Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: EDanaII on September 27, 2007, 08:36:39 PM
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So far, I've stayed (mostly) quiet about the minimig situation. Don't get me wrong, I think it's fantastic what Dennis has achieved, and I'm curious to see where all this will lead, and I have one thought on this matter that I have no idea has been explored or not, so apologies if it has.
Why a minimig "board?" Or, more specifically, why JUST a minimig running with an m68k supporting only legacy games? Why not a minimig graphics card? In other words, forget keyboards, serial ports and all that jazz and instead create a MODERN graphics card using what minimig has learned to support UAE, AROS, MorphOS and OS4.0? Leave the keyboard, mouse, serial and even USB to UAE and the like, and use minimig to support the legacy software?
Like I said, just a random crazy thought. I'm no expert in this matter, but it seems feasible, and practical, to me to use what we have already today with what minimig can bring tomorrow to make a better Amiga, if only an emulated one.
Two cents.
Ed.
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I think it's a great idea. In fact I think I mentioned it when MiniMig was first announced.
Basically, I would like to see MiniMig on a PCI card. You then run an app inside your main OS which is similar to UAE, but instead of emulating the 68k CPU and custom chips it uses the real ones on the MiniMig card.
If the card were supported by AROS, MOS or OS4 it would provide great legacy support in a modern, AmigaOS-like environment.
--
moto
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Problem is that would have been a cool when PCs were not fast enough to emulate the amiga. Nowadays it would not add anything you can't already have with winuae. Same would apply to a playstation one emulator on a card, you can already do that in software, why do you need a PCI card also?
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I don't think it's quite ready for that, yet. But a revision or two, maybe.
I'd be more worried by the fact that PCI itself is now on the way out.
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Next time I make a billion bucks..I want
to buy up everything Amiga.inc and all the os goodies..
and turn it out to open source...
We need to take the minimig and run
with the spirit of this build out &
improve and expand it and make
everything on it and AMIGA
((AMIGA needs to be open source...))
This way just like Linux it will survive
no matter who tried to ummm commodore
it into the ground...
Joe......
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IOWASURFER wrote:
Next time I make a billion bucks..
Next time...?
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moto
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little wrote:
Problem is that would have been a cool when PCs were not fast enough to emulate the amiga. Nowadays it would not add anything you can't already have with winuae.
Emulators will always be a bit quirky, no matter how well they are coded. There are still some flaws in WinUAE's sound output: some games just sound terrible. Now I don't know how good the sound of the Minimig is, but I would expect it to be pretty much accurate.
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Open source is the way to go. Any way Amiga items can get into more users is a good thing, especially if folks can tinker with a Mini-Mig style open source implementation of an Amiga tha can be rewoked into an Atari ST, or a Sharp X6800, etc or whatever.
There is also a great wow factor in having a sandwich box size Amiga connected to a Big LCD, without cumbersome VGA adapters, or spending 40 hours online looking for a HDTV that supports 15.75 klhz in RGB, and that can do pal for the occasional Pal game.
My dream is to have an AGA version in conjunction wuth a 3D VGA chipset. The VGA mode stuff would be available in WB via Picasso 96. For demos you couldcombine 3D VGA and AGA to and create some wild graphics effects.
For example have the VGA chipset scale the AGA screen.
Thinking out loud here...
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The minimig is also just "emulating" the custom chips of the original Amiga. Don't forget that. It's just done in hardware instead completely in software.
So, probably you will get something close, but not completely.
On the thought of a pci Amiga board, seems pretty redundant to me. like someone earlier posted WinUAE is good enough to emulate most of the Amigas quirks. And it will get better and better.
And yes, indeed, Amiga has to go opensource, the only way to survive for the system.
:angry:
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You mean something like this? (http://www.amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=41)
Altho i should think there would be probs doin it. But minimig is a good start IMO. Back to basics, starting small to work big.
Obviusly money is always a prob but if the amiga scene had a representitive and went to say Richard Branson and put down a pitch for funding or sponsoring maybe the amiga scene would get it. I say Richard Branson cos he seems to like investing in markets to give others headaches i.e trains, planes, broadband, phones etc etc never know it could work.
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little wrote:
emulator on a card, you can already do that in software, why do you need a PCI card also?
Software emulators will in most cases not be upto the latency requirements of the original. Also synchronisation may be lost. Parallel operations are possible with hardware in a whole another way.
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freqmax wrote:
little wrote:
emulator on a card, you can already do that in software, why do you need a PCI card also?
Software emulators will in most cases not be upto the latency requirements of the original. Also synchronisation may be lost. Parallel operations are possible with hardware in a whole another way.
It doesn't matter anyway because reimplemented hardware isn't any better than software emulation, it's not the original equipment so it's a moot point.
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It's a good idea - another reason to just stop using the real albeit dying original Amiga hardware altogether.
It also means we wouldn't be railroaded into using Windows' WinUAE anymore because up to now it has had the superior emulation.
You could use your:
Modern OS of choice + Amiga compatibility running alongside/inside
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You could use your:
Modern OS of choice + Amiga compatibility running alongside/inside
We already have that, its called UAE.
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Hmmm, an FPGA with an integrated PCIe 1.0 phy eh?... Crap look whats on my desk ;)
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@alex:
Got hit by an Enterpoint product? :-D
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alexh wrote:
Hmmm, an FPGA with an integrated PCIe 1.0 phy eh?... Crap look whats on my desk ;)
What's your FPGA of choice anyways? I've had good luck with Altera, but wound up with Xilinx most of the time.
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Just reading a bit on FPGA (Xilinx) and SDRAM & DDR. Which memory type to bet on?, SDRAM memories are available in abundance from old x86-pc ram modules. DDR maybe offers a more future proof path..?
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SDRAM or DDR?
Wouldn't DDR provide more bandwidth just in case someone wants to improve the AGA chipset or implement some kind of RTG graphics to provide 15/16/24 bit modes?
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I would think that whatever is the cheapest and easiest to implement would be the way to go. It is likely that there will be periodic updates to the MiniMig. This means that if SDRAM is easier to implement, current MiniMigs can use them. This will give people plenty of time to work out getting DDR to work.
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Any pipelined dram may actually waste a lot of (dram) clock cycles as the Amiga doesn't really expect such functionality.
So a SDRAM would then receive a read command, wait1, wait2, get data and continue (or something similar).
DDR1 in essence just seems to be about different pipeline depth and voltage.
DDR2 and DDR3 use voltage levels that may be incompatible with the FPGA. At least there's currently no onboard supply to drive them. So EDO, SDRAM, DDR1 seems to be the choice of DRAM in that order.
Sidetrack: Seems SDRAM is tested with 50 pF bus load and each input is max 3,8 pF. So it should be possible to drive an array of 12 SDRAMs with one bus to accomplish a large ramdisc.
@Belial6:
Considering that most pre DDR2 dram is dirt cheap these days. I think the rational choice is to go for the simplest dram to implement.
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Good Idea, but as a commercial product very limited. As a hobby type project it could fun.
I have another idea, I was wondering if you got one of the Xilinx chips with a built in PPC, could you make a very small computer capable of running OS4 ?
The minimum of I/O, PS2 keyboard/mouse, VGA video connector, USB, all done by the FPGA. Use a Compact Flash card as a HDD. Very small, no noise, and should be fast enough to useful.
There are FPGA packages for the VGA type video, the PS2 keyboard/mouse is simple, I couldn't find a USB implementation for a FPGA (but it should be doable).
Comments!
An open source OS4 compatable computer would be nice.
Would probably need to pay a lincese fee for the OS4 though.
:-)
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SDRAM is a move forgiving on the PCB layout than DDR.
DDR with a Xilinx FPGA will work fine; however, PCB layout rules and signal integrity analysis must be followed in order to insure a properly working memory implementation.
:-)
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Any pipelined dram may actually waste a lot of (dram) clock cycles as the Amiga doesn't really expect such functionality.
Yes and no, isn't the 31 khz modes achieved using the extra bandwidth the installed RAM provides? Back in the day the Picasso IV had to use EDO RAM (45ns) and a 64 bit chipset to have enough bandwidth to display 1600x1280x16; that is the reason I suppose that with faster RAM it would be feasible to implement AGA+ or Picasso96 compatible video modes.
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@jkonstan:
What do I have to do when it comes to pcb layout to make sure SDRAM will work?
Also what DRAM access time does the 7.09379 MHz Minimig demand? (it had four cycles or so?)
The current sdram is 70 ns. But that's maybe faster than needed.
@little:
EDO is the "last" dram that don't use any real pipeline. But it might be harder to get a hold of in the future.
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To be clear, guys, I'm not talking about a "computer on a card" like the Inside-out. I'm talking about using the lessons learned from Dennis' project to create a graphics card with legacy support.
But, as McVenco points out, there are still some sound issues, so maybe it shouldn't be JUST a graphics card. The point here, however, is to create some kind of card that help supports the legacy issues while supporting all other modern hardware solutions with modern hardware.
So, what I mean is legacy support, but no CPU. The best you can hope for a modern CPU is an m68060 and that running at, maybe, 75mhz. And THAT, even in this day and age, is still not cheap. Let's leave it, as well as any other currently supported hardware options, to modern hardware.
And, of course, who's talking emulation? We are talking about supporting ALL of the currently available options by providing a little legacy support. You need a catweazel to if you want legacy floppy support. Why not a graphics card or audio card for legacy video/audio support?
The modern computer is modular in design. Why shouldn't the current Amiga options also be modular?
And creating a hardware solution that supports ALL of the current options has a better market than creating a minimig which is an island unto itself. (To be sure, I'm not dissing minimig, merely pointing out the advantage of cross solution support. Also, to be clear, I doubt we're talking about a potentially viable market here, but... what the hell. :-) )
Two more cents.
Ed.
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EDanaII wrote:
So far, I've stayed (mostly) quiet about the minimig situation. Don't get me wrong, I think it's fantastic what Dennis has achieved, and I'm curious to see where all this will lead, and I have one thought on this matter that I have no idea has been explored or not, so apologies if it has.
Why a minimig "board?" Or, more specifically, why JUST a minimig running with an m68k supporting only legacy games? Why not a minimig graphics card? In other words, forget keyboards, serial ports and all that jazz and instead create a MODERN graphics card using what minimig has learned to support UAE, AROS, MorphOS and OS4.0? Leave the keyboard, mouse, serial and even USB to UAE and the like, and use minimig to support the legacy software?
Like I said, just a random crazy thought. I'm no expert in this matter, but it seems feasible, and practical, to me to use what we have already today with what minimig can bring tomorrow to make a better Amiga, if only an emulated one.
Two cents.
Ed.
I've been thinking kinda the same thing, but then an USB thingy, with connectors for floppydrive and joystick, and a plugin for winUAE :-)
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You mean something like an FPGA based graphics card that implemented the necessary parts of the Alice and Lisa (for AGA) or Denise and Agnus (for OCS/ECS) to reproduce the Amigas graphics in hardware.
I think that'd probably be harder than doing the MiniMig as you'd effectively be pulling out and exposing the raw interchip interfaces and then trying to put a clean interface over them so that they could be called from the "other" OS over some kind of bus. PCI/PCIe most likely.
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freqmax wrote:
@jkonstan:
What do I have to do when it comes to pcb layout to make sure SDRAM will work?
Also what DRAM access time does the 7.09379 MHz Minimig demand? (it had four cycles or so?)
The current sdram is 70 ns. But that's maybe faster than needed.
In order to insure that the SDRAM works, the answer is complex and may be out of scope for a simple post. The proper recipe deals with a static timing analysis & Signal Integrity (PCB stack up, series termination resistors, trace lengths, trace impedances, and a Signal Integrity simulation tool such as HyperLynx from Mentor).
If you really want to know more about this, I can write up more after I finish assembling my MiniMIG1.1.
Also, this book is a good starting point/reference.
http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Digital-Techniques-High-Speed-Design/dp/013142291X
:-)
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@ AJCopland,
You mean something like an FPGA based graphics card that implemented the necessary parts of the Alice and Lisa (for AGA) or Denise and Agnus (for OCS/ECS) to reproduce the Amigas graphics in hardware.
Essentially, yes. :-) But a card designed in FPGA, somebody correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't have to stay in FPGA. Just a thought.
I think that'd probably be harder than doing the MiniMig as you'd effectively be pulling out and exposing the raw interchip interfaces and then trying to put a clean interface over them so that they could be called from the "other" OS over some kind of bus. PCI/PCIe most likely.
Of course. I've never stated otherwise.
Consider, though, that some people on this thread, and elsewhere I'm sure, have been advocating an open-sourced Amiga. What's amusing for me about all this, thanks to Dennis and AROS, is that we already HAVE an open-sourced Amiga. :-) And all I'm doing is advocating one of the directions that it should take.
Ed.
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little wrote:
Problem is that would have been a cool when PCs were not fast enough to emulate the amiga. Nowadays it would not add anything you can't already have with winuae. Same would apply to a playstation one emulator on a card, you can already do that in software, why do you need a PCI card also?
There are still advantages to hardware solutions. Having the custon chips in silicon means less for the host processor to do, which in turn means faster 68k emulation.
Plus, the best emulation programmers alive will never get a VGA card to pump out a 15kHz PAL signal. The MiniMig also has real 9 pin joystick/mouse ports. The only way to use Amiga joysticks with UAE is via a Catweasel card. Imagine both products combined into one.
________
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I would think that the best way to do an add in card would be to have a complete MiniMig with all ports passable through the PC's Bus (Be that PCI, ePCI, or whatever) This way you could use your 9-Pin joysticks, or have your PC route the equivalent commands through the bus so that the MiniMig thinks that they are real 9-pin joysticks. The same with keyboards and mice. Give the PC access to a frame buffer on the MiniMig Card, and PC software could route it to a window on the host PC. This would give you all the benefits of the suggested video card without the problems associated with trying to get hardware banging software to work on non-integrated MiniMig chips. It could also allow for a Virtual MiniMig bus that would make adding any PC peripheral just (just??? who am I kidding?) a matter of writing drivers.
Of course, I wouldn't even consider buying/building such a card until I had at least one or two stand alone MiniMigs in the house.
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I think what's sought after by the OP is essentially an Amiga graphics card that can be used on modern hardware. There is already a project that may be altered for that purpose:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Graphics_Project
It even got 2x DVI :-)
@jkonstan:
I guess I was looking for thumb rules. Most Minimig boards will be 2-layer at most.
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In order to insure that the SDRAM works, the answer is complex and may be out of scope for a simple post ... If you really want to know more about this, I can write up more after I finish assembling my MiniMIG1.1
Since nobody answered to this post either people find this knowledge fascinating but completely out of our grasp (like me) or already know about it (I am hoping there are a few in this category, otherwise we will be stuck with 2mb or worse, with a hardware design that overtime becames imposible to implement because those chips can no longer be obtained).
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> FPGA and PowerPC:
Project Blackdog: Xilinx Virtex II Pro on USB:
http://www.projectblackdog.com/
Celoxica plan to release Xilinx Virtex II Pro FPGA for AMD Torrenza motherboards. Perhaps similar FPGA product will be available for Intel Geneseo.
"AMD’s Torrenza Initiative Begins to Materialize."
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/cpu/display/20070924084002.html
Compaq Plan to release server with HTX slots. Perhaps someday PowerPC / Power CPU can use HTX / Hypertanspor socket.
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freqmax wrote:
I think what's sought after by the OP is essentially an Amiga graphics card that can be used on modern hardware. There is already a project that may be altered for that purpose:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Graphics_Project
It even got 2x DVI :-)
@jkonstan:
I guess I was looking for thumb rules. Most Minimig boards will be 2-layer at most.
Oh man, what a waste of time. gfx cards are soooo cheap these days, whats the point? And AMD is making all the radeon specs OS anyway. Why, oh why, reinvent the 10 dollar wheel?
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koaftder wrote:
freqmax wrote:
I think what's sought after by the OP is essentially an Amiga graphics card that can be used on modern hardware. There is already a project that may be altered for that purpose:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Graphics_Project
It even got 2x DVI :-)
@jkonstan:
I guess I was looking for thumb rules. Most Minimig boards will be 2-layer at most.
Oh man, what a waste of time. gfx cards are soooo cheap these days, whats the point? And AMD is making all the radeon specs OS anyway. Why, oh why, reinvent the 10 dollar wheel?
That project was born when graphics manufactors refused to give documentation that allowed drivers to be written for free operating systems like FreeBSD, NetBSD, Linux etc..
This is especially true when it comes to 3D usage.
ATI and NVidia binary blob drivers that are supposed to solve this problem for end users are poorly written, and doesn't work alright with software upgrades or non-x86 architectures.
I have heard that Intel and ATI are more documentation friendly at the momement. But NVidia is a particular rotten egg in this department. So NVidia hardware are ditched by many that want unix on their machines because of their refusal to provide documentation to driver writers.
The OGP card also gives the possibility to experiment with new computer graphics hardware algorithms.
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In order to insure that the SDRAM works, the answer is complex and may be out of scope for a simple post ... If you really want to know more about this, I can write up more after I finish assembling my MiniMIG1.1
Since nobody answered to this post either people find this knowledge fascinating but completely out of our grasp (like me) or already know about it (I am hoping there are a few in this category, otherwise we will be stuck with 2mb or worse, with a hardware design that overtime becames imposible to implement because those chips can no longer be obtained).
Unfortunately Signal Integrity issues are not a simple problem. At frequencies above 50MHz (actually its the rise times that count) you have to start looking to RF principles. Every track on the PCB starts looking like a transmission line that has to be properly terminated. Maxwell's equations and Impedance matching are the order of the day rather than ohms law and thevenin. This does make SATA and DDR2 a challenge for engineer let alone a hobbyist. Most electronic engineers are still taught nothing of this subject at UNI.
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@ freqmax
freqmax wrote:
I think what's sought after by the OP is essentially an Amiga graphics card that can be used on modern hardware. There is already a project that may be altered for that purpose:
Open Graphics Project (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Graphics_Project)
Yep, that's essentially what I'm arguing.
Nice link, BTW, I had no idea such a project existed, but I'm not surprised either. :-)
Ed.
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EDanaII wrote:
@ freqmax
freqmax wrote:
I think what's sought after by the OP is essentially an Amiga graphics card that can be used on modern hardware. There is already a project that may be altered for that purpose:
Open Graphics Project (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Graphics_Project)
Yep, that's essentially what I'm arguing.
Nice link, BTW, I had no idea such a project existed, but I'm not surprised either. :-)
Ed.
I don't see how having an expansion card that offloads some of the horse power of generating video has an advantage over just doing a software only solution in this case. With either software or hardware, the end goal is to replicate the graphics functionality of the amiga. It doesn't matter if the functionality is hardware or software, the result is the same. In over a decade of evolutionary advances in software emulation we still don't have perfect emulation. The latest hardware emulation, the minimig, is not a perfect emulation of the a500.
I just don't see the advantage of an imperfect and expensive hardware emulation of graphics over an imperfect and free software emulation of graphics...
Hardware solutions make most sense when what you are trying to accomplish is impossible or prohibitively expensive in software.
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Of course it's expensive, koafter. Welcome to the Wonderful World of Amiga. :-) Even the MiniMig is going to be _relatively_ expensive for what it has to offer.
My point in arguing this has to do with modularity. It has to do with the direction I think this should go. If this takes off, rather than developing an A1200 and AGA -- not that I'm against this -- I simply would like to see it used in a modular fashion that parallels the state of computers today.
Ed.
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Nice idea, the Amiga Hardware on a card, with WinUAE altered to use it, whilst still running 68k emulation itself. Of course you would need to route all the output back into the host computer (audio, graphics, etc) to integrate into its output - unless the card had its own graphics and audio I/Os.
An alternative idea in the opposite direction is to extend the MiniMig hardware implementation to add some chunky graphics modes, and write a Picasso96 driver that uses them. It would only be useful for Workbench, etc, but if you could have some graphics modes like 1280x720, 1920x1080 it would be neat on a modern TV. Probably would need a MiniMig implementation with SDRAM rather than SRAM, to use the extra capacity, or be stuck with 4 colour hi-res modes or divisors of that mode (640x360, 960x540). Also the 68k might struggle to manage that on its own...