Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: stopthegop on September 04, 2006, 09:01:43 PM
-
Anyone know of a way to increase chipram beyond 2M in an A4k? I thought I read somewhere about a hw hack that could be done to accomplish this but its just been so long I don't have a clue where I read it.. Or even IF I read it. :) Anyway, the question is: Can this be done?
-
Sorry it's not possible...
-
Actually it is... you just have to find the "Free sex and beer" jumper...
-
You'd just have to put in an 8M Alice, add some piggy back RAMs and change J214 to the 8M position.
However, the 8M Alice does not exist, so you'd have to do a bit of redesign... :-(
-
You would also have to solder in a line for an extra data bit to allow the rest of the system to address >2MB.
--
moto
-
How about having a 512K bank switched window inside the 2MB region using some general IO lines or something? Even better when its switched out it could be mapped into fast RAM area. So to update the screen you write to fast RAM, set a bit, it becomes chip RAM. Very fast screen updates are yours...
Mark
-
I wish people would learn to use the search (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=22715)
-
Hehe wishful thinking; it's not Christmas yet ;-)
-
What about piggybacking 3 extra Alice chips. Maybe like a 4 Alice chip board that plugs into the Alice socket. That would be neat.
-
@Piru
You mean "search" the Internet? Tried that. No luck. Searching a much more effective medium now: people's brains. There is definately a way to do this. The hurdle to overcome in this case is one of limited resources, not technical feasibility. What the Amiga community lacks in resources, however, it more than compensates for in its resourcefulness! This will be solved with pure ingenuity, imho.
Chronic pessimism -- or as the pessimists call it, 'Realism' -- doesn't help much. There's ALWAYS a way... no matter what the problem is. If pessimists (sorry, "realists") had been listened to throughout history we'd all be travelling by mule, communicating via carrier pigeon, and marrying our relatives. Actually, that all still happens in the bible belt of Central US (sorry, could resist). :) Anyway...I'll give one example and then be quiet.
Ever hear of Prescott Eckert? He built the ENIAC for the US Army in WWII. ENIAC was the world's first 100% digital computer, btw. Guess how many people told him "it can't be done" ove the 5 or so years it took him to build it? Everyone except his dog, pretty much.. Its a good thing he didn't listen to the surrender monkeys.
-
Well the resourcefulness you're talking about already made it possible to have 8Mb of ChipRAM; in WinUAE that is...
Don't want to sound pessimistic in your book but I don't think we'll see it in Classic Amiga hardware. There shouldn't be a specific need for it either. Why do you want it?
-
resourcefullness is a great asset. it has allowed us to do lots of things with our amigas, from accelerator projects to usb to mp3 stuff. but there are things we cant do unless we have deep finacial resources. the 8meg chipram would require a chip redesign. is it possible yeah, likely not at all.
ive never run into chip ram problems. maybe im the only amigian who has. there are lots of things you can do to get around chip ram constaints. why dont you let us know what you are trying to do and see if we can help that way. esecially before you start posting insults. (no im not from the bible belt, nor am i married to a relative)
we have all known about chip ram for a very long time, so have programmers there is a lot that can be done even with 1meg of chip ram.
-
Look, read the thread that Piru linked to. This has been discussed to death already. Dave Haynie, the designer of the system architecture, has stated over and over that it's not possible without a major rework to the chips. End of discussion.
-
Stopthegop, no Peru meant search Amiga.org, as he provided a hyperlink in his reply, click on it :P
-
Now this is just academic, for the sake of argument.
On my big box systems (2000 with MegAChip and 4000) with graphics cards, my ChipRAM RARELY dips below 1.8MB or so. My 1200 is a different story as it has nothing more than standard AGA. I will leave the 500 out of the discussion ;-)
Out of sadistic curiousity, with the number of people working on hardware emulations of the Amiga system, would it be possible to design a cheap replacement Alice to allow the 8MB Chip RAM for those using standard AGA, or would more need to be done?
Since the chips on the 4000 are not socketed, a MegAChip-style upgrade is not viable -- the upgrade would need to be an over-chip design, like accelerators for the 600. It is also apparent to me that the 1200's design lacks the support for such a hack.
-
LoadWB wrote:
Now this is just academic, for the sake of argument.
On my big box systems (2000 with MegAChip and 4000) with graphics cards, my ChipRAM RARELY dips below 1.8MB or so. My 1200 is a different story as it has nothing more than standard AGA. I will leave the 500 out of the discussion ;-)
Out of sadistic curiousity, with the number of people working on hardware emulations of the Amiga system, would it be possible to design a cheap replacement Alice to allow the 8MB Chip RAM for those using standard AGA, or would more need to be done?
Since the chips on the 4000 are not socketed, a MegAChip-style upgrade is not viable -- the upgrade would need to be an over-chip design, like accelerators for the 600. It is also apparent to me that the 1200's design lacks the support for such a hack.
It isn't just the chips. It's the data lines as well.
Honestly, if I had the time and resources I'd focus on a mini-miga like project and in the FPGA emulation crank the chip-ram up to 8mb there. Forget taking the old classic hardware that far.
Now that would be sweet. A little mini-ATX board MiniMig with full AGA + 8mb chip RAM hack, a couple PCI slots (and appropriate controller to make 'em active), and a 100mhz 060 (assuming you could ever find 'em again).
THAT would be a fun little hobby box.
-
... and additional AGA modes like real chunky, lores truecolor etc. plus a Coldfire with hardware assisted 68k emulation (there were only 75 MHz EC060 or 66 MHz 060 around)...
-
Piru wrote:
I wish people would learn to use the search (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=22715)
Dave's post should be a sticky!
-
Stacking four Agnuses/Alices could actually work
- completely separated chipset areas
- four complete (!) sets of custom chips
- stacking those chips wouldn't help too much, since you'd need four sets of chip busses as well
- complete rewrite of all hardware dependant parts in AOS (mucho gusto on that)
- rewrite of APIs to take care of allocating the right chipmem to get the right screen output/same with sound/floppy
=> no AOS compatibility on application level
I'm sure it's much easier to redesign Alice in FPGA - and that'd be a nice task anyway. Better redesign the system in whole like Dennis does. Chipset level compatibility must be a pain.
I'd like to get a solid foundation from Dennis' project to start from and then add expansions to that as needed. Might even get somewhere 'modern'...
-
@stopthegop
I am with you 100% I totally believe it can be done........and quite easily too.........I dont care what anybody says..even if it seems to defy logic...........if WinUAE can do it.so can a real Amiga.even if it has to be emulated.......the system doesnt seem to be told that there is extra chipRAM.......it just uses it....as in WinUAE............so it will be the same o Amiga I think..................you can just Run for instance CAPITAL PUNISHMENT while having 10 applicatons running without having to tell the system anything..........at leats thats how it is on WinUAE.
I have heard so many people throw Technical Jargon my way throughout my life.............they were all mostly wrong......
I guess us New Yorkers Think alike eh? what part of New York are you in?
@Flashlab
Quote:
There shouldn't be a specific need for it either. Why do you want it?
----------------------------------------------------------
There is definitely a need for more ChipRAM......Amigas would be so much more productive.especially for me in which I run about 4 applications at once an Night Clubs and Parties.................I VJ and I use SCALA MM300, Elan Performer, MindEYE, and Trip-A-Tron all at once.....and it totally helps especially SCALA if I have more ChipRAM.
Nevertheless.............Imagine using Final Writer and True Brilliance to create stuff to place in Final Writer? you run out of ChipRam easily.
I specifically like switching from SCALA and Brilliance or True Brilliance to see what I create for SCALA.
Trust me....its usefull!
-
@leirbag28
You have been told repeatedly it won't happen. It will not happen. The only way it can happen is emulation (either in sofrware, or hardware (MiniMig)). Real Amigas will never have more than 2MB chip memory.
I dont care what anybody says.even if it seems to defy logic
I can see that. If you don't listen to Dave Haynie, who actually designed some parts of those machines, you're indeed beyond hope.
-
OT, but:
ENIAC was the world's first 100% digital computer
Nice try, nevertheless, completly wrong. There is so many stuff
predating the ENIAC, it is fascinating how it ever could become known
as the first computer. (or "full digital computer" as you refer)
For Example, The Harvard Mark One 1944, the British
Colossus, same year. And finally the German Z(use)3, 1941,
all where before the ENIAC (1946).
Even the Term Bug is not related to the ENIAC, but the Mark two (same year as ENIAC was done)
-
People have got to face the fact that the Amiga hardware design was great in its time but much better is available now. Wishing for more chipram is understandable but as realistic as wanting automatic transmission, air conditioning, and power steering in a Ford Model T:it could be done,but it won't be authenic.
To my mind,the reason Amiga were so great is that the design interfaced very well with the TV standards of the time and was ahead of the pack in OS elegance and graphics.
Barring the resurrection of AAA chips plus improvements the future is going to be Amiga OS running on "standard" hardware already widely produced .
It would be interesting to know if more Amiga Forever on Windows OR classic Amigas are being used today.
Personally I'd love to see one of those Chinese factories churn out a few million Retro+ A1200s only with built-in CD/DVD drive(skip the built-in floppy),HD loaded with a sampling of the fun games and productivity software,50(or higher)mhz '030(highest compatibility) or better and 128 or more ram running OS3.9 or 4.Sell 'em for $199 and they'd fly off the shelves. They have already made retro game machines for the C64 and Atari classics in which dozens of games,the equivalent to the old computer,and a joystick are combined and sold for $19.99 !
-
@leirbag
As discussed many times, it IS possible to add more chip RAM to the Amiga, but its not realistically feasible. Lets look at the options for the thousandth time shall we?
1) Banking.
Have n banks of 1Mb in the upper 1Mb space of Chip RAM.
This is feasible, and probably cheap to do. The problem? You'd have to patch AmigaOS and recompile every single piece of software to cope with it. So its not worth it.
2) Create a pin-compatible 8Mb Alice.
This would actually work in an A4000, which is the *ONLY* classic Amiga with enough address lines to the chipset. Good luck, though, the schematics for the chipset are long lost and it would take many years and probably hundreds of thousands of pounds to complete the design from scratch. By then a lot of A4000s will have died. For so many reasons, its just not worth it.
There is no "magic" solution to this problem. You can't "emulate" chip ram for the physical chipset; the idea is complete nonsense to anyone with an ounce of technical knowledge. You might as well wish for a dual core 18THz 68080 and Zorro V slots while you are at it; its just a meaningless nonsense idea.
The only realistic solutions are to just run UAE, or make a new board with the minimig chipset, modified for 8Mb of chip ram.
-
The only way I can conceive for the classic Amigas would be through the use of an accel/graphics/memory card add-on and a wedge program that would intercept all relevant calls and process them on-card.Isn't this what a Mediator type system does?
There is so much difference between possible and practical!
Hobbyists can do try/all sorts of things on their own time and money that would never be approved in a profit-making corporation
-
@recidivist
The only way I can conceive for the classic Amigas would be through the use of an accel/graphics/memory card add-on and a wedge program that would intercept all relevant calls and process them on-card.
No, this will not work. No external HW can patch the internal chipset dependecies, nor can software account for HW banging applications/games/demos. You would end up emulating the whole system, and then you're back with UAE anyway.
Isn't this what a Mediator type system does?
No, it isn't.
-
Whether WinUAE can do it or not is completely irrelevant - WinUAE is an emulator, and it is creating a virtual set of hardware. WinUAE gets to decide the spec of the machine. Amiga motherboard custom chips are set in stone - isn't that obvious?
Being defiant and ignoring the designer of the machine is slightly idiotic, too, to say the least.
And who needs ChipRAM anyway? It's slow as hell compared to Fast. Ever see a piece of Amiga software that needs more than 2MB Chip?
Get yourself a RAM board and bask in the luxury of speedy memory. Add a graphics card and ChipRAM then rarely gets touched - as someone else said, my A4000 boots to Workbench with way over 2,000,000 bytes free and it never drops below 1.8 when I'm working.
-
"Guess what?! I have a fever. And the only perscription is, more chipram!"
;-)
-
This is one subject where you really ought to listen to the nay sayers.
Short of building a complete replacement set of custom chip hardware that supports 8MB of chip ram and writing the appropriate OS patches to get it recognised and doing what you can to fix what that breaks in the Z2 space (if it is even possible), it isn't going to happen.
UAE works simply because it doesnt have any real constraints. Real hardware does. Something like a MiniMig style system is the best possibility for this type of thing.
-
recidivist wrote:
The only way I can conceive for the classic Amigas would be through the use of an accel/graphics/memory card add-on and a wedge program that would intercept all relevant calls and process them on-card.Isn't this what a Mediator type system does?
Oh FFS. I don't understand why this is so difficult. Let put it in electronic terms. The Amiga's Chip RAM bus is 16 bit because of the number of data lines running between the chips. In its most basic terms, there are a fixed number of wires running between the legs of the chips.
In order to address more than 2MB of RAM, the memory bus would have to be 32 bit. Changing the chips for 32 bit versions is not enough. You also have to increase the number of "wires" running between the chips to allow 32 bit communication between them.
Wedging some hardware between the accelerator can't increase the number of lines running between the chips on the motherboard. Neither can changing the chips themselves. Software won't help, because it's not a limitation of the OS - it's a physical limitation of the board.
recidivist wrote:
There is so much difference between possible and practical!
Hobbyists can do try/all sorts of things on their own time and money that would never be approved in a profit-making corporation
That's true. But hobbyists can only achieve what is possible within the confines of physics - IOW they can't magically make 16bit motherboards 32bit :roll:
--
moto
-
@d0pefish
Quote:
And who needs ChipRAM anyway? It's slow as hell compared to Fast. Ever see a piece of Amiga software that needs more than 2MB Chip?
----------------------------------------------------------------
Have I ever seen any software that needs more that 2mb Chip?
hmmm.............lets see:
1. Viewtek (when viewing larger pictures)
2. Brillance (if you want to paint larger pictures)
3. Capital punishment (would be nice if I didnt have to close all windows and put less colors on workbench just to boot the thing)
4. Zool 2 AGA (same as Capital punishment)
5. Super Street Fighter 2 TURBO (Same as Capital Punishment)
SCALA MM300 (try doing certain wipes with HAM8 pics.Youc ant!.......this app alone is worth the extra ChipRAM)
6. The one and only VIDEO TOASTER! (this definitely can do with more chipRAM)
7. Simply to open MULTIPLE SCREENS at once to do heavy duty Jobs as needed by todays standards just to slightly keep up or compete.
8. WORKBENCH needs more CHipRAM if you want to use it with 256 Colors and PNG icons to make it look its best and still fuction! ....... who wouldnt love this?
I dont care if ChipRAM is slow....it is great just to have it...........if the MegaCHIP can be invented to give A500 2mb Chip............then so can the ULTRA MegaCHIP with 8mb ChipRAM be invented.
It can be Done..........Do my Words defy logic? to some probably...........but many will tell you here that God doesnt exist..........to them it defies Logic and science and cant it cant be proved to them. But seeing and experiencing is believing. it is obvious we don't have knowledge of what we haven't seen.... so hence we think it's not possible. No scientist can do tests on a Spiritual realm.............so their explanation is: It Doesn't Exist.
Since I know for sure that it does..........it simply tells me man cannot be trusted in his limited capacity.
Simply put...........I have heard Nay Sayers before....and many have been proven wrong...I don't care what people know about the Amiga...............what I care about is what they DON'T know..............all angles have not been examined.
I believe this can be achieved on an AGA machine, even if AAA has to be imitated in software or hardware.....bottom line is I believe the CD32 I own and the A600 I own can be made to have more ChipRAM one way or another without replacing the entire motherboard.
Heck...........I even believe you can use USB and make it work to the full on aplain A600 @ 7mhz, despite the fact they say you need at least 68030. Baloney!
Think of it this way .....(this is what I mean about thinking outside the box)..... some will tell you that you need a 68040 at least to play MP3's at a decent speed. But here is what I say to them:
Explain to me how is it I am playing 18bit Mp3's on my plain A600 @ 7mhz? its called the MASPlayer!.... yes I know your thinking....."ah but thats external hardware blah blah blah" Yes.......but its done aint it?
Same can be done with USB...........an external processor that plugs into the Amigas Parrallel and serial and processes the speed it needs etc.....sort of like a USB decoder the way one would have a hardware DVD decoder.
and the same can be done with ChipRAM.......and external Card, if need be.... like the Graffitti Gfx Box..........that plugs into the RGB port and gives more color and more ChipRAM.
Thats How !!
its thinking: OUTSIDE THE BOX!.....
In this case....Literally ! ....outside the Amiga case :-)........ in some cases. :-P
So as I said...I believe It can be Done!
-
@leirbag28
What everyone has said at this point is that the limitation is in the hardware.
14-bit audio is a trick with our hearing, similar to speech synthesis on the C64's SID. To anologize, it appears that a project of this sort would be akin to forcing more than 16 colors out of the C64's VIC-II -- it just ain't gonna happen since the VIC only processes one nybble (four bits) of color data, period.
The MegAChip was nothing more than the fulfillment of the expected expansion of ChipRAM using compatible and available custom chip, Agnus. The systems already had the provisions for 2MB. Whereas the 1200 and 3000 do not have provisions for 8MB addressing and while the 4000 has the data lines for it, it appears that the chipset as a whole neither supports nor recognizes the extra lines required.
Software emulation of ChipRAM is not possible. The custom chips cannot access FastRAM directly due to hardware architecture. Software cannot overcome this limitation. Virtual ChipRAM would not work as there is no way for the custom chips to throw an exception on memory accesses out-of-boundaries. Even if it could, imagine how the system would come to a crawl if you had objects on the screen from different pages -- the CPU would now be tied up moving memory in to and out of ChipRAM via the custom chip interfaces.
In IBM/PC perspectives, you cannot increase the memory on some video cards because the video chip (Cirrus Logic, Trident, etc.) does not know how to address the extra space. This is the same reason why on some motherboards a 32MB SIMM shows up as 8MB.
Comparing UAE's multi-MB ChipRAM feature to the Amiga hardware is comparing trees to acorns. UAE is a software implementation of classic hardware -- in short, it *is* redesigned hardware. The OS doesn't care about or understand hardware limitations, so it is happy to accept whatever information the software-emulated hardware tells it.
So, the bottom line is more ChipRAM requires a completely new hardware architecture.
-
Have you even read the rest of this thread? Or any of the other ones on this topic? There are some in-depth technical explanations of why implementing more than 2MB chip RAM would involve replacing the motherboard.
Software CANNOT add data lines between chips on a motherboard.
Hardware on the parallel port or accelerator port CANNOT add data lines between chips on a motherboard.
The only way to add data lines to chips on the motherboard is to PHYSICALLY SOLDER THEM ON TO THE BOARD.
End of story.
Someone, please close this thread before I throw my laptop at the wall in frustration.
--
moto
-
Bruce Dickinson: Guess what? I got a fever! And the only prescription.. is more Chip Ram!
(http://www.onsite-pc-upgrades.com/private/amiga/ChipRam.jpg)
:lol:
-
Comparing ChipRAM to God or the supernatural seems to me (a bit) absurd. But maybe that's Dutch realism speaking...
There's a perfectly technical/scientific explanation why it can't be done on current classic hardware and why it does work on WinUAE.
So if you really really REALLY need the extra ChipRAM you got two options:
1. use WinUAE
2. make the ChipRAM expansion hardware you seem to insist is possible to make
-
it...........if the MegaCHIP can be invented to give A500 2mb Chip............then so can the ULTRA MegaCHIP with 8mb ChipRAM be invented.
This is called flawed logic. Look it up.
Do my Words defy logic?
Yes.
But seeing and experiencing is believing.
So you, personally, have actually seen God? Actually seen the actual deity of the christian* religion? (*insert alternative here if you are of a different faith).
seen.... so hence we think it's not possible. No scientist can do tests on a Spiritual realm.............so their explanation is: It Doesn't Exist.
The hardware limitations of the classic Amiga has NOTHING to do with spiritualism or religion. It is an electronic board who's basis and foundations are entirely built upon logic. It is possible to map more memory into the chip ram window; but to use it every single piece of software would have to be patched and modified to make use of it. Every. Single. One. Is it worth the effort? To run a few apps and capital punishment at the same time? Errr.... NO. Especially when it would take a lot less years and money to just make a MiniMig based board with 8Mb on board.
I believe this can be achieved on an AGA machine,
Fine. Proove us wrong. Learn electronics, design the upgrade and make one. I bet you can't.
even if AAA has to be imitated in software or hardware.....
This sentence is complete nonsense. Complete. Nonsense. Do you understand? Emulating a more powerful computer on a less powerful computer doesn't work. Do you think E-UAE running on an A500 would let you run AGA games at full speed? No. Even if you managed to get it to run somehow, you'd be talking hours per frame, not frames per second.
bottom line is I believe the CD32 I own and the A600 I own can be made to have more ChipRAM one way or another without replacing the entire motherboard.
Sure. You can keep the connectors, some of the resistors, maybe even some glue logic. But you'd have to replace most of it. It would essentially be a whole other motherboard bolted onto the original one.
I even believe you can use USB and make it work to the full on aplain A600 @ 7mhz, despite the fact they say you need at least 68030. Baloney!
USB doesn't go "to the full" on a 68030. The only USB 2.0 card for the Amiga is the Spider. You simply will not reach USB2.0 speeds on an 030. There is nothing stopping USB from working on a 7Mhz 68000 other than the lack of a 68000 USB stack. Write one and it'll work, but it won't be as fast as a USB card on a faster amiga.
Explain to me how is it I am playing 18bit Mp3's on my plain A600 @ 7mhz? its called the MASPlayer!.... yes I know your thinking....."ah but thats external hardware blah blah blah" Yes.......but its done aint it?
Fine. Thats a whole seperate independant audio chip outside of the Amiga. You want more "graphics memory"? Put a graphics card in your Amiga. Thats a completely seperate independant graphics chip with seperate video memory. You'll be able to run more graphic oriented apps at the same time. YOU WILL NOT HAVE A SINGLE BYTE MORE CHIP RAM, THOUGH.
and the same can be done with ChipRAM
No, it absolutely, positively, CANNOT be done that way. It is physically impossible to add chip ram to an amiga using any of the signals on the external connectors. You'd have to botch a whole new chipset onto the PCB itself.
and external Card, if need be.... like the Graffitti Gfx Box..........that plugs into the RGB port and gives more color and more ChipRAM.
Do you want to know how much Chip RAM the graffiti adds to the Amiga it is attached to? I'll give you a clue. Its an integer between -0.01 and 0.01 bytes.
-
@leirbag
go ahead and do it. and while you are redesigning the chips put in chunky displays and true color and stuff like that. and redesign paula to have 16bit sound.
but you'll have to redesign the mobo too or have patch wires for addressing, that would be a mess.
-
Dillusional in 4 words:
Eight Megs Chip Ram
-
@bloodmoney
You took the image right out of my mind ;-)
"And Leirbag, explore the address space. Explore the address space!"
Leirbag waveing megachip...
"I would be doing myself and this platform a disservice if I didn't expand the hell outta this"
-
Whoaaaa,nelly!
I DO understand the difference in 16 and 32 bit ,at least in general,and was under the impression that with the AGA 1200 and 4000 the whole machine was 32 bit not just the processor.
Further,I wondered if the call to from the 2mb of chipram could not "simply" be diverted to a new piece of hardware,and the on board chipram ignored.
I see now that something like the A1000 Phoenix motherboard replacement ,only more ambitious, is necesary.(and hi
ghly unlikely.)
Now IF I understand correctly,even the old Amiga OS could use more chipram EXCEPT for hardware limits,then someone with enough time,money,and knowledge could make a hardware Amiga Forever.
Relating to my earlier post,it seems we can enjoy a stock Model T(Amiga) or turn it into a hot rod from mildly souped up to being completely new under the hood.Kind of like the people who write new Sherlock Holmes stories;they will be imitations of the true thing.But it appears that most still using the Amugas have already added many things not envisioned in Commodore's plans.
-
@LoadWB
I know its a limitation in the hardware................I understand that...
Sega Genesis also had limited hardware.....then they came out with the 32X ! and the gfx improved.... and so did the speed....same machine! ...just extra add ons!...........the Super NINTENDO had certain capabilities............then came StarFox and Killer Instinct and Donkey Kong Country! Add-ons in the Cartidge that exapnded the capability of the SNES..........Same machine! just extra hardware! Just like the MAS Player and Graffiti card for Amiga....or even the DCTV
The DCTV is an excellent example of what I am talking about!...........the Amiga Displays a 16 color picture..yet it is spit out in 16 million colors faster than it would if it was actually displaying 16 million colors...how did they do it? thinking outside the Box!
Same can be done with ChipRAM..........I suspect it would be a Hardware software Combo.........the Hardware would be like the MegaChip or even the Graffitti....and the Software would be like AmigaDE or Java.........making the computer think its something its not...............if my understanding of AmigaDE is right.......the software supposedly lets any machine think its one machine..........in other words...write one application.........and as long as you have AmigaDE on any machine..........the Machine will think its the machine the software was written for.
It will be similar with ChipRAM...except in this case, the Software will let the REAL Amiga think it is WinUAE!..... Possible??? I think definitely!
@xeron
Quote:
The hardware limitations of the classic Amiga has NOTHING to do with spiritualism or religion
------------------------------------------------------------------
No, I know it doesnt............I used it as an illustration of how I know you cant believe everything everyman says, even the the So called "Experts" and I dont fall for nay saying all the time. People love to be negative by nature.
Since in my experience I seen with my own eyes how people purposely blind themselves to the Evidence of God time and time again or even so miss the simplest proof and claim to have high scientific evidence, but they dont, I see the same comparison here....simpy because God is the highest thing you can possibly believe in.....everything else below it gets even silly-er to use as a comparison. To put it simply.....the mind of Humans are simply flawed......I know it....and anyone who is honest would admit it.....it is a great thing to admit......because only then will your mind be opened even more.
So I know how it is mans nature to nay Say what they have not yet seen. That was my puspose in the illustration.
Quote:
even if AAA has to be imitated in software or hardware.....
------------------------------------------------------
This sentence is complete nonsense. Complete. Nonsense. Do you understand? Emulating a more powerful computer on a less powerful computer doesn't work. Do you think E-UAE running on an A500 would let you run AGA games at full speed? No. Even if you managed to get it to run somehow, you'd be talking hours per frame, not frames per second.
------------------------------------------------------------
It's not nonsense..............Im simply speaking of emulating the ChipRAM a AAA machine would have had and how it would have accessed it...........not the entire machine itself.
Quote:
I even believe you can use USB and make it work to the full on aplain A600 @ 7mhz, despite the fact they say you need at least 68030. Baloney!
--------------------------------------------------------------
USB doesn't go "to the full" on a 68030. The only USB 2.0 card for the Amiga is the Spider. You simply will not reach USB2.0 speeds on an 030. There is nothing stopping USB from working on a 7Mhz 68000 other than the lack of a 68000 USB stack. Write one and it'll work, but it won't be as fast as a USB card on a faster amiga.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Still Baloney!
Some would say you need more than 14mhz on an Amiga in order to run Full frame 16 million color MPEG1..........I beg to differ! behold! the FMV card for the CD32! Nuff Said!
Understand what I am saying here? a CD32 plays perfect VideoCD's...why? because of a hardware addon....I can even play the Videos through SCALA or Workbench.the chips contained in the FMV card can probably make the card itself alone a full VCD player if you add a CD drive.
the same can be done with a USB card and made to be running at Full 2.0 speeds on a plain A600 @7mhz. Those portable MP3 players that come in 256mb and up flavors prove this! im sure they have an OS in there thats real tiny! ...and runs less than 7mhz. I would even dare say its possible to use FireWire at full speeds on a plain A600 @ 7mhz..with an external box that does all the Data transfer (think of it as a FMV card for an A600 but the F in FMV stands for FireWire)
it would be something similar to a VLAB parralel port version.
Quote:
Explain to me how is it I am playing 18bit Mp3's on my plain A600 @ 7mhz? its called the MASPlayer!.... yes I know your thinking....."ah but thats external hardware blah blah blah" Yes.......but its done aint it?
---------------------------------------------------------------
Fine. Thats a whole seperate independant audio chip outside of the Amiga. You want more "graphics memory"? Put a graphics card in your Amiga. Thats a completely seperate independant graphics chip with seperate video memory. You'll be able to run more graphic oriented apps at the same time. YOU WILL NOT HAVE A SINGLE BYTE MORE CHIP RAM, THOUGH.
--------------------------------------------------------------
But thats what Im saying! except it will be a completely seperate Graphics Chip if need be...........but indeed giving it more ChipRAM.
I am not saying any of this can be done for a FACT....I am just saying I believe it is definitely possible.
-
leirbag28 wrote:
I suspect it would be a Hardware software Combo
...
It will be similar with ChipRAM...except in this case, the Software will let the REAL Amiga think it is WinUAE!..... Possible??? I think definitely!
Ummm, so basically you are talking about running WInUAE on an Amiga. How fast do you think that would be? You would be better off getting a Pegasos board or an A1 and running UAE on that. It's the only way you're going to get more than 2MB of chip ram without replacing the Amiga's motherboard.
You keep banging on about add-on hardware. Clearly you don't understand the point of chip ram. The chip ram bus is linked directly to the custom chips. It is used by Paula, Denise et al. If you want your software to use more than the 2MB Of chip ram, you have to rewrite your software to use fast ram.
If you want to add more chip ram to be available directly to the custom chips, so software which uses chip ram can access it, YOU HAVE TO MODIFY THE HARDWARE. And no, you can't add hardware to the parallel port or expansion port, because the custom chips will ignore it. They are hard wired to the chip ram, so you have to change the way the custom chips interface with each other and with the ram. YOU CANNOT DO THIS WITH SOFTWARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Why aren't you listening to what people are telling you? People here are giving you very sound reasons why what you're proposing is impossible without replacing the motherboard. Why can't you just accept that they know better?
--
moto
-
@Motorrollin
It's like preaching to the converted; give it up. He/She won't listen.
To be honest this reminds me of those evangelists or Jehovas witnesses that try to convert you on the street. You talk to them but inspite of all the ratio and reason you tell them they keep saying you're wrong. It's frustrating...
-
leirbag28 wrote:
@LoadWB
I know its a limitation in the hardware................I understand that...
Sega Genesis also had limited hardware.....then they came out with the 32X ! and the gfx improved.... and so did the speed....same machine! ...just extra add ons!....
Sure, but what effect did this new HW have on old SW ?? Hopefully non, potentially deadly .....
There is absolutly no problem getting more "chipmem" useable for newly written SW. Just use the Permedia, or Voodoo-chip found in your GFX-card .....
-
@motorollin
No I am not talkig about emulating WinUAE.........only the part that allows 8mb ChipRAM to be accesed.
@Flashlab
Im not a Jehovah's Witness (yes they are stuborn for slightly different reasons than evangelsists...they are a Cult)
........the reason for the "hardheadedness" of evangelsists is not because they are stubborn........it is because of their strong conviction in God.
Try convincing a person who saw a aghost and knows he saw a ghost, that he didnt actually see one. Your gonna lose especially when it comes to the matter of the most important quetion in the universe "what happens after we die?" you dont want to be second guessing this..........you want to actually "Know for sure" Your soul depends on it. its a matter of being wise and making sure your eternal destiny is secure........no matter who ridicules you....if there is a God, a Heaven and hell, then I will tell you what. They could care ess if there are people who dont believe...They want to make sure They dont find out the hard way.......by then its too late.
Their logic and most evangelist anyway, is: if you found a cure for AIDS, would you keep it to yourself? that would be awful.........God actually commands in the Scriptures......that if you have been forgiven..how can you not forgive? and the Good News you have heard about Christ.......go tell it to others.
understand my point?
I dont have any hardheadedness about this issue. I just think it should be done and it can be.... despite every logical reason mentioned here that it cant. If WinAUE can fool my Amiga applications.....then so can a peice of hardware.
-
leirbag28 wrote:
No I am not talkig about emulating WinUAE.........only the part that allows 8mb ChipRAM to be accesed.
And how would existing software written for the Amiga, which addresses the hardware directly, know that it is supposed to use the emulation instead of the hardware? It wouldn't. It would have to be rewritten. And if you're going to rewrite it anyway, it would be far better to rewrite it to use fast ram than some slow chip RAM emulation.
leirbag28 wrote:
I dont have any hardheadedness about this issue. I just think it should be done and it can be.... despite every logical reason mentioned here that it cant. If WinAUE can fool my Amiga applications.....then so can a peice of hardware.
You're not listening. WinUAE is a complete emulation environment which has NO DEPENDENCY ON HARDWARE. Therefore it can emulate anything. If a piece of software running on an Amiga writes data to chip mem directly, using the hardware, then no emulation can capture this and redirect to another part of memory.
Do yourself, and us, a favour: Listen to the information being given to you by people who know more than you do.
--
moto
-
Yo. How about we just listen to what the architect says in the thread from June.
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=22715
This should be put into an Amiga FAQ, linked from the front page, tatooed on foreheads, etc.
-
Sega Genesis also had limited hardware.....then they came out with the 32X ! and the gfx improved.... and so did the speed....same machine!
But sonic the hedgehog didn't get any faster, and you couldn't run two megadrive games at once. The 32X was basically a new console; it was a new processor and new graphics chips that routed the video through a special pin in the Megadrive cartridge port that was DESIGNED for that purpose.
The 32X was only used by 32X games. As I have said many times before, you COULD bank in extra chip ram, but it would ONLY work with software written for that expansion, JUST LIKE THE 32X. So capital punishment, Scala, AmigaOS etc. etc. would not be able to use the extra chip ram. Period.
then came StarFox and Killer Instinct and Donkey Kong Country! Add-ons in the Cartidge that exapnded the capability of the SNES
Yes. And those extra chips could run Starfox, Killer Instinct and Donkey Kong, BECAUSE THEY WERE WRITTEN FOR THE EXTRA HARDWARE.
Adding 8Mb of chip ram to a classic Amiga in such a way that the chipset, and existing apps can use it is impossible without redesigning the chips and adding extra memory bus wires all over the motherboard. And thats it.
The DCTV is an excellent example of what I am talking about! the Amiga Displays a 16 color picture..yet it is spit out in 16 million colors
Do you know how much extra chip ram the DCTV gives you? Go on guess. If you guessed more than 0.0 bytes, you are wrong.
Same can be done with ChipRAM
No it can't.
the Hardware would be like the MegaChip or even the Graffitti
Neither of which give you more than 2Mb chip ram.
and the Software would be like AmigaDE or Java.........making the computer think its something its not
But existing apps are already 68k native. Any layer between the apps and the actual 68k is only going to slow it down. Never mind the fact that no amount of software or emulation will ever make the actual chipset see more than 2Mb of RAM. Its just not possible.
It will be similar with ChipRAM...except in this case, the Software will let the REAL Amiga think it is WinUAE!..... Possible??? I think definitely!
No. Definately not. WinUAE can only emulate 8MB of chipram because it also emulates the chipset itself. You can't use any kind of software emulator to make the actual physical chipset in your amiga "see" more than 2Mb of chip ram. At all. Ever. Period.
even if AAA has to be imitated in software or hardware.....
This sentence is complete nonsense.
It's not nonsense..............Im simply speaking of emulating the ChipRAM a AAA machine would have had and how it would have accessed it...........not the entire machine itself.
This paragraph is complete nonsense. You can't do that. Thats not how emulation works. You'd have to emulate the whole chipset, which would be VERY SLOW. It is simply impossible to make the actual physical chipset see more than 2Mb. You can't emulate a bigger memory bus for a physical chip. You just can't. You might as well ask for an emulator that emulates a pizza oven but actually physically produces real pizza out of your floppy drive. Its equally as nonsensical.
beg to differ! behold! the FMV card for the CD32! Nuff Said!
Understand what I am saying here? a CD32 plays perfect VideoCD's...why? because of a hardware addon....
But the Amiga has always had a genlockable video signal. You could always combine an external video source with the Amiga video signal. The FMV card for the CD32 is an mpeg decoder card that plugs into a socket designed to accept an MPEG decoder card and it uses already existing proven genlock technology to put the display on the screen. This is something trivial and totally and utterly different to adding chipram to the chipset on an amiga motherboard.
the same can be done with a USB card and made to be running at Full 2.0 speeds on a plain A600 @7mhz.
You know what? You could make a card with a USB port and some fast RAM and its own private DMA controller and transfer data from USB devices at full USB2.0 speed. When you actually want to save that data to a hard disk on your SCSI hard disk attached to the A500 side port, or read it into the processor to do some processing on it, the transfers will go a LOT slower since you'll have to transfer it across slower busses. This is a fact.
it would be something similar to a VLAB parralel port version.
Wait. So you're saying that you can transfer data over the Amiga parallel port at FireWire speeds? Well I have news for you. That is COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE. There are well known bandwidth limits to all the Amiga connectors, and they're really not that high.
But thats what Im saying! except it will be a completely seperate Graphics Chip if need be...........but indeed giving it more ChipRAM.
Graphics cards DO NOT ADD A SINGLE BYTE OF CHIP RAM. They have their own seperate video ram which the amiga chipset simply cannot access. The video chip on the card cannot access chip ram, either. Only programmes that use RTG friendly APIs can use the video cards.
-
No I am not talkig about emulating WinUAE.........only the part that allows 8mb ChipRAM to be accesed.
This is impossible.
-
@LoadWB
Thanks for that Link :-)
Quote from HazyDave:
In an emulator, of course, you can try to perfectly emulate an existing Amiga chip, but there's no reason you can also emulate chips that never existed. If it's a simple thing, like more Chip RAM, the OS already supports it, maybe with a little help (eg, it may not detect 8MB automatically, but it knows what to do with it when it's there).
----------------------------------------------------------------------
as you can see...according to him.......the OS already supports the 8mb ChipRAM!! just like in WinUAE! all my apps on WinUAE read the extra ChipRAM! and as you can see he says its possible :-P
Quote from HazyDave:
If someone built an add-on that could perfectly replicate the function of the custom chips, there no reason they couldn't support 8MB of Chip RAM, of course. However, this is inherently a hack, because the only place you can all the signals needed to replace the three chips is at the chip bus itself. You'd have to physically replace the custom chips, you couldn't do this on a Zorro card, at least not without big software changes (interrupts you can't generate on the expansion bus, things like that).
-----------------------------------------------------------------
As you can see....according to him it is possible by replcacing the custom chips! a not too difficult task on the A500 and some Amigas! just as I have been saying all along.
as someone here said:
The Master Has Spoken :-)
is this thread over? Nothing is impossible!
-
@leirbag28
as you can see...according to him.......the OS already supports the 8mb ChipRAM!
Oh really? It supports roughly 2GB of chip ram. Now think about that. However, the OS itself does not scan more than 2MB, you need to manually add the rest. This is not the problem, the problem is that no-one is able to produce the HW chipset replacement that can handle more than 2MB.
As you can see....according to him it is possible by replcacing the custom chips! a not too difficult task on the A500 and some Amigas!
This is not about being physically able to replace the chip, this has never been impossible. The impossibility is being able to produce such replacement chipset that can give you more than 2MB chip memory. It must be fully compatible with old chips, it must be signal compatible with old chipset. For A500 and "some Amigas" (ones with socketed chips) you also need to wire more physical addressing lines between the chips (however, this is trivial compared to creating the new chipset).
is this thread over?
It was over from the beginning. You can't have more than 2MB chip memory in real amiga.
-
@Piru
Quote:
However, the OS itself does not scan more than 2MB, you need to manually add the rest.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Oh really? let me tell you a little story...........i once pulled out my Harddrive from my REAL Amiga and slapped it into a PC and ran WinUAE and ran my REAL Amiga hardrive in WinUAE.........I was using Workbench 3.1....I didnt change a darn thing about my Workbench...........but there it read on WinUAE 8Mb ChipRAM in all its glory!!! so your telling me the OS itself does not scan more than 2mb ChipRAM????
It does!.........and according to HazyDave it does!.
Workbench will read more than 2Mb and it supports it just as he said. Put your very own Amiga OS hardrive from a real Amiga into a PC (dont use AmigaKit or AIAB) then you will see Workbench definitely supports it...........and WinUAE emulates the Extra chipRAM.
Even all my applications ran and used the extraChipRAM without any patches and such. and the Games too!
-
@leirbag
Since WinUAE emulates 8MB capable hardware. What makes you think it wouldn't patch _any_ kickstart version you provide it with in order to get it recognised?
-
@Blade:
Sorry, nice try. Z3 and MK1 don't qualify as "digital" since they both used mecanical parts. The z3 used mechanical relays and the Mk1 was used magnetic relays! The Colossus was indeed purely digital but, according to what I've read, it was not fully funtional until January/February 1946, while the ENIAC was completed as of December of 1945. If you're going to count mechanical machines as true "computers" then we'll probably have to hand the crown to the ancient Mayans or maybe the Chinese for some the their stick and rock contraptions!
-
@Blade:
The question of which computer came first, Colossus or ENIAC is polymical. My original point is the same.
-
@leirbag28
Oh really? let me tell you a little
story...........i once pulled out my Harddrive from my REAL Amiga and slapped it into a PC and ran WinUAE and ran my REAL Amiga hardrive in WinUAE.........I was using Workbench 3.1....I didnt change a darn thing about my Workbench...........but there it read on WinUAE 8Mb ChipRAM in all its glory!!! so your telling me the OS itself does not scan more than 2mb ChipRAM????
Because of: winuae/src/filesys.asm (http://winuae.cvs.sourceforge.net/*checkout*/winuae/winuae/src/filesys.asm)
Specifically:
; add >2MB chip RAM to memory list
move.w #$FF80,d0
bsr.w getrtbase
jsr (a0)
moveq.l #3,d1
moveq.l #-10,d2
move.l #$200000,a0
sub.l a0,d0
bcs.b FSIN_chip_done
beq.b FSIN_chip_done
moveq.l #0,d4
move.l d4,a1
jsr -618(a6) ; AddMemList
FSIN_chip_done
It does!
It does not. See above.
and according to HazyDave it does!.
Nope. Stop putting words to Mr Haynie's mouth.
Workbench will read more than 2Mb and it supports it just as he said.
Workbench will report whatever AvailMem call returns. 0 or 2^31-1, or anything in between.
Put your very own Amiga OS hardrive from a real Amiga into a PC (dont use AmigaKit or AIAB) then you will see Workbench definitely supports it.
Yes. Workbench has nothing to do with hardware though, or anything to do with adding the chip memory to exec memory lists.
The extra memory past 2MB is only visible because WinUAE specifically adds it. The applications work only because WinUAE actually emulates such hardware chipset that can use more than 2MB. There is no such chipset available for real Amiga, and there never will.
-
leirbag28 wrote:
Oh really? let me tell you a little story...........i once pulled out my Harddrive from my REAL Amiga and slapped it into a PC and ran WinUAE and ran my REAL Amiga hardrive in WinUAE.........I was using Workbench 3.1....I didnt change a darn thing about my Workbench...........but there it read on WinUAE 8Mb ChipRAM in all its glory!!! so your telling me the OS itself does not scan more than 2mb ChipRAM????
Sounds to me like you have your solution. Since the Classic Amiga hardware cannot support more ChipRAM without a major hardware overhaul, your answer is to start using your Amiga OS applications in WinUAE. It is probably many many times faster, anyway.
Case closed... ? :shrug:
-
@Piru
I am not putting words into his mouth:
" If it's a simple thing, like more Chip RAM, the OS already supports it, maybe with a little help (eg, it may not detect 8MB automatically, but it knows what to do with it when it's there)."
Thats what he said...............and I also believe its true....and WinUAE is proof of it.
one can even create a WinUAE tiny Hardware box if need be to emulate the ChipRAM the way WinUAE does without any strain on the REAL Amiga's CPU.
Is this not possible? I think it is. Maybe that is what someone should do. Create a WinUAE card that plugs into Parralel or serial or wherever it needs to go and Do ChipRAM some Justice! I would see it as a box like the LightRAVE that allowed one to use the VideoToaster software on a Non Toaster equipped Amiga. One might as well add extra features to while they are at it.
How about you Jens? can you do something like this? a WinUAE ChipRAM emulator box? as small as a MASPlayer maybe?
We need more ChipRAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
How I wish I was a coder and electronics engineer. ...
-
[ ] leirbag knows what this is all about
- DFTT
- more than 2 MB chipmem can be emulated
- it's rather easy to add some address lines to the board to use more than 2 Meg if the chipset could address it
- there's no 8M Alice in this universe and probably never will be
- 16 vs 32 bit has (mostly) to do with data bus size and not necessarily address bus size
- if you like to have more chipmem, just set the MEMF_CHIP on a fastmem chunk and off you go!
-
How I wish I was a coder and electronics engineer. ...
That would have made this topic a lot shorter!
-
@leirbag28
and I also believe its true....and WinUAE is proof of it.
Of course it is true. But you claimed AmigaOS would detect the 8MB automagically ("so your telling me the OS itself does not scan more than 2mb ChipRAM???? It does!.........and according to HazyDave it does!"). It does not, WinUAE has special code for the >2MB area. If the code wasn't there, AmigaOS would only see 2MB chip memory.
one can even create a WinUAE tiny Hardware box if need be to emulate the ChipRAM the way WinUAE does without any strain on the REAL Amiga's CPU.
Naturally. But this box will be 100% isolated from the real Amiga. It will not add any chip memory to the Amiga.
Is this not possible? think it is.
Not in a way you envision it.
Maybe that is what someone should do. Create a WinUAE card that plugs into Parralel or serial or wherever it needs to go and Do ChipRAM some Justice!
It still does not give the Amiga any more chip memory. The Amiga custom chips can not access the system thru serial or parallel port.
Naturally if you forget the real amiga altogether and just replace your A500 innards with some X86 Windows box running WinUAE... then we're getting somewhere. But that is WinUAE, software emulation solution.
There is no way to get >2MB chip memory in a real Amiga.
-
i have questions here that are related but i dont want to start more flaming. so please... be good
what happens exactly if you just add more ram to the address area normally used by chipram. what is it detected as? fast slow or chip?
we dont really care if the custom chips can see the ram or not do we? regardless of how it does it winuae gives the emulated environment 8megs of chip ram, the emulated chips cant really use it other than to give programs use of it.
were in the memory map is the additional 6megs of chip under winuae? it is contiguous to aga chip ram right?
in other words if the cpu can see it is that enough for programs and os? what in the custom chips needs to know that "chip ram" is being used, and are there other ways of doing that. the custom chips dont manage chip ram right? the just share access to it.
-
Piru wrote:
There is no way to get >2MB chip memory in a real Amiga.
:horse:
I'm sure you could code a program that rewrites the Workbench banner to show 4x the amount of free ChipRAM. Of course, then programs would use four times as much memory when they run. But, I guess that's just the sacrifice you make.
-
@KThunder
what happens exactly if you just add more ram to the address area normally used by chipram. what is it detected as? fast slow or chip?
That would be 0x200000 and onwards (end of 2MB chip memory). Nothing happens at all, the memory is not detected (normally fastmem residing here is added to the system with AutoConfig(TM) ROM).
we dont really care if the custom chips can see the ram or not do we?
But we do, at least if you tag the memory as MEMF_CHIP. Such memory must be able to be used for audio, display, copper, floppy DMA etc. The MEMF_CHIP flag is there to indicate that this memory can be used with custom chips.
Regardless of how it does it winuae gives the emulated environment 8megs of chip ram, the emulated chips cant really use it other than to give programs use of it.
Not quite sure what you mean here, but WinUAE really does support this 8MB for the emulated chips.
were in the memory map is the additional 6megs of chip under winuae? it is contiguous to aga chip ram right?
Correct. It continues right after the regular chip memory (address 0x200000). Thus if >2MB is enabled, WinUAE disables any fast memory configured there. Z3 Fast is unaffected naturally since it's mapped to >24bit address.
in other words if the cpu can see it is that enough for programs and os?
It's not. AmigaOS and programs allocate chip memory to be used with the custom hardware.
what in the custom chips needs to know that "chip ram" is being used, and are there other ways of doing that.
Well, the thing is that custom chips don't care if the passed memory address actually works or not. The caller is supposed to pass valid pointer. Custom chips will just "forget" the upper bits in the passed address and use matching chip memory anyway. If you pass 0x274000 to blitter, it will use 0x074000 instead (destroying any data that is in that address in the chip memory).
There really is no way around it. You really can't have more than 2MB of chip memory in a real Amiga.
-
Just out of interest, is there any limit on the chip RAM on an emulated Amiga? Could WinUAE have more than 8MB?
-
@Piru
@leirbag28
Quote:
and I also believe its true....and WinUAE is proof of it.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Of course it is true. But you claimed AmigaOS would detect the 8MB automagically ("so your telling me the OS itself does not scan more than 2mb ChipRAM???? It does!.........and according to HazyDave it does!"). It does not, WinUAE has special code for the >2MB area. If the code wasn't there, AmigaOS would only see 2MB chip memory.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Piru.......Thats what I am saying! to add this very same special code that WinUAE uses for the 2MB area but to a real Amiga, either in software (Because WinUAE is software aint it? and it works!) or in a Special Hardware that attaches to the custom Chips that emulates WinUAE in hardware so that there is no strain or slowdown on the Amiga side. WinUAE is doing the Work of allowing my REAL Amiga Hardrive to see the extra chipRAM as if it were native 8mb ChipRAM....I find this amazing yet simple........and I am saying this very same code can be made into a Hardware box and smacked onto or piggybacked onto the custom chips to fool it to see 8Mb ChipRAM, even if it has to be taken from FastRAM or have its own ChipRAM on the WinUAE hardware (I prefer that) I am proposing.
Quote:
one can even create a WinUAE tiny Hardware box if need be to emulate the ChipRAM the way WinUAE does without any strain on the REAL Amiga's CPU.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Naturally. But this box will be 100% isolated from the real Amiga. It will not add any chip memory to the Amiga.
--------------------------------------------------------------
I believe it would add more ChipRAM just as I explained above the same way WinUAE does it.
-
leirbag28 wrote:
either in software ([...]) or in a Special Hardware that attaches to the custom Chips that emulates WinUAE in hardware so that there[...]
*ROFLMAO* This is getting ridiculous! Do you have any idea in which way hardware differs from software?? Go ahead, this is getting better and better - can't wait for the next bit!
Believing that hard beyond common sense, you should really go into theology!
-
@leirbag28
Thats what I am saying! to add this very same special code that WinUAE uses for the 2MB area but to a real Amiga, either in software
Will not work in real amiga, unless if the amiga runs UAE.
Again, you fail to understand that making the memory appear in the AmigaOS does NOT make the custom hardware support it.
(Because WinUAE is software aint it? and it works!)
It works because WinUAE emulates the hardware, and it has chips that can do 8MB chip memory. Amiga has no such chips.
or in a Special Hardware that attaches to the custom Chips that emulates WinUAE in hardware so that there is no strain or slowdown on the Amiga side.
Will not work. You can not isolate parts of WinUAE to separate chips that you can plug into Amiga motherboard. No, it does not work.
WinUAE is doing the Work of allowing my REAL Amiga Hardrive to see the extra chipRAM as if it were native 8mb ChipRAM.
No, it is not possible to interface WinUAE with real Amiga hardware.
I find this amazing yet simple.
And I find it really hilarious.
and I am saying this very same code can be made into a Hardware box and smacked onto or piggybacked onto the custom chips to fool it to see 8Mb ChipRAM, even if it has to be taken from FastRAM or have its own ChipRAM on the WinUAE hardware (I prefer that) I am proposing.
I understood the first time, and I clearly told you it is not possible to do that.
I believe it would add more ChipRAM just as I explained above the same way WinUAE does it.
You still fail to understand that WinUAE has no way to integrate to the real Amiga hardware. It's full 100% isolated Amiga running on it's own. It doesn't generate any needed hardware signals and it internally works totally different to real hardware. It's just software emulating the custom hardware functions. It does not emulate the actual hardware. Thus it is not possible to replace real hardware with this emulation.
Got it now?
-
Zac67 wrote:
Believing that hard beyond common sense, you should really go into theology!
ok thats a bit unneccisary. he is wrong sbout an aspect of a vintage computing platform. many, many people are. i personally dont see the need for more than 2megs chip, but im not going to bash him for it.
-
@Zac67
Yes I do know how hardware differs from software..................so are you saying software cant be made into hardware?
Because it can be....how do you think DVD players work? standalone ones? they are not being run from WindowsXP ya know?
They have their own little OS inside the hardware. Thats what Im talking about!
Think of it this way.........WinUAE installed onto a Cartridge where it stays permanently.......then circuits are made around it to attach to the custom Chips............does that sound ridiculous to you?
Doesn't a melody Sound Card attach to the Amiga Hardware? Doesn't a Full Motion Video Card attach to the CD32 giving it MPEG1 VideoCD capability? well to make things simpler.....lets just talk about an imaginary FMV card for the CD32.......except its a WinUAE card with the software embedded into it specifically just for the ChipRAM emulation...............making sence? it should make sence. ....someone just has to make it and accessible in an AmigaOS kind of way, or CD32 kind of way in this case.
Seriously....think about it for a second what I am saying.............it can work...........forget all the technical stuff you know. I think what I am saying makes perfect sence to him who is willing to understand.
Dont they have E-UAE now for Amiga 68k? well we are getting closer! imagine that on a CompactFlash (Hardware) with a Special WinUAE "necessitites" decoder.......and you start to get the idea.
-
@maffoo
Just out of interest, is there any limit on the chip RAM on an emulated Amiga? Could WinUAE have more than 8MB?
Pointers used with custom hardware are real 32bit ones, so you could in theory have ~4GB chip memory with emulation such as UAE. In practice certain AmigaOS functions interpret the bit 31 as failure indicator, thus the limit is ~2GB. However, anything > 8MB would need to be located to 32bit address space. Any well behaving app should work fine, but various apps would break.
In fact already using >=0x200000 breaks some things (apps compare against this fixed address to determine if memory is chip or fast).
-
so the current custom chips dont fully decode the bus and will corrupt memory if it is above their limit. would a bus snoop chip that watches for accesses above the 2meg and inhibit action in the blitter et.al. prevent this?
-
leirbag28 wrote:
forget all the technical stuff you know. I think what I am saying makes perfect sence to him who is willing to understand.
you can't forget the technical stuff if thats the reason it wont work. this is technical, and everything that has been done for the amiga over the last 10yrs is because of technical stuff.
-
@leirbag28
Because it can be....how do you think DVD players work? standalone ones? they are not being run from WindowsXP ya know?
They have their own little OS inside the hardware. Thats what Im talking about!
Aha, I think we're getting somewhere now. Actually they are much more Windows XP than Amiga hardware custom chips.
WinUAE installed onto a Cartridge where it stays permanently.then circuits are made around it to attach to the custom Chips.does that sound ridiculous to you?
Utter nonsense. Totally ridicilous.
Doesn't a melody Sound Card attach to the Amiga Hardware? Doesn't a Full Motion Video Card attach to the CD32 giving it MPEG1 VideoCD capability?
These two are using the provided, well documented interfaces. There's nothing magical about these products. They do not modify any custom chips functions inside the Amiga, nor do they add any chip memory to system.
lets just talk about an imaginary FMV card for the CD32..except its a WinUAE card with the software embedded into it specifically just for the ChipRAM emulation..making sence?
It is not making sence (or sense). It's nonsense.
it should make sence. ....someone just has to make it and accessible in an AmigaOS kind of way
It is not possible to make hardware support >2MB chip memory via software.
or CD32 kind of way in this case.
No Amiga hardware expansion slot has the required signals to replace Amiga custom chips completely. It needs to connect/replace the chips directly (or have tons of really ugly wiring).
Seriously....think about it for a second what I am saying..it can work.
It can not work.
forget all the technical stuff you know. I think what I am saying makes perfect sence to him who is willing to understand.
You are not making any sense. Your ideas do not work at all. Anyone who understands how Amiga works, understands that you are totally lost here.
Dont they have E-UAE now for Amiga 68k?
UAE has been available for Amiga since 96-97 at least. Even with 68060 it runs tens to hundreds of times slower than 7MHz A500.
well we are getting closer!
We're exactly as far away as we were in 96-97.
imagine that on a CompactFlash (Hardware) with a Special WinUAE "necessitites" decoder.and you start to get the idea.
Yeah, we're getting the idea. You're incapable of accepting that you're wrong.
-
@KThunder
would a bus snoop chip that watches for accesses above the 2meg and inhibit action in the blitter et.al. prevent this?
Can't see how it could, and even if it could, it would lack the actual blit operation that is expected to be performed.
And it's not just blitter, it's all custom hardware DMA, copper, blitter, bitplane DMA, Paula audio, floppy read/write etc etc.
-
@leirbag
I really don't mean to sound harsh here but you just need to accept it. There are people here who have forgotten more about the amiga hardware than you, or I, will ever know. And you are the only person insisting this idea will work.
The thing is, even if I can add 8MB an amiga's Z2 area by hacking away merrily, there are only 21 working address lines gluing it together. 2^21 = 2097152, which oddly enough is 2MB worth of address space. Even if I used lots of really fine wire to add the other 2 I would need to get to 2^23 (8MB), where do I connect them to?
Answers on a postcard...
-
Piru wrote:
Can't see how it could, and even if it could, it would lack the actual blit operation that is expected to be performed.
And it's not just blitter, it's all custom hardware DMA, copper, blitter, bitplane DMA, Paula audio, floppy read/write etc etc.
what i meant was the memory not the blitter etc. if the snoop chip saw a memory access to say a memory location above 2meg, that would cause problems because of the partial decoding of the bus but the custom chips, it would basically step in and let the custom chips know not to do anything.
-
@KThunder
it would basically step in and let the custom chips know not to do anything.
Yes, I got the idea, and I tried to say that even if it could stop the operation, it would still lack it, which in itself that can be fatal aswell. Various examples: Missing write to a floppy. Not reading data from the floppy to memory. Not decoding floppy MFM buffer properly.
-
you could easily allow normal operations to continue. anything under 2megs.
-
@KThunder
you could easily allow normal operations to continue. anything under 2megs.
And anything above it would break.
AmigaOS doesn't check from which address it gets the memory from. If you would make above 2MB "chip memory" available to system, it would use it, and break.
-
the os doesnt break under winuae
-
@KThunder
the os doesnt break under winuae
Because the WinUAE emulates chipset that works with > 2MB chip memory. WinUAE's custom chips don't ignore the uppers bits of 0x274000 pointer, but use 0x274000 as expected.
See?
-
@Leirbag:
Critics are a dime a dozen. This is not impossible. I'm thinking again about one possible solution that came to me back when I was in AT school in the Navy. I never got past sketches for it, but I believed then (as I do now) that this is not the Mission Im possible some here make it out to be. A lot of people are just dead certain about this and have intractably closed their minds to any possibility of nuance.
-
Piru wrote:
@KThunder
the os doesnt break under winuae
Because the WinUAE emulates chipset that works with > 2MB chip memory. WinUAE's custom chips don't ignore the uppers bits of 0x274000 pointer, but use 0x274000 as expected.
See?
thats what im saying piru.
you use a bus snoop chip to decode the upper bits and if anything over 2meg is being accessed it lets the custom chips know
-
@KThunder
you use a bus snoop chip do decode the uppeer bits and if anything over 2meg is being accessed it lets the custom chips know
And tell custom chips to do what? Don't do the operation? If they don't, the result is garbage, regardless.
Do or don't, the result is the same. Something is trashed.
-
@Stopthegop
Look, nobody said that an 8MB chipram capable hardware amiga is impossible per se. You could do it just fine if:
1) You make a replacement chipset capable of accessing the full 8MB
2) rewire entire motherboard to take said chipset, included but not limited to adding extra addressing lines etc
3) Make a patch for the OS so that the 8MB are recognised
4) Find a fix for whatever problems stealing the address space away from other hardware that wants to reside there causes.
If you do all of this, you will find you have essentially replaced the entire system. It wouldn't exactly be an expansion, it would be an entirely new system.
Hmm, guess what WinUAE does...
Something like MiniMig has the potential for this type of thing, but as far as existing classics systems go, forget it. However, if you can find a way to make the existing custom chips sprout more address lines and be able to use them then I will stand corrected on the original point.
-
KThunder wrote:
you use a bus snoop chip to decode the upper bits and if anything over 2meg is being accessed it lets the custom chips know
So you get a system with >2MB chipram that can't be used by the custom chips. It also means that things that are supposed to get done, arent, which probably means a crash. How is this useful?
-
Piru wrote:
And tell custom chips to do what? Don't do the operation? If they don't, the result is garbage, regardless.
Do or don't, the result is the same. Something is trashed.
yes exactly if you are trying to use above 2meg as ram you dont want the custom chips to do anything right, you want them to share the bus with the cpu. you dont need the custom chips to do anything with above 2meg do you you just want to use the ram for the cpu for programs
-
Karlos wrote:
So you get a system with >2MB chipram that can't be used by the custom chips. It also means that things that are supposed to get done, arent, which probably means a crash. How is this useful?
noone ever said not let the custom chips do aything. everything under 2meg would be left alone by the bus snoop chip so the custom chips would continue to do their job
-
@KThunder
yes exactly if you are trying to use above 2meg as ram you dont want the custom chips to do anything right, you want them to share the bus with the cpu. you dont need the custom chips to do anything with above 2meg do you you just want to use the ram for the cpu for programs
And this is: fast memory.
So what's the point in trying to make it chip memory, again?
-
@KThunder
"So you get a system with >2MB chipram that can't be used by the custom chips" - meaning they can't use the area > 2MB, not that they can't use any chip ram at all.
The problem is, what happens when the OS allocates chip memory above 2MB space for the bitplane data of a screen you just opened? Your snooper prevents the hardware from doing anything when it tries to fetch the data. So you just get a totally black screen (if you are lucky, I am sure things would crash long before getting even this far) ?
As for using the memory for program code etc, why? This is what fast ram is for.
-
some programs need chip memory for certain functions, amigaos loads certain things into chip ram yes. if you are trying (like some people) to run too many programs and the os needs more chip ram you are stuck. what does the custom chips in winuae use the upper parts of 8meg for? not much id wager because the os commands those chips to do stuff right. the os can use up to 8megs for lots of stuff though
why would the os allocate bitplane space up at 7meg or so? it wouldnt or wouldnt have to anyway
-
Can you give an example of anything the OS specifically puts into chip ram (on any machine having adequate fast ram) that isn't put there so the custom chips can use it for some purpose?
-
wait... screens i see what you mean, im thinking in terms of programs but the os could put screens up there couldnt it
your stack is in chip ram, so are major parts of the os, as are any old programs and all data concerning what programs are loaded and where they are, multitasking info etc.
-
@KThunder
some programs need chip memory for certain functions, amigaos loads certain things into chip ram yes.
But they load these things to chip memory for a reason: These things are to be processed using the custom chips.
if you are trying (like some people) to run too many programs and the os needs more chip ram you are stuck.
Tough. You're supposed to free some memory and try again. Or reboot.
what does the custom chips in winuae use the upper parts of 8meg for? not much id wager because the os commands those chips to do stuff right.
The OS sees absolutely no difference in the memory below or above 2MB, there is no special treatment. It's exactly the same as the lower parts, it's regular chip memory. It can be used for display, blitter, paula audio, floppy DMA etc.
This works in WinUAE because it a) has chipset emulation that can handle upto 8MB chip memory b) it has resident tag that AddMemList the additional chip memory to system.
-
KThunder wrote:
wait... screens i see what you mean, im thinking in terms of programs but the os could put screens up there couldnt it
The OS would look only for MEMF_CHIP for the displayable bitplane data on your 8MB system. Now if you already gobbled up your lower 2MB with 3 instances of Scala, it isnt going to not allocate it above 2MB if space exists there.
-
@KThunder
wait... screens i see what you mean, im thinking in terms of programs but the os could put screens up there couldnt it
No it couldn't. Or at least it would be no different from fast memory. You'd still need to swap the memory in & out, which is really painfully slow with chip memory. And OS doesn't do this anyway, it assumes MEMF_CHIP is displayable.
-
yeah the os allocating some stuff in upper chip ram would muck stuff upp. at best it would be like slow ram or something. not completely usable, fast ram is better
-
KThunder wrote:
your stack is in chip ram, so are major parts of the os, as are any old programs and all data concerning what programs are loaded and where they are, multitasking info etc.
Holy smokes, your amiga must be dead slow then. On mine, all this data goes right into fast ram where the 68040 can access it every cycle ;-)
-
actually it doesnt. you can use mmu to remap rom to fast ram but alot of this stuff goes into chip
-
@KThunder
your stack is in chip ram, so are major parts of the os
No way, they aren't. This stuff is in the fastest memory possible (highest priority).
, as are any old programs
Only some very very very old and buggy (I'd say -86 or so apps).
and all data concerning what programs are loaded and where they are, multitasking info etc.
No, nothing of this sort is in chip memory. This stuff is kept in fastest memory possible.
you can use mmu to remap rom to fast ram but alot of this stuff goes into chip
The only situation things like supervisor stack and exec.library can end up in chip memory is due to lame accelerator adding memory to system too late, so that the exec.library relocation code can't see it. And anyway, there are patches to fix this (FastExec, BK's LocalFast).
-
Nope, I have the following all in fast (and the address ranges to prove it)
Kickstart
Exec
Supervisor Stack Pointer
User Stack Pointer
Vector Base Register
-
Piru wrote:
@KThunder
wait... screens i see what you mean, im thinking in terms of programs but the os could put screens up there couldnt it
No it couldn't. Or at least it would be no different from fast memory. You'd still need to swap the memory in & out, which is really painfully slow with chip memory. And OS doesn't do this anyway, it assumes MEMF_CHIP is displayable.
in winuae if you have 8megs chip and you start up a crapload of programs screens ight get put up above 2meg right? that would cause problems right if you flipped screens or doesnt it work that way?
-
so you guys have nothing in chip ram huh, nothing at all not a single byte used?
what is this thread here for then if noone uses chip ram
-
On UAE its fine because UAE emulates custom chips that were never actually made in real life that are capable of using all 8MB of chip ram. So everything is just fine.
Of course setting 8MB of chip reduces your Z2 space as you might notice. On a real amiga this could be problematic as a lot of expansions want to live there.
-
@KThunder
in winuae if you have 8megs chip and you start up a crapload of programs screens ight get put up above 2meg right?
Naturally.
that would cause problems right if you flipped screens or doesnt it work that way?
There is no problem in WinUAE, it handles 8MB just fine. It has chipset that is able to handle >2MB chip memory without any issues. I was commenting your idea.
-
Piru wrote:
@KThunder
in winuae if you have 8megs chip and you start up a crapload of programs screens ight get put up above 2meg right?
Naturally.
that would cause problems right if you flipped screens or doesnt it work that way?
There is no problem in WinUAE, it handles 8MB just fine. It has chipset that is able to handle >2MB chip memory without any issues. I was commenting your idea.
i was agreeing with you some stuff might get put in upper chip that the custom chips might need and that would cause problems. since my idea wouldnt fix the problem it would only partially bypass it.
-
KThunder wrote:
so you guys have nothing in chip ram huh, nothing at all not a single byte used?
what is this thread here for then if noone uses chip ram
Yes we do have stuff in there, just not code. Graphics data, sound data all go there, where the custom chips can make use of it.
Although my graphics data tends to reside in the VRAM of my graphics card. It's only in chip ram when retrogaming ;-)
-
@KThunder
so you guys have nothing in chip ram huh, nothing at all not a single byte used?
Some graphics.library arrays and buffers, native screenmode bitmap planes (if any native screen is open), floppy track buffers, AHI 14bit audio buffers.
Typically over 2 million bytes of chip memory was free (I don't have my A1200 set up anymore).
-
unless....
just kidding, i have never runinto any memory problems on my miggy, i did back with my 1000, but that was with 1meg of fast and 512 chip
-
@KThunder
i was agreeing with you some stuff might get put in upper chip that the custom chips might need and that would cause problems. since my idea wouldnt fix the problem it would only partially bypass it.
Well, I don't see how this "chip memory" would be any different from having the extra areas available as fast memory. You could aswell just use FBlit, and/or MCP's patch to direct chipmem allocations to fastmem. And you wouldn't need the hw modifications... :-)
-
Piru wrote:
Well, I don't see how this "chip memory" would be any different from having the extra areas available as fast memory. You could aswell just use FBlit, and/or MCP's patch to direct chipmem allocations to fastmem.
piru im agreeing with you, discusion over it wont work
i was interested in why it wouldnt, the main thing i didnt think of was screens. it clicked when karlos said something about bitplane data. with my video card none of that goes in chip so i didnt think of it.
-
wait hang on a sec...
here you go:
:bow: :bow: :bow:
and one of these: :cheers:
and maybe one of these for good measure: :whack:
-
Agreed. :-)
Now, it's time to sleep a bit. Hopefully...
-
yeah sleep is good, i work the night shift.
later
-
@KThunder
BYW, if you really do have OS stuff in chip ram for any reason on your system, try to get a remapper tool to move it into fast ram where it should have gone in the first place. My very old Apollo1240 for instance didnt add the fast ram to the system until after exec was fully loaded and running, meaning exec and several other bits ended up in chip ram. Moving it to fast ram with first fastexec and later remapollo made a *huge* difference to the overall performance of the machine.
-
@stopthegop
True
I guess I will just keep it quiet for now........past this point its just arguing.
lets just see if one gets created.
I think it might :-)
-
@leirbag
and I know for a fact it won't. Anyone with the technical knowhow to bodge an entire replacement chipset (basically most of the motherboard) on top of an Amiga to gain 6Mb more chipram will realise the utter futility of the exercise when it would be easier, faster and cheaper to just make an "Amiga on an FPGA" from scratch.
-
I'll give it two months before someone starts a new thread. :lol:
-
It's almost as bad as Shaun the Bus Arch Troll :lol:
-
I find it funny how people try to create the theory of "chip memory that cannot be accessed by the custom chips".
The definition of chip memory is "memory that can be accessed by the custom chips". That's what its name comes from and that's the only pupose why it exists.
"Chip memory which cannot be accessed by the custom chips" cannot exist simply because it is the opposite of the definition of chip memory.
It's also quite simple to understand that the currently existing custom chips are designed and built to access not more than 2MB of memory. People not knowing the technical internals of the chips just have to believe it, but it is a fact. All existing chips cannot access more than 2MB of memory. In order to have the custom chips access more than 2MB of memory, you have to build new chips.
That's what WinUAE's authors did. They built new chips. It's easy to do if the entire machine is built in software. But for a real (hardware) Amiga it would mean to develop an entire new set of custom chips. And motherboards.
And I fully agree with Zac67 that people saying to keep away technical facts from a technical discussion should deal with theology or philosophy but please keep away from computers and mathematics.
Bye,
Thomas
-
The only Threologans here are the hard-headed ones who know for absolute certainty that they -- and only they -- have all the answers.
-
Let's quit the religious tone of this topic. Whether people believe in God/supernatural or not is their own business.
This is about technology and hence it is perfectly explainable; after it is all man made.
There have been people responing here that KNOW what they talk about. They program the machine and know its inner workings.
I for one am getting a bit tired of this bogus.
No-one said that it's impossible. It is theoretically possible to create an 8Mb ChipRAM Amiga. But that would require a lot a work. I'm not going into details; you can read them in the topic. There's also something like economically sensible; the effort to create this would just not be worth it...
-
Thomas wrote:
I find it funny how people try to create the theory of "chip memory that cannot be accessed by the custom chips".
you are missing the point of what leirbag wanted. if you are trying to load a whole bunch of programs that are all asking for chip ram you dont care if the custom chips use it. only that the cpu does. dont make fun of somebody if you are missing the entire point of the arguement.
some people still run programs that want chip ram, we all know that fast is better and most new programs dont need much chip, about the only program that i use that does is dpaintIV, if i wanted that running with several other programs that needed chip id be out of luck and would have to unload dpaint for another prog or whatever.
-
@KThunder
if you are trying to load a whole bunch of programs that are all asking for chip ram you dont care if the custom chips use it.
Actually, have a look at the program examples he gave. They all allocate chip ram because they are using the custom chips to do stuff with data they store there, such as play sounds, display graphics etc. They don't allocate it for *any* other reason. No sensible program since OS 1.3 allocates chip ram for code when fast ram exists.
A few, very old, very badly written programs fail to work when running from fast ram.
-
if you are trying to load a whole bunch of programs that are all asking for chip ram you dont care if the custom chips use it.
That's what is so entertaining about it. A memory area can either be declared as chip RAM or not. If it is declared as chip RAM, it is expected to be accessed by the chips. If a program allocates chip memory it expects the chips to be able to access this memory. If the chips cannot access it, the program will crash or create corruption.
You certainly can fake chip memory in any memory area, just by declaring this area as chip memory. You don't need new chips or anything. The OS will at once start to use it for bitmaps, sounds, floppy disk caches etc.
And will immediately crash. Because the chips which are told to access this area, can't. They just cut off the upper bits of the address and overwrite areas in (real) chip memory instead.
If you have programs which allocate chip memory although they could use any memory instead, you should rather patch these programs instead of trying to argue about non-exitant (or should I say impossible) hardware features. If a program allocates chip memory although it does not need it, the program is buggy, not the hardware bad. And the programs mentioned above surely need chip memory because they use the chips to do something with this memory. So they don't run with faked chip memory.
Bye,
Thomas
-
"entertaining" as if we are stupid or something, thats increadibly arrogent of you.
the one program that i use that makes lots of use of chip ram is dpaint IV. it was written after fast ram began to be used extensively. according to the manual 140k or something like that is used by the program even if you have fast. the manual also states that with certain fuctions in some screen modes you might run out even if you have 2megs chip. dpaintIV uses as mich fast ram as possible and still uses some chip. even dpaint 2 loaded as much into fast as possible (acording to dan silva the guy who wrote it) and the rest into chip.
now if i had 8megs chip in dpaint IV i could say open a hires overscanned screen with stensils and animation controles etc etc with no trouble,
if i had 2megs chip and some "chip" all the stuff the custom chips need: screens stensil etc could concevably fit in the 2megs with the program that is requesting chip ram going into "chip" and still working. dpaint is modular so if you use a function like 3d rotations and stuff it loads that into ram. if it needs chip it could possibly use "chip"
we have agreed that it is not possible and the reasons for it and i was wrong on part of that, if you want to come in and make people seem stupid thats your perogitive but i think its pretty low class of you
i havent done much programming for amiga and id like to do more. i dont know why a program would need code in chip ram. piru does or knows why it doesnt he seems to know quite a bit about this thats why im asking him. you i dont need
-
Yes, it is arrogant and it is arrogant for a good reason. You just don't want to understand. There are about 120 postings in this thread and in every second posting Piru repeats that chip memory is chip memory for a reason and programs allocate chip memory for that reason. Things allocated in chip memory belong into chip memory. Things allocated in chip memory belong into chip memory because the chips need access to it. You cannot define fake chip memory because the custom chips don't have access to faked chip memory. You cannot define chip memory outside of the address space of the custom chips because memory outside of the address space of the custom chips is no chip memory.
if i had 2megs chip and some "chip" all the stuff the custom chips need: screens stensil etc could concevably fit in the 2megs with the program that is requesting chip ram going into "chip" and still working. dpaint is modular so if you use a function like 3d rotations and stuff it loads that into ram. if it needs chip it could possibly use "chip"
So what is the difference between '"chip"' and 'fast' ? If anything DPaint allocates in 'chip' could go into '"chip"', why shouldn't it go into 'fast' ? The only difference between 'chip' and 'fast' is that 'fast' cannot be accessed by the custom chip. So what is the difference between '"chip"' and 'fast' ?
DPaint allocates as much as possible into 'fast'. Everything else goes into 'chip'. Neither 'fast' nor '"chip"' will do, it needs to be 'chip'. Because the custom chips need to access it.
You give screens, stencils, animation controls etc. as examples. These are all either displayed (which needs 'chip', not '"chip"') or ready to be copied into the graphics buffer (using the Blitter which is a custom chip which needs 'chip', not '"chip"').
I don't get your point. There is either chip memory or non-chip memory. You cannot have "chip memory that is no chip memory". (Remember: chip memory is the memory accessible by the custom chips.)
Bye,
Thomas
-
@Xeron
You might as well ask for an emulator that emulates a pizza oven but actually physically produces real pizza out of your floppy drive.
Yes, but let's face it, that'd be genius :lol:
-
again you miss my freaking point: i do understand i have agreed with the others. and you completely missed what i was saying with dpaint too.
if a program is loading code into chip as well as stuff that does need to be displayed and there was a way to get the code into something other than chip there would be more room for stuff that needs to be in chip.
you are arrogant and dont want to understand
i was going to ask piru and karlos if there was a way to use the mmu to remap code that wants to use chip to fast but you would probably jump all over that too.
-
@KThunder
if a program is loading code into chip as well as stuff that does need to be displayed and there was a way to get the code into something other than chip there would be more room for stuff that needs to be in chip.
Which programs put code to chip memory explicitly? At least not DPaint, that's for sure.
Normally the only condition code can get into chip memory is: a) the program explicitly requests chip for the code. Usually this is some lame old app or most of the code hunk is actually data, and really is accessed by the custom chips. b) system runs out of fast memory and hunk is not requesting to be put to fast memory explicitly. In this case hunk is loaded to chip memory as last chance measure, instead of failing to load the executable.
-
i was going to ask piru and karlos if there was a way to use the mmu to remap code that wants to use chip to fast but you would probably jump all over that too.
This shouldn't really be needed, certainly not for an application like Dpaint IV - after all it is 'new' in comparison to programs that actually don't already use fast ram for everything that it can.
If you look at a basic OS1.3 (maybe it is since 2.0) AmigaOS install and above, you can find a system tool called "NoFastMem". This was to assist very old programs (much older than DP IV) that for various reasons don't work if their code is loaded into fast ram. You ran NoFastMem, which temporarily 'hid' the fast memory, then you ran your troublesome application which was then forced to use only chip ram for its code and data. Then you could safely run nofastmem again to 'unhide' the fast memory.
DPaint uses lots of chip ram because of the type of application it is - an art package designed for native video modes. It uses chip memory for the screen, some hidden images, brushes, stencils, animation frames and lots of other stuff. These things are either displayed or operated on using the blitter, which is why they need to be in chip ram.
However, it really ought not to be using any chip ram for anything that can be safely put into fast. By which, of course, I mean anything the custom chips don't need access to, such as program code and data structures - even graphics data that is not presently 'in use' can be stored in fast ram if the program knows how to page it in and out.
What you really need is a paint package that does everything using the CPU and does it in fast ram. Only the display itself needs to be in Chip ram (or indeed video memory on a graphics card) and you would have to have a code that performs copies of the changed areas of the image from fast ram to the display area. This would remove your limit but has one overriding drawback - you likely need a much faster CPU to do everything with, more powerful than the average user would have had when the software was originally made.
The other alternative is to have a paint program that only uses graphics.library routines. This would mean FBlit could help a lot on basic AGA and also you could run it under RTG. The drawback here is that the graphics.library routines are frankly rather crap for making a decent paint package with.
-
ok here are the actual number i got from the dpaint manual:
dpaintII with no fast uses 200k for the program and with fast can free up 170k so leaving 30k in chip. this is code of some type not including screen. 320x200x32 uses 40k. i checked this all and its pretty close, so not bad even for an old program.
dpaintIV uses 282k for the bare program. i couldnt find what fast frees up in the manual anywhere.
i ran it bare on my 3000 and checking ram came out with 99.8k used minus 40k for 320x200x32 screen leaves about 60k left in chip of code.
so in otherwords this is a huge problem!!!! :-D
it is 60k for the bare prog. i assume that that has to be there. the dpaintII manual says that it loads as much as it can into fast leaving about 30.
that 60k would only be a problem if i had all animation stuff on and something running in the background. i usually run dpaint alone though.
-
i checked ppaint also and it uses some chip beyond the amount used for screen. i tried it with a bunch of different screen resolutions and program settings but i couldnt find out how much it uses. i dont know if you can turn workbench off with ppaint. it seems to use about as much as dpaintIV. rtg uses a bit at least with my video cards.
-
The 30K of stuff in chip probably isnt code though. It might be some of DPaint's user interface graphics. That and other stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if there were some permanently allocated bits of chip ram for undo buffers and stuff.
Also, looking at your free chip ram isnt the perfect scientific method. Stuff gets temporarily allocated and freed constantly during normal operation. That means your reported figures are subject to a degree of entropy.
-
@KThunder
dpaintIV uses 282k for the bare program. i couldnt find what fast frees up in the manual anywhere.
i ran it bare on my 3000 and checking ram came out with 99.8k used minus 40k for 320x200x32 screen leaves about 60k left in chip of code.
of code? And you can tell this how?
Just because some app uses more chip memory than the display doesn't mean the extra chip is actually used for code. This memory is likely to be used with the custom chips in some other ways.
i checked ppaint also and it uses some chip beyond the amount used for screen.
You assume that this extra chip usage is somehow rogue, something that could use fast. How can you tell this is the case?
-
@KThunder
The MMU style approach can't work in this case, since an MMU can only reuse a (relatively) small amount of memory in a larger amount of address space such that an application believes to see more memory than is present. To do this, the MMU monitors the address generated by the CPU (in this case) and the memory manager is used to move (swap in and out) the physical memory to the logical location where it's needed. (Obviously the data has to be stored in an adequately sized but probably slower location, i.e. a hard disc.)
It's very important that logical address space is greater than physical memory. This whole idea with enlarging chipmem tries to operate an amount of physical memory inside a logical address space (=everything the unit in question can address, in the case of Agnus/Alice = 2 MB) that is actually smaller - this is just the opposite and is not possible. Furthermore, paging data in and out requires time, which very clearly violates the realtime requirements needed for producing graphics output, sound and floppy data transfer.
Try to envision the good ol' 6502 CPU of the C64, VIC20 et al. It's got a 16 bit address bus and can see 64K of memory. There's no way it could see more, its world has a size of 65536 bytes. The only way to access more is to use a scheme of bank switching (which the C64 actually does) where the same location in memory is used to window different sets of data. Now, this obviously requires clever programming to ensure that the application always sees the data it's expecting. The only one able to tell which data is needed is the app itself, so it must have provisions to switch the banked data.
Back to the Amiga, the chipset (representing the application) lacks any capability of telling any added (and arbitrarily clever) hardware which bank it wants to see right now. So banking is not a solution.
In theory, it's of course possible to build some hardware that simply knows which address location/bank the chipset wants to access because it knows Agnus' inner workings and foresees which memory locations are really needed. However, this hardware must be able to simulate the complete chipset to actually make this forecast, so its obviously more complex than the chipset itself - and harder to design.
The only solution to this problem is to completely redesign Agnus/Alice, enlarge the address registers and add the required address lines (towards the CPU bridge and towards RAM). Patching the OS to recognize/utilize the larger space is close to trivial.
Because the Agnus/Alice chip not only houses the registers, address generators but also blitter, copper, RAM controller, DMA arbitration engine, etc. a redesign from scratch for a pin compatible chip is a tall task, most of today's logic isn't even signal compatible to the old chips!
-
regardless of what goes were etc. i think weve kilt this one dead. i tried to figure the ram usage best as i could with lots of different program settings and screen settings but you are right its tough to nail down.
:horse:
thanks for your help quys i think im done with this thread hope i didnt piss anybody off too much i do respect you guys and you knowledge of the hardware.
except thomas, i hope i pissed him off real good :-D
kidding
-
I's obvious that a hardware UAE is what we want!It should do everything the classic Amiga did,only more and better,and be way cheaper.
Now I think I'll work on something simpler like an exchange program between Mediteranean and Nordic Hells so the occupants have a chance to cool off or warm up!
-
The 'hardware UAE' you're talking about is pretty much the Minimig Dennis is working on - he remodels the functions of ECS, but without chipset level compatibility. He stated he used UAE as a source for detail knowledge, so that kind of makes Minimig a 'hardware UAE'. Let's wait for him to finish.
:popcorn:
-
@KThunder:
If your main problem is that you have to little chipmem to use DPaint, then replace it with Brilliance (last version is 2.0), which uses chipmem in a more intelligent way, and instead uses a lot of fastmem for buffers, animations, undo-levels etc, when possible.
You will not miss DPaint, Brilliance is a much better paint package in all aspects. The only thing it lacks in comparison is reputation, as it was released so late in the Amigas commercial life.
/Patrik
-
i said i was done with this thread but ill make one more post since yours was directed at me.
i dont have a problem with chip ram, i never have. i run dpaint for its animation features. i use ppaint, and xipaint for paint stuff since they work well with my video card.