend work. Dont get me wrong I like the real gear, its just not good value to continue with it for me when my PC can do everything my old A1200 did and a lot more.
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I will comment on a lot that is said in all the replies. You are right the price of some Amiga Hardware is unbelievable. I have no experience with 1200 hardware setups, but do have experience with A2000HD with GVP 060 128mg ram, Spectrum Graphics card. I also use UAE 1.x and Amithlon on a AMD Athilon 2400+.
First an 060 is remarkable better than an 030 on my sytems (ZorroII based) up to 5 times faster (Imagine Rendering).
If you are going for emulation you will have problems with 15 khz output the screen are availble on my NVidia graphics card with Athilon and UAE scan doubled and Graphics cards with a TV out have limited support (read drivers). That said Amithlon will run cicles around UAE with speeds at least 30% faster.
But to clear the air for NTSC or PAL (especialy PAL) outputs, a real AMIGA IS A MUST the general ease at which the Amiga handles standard TV output puts to shame most TV out put cards on Windows,. That is the reason Amigas and OS2 machines are still being used for Icon ID tags on TV broadcasts.
I would stick to a standard 060/50 or 60 card with attached ram and scsi this will speed every thing up. Graphicly you will need a Picasso 4 or Cybergraphics 4 meg card in traditional hardware or the Vodoo 3-5 series on one of the PCI extenders works very good to and it will allow you to use cheaper ethernet cards.
There are a couple of native 16 bit cards for sound arround the Melody is a good choice. But as you mention pricing may be a little steep.
But try to talk to some local Amiga users sometimes they will just give away there hardware to a good home if they know it will be used.
I hope I have helped a little.
For the use you are using your Amiga's for stick to the real hardware. Maybe get a modest VIA chipset AMD Athilon system and install UAE under Windows and Set up a Linux partition to play with and get Amithlon and set it up on an old IDE drive you can get from one of your I have to have the latgest drive on my X86 hardware freinds. An Amithlon install will take up the same space on a single drive as on a real amiga, a ten gig drive would be a monster:) :-D
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Wow.
More replies than I even expected, thank you guys. This helped a lot, specially when it comes to graphic output.
For this very job I'm gonna stick with the AGA chipset, and just buy a 060 1200 with a SCSI kit and 256M RAM. Think about it, it's a really kickass Video machine we're talking about here ! Too bad there are no practical solution to speed up AGA, but then again on such a machine it *should* go faster than on my 24Mg SCSI 1 A4000d.
I'm really disappointed by the fact that the BlizzardPPC is no longer available (or is it not ?), as I would have love to try it, along w/ a BVision3D.
Because heck, from AmigaKit at least, this is the LAST graphic card available for (non-PCI) 68k Amiga !
I decided that I wont' buy a mediator, prometheus or any similar product w/o actually seeing such a machine run to see if it can do what I want it to. So basically, I'm now looking for an Amiga event somewhere in BENEFLUK (Belgium, Nederlands, France, Luxemburg(?), UK)
The Emu talk was also quite refreshing. I'm already running a UAE under Linux on a 2Gig Athlon, and yes it rocks, but not when it comes to DPaint Anims in a SCALA pres w/ Paula sounds.
BTW, I though that Amithlon was no longer available ? Where can I grab a copy ? And why could it be faster than UAE ?
But I also have to say : I'm a sucker for Amiga HW. I don't know, I just love it. When I see my A1200 (& my even older A500 too!) running as we talk, and think of... (I don't really remember when I bought it, what I do remember is that win95 was *not* out yet at that time) the NUMBER of machines that failed on me :madashell: in the meantime (you'd be skeptic), I'm more than puzzled, I'm SOLD. A1200 just rules, if you ask me. Oh, and there's the crisp TV output, that never ceased to :crazy: amaze me. I want to be sure I'll still have a real Amiga running in Ten years.
Thank you very much to all of you for your answers.
Yesterday nigh I was at the studio, where my '030 1200 is, we had a long work night ahead, but, while waiting for the girl that was to do some voiceover samples, we started a Super Skidmarks game on the BIG lobby TV, that lasted the better part of the night :) But the animation (now called "MUR, Meat Us Residents" - pun intended) is really shaping up. When finished it will be a 3.20 minutes non-interactive SCALA visual presentation, and aired (yikes!) by a local TV here for an art show. I'll keep you posted.
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MIPS/MHz benchmarks from JIT emulation are not precise. Benchmarking
dnetc or some other real world application could give more realistic
results.
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@xaccrocheur
Amen brother! You won't be disappointed.
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xaccrocheur wrote:
I'm really disappointed by the fact that the BlizzardPPC is no longer available (or is it not ?), as I would have love to try it, along w/ a BVision3D.
Well none of the Amiga accelerators are being made anymore so in that sense none of them are available. BlizzardPPC cards are just a bit harder to find than their 060 equivalents, but they pop up on auction sites from time to time. They are certainly a lot easier to find than CyberstormPPCs though.
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@xaccrocheur
Yes....please keep me posted.....I love to see Scala in action
Maybe I will post My Game made on Scala when I finish it.
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Piru wrote:
WinUAE (http://www.winuae.net/) is the most obvious cost effective solution.
Faster than any 060 system available, you can use both AGA and RTG screen modes (huge resolutions if you need to), and can get TV out easily.
Just my .02 eur.
Winuae might be faster in raw cpu power, but it still does not emulate the amiga perfectly. Alot of people look at AmigaOS as the main advantage of using Amiga and having this OS hosted ontop of Windows then makes no sense.
Nothing beats the real thing in my opinion.....
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Totally agree! I have much less problem and hassle with my A4000/060 than my Winuae setup.. Especially for demos the A4000 wins it all... (And feeling ofcourse :))
I would upgrade the A4000 with 060 and gfx card (a zorro). This makes you able to use new monitors for web/gfx/whatver and AGA for tv output scala/etc..
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Theres just something special about classic Amiga hardware, or a classic Amiga setup.
I do some pixel work in WinUAE and I would rather run AmigaOS directly on my x86 system instead of over XP. I have often dreamt of setting up a PCI system with 060 but I can not justify the amount of money involved. Yes I believe in a future for the classic Amiga, not just in emulated form even though WinUAE totally rocks.
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If you _can_ try to get an MC68060RC50 with the E41J Mask.
Also try and get the fastest SIMMS you can get (50ns or better).
These coupled with a Cyberstorm 060 or Blizzard/Apollo 060 will allow for overclocking of at _least_ 66MHz
Switch to 1 wait state on the RAM and you'll get 80MHz easily. (This probably results in worse performance?)
The E41J mask will run cold enough for desktops
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I forgot about this thread. Just to catch up, I finally found (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=19476) the killer video-station I was looking for. All the 3D is going to be made in blender on PCs, but all video mastering&genlocking (&TBC'ing) will be handled by the Miggy, not to mention 2D anim.
Allelujah. :angel: