Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: Beast96GT on August 29, 2008, 07:46:19 AM
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You guys have to forgive me if these questions have been answered elsewhere or stomp on our sacred Amiga heritage. I've spent the past few days reading (and bad YouTube videos) about nothing but tragedy with the Amiga.
(I'm a person who knows nothing about the Amiga after the A3000)
If a new Amiga was produced:
1) What would be special about it? What would make people want to buy it instead of a PC?
2) How can the Amiga recreate the charm it once had as an inexpensive multimedia computer?
3) What are the hardware solutions for the Amiga considering it typically uses hardware that can be outdated, limited in quantity, generally incompatible with market leader?
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hey there, hello from dull overcast london :-D
1. special? well, thats pretty dependant on each person i guess, but really for me its half sentimentality, and half learning from a time when computers were interesting/fun.
its going to be much easier to develop hobbie software/hardware for a standard platform thats as accessable/inaccessable as the amiga. like expanding an A600, if it wasn't difficult, there would be no interest. :-)
if you can use it for day to day computing instead of a PC, then good on you, :-) and all power to your elbow etc, but really, i find a reasonable PC running UAE can be an invaluable tool in keeping amigas alive. be it for backup purposes, transfering data, acting as a data server over the network.
for example,
lots of people are starting to get into using compact flash cards as hard disks. a USB to IDE adapter, and a CF to IDE socket thing, and you can backup, copy, create amiga partitons and data really quickly on the PC and then plug the card into the CF adapter on the miggy and off you go. saves mucking about with floppys.
i wouldn't buy a miggy without a PC to "help out" these days.
2. amiga needs to dev some totaly mental hardware with some venture capitalists money and blow everyones socks off again. something like the Tile64 processor with a completely radical architechture. but able to scale from games machines a-la A500, to highend A2/4000.
trouble is, we live in different times these days. there isn't the room for something new and different. even a mac is just an intel PC with a pretty skin. x86 pretty much rules all. and anything that isn't x86 these days scares off both venture capitalists, customers, and consumers, as "it is not compatable".
People aren't willing to be as savey anymore. a computer isn't a thing to investigate and learn about, its a consumer item. its for removing the red eye out of wedding photos, running iTunes, and surfing for pr0n. most people don't want to know how, or why, they just want to do what they are told it can do in magazines.
There is no room for any "upstart" in the market anymore. no more atari's, no more sinclair spectrum's, no more amstrads, and no more amiga's...
the only shot i can see, is amiga OS4.x being recompiled for cheap comodity x86 hardware, and someone developing a "killer app/game" for it, to make everyone want it.
3. market leader? wintel PC? well, your A2000 can use the Deneb Zorro2/3 USB2 card. this will allow such crazy things as USB Lan ethernet, USB sound cards, USB hard drives and CD/DVD optical drives. not to mention Keyboards and mice. if i had a zorro capable machine, i would look to invest in one of these...
also, you may look to getting a CV64/3D or Piccaso4 as this will put a 64bit GFX card in your A2000. ok its only got 4Meg ram, but compared to OCS/ECS/AGA its a dream.
another idea is a more heavyweight accelerator card. something with an 040 or 060. an 060 is roughly equivilent to a pentium1, but without the windows overhead :-)
if i recall correctly, the inferno accelerator for the A2000 had an 060 on it, along with scsi, network port, upto 128Mb ram, and a custom PCI slot designed for the wildfire graphics card. the wildfire being one of the fastest amiga graphics cards ever designed...
but mostly, you'll probably find GVP techmagic's, or Blizzard20x0's - both very good cards in their own right.
most amiga's have all kinds of hardware solutions. just what kind of solution do you need? :-)
sorry for the length of post... i'm bored this morning. its friday and its payday, so everyone just wants to do as little as possible and go home :lol:
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Yes darksun9210
I totally agree with you post 2 statement. Since Mac have moved to cheap Intel chips, why not also Amiga. A new Amiga should at least be 64 bit multi core. No lack of power any more, but Amiga should not only be a fast PC like Mac, cutting edge today is different. How about a built in FPGA board? Give Amiga programs the possibility to reprogram part of its hardware?? The hardware experts here probably have ideas on what would be cutting edge today. Hardware for CUDA??
Main point is, a new Amiga should level with Mac and PC and then go beyond them in how it utilizes present day technology that is true Amiga, being the best, yet again.
If we do this, we both have the cake and eat it, meaning; the joy of vintage, emulation and vintage advancement(Natami,c-clone), is still there. Nothing of the interesting projects will die, they will live side by side with a modern battle cruiser Amiga. :-)
There could be a great advantage for the lack of new models in the recent years, no burden of backward compatibility, just the latest technology, put together in a smarter way.
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I'd strongly disagree on going Intel for the same reasons I gave against PowerPC: Vendor Lock-in. Intel you're tied to Intel, period, the end. Intel doesn't support your efforts, too bad.
I would instead look to one of the licenseable architectures, whereby if a vendor does not deliver, well, you control your own destiny and can change fabs, vandors, etc with minimal issues. ARM, MIPS and SPARC all qualify. ARM is expensive to license, but quite popular. MIPS is less expensive to license, and with the new Chinese Loongson CPU's shipping are making a strong comeback. SPARC tho, least expensive to license, and with the strongest reputation among them all. Hell, I made a SPARC based mp3 player for myself a few years back. Tried to do that with Intel anytime lately?
What would the Amiga offer? Look at the newest trends in computing, for lighter weight, faster operating machines weither they have the CPU power or not. Netbooks, tablets, e-books, cell phones, that is the target for a new Amiga. The Amiga's instant-on capability, ideal for this market. Desktops and workstations would be mainly for support of the real market, the portables. That would be my ideal.
So, what would I do? Make a SPARC based System on Chip for the netbooks, with a HT bus for expanding into a full fledged desktop and workstation CPU. PowerPC is a dead end. ARM and MIPS are too expensive. Intel is proprietory. AMD is not mobile. VIA cannot handle the desktop.
I have plans for a MiniMig based PDA, to demonstrate this. Plans I likely will never finish because I don't think anyone here cares about playing to the Amiga's strengths, only in focusing on some pipe dream. There is nothing stopping us from reaching our dream of a new Amiga save ourselves.
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I understand what you saying downix.
Amiga should today be a so powerful platform that it was possible to port Masseffect, Crysis or Bioshock with ease and run all modern music and graphic software, That is how you compete with the best. If this could be accomplished in your way without Intel I’m all for it. But as you say Amiga should also be PDA’s.
Nobody is debating if a Mac is a Mac because of the Intel chips. Why should Amiga be any different? Amiga is a powerful brand name not some small orphan OS that never had a platform of its own. I was forced to leave Amiga in the 90’s because the stopped development of hardware. I loved my A1200.
Millions upon millions of people were like me, force to leave a platform we liked for PC or Mac.
If the right decisions are made Amiga can again be a force to be reckoned with.
The Amiga strength should be all over the playing field from super desktop to PDA. Don’t stop your PDA project, All Amiga is needed.
Dreams are necessary to shape reality. I would love to see this PDA project come to life.
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Reality check
...failed.
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Beast96GT wrote:
If a new Amiga was produced:
1) What would be special about it? What would make people want to buy it instead of a PC?
It would be integrated into the head-rests of cars.
Beast96GT wrote:
2) How can the Amiga recreate the charm it once had as an inexpensive multimedia computer?
Dunno about you, but I certainly do not remember the Amiga as "inexpensive".
A Batman Pack (http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/a500batman.html) which cost £399 in 1989 would cost in today's money (adjusting for inflation) £734.16. That is hardly inexpensive is it?
Beast96GT wrote:
3) What are the hardware solutions for the Amiga considering it typically uses hardware that can be outdated, limited in quantity, generally incompatible with market leader?
Emulation.
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Piru wrote:
Reality check
...failed.
@Piru
Do you know what vision is?
It is something that you force upon reality by strength of will. If the will fail, the intention fails.
Do you know what reality is?
It is something that is true from a certain point of view at a certain time. it is no categorical imperative.
Tell me about the impossibility to create a highly innovative motherboard with Intel's chips and stamp the Amiga logo on it??
exactly what part of that process is incomprehensible?
:-)
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@downix
i hear what you are saying, i really do, personally i see x86 as a backwards step. but its the way i see as a "quick to market" idea of hardware to maybe start selling stuff and generating revenue for futher development...
that sparc mp3 player sounds wicked, and i love the idea of a PDA minimig.
i was thinking of something along the lines of a netbook laptop but based on a minimig myself...
anyway,
64bit? multi core? pffft. so what. non of this will matter.
multi core is still lining up serial processors to try to do a parallel job. hyperthreading is a cheap way of extending this by assigning unused execution units to virutal processors in an attempt to have more threads running concurrently on a single core. providing your software is threaded.
waste. of. time.
i was looking at this stuff from Tilera.com the otherday. really interesting idea. bit of a rework, and you have a chip that could be an order of magnitude over what we have today, and blow intel's vapour laughabee out of the water before it even sails. all from one chip. and to quote power disipation, 700Mhz at 22W. ok 700mhz sounds pretty poor. but this looks like an achitecture shift. true single cycle multiprocessing (MIMD).
main problem is, to bring to market something like what the amiga was then, in todays environemt... would cost billions. intel/nvidia/amd pump billions into R&D every year. hows a startup gonna keep up?
innovation is dead and buried in the mainstream - as displayed by "bigger/faster/shiney" so called advances. it's just not profitable to deviate to far from what mass consumers are comfortable with.
so now, it's down to people that are interested and know about alternatives, to bring this forward. in little steps.
like downix's minimig PDA and sparc mp3 player :bow:
the way i see it, unless hyperion win the lottery, its down to us basicly... and as far as mainstream business is concerned, the amiga name seems to be about as attractive as the number 13. :lol:
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The issue of going x86 was discussed a zillion times already. the prob is the endianess. either you lose binary compatibilty (like AROS) or you lose cpu cycles (needed to continously swap endianess) - which wouldn't comply with the 'elegance through simplicity' approach.
Anyway, for x86 there's AROS.
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@3Ghz, what's a few cycles between friends? :-D
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@darksun9210
Perhaps there are other ways and your way could be possible but if the platform lacks the power to run the best games and apps there will be starting problems. If on the other hand this is possible then the door is open to the market and the wheels are tuning with new models.
A modern Amiga must have the force to be able to run the best games and apps, and this must be accomplished in cheapest possible way in a do able fashion. And that is possible.
@zylesea
The machine we are talking about here should not have a backward compatible anchor to drag. Mac left there original design. It should be like the original Amiga cutting edge in this age and possible to manufacture in the present now.
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cicero790 wrote:
Nobody is debating if a Mac is a Mac because of the Intel chips. Why should Amiga be any different?
This was one of the few things AInc did hit right on the head, make the CPU irrelevent to the equasion by simply emulating it from the get-go. Their issue was that they began re-inventing the horse, new OS. If they'd taken Tao's system and simply ported the AmigaOS to it, who knows what could have been accomplished. Add in a fast emulation for the classic hardware, and then we'd be talking a solid, powerful and flexible platform that would scale down or up as needed with a solid knowledge base. Heck, could still do this with an optimized 68k emulation system, as shown with Amithlon. Then wouldn't matter what CPU you ran on, would it?
But AInc's focus on a CPU agnostic system that only runs on one CPU and with little legacy support... just not worth it to me.
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Ahmen
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downix wrote:
cicero790 wrote:
Nobody is debating if a Mac is a Mac because of the Intel chips. Why should Amiga be any different?
This was one of the few things AInc did hit right on the head, make the CPU irrelevent to the equasion by simply emulating it from the get-go. Their issue was that they began re-inventing the horse, new OS. If they'd taken Tao's system and simply ported the AmigaOS to it, who knows what could have been accomplished. Add in a fast emulation for the classic hardware, and then we'd be talking a solid, powerful and flexible platform that would scale down or up as needed with a solid knowledge base. Heck, could still do this with an optimized 68k emulation system, as shown with Amithlon. Then wouldn't matter what CPU you ran on, would it?
But AInc's focus on a CPU agnostic system that only runs on one CPU and with little legacy support... just not worth it to me.
There have been many mistakes, so many that the chance of getting it right have increased exponentially it seems.
I just have a feeling that there will be a hole in one next time, that there will be new Amiga's with enough power to match PC and MAC. How these are done with Intel or in a another fashion I do not care. I just want a new super Amiga and a PDA Amiga. :-)
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If it's going to fly. It better be something that knocks your socks off.
What Amiga had going for it was superior Video/Sound capability and hardware accelerated subsystems. And smart designs like seperate cpu/io bus with it's own memory.
And a price that was small enough to be overcome by a generation of college students.
One trend that could be exploited is the open source and going small (asus eee). Make something with complete and open documention like the IBM PC had in the 80s. Make it small like the eee. Use efficient hardware. And low memory and cpu footprint software.
Fit it with a killer price.
Also when I used AmigaOS applications easily crashed the entire system with bad memory access. This won't do. The OS will have to do memory protection, virtual memory (swap), preemptive multitasking etc.
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So many threads about what the Amiga should have been and still could be. If only Stark was here to see this. He would be so proud of you guys :bigcry:
(http://i120.photobucket.com/albums/o164/Cyberstorm604e/Stark.jpg)
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A4000_Mad wrote:
So many threads about what the Amiga should have been and still could be. If only Stark was here to see this. He would be so proud of you guys :bigcry:
Hi A4000_Mad
I do not know Stark, to newly arrived here, but this is the time for speculations like these. The trial is soon over and the machine will start to run in some direction, hopefully the best this time. No more desolate wastelands :-D
Think of having an Amiga that was the envy of PC and MAC owners. Wouldn't that be great. :-D
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cicero790 wrote:
Do you know what vision is?
It is something that you force upon reality by strength of will. If the will fail, the intention fails.
Do you know what reality is?
It is something that is true from a certain point of view at a certain time. it is no categorical imperative.
Do you know what insanity is? I think so ;-)
cicero790 wrote:
Tell me about the impossibility to create a highly innovative motherboard with Intel's chips and stamp the Amiga logo on it??
Impossibility, nothing. Improbability, well there is the mess which is who owns Amiga and its IP.
Plus have you never heard of AROS? The free x86 compatible OS in the Amiga style for generic (i.e. cheaper) PC's?
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Hi alexh
I just believe that if who ever wins sets the bold single overall goal to be better than PC and MAC and build a welcoming design that makes the porting of the best SW titles easy. If this happens everything that is Amiga would benefit. Vintage, emulated, vintage advancements. Special projects and of course AROS.
I think it could be an interesting time to come :-)
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somebody give 2 mins of my life back ... :crazy:
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countzero wrote:
somebody give 2 mins of my life back ... :crazy:
Oh sorry, there will be no more Amiga. Feeling better? :-D
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there is the mess which is who owns Amiga and its IP.
But the lawsuit is not on the 'Amiga' name but rather on the OS source code (who owns the code). Personally (and this is just a personal opinion) I can't understand why Amiga Inc. is trying to stick with amiga workbench or any derivation of it. Linux/BSD/Windows have all the market. So why not they concentrate on building an apple like computer, brand is 'Amiga' and install some modified version of BSD!! This would also solve the 'there is no software for amiga' problem.
I know I over simplify thing ... but can't really understand the business strategy of Amiga Inc.
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I consider that all modern computers running a modern OS (ie; Linux, Vista) contain all the best elements that made the Amiga special in its day. In this light, I see the Amiga as being a contributor to the computer I'm using right now; which means that, in a sense, I am using a modern variation of the Amiga.
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The USB protocol is not within the Amiga way. Nor is the code bloat that plagues Microsoft products, but also Linux to some extent (stay away from C++ :) ). OS + GUI within a 512kB ROM & 880kB floppy.
But in many other ways you'r right.
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Truthfully?
It's a dream world. I would pick up a new Amiga to go with my other old systems. It's a fun hobby to be sure. But, really, look at where the state of things are. How many years now has it been since a "real" new machine, with upgraded OS was supposed to be here?
Even Vista came out early compared to this!
Sadly, at this point in time, I don't see much hope for anything significant. Some rewarmed, almost obsolete thing may show, but for those who think that Amiga will be back in the thick of it, think again.
The longer things go on, the more people get disgusted, and move on, never to return. Today, it takes a large number of machine sales to make a profit. If they can't get that, then either they won't try, or prices will reflect the low numbers.
Despite some thinking here that a Mac is just a warmed over PC, well, it is not. Either that or some Linux distro will be the closest one can get these days to what the old days were.
Look at all the members here. Why is it such a struggle to get a few bucks out of them for this useful site? Think they will all run out to buy a new Amiga? Nope!
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This topic seems to come up constantly. Search old posts, youll probably find hundreds of opinions on new Amigas.
Personally I think its kind of a silly conversation. Without some continuity from the Commodore Amigas either in technology or engineers... I think it'd be an Amiga in name only. Things like the Minimig and AOne are cool, but I cant really consider them Amigas.
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by cicero790 on 2008/8/29 7:30:44
>Nobody is debating if a Mac is a Mac because of the Intel chips. Why should Amiga be any different?
Because Amiga IS better than a Mac, and a new "Mac" is NOT a Mac because of Intel chips. If hardware can be completely different and name remain the same, then the Commodore PC (especially an upgraded one) can be relabeled as an Amiga as well, right? They are just using the name to draw loyal fans and for marketing purposes. I would state that if the hardware is backward compatible, then you can use the same name.
>Amiga is a powerful brand name not some small orphan OS that never had a platform of its own. I was forced to leave Amiga in the 90’s because the stopped development of hardware. I loved my A1200.
>Millions upon millions of people were like me, force to leave a platform we liked for PC or Mac.
Well, if Motorola kept advancing their processors and keeping them backward compatible, you could have had a more powerful Amiga more easily today.
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@amigaksi
a new "Mac" is NOT a Mac because of Intel chips
Why not?
I have both PPC and Intel Macs. There is no difference between them, except that the Intel Mac is much faster.
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Exactly right, only a couple people here would even *like* a new Amiga, because it would be so different from what they use. Forget it, the Amiga is part of the retro world, that's where it'll stay, maybe some will make retro-clones, but it will never again be modern, never again be state of the art. The Amiga is 1989!
(http://forums.clanterritory.com/images/smilies/celebs/groucho.gif)
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Piru wrote:
@amigaksi
a new "Mac" is NOT a Mac because of Intel chips
Why not?
I have both PPC and Intel Macs. There is no difference between them, except that the Intel Mac is much faster.
I think the point is the "Spirit or Soul" of a MAC is that of a different architecture. The modern Intel MAC is exactly the same as running AUE or Amiga forever on a modern Intel box, although the MAC is not Emulated anymore but the OS is designed to run on an x86, the spirit of a MAC will always run on a Moto or PPC. Infact the "OS 9" and legacy mode for OS 10 (as I understand it) is an Emulation of the PPC.
It is the same debate on why cant we have Amgia OS 5 run solely on an x86 platform, because (in my mind) that would go against everything unique about the Amiga.
Too me it would be like all cars running the same frame and chassis. motor etc. The only difference would be the outer body and interior of the car. This is used by each of the car manufactures, but what happens if they ALL used the same one, whether it was Ford, GM or what ever? That is what is happening in the computer industry today, there is no Soul left, no real pride left in owning a brand name, they are just recycling the same stuff over and over and putting a different paint job on it.
Of course the MAC fanboys will argue this point saying that Apple is truly different, but at the end of the day, no matter what box it is in, it is still the same internals as the next company.
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>1) What would be special about it?
It should be so simple to use that a computer-challenged individual could use it, yet powerful enough for advanced endeavors. A compact design that doesn't clutter; something like the MacMini or iMac, or the A500|A600|A1200 line.
>What would make people want to buy it instead of a PC?
In America, competitive in price, which is now about $395 for a base system. It would have to be focused on the consumer market. A Productivity Application Suite would need to be able to read and write in MS-Office datatype formats.
>2) How can the Amiga recreate the charm it once had as an inexpensive multimedia computer?
Cost $395 and be able to do word processing, spreadsheets, email communications, save and organize pictures easily, databases, acccounting, JavaScript, Java, Acrobat Reader, Flash, Shockwave, and some good quality games which Amiga has a good collection though some are outdated.
>3) What are the hardware solutions for the Amiga considering it typically uses hardware that can be outdated, limited in quantity, generally incompatible with market leader?
Something that's cheap, readily available, will be around for a long time, and designed with efficiency as top priority. In reality, Amiga needs a technology Partner, and it would be an x86 manufacture. Even Sun Microsystems ported their SolarisOS to x86, so that should be motivation enough business-wise.
In brief, use low cost hardware (x86, get over it cause there's nothing cheaper), port AmigaOS4 to it, create and include in the base system aLife and aWork (similar to iLife and iWork) application suites, and include Firefox as a modern web browser.
Then market the computer to China, because they have plenty of people to buy and to help develop for it. :) Actually, working with a company from Japan may not be a bad idea because they have gadgets and technologies that are more advanced, technical, and "gadgety" than America.
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Forget about the Amiga being mainstream again, i only hope to get my hands on an NatAmi60 :bow:(new hardware, fast, and compatible to all glorious software collection the Amiga has), because the bigger problem the Amiga community was is dying hardware, and thats the first priority, keep the Amiga we all know alive. :crazy:.
For the rest any PC (black, withe, yellow or watt ever... doesn't matter) will do.
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...
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DavidF215 wrote:
Then market the computer to China, because they have plenty of people to buy and to help develop for it. :)
Which leads into my comment above, if you want to go to China, you'd better be running a MIPS CPU rather than an x86. They are doing a huge push for "home grown" solutions, and the key to breaking into China right now is to make a solution compatible with their home made CPU, the Loongson, which is a MIPS compatible CPU.
You try and emulate Apple without understanding why, you will wind up like Be. You want to compete, change the rules. Make a $100 portable (more than doable... so long as you don't go x86) and people will take notice.
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@quarkx
I think the point is the "Spirit or Soul" of a MAC is that of a different architecture. The modern Intel MAC is exactly the same as running AUE or Amiga forever on a modern Intel box, although the MAC is not Emulated anymore but the OS is designed to run on an x86, the spirit of a MAC will always run on a Moto or PPC. Infact the "OS 9" and legacy mode for OS 10 (as I understand it) is an Emulation of the PPC.
It is the same debate on why cant we have Amgia OS 5 run solely on an x86 platform, because (in my mind) that would go against everything unique about the Amiga.
Too me it would be like all cars running the same frame and chassis. motor etc. The only difference would be the outer body and interior of the car. This is used by each of the car manufactures, but what happens if they ALL used the same one, whether it was Ford, GM or what ever? That is what is happening in the computer industry today, there is no Soul left, no real pride left in owning a brand name, they are just recycling the same stuff over and over and putting a different paint job on it.
Of course the MAC fanboys will argue this point saying that Apple is truly different, but at the end of the day, no matter what box it is in, it is still the same internals as the next company.
The thing is that with computers software is everything. Who cares about the actual HW underneath as long as it's fast enough and bugfree?
BTW, car analogies suck.
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That is what is happening in the computer industry today, there is no Soul left, no real pride left in owning a brand name, they are just recycling the same stuff over and over and putting a different paint job on it.
The marketing makes the spirit or "soul", not the material it is made from.
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@DavidF215
Good post, wrong website - this one's filled with amiga haters.
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Piru wrote:
The thing is that with computers software is everything. Who cares about the actual HW underneath as long as it's fast enough and bugfree?
BTW, car analogies suck.
I Beg to differ, the hardware is what makes it unique, otherwise all we have is the same bs over and over. Send in the clones...and innovation and evolution is non-existent. that is the reason, the hardware is so important in this hobby, otherwise, we would all toss our amigas and just run winAUE or some other emulation and the re-sale market on e-bay and such would be nothing. But hey if you want to ditch all your Amiga hardware and run emulators then there are A LOT of people waiting to grab your old hardware.
Car analogies may suck, but they are the most effective in proving a point. I would much rather drive and own a 1970 Hemi Cuda ragtop, then a Ford focus anyday, even if the focus could emulate the feel of the cuda, it still not the same. in many ways the car hobby is the same as the vintage computer hobby.
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Because Amiga IS better than a Mac, and a new "Mac" is NOT a Mac because of Intel chips. If hardware can be completely different and name remain the same, then the Commodore PC (especially an upgraded one) can be relabeled as an Amiga as well, right? They are just using the name to draw loyal fans and for marketing purposes. I would state that if the hardware is backward compatible, then you can use the same name.
That's stupid. Seems like you are against evolution to me...
And you cannot accept your old Amiga solution sucks and isn't the way to go anymore. This was good 20 years ago though... As good as the Ford produced 20 years ago was probably good. But the Ford produced today isn't backward compatible with the old one... And Amiga of today... Wait! there's no Amiga of today. The Amiga hasn't evolved since 20 years. But maybe it's still better than anything... Or maybe it's not...
Well, if Motorola kept advancing their processors and keeping them backward compatible, you could have had a more powerful Amiga more easily today.
Maybe they didn't because it was hard and useless ? maybe the 68k wasn't perfect and there was a better way to design processors ?
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I have to disagree with quarkx (not for the first time).
The ethos of AmigaOS was to make the user experience easier and better to the point where it almost doesn't feel like you are using a computer.
It doesn't matter what hardware it uses. To be honest if you're even THINKING what the underlying hardware is then the OS + applications have not done their job correctly.
The most functional, easiest to use User experience is what it aims for. Stuff "just works".
Taking a crappy stoic stance of "it's not pure" is so lame and not what computing is all about.
You use words "Spirit" and "Soul" and I say that your ideas are the work of Beelzebub. You've missed the whole point of OS level computing!
You could argue that the spirit and soul of the Amiga was not in the OS level but in the bang the metal programming that grew up around the earlier computer systems. But I doubt very much you are a programmer or know anything about this area. You are just a user. (As am I)
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>by Piru on 2008/8/30 22:29:15
>@amigaksi
>Quote:
> a new "Mac" is NOT a Mac because of Intel chips
>Why not?
>I have both PPC and Intel Macs. There is no difference between them, except that the Intel Mac is much faster.
And how did you draw such a conclusion that they are both Macs. The Mac was originally a 680x0 and although overburdened (unlike amiga) had some support hardware like for audio/keyboard/mouse etc. so unless you have a system that is a subset of that hardware configuration you can bet there exists a program that will work on original Mac not on your so-called Mac.
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you can bet there exists a program that will work on original Mac not on your so-called Mac.
I bet there are very few programs worth running that fall into this category.
If you find one of these programs and find you cannot live without it, there are numerous easy to use hardware level emulators at your disposal.
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>by warpdesign on 2008/8/31 13:02:15
>Quote:
> Because Amiga IS better than a Mac, and a new "Mac" is NOT a Mac because of Intel chips. If hardware can be completely different and name remain the same, then the Commodore PC (especially an upgraded one) can be relabeled as an Amiga as well, right? They are just using the name to draw loyal fans and for marketing purposes. I would state that if the hardware is backward compatible, then you can use the same name.
>That's stupid. Seems like you are against evolution to me...
Saying it's "stupid" is not an argument but your biased opinion. If you had read the entire post before replying-- I did mention something about evolution of processors where Motorola one's did not go as far as Intel ones.
>And you cannot accept your old Amiga solution sucks and isn't the way to go anymore. This was good 20 years ago though... As good as the Ford produced 20 years ago was probably good. But the Ford produced today isn't backward compatible with the old one... And Amiga of today... Wait! there's no Amiga of today. The Amiga hasn't evolved since 20 years. But maybe it's still better than anything... Or maybe it's not...
I don't even think you understood what I wrote. PCs are backward compatible for about 30 years; I can still run 8088 code on a Pentium IV. Get your analogies correct. I already know there are still unique uses for an Amiga even today, but that's not the argument-- the point was there's no meaning to the name if you can assign it to hardware that's completely different.
You cannot accept that you are a hypocrite claiming Amiga sucks on an Amiga forum. If you really know it sucks, then state the proof. Any small baby child can be taught to say "this sucks", "this is stupid", etc. etc.
>> Well, if Motorola kept advancing their processors and keeping them backward compatible, you could have had a more powerful Amiga more easily today.
>Maybe they didn't because it was hard and useless ? maybe the 68k wasn't perfect and there was a better way to design processors ?
You can always design hardware for backward compatibility; just look at Intel. They would have had better optimization if they dropped all the 8-bit instructions in their 8088 instruction set but they did not.
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by alexh on 2008/8/31 13:49:03
>> you can bet there exists a program that will work on original Mac not on your so-called Mac.
>I bet there are very few programs worth running that fall into this category.
It does not matter the number; in fact, there can even be none-- just theoretically exist (someone may write one) and that would show it's not backward compatible.
>If you find one of these programs and find you cannot live without it, there are numerous easy to use hardware level emulators at your disposal.
Well, unless the audio/kb/etc. of the new machine is a superset of the old machine, it would be hard to do any sort of emulation accurately. Actually, you can state there is some Mac out there that does this since there are so many flavors and new flavors coming, it's hard to keep up.
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That should be "has a subset" not "is a subset".
by amigaksi on 2008/8/31 13:45:16
>by Piru on 2008/8/30 22:29:15
>@amigaksi
>Quote:
> a new "Mac" is NOT a Mac because of Intel chips
>Why not?
>I have both PPC and Intel Macs. There is no difference between them, except that the Intel Mac is much faster.
And how did you draw such a conclusion that they are both Macs. The Mac was originally a 680x0 and although overburdened (unlike amiga) had some support hardware like for audio/keyboard/mouse etc. so unless you have a system that is a subset of that hardware configuration you can bet there exists a program that will work on original Mac not on your so-called Mac.
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Well, first off, I didn't start the thread to become some kind of flame war calling people stupid. And murple, the thread is for fun and at least keeping ideas fresh. If we never talked about the new Amiga subject because there are "old threads" about the topic, nothing would ever be done to move forward. Silly or not, it keeps the idea going and its kind of fun.
Here is my personal opinion regarding the questions I asked. Mind you, I'm a software engineer, not a hardware guru--so I can't really tell you the problems associated with Motorola vs. Intel vs. PPC, etc. Maybe that's why I asked the questions in the first place.
Here it is:
The Amiga originally was an incredible machine that could deliver graphics/sound/multitasking at an affordable price (yes, affordable--PCs were thousands of dollars). The Amiga would need some kind of "niche" to fill that's not being currently exploited. Of course the affordability would suffer, I would think, but there would a new draw to the Amiga.
I would like to think that the new Amiga would have an architecture that would not be held back by backward compatibility, as the PC seems to be. Why couldn't backward compatibility be provided in software emulation?
There would need to be incentives for developing software for it. Maybe a killer app that really fills the "niche"?
On more realistic note, however, I think Hyperion (sp?) has the right idea. An OS would seem to be the most logical way to promote the Amiga despite the hardware it runs on. Of course I know nothing about AmigaOS, but it seems to be the only way the Amiga will stay around. Hopefully Hyperion stays around, too.
In the end, of course, it's a pipe dream, but it's still fun to discuss. And I think it's good to bring it up, regardless of critics that think it's pointless.
Thanks, for the silly fun.
Chris
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@Piru
The thing is that with computers software is everything. Who cares about the actual HW underneath as long as it's fast enough and bugfree?
Question: if MorphOS development had started today (not x years ago) - or maybe put differently: if cpu situation when MorphOS development started back then would have been as it is now - which CPU family would in your opinion have been the best choice?
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by Beast96GT on 2008/8/31 14:38:39
...
>I would like to think that the new Amiga would have an architecture that would not be held back by backward compatibility, as the PC seems to be. Why couldn't backward compatibility be provided in software emulation?
I would state that it kills the userbase once you just develop a new machine that's not backward compatible and you have a new learning curve for development as well. It could be backward compatible in software if the hardware supports it (that's why I was stating things like subset/superset). For example, you can't show real-time sprites all over a screen on a machine that does not have sprites.
>There would need to be incentives for developing software for it. Maybe a killer app that really fills the "niche"?
PCs have always coexisted with Amiga/Ataris-- one having a different focus than the other. All of a sudden people want to use the PC for everything once Amiga/Atari went bankrupt, but they did not redevelop the PC that fits the hardware requirements of Amiga/Ataris.
There's nothing wrong with people asserting their opinions, but when people start declaring "it sucks", "it's stupid" we need evidence.
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amigaksi wrote:
PCs are backward compatible for about 30 years; I can still run 8088 code on a Pentium IV.
No you cannot. The caches and internal pipeline structure means that a lot of code does not run as it was supposed to. I dont think you were a PC user during the transition to 32-bit x86 architecture and once again to the Pentium architecture. Either that or you've forgotten.
amigaksi wrote:
It does not matter the number; in fact, there can even be none-- just theoretically exist (someone may write one) and that would show it's not backward compatible.
Of course it matters. Creating a system that performs terribly for all applications just to support one or two rogue applications that are very rarely (if never) used (and have working equivalents) is just stupid. Like everything in life its a matter of numbers.
amigaksi wrote:
Well, unless the audio/kb/etc. of the new machine is a superset of the old machine, it would be hard to do any sort of emulation accurately.
Hard yes, but people have been working on them for decades. They are very good. Certainly good enough for a regular user. Because the MAC used libraries to abstract everything and there was far less "bang the metal" programming a highly accurate and compatible MAC emulator is far easier than say an Amiga emulator.
amigaksi wrote:
For example, you can't show real-time sprites all over a screen on a machine that does not have sprites.
Not true. It all depends on how much CPU power per VBL you have, what RAM bandwidth you have, what VBL synchronisation you have.
You think high level Amiga games use only hardware sprites? Of course not when the accelerated CPU's could pump 10x of them around in 1/10th the time.
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@amigaksi
And how did you draw such a conclusion that they are both Macs. The Mac was originally a 680x0 and although overburdened (unlike amiga) had some support hardware like for audio/keyboard/mouse etc. so unless you have a system that is a subset of that hardware configuration you can bet there exists a program that will work on original Mac not on your so-called Mac.
I didn't own any of the m68k Macs, but I've used them. Considering some evolution, these PPC and x86 Macs look and feel the same. They run much of the same software (although now much more advanced). Frankly, I don't give a poop whether the underlying HW is m68k, PPC or x86. All of them work. x86 works faster than PPC. PPC works faster than m68k.
This is how I feel. I consider them Macs. Obviously you don't need to agree.
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amiga is missing in:
1) Software
2) porting to x86
3) porting to Qemu and PearPC.
the second point will be very impossible, but now, the only way to show the new AmigaOS to a major number of users is to run OS4 and MOS1/2 on emulator x86 like Qemu and PearPC.
there is no advantage for the one that has developed the two OS, if these last remain confined on A1 or uA1.
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@Georg
if MorphOS development had started today (not x years ago) - or maybe put differently: if cpu situation when MorphOS development started back then would have been as it is now - which CPU family would in your opinion have been the best choice?
Assuming that there would be no backwards compatibility issues to consider, clearly x86 (or x86-64 probably).
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Piru wrote:
@Georg
if MorphOS development had started today (not x years ago) - or maybe put differently: if cpu situation when MorphOS development started back then would have been as it is now - which CPU family would in your opinion have been the best choice?
Assuming that there would be no backwards compatibility issues to consider, clearly x86 (or x86-64 probably).
I'm still leaning more for keeping the software as 68k and emu it, a la Amithlon, thereby eliminating the whole native issue. *shrug*
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@downix
I'm still leaning more for keeping the software as 68k and emu it, a la Amithlon, thereby eliminating the whole native issue. *shrug*
Sure go ahead. I was asked my opinion and I gave it.
If the only goal is to run the old m68k apps in some boxed emulation and have the surrounding OS somehow new, then it will be quite hard to compete with Windows + WinUAE or Linux x86 + EUAE.
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@Piru
Assuming that there would be no backwards compatibility issues to consider, clearly x86 (or x86-64 probably).
In recent times (months?) I think to have noted "indications" that several other people from MorphOS team might have similiar opinion. Might that be so?
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@Georg
In recent times (months?) I think to have noted "indications" that several other people from MorphOS team might have similiar opinion. Might that be so?
I don't speak in behalf of other people. This is my personal opinion.
Anyway, this particular opinion was given about hypothetical scenario. It is in no way related to MorphOS as of today.
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alexh wrote:
I have to disagree with quarkx (not for the first time).
The ethos of AmigaOS was to make the user experience easier and better to the point where it almost doesn't feel like you are using a computer.
It doesn't matter what hardware it uses. To be honest if you're even THINKING what the underlying hardware is then the OS + applications have not done their job correctly.
The most functional, easiest to use User experience is what it aims for. Stuff "just works".
Taking a crappy stoic stance of "it's not pure" is so lame and not what computing is all about.
You use words "Spirit" and "Soul" and I say that your ideas are the work of Beelzebub. You've missed the whole point of OS level computing!
You could argue that the spirit and soul of the Amiga was not in the OS level but in the bang the metal programming that grew up around the earlier computer systems. But I doubt very much you are a programmer or know anything about this area. You are just a user. (As am I)
First, you are right, I am not or never said I was a programmer, but I just can't seem to understand your point at all. Why do you even bother with Amiga then if not for the hardware? Why is the price of all the amiga stuff so expensive, if none of the hardware mattered? By your argument, we should all just trash our amigas and run emulators, because the real stuff doesn't matter. X86 is going to go the way of the 68xxx sooner or later also. The hardware is the most important part of any computer system, otherwise, you just have trash.
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Beast96GT wrote:
1) What would be special about it? What would make people want to buy it instead of a PC?
The same reasons people buy Macs: avoiding viruses etc; wanting an all-in-one combined hardware/OS package from the same company; just wanting to be different.
2) How can the Amiga recreate the charm it once had as an inexpensive multimedia computer?
All computers these days have the charm of being inexpensive multimedia computers. So there's no need to recreate it, just offer what everyone else offers these days.
3) What are the hardware solutions for the Amiga considering it typically uses hardware that can be outdated, limited in quantity, generally incompatible with market leader?
Well obviously it would be silly to use years old hardware, and there's no reason to restrict it to such hardware. The hardware solutions are those on the market today, which includes hardware that is compatible with Windows.
alexh wrote:
Dunno about you, but I certainly do not remember the Amiga as "inexpensive".
A Batman Pack (http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/a500batman.html) which cost £399 in 1989 would cost in today's money (adjusting for inflation) £734.16. That is hardly inexpensive is it?
It was inexpensive compared to the alternatives to the time (e.g., PCs costing twice as much). But yes, computers of today are even more inexpensive.
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zylesea wrote:
The issue of going x86 was discussed a zillion times already. the prob is the endianess. either you lose binary compatibilty (like AROS) or you lose cpu cycles (needed to continously swap endianess) - which wouldn't comply with the 'elegance through simplicity' approach.
It wasn't a problem for Apple.
And given that a modern x86 can run rings around the fastest '060, even with the burden of emulation, I'd say that's a far more elegant and simple solution than using outdated and expensive hardware.
DigitalQ wrote:
I consider that all modern computers running a modern OS (ie; Linux, Vista) contain all the best elements that made the Amiga special in its day. In this light, I see the Amiga as being a contributor to the computer I'm using right now; which means that, in a sense, I am using a modern variation of the Amiga.
I fully agree. I've been using PCs for the last few years because they have become far more in the spirit of what the Amiga was. The Amiga lives probably more so than anything to do with DOS or classic MacOS. I could stick an Amiga sticker on it if I really wanted to, but I'm not really bothered about being loyal to a trademark.
murple wrote:
Without some continuity from the Commodore Amigas either in technology or engineers... I think it'd be an Amiga in name only.
Note that this is just like Mac OS X and Windows.
Things like the Minimig and AOne are cool, but I cant really consider them Amigas.
This seems to me an odd thing to say - do you say the same of modern Macs and Windows PCs (which are far more of a gap than the AmigaOne, where the only difference is a different CPU; Macs have a completely different OS too)?
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quarkx wrote:
Why do you even bother with Amiga then if not for the hardware?
Same reason everyone else does. For the games & demos (and perhaps applications) they once used as kids.
quarkx wrote:
Why is the price of all the amiga stuff so expensive, if none of the hardware mattered?
But the price of all Amiga stuff isn't so expensive. You can pick up A500/600/1200 for next to nothing £10-20. The reason certain items are so expensive is because they were the items we coveted as children. The expensive addons we read about in magazines and dreamed of but could never afford. The GVP A530, Blizzard & Cyberstorm PPC, A3000 & A4000.
quarkx wrote:
By your argument, we should all just trash our amigas and run emulators, because the real stuff doesn't matter.
I would say that a great deal of us have done just that. The emulator is just a tool, it's easy to use. Works well (concededly far from perfect) and can perform much faster and to a higher specification than an Amiga we could realistically own.
It's still nostalgic to keep the old hardware. It looks better (or should I say different) on a TV that an emulator on a PC monitor. It sounds different. It feels different. But all these differences do not detract from the fact that it is slow and difficult to use compared to firing up the emulator. Which is why they remain in the cupboards for most of us a great deal of the time.
quarkx wrote:
The hardware is the most important part of any computer system, otherwise, you just have trash.
The software is everything. Today the hardware is nothing.(Although I admit that without the hardware in the first place there would have been no software).
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@Beast96GT
>The Amiga would need some kind of "niche" to fill that's not being currently exploited.
Every business writing, even the get rich ones, say to find a niche market. I completely agree. My idea of the niche market is an inexpensive computer that is extremely simple and comes (out of the box) with software needed for such market.
>I would like to think that the new Amiga would have an architecture that would not be held back by backward compatibility, as the PC seems to be. Why couldn't backward compatibility be provided in software emulation?
The JIT emulation is find, IMO. A new system needs to be engineered with current new ideas for system architectures. The catch would be a bridge system between current architectures and the future system. I thought Amiga's AmigaOS5 was a good idea until they decided to have it basically like a Java OS atop another OS; then you're competing with Sun--not a good idea, and why would someone buy an OS that requires the extra expense of an underlying OS. It's a bad idea, IMO. AmigaOS5 should have been AmigaOS4 but on x86--or even just on a modern PPC system.
>On more realistic note, however, I think Hyperion has the right idea. An OS would seem to be the most logical way to promote the Amiga despite the hardware it runs on.
I agree. I would like to know the underlying reasons why Amiga canceled the contract. I would also like to know if someone presented investment capital to Amiga to further develop AmigaOS4 if they would be interested. I think Amiga is going down the same deadend path that Be, Inc went when they decided to try the Internet Appliance market; it's the same market, but just named differently now.
>In the end, of course, it's a pipe dream, but it's still fun to discuss. And I think it's good to bring it up, regardless of critics that think it's pointless.
Without the dream though, new technologies and innovations would not be developed. Many new technologies are born atop previous technologies, and Windows is the perfect example--as MS typically copies rather than innovates.
The dream needs a focus and a niche, and, IMO, further AmigaOS4 development on existing modern PPC hardware is the first step with a port to x86 as the step thereafter. Money should be spent on developing (or acquiring) a good software suite for the PPC AOS4 before spending resources on porting.
Along that line, is there even an IDE available for AmigaOS development? Is StormC even still being updated or available? I recall SASC, but is it even still available? Are there any decent development tools for AmigaOS3.9 or 4.0?
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DavidF215 wrote:
is there even an IDE available for AmigaOS development?
Cubic IDE
DavidF215 wrote:
Is StormC even still being updated or available? I recall SASC, but is it even still available? Are there any decent development tools for AmigaOS3.9 or 4.0?
There is GCC.
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Here are just a few thoughts/ideas if the Amiga WERE to be redesigned, re-introduced hardware and software-wise:
1) The Amiga should be a graphical powerhouse. It's an old idea, but it's amazing how much attention is paid to the machine with the best graphics--Hell, it's how the Amiga really made a name for itself (among other things, of course).
Modern graphics cards are designed to be optimal for typical 32-bit floating point (matrices and such) math.
The Amiga graphics chips (preferably on a card) could optimize for real-time ray-tracing. It's not a fantasy by any means; it's already being done on the PC, but it's limited and requires massive hardware. The Amiga, if designed with the bottlenecks of doing this in mind, could possibly bring this market and exploit it as its own.
The Amiga graphics chips could optimize for Quaternions which are much better than matrices (especially for rotations).
It's amazing what graphics will do to get your platform some attention. Remember the first time you saw the Amiga screenshots of Defender of the Crown?
2) Support your software developers. A good machine has to be supported by good software. Good software has to be made with by developers and publishers who think they can make a profit. On a new platform, help from the manufacturer is a must.
Reusable code is in that equation. It's time to move past assembly code and support a higher level language like C++ with libraries. This means a real compiler that supports serious debugging and a optimized machine language generation. Professional code-bases are huge, and require easier to read code.
3) Have a multimedia solution like no other. The Microsoft Windows PC has come a long way with multimedia integration, but in my mind it has never taken the next step nor done it right. The Amiga could have additional inputs for things like HDMI and optical audio.
The Amiga could have DVR and video editing capabilities. Make people who own a video camera feel they need an Amiga to make (semi-)professional video of their ugly kids.
;-)
4) Provide a modular approach. Being able to upgrade your computer is a good. Computer manufacturers aren't always keen on this idea--they'd rather you buy a new system. At least on your higher end system, it's a good thing. You need to not be limited by your motherboard with what you can do with your system--especially graphics.
Like I stated in a previous post, this is really a pipe dream, but it's fun to ponder what would be if the Amiga has a serious investment.
:-D
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alexh wrote:
but the price of all Amiga stuff isn't so expensive. You can pick up A500/600/1200 for next to nothing £10-20. The reason certain items are so expensive is because they were the items we coveted as children. The expensive addons we read about in magazines and dreamed of but could never afford. The GVP A530, Blizzard & Cyberstorm PPC, A3000 & A4000.
Again, you are living in a land where it may just be cheap, other parts of the world, it is VERY expensive. remember the world does not center around the UK, and UK hardware will not necessarily work without modification in other parts of the world. To think otherwise, you are just living in a bubble. An A 500 may be reasonably priced here ($50 +), but thats it. To find an NTSC A500+ or a NTSC A600 is next to impossible without ordering it from halfway around the world and paying hundreds of dollars in shipping (and good luck getting that NTSC).An NTSC 1200 is also rare, but not as hard to get as a 600.
Also, the software is worth NOTHING! You can find all of it for free if you look.(mind you it may be pirated) The hardware is worth everything! the hardware will always be the most important thing in any system. It's very hard to pirate Hardware, but software can be gotten anywhere for free (if you want it badly enough). Now, I don't personally condone software piracy or peer to peer networking, but its there and it does make software rather worthless.
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Don't agree with you
CPU time spend to convert big endian / little endian just take a look at the cpu utilization: in normal everyday use it isn't more than some % rarely more than ten enough to convert. for cpu intensive programs like audio/video encoding they all have versions compiled for non legacy hardware.
I suggest:
- a program structure for legacy (68k) sofware that emulate a 68k or convert on the fly little / big endian as the fastest amiga processor is a 68040/60 running at max 75mhz I suppose that even a single processor at 1500Mhz would be many times faster than any real amiga
- a program structure for new software that use x86 specificity : the only issue for amiga is that it can live in any everyday PC.
Be realistic amiga has always suffered from it's hardware specifity (even if it was his main advantage too).
Amiga's miracle of the 80's is no more possible: nowadays standard hardware is many times faster that any more or less selfmade hardware.
His only chance is x86 there are many x86 compatible processors, take a look at cpu market these days:
- Power pc : doesnt exist anymore on desktop
- Sparc : incertain future (does sun will continue to develop him ?)
- Mips : the only computers that used them are retired since 2 years
- ARM : Could be a good choice but doesn't exist on desktop.
Think : anybody could make is own amiga from of the shelf hardware just imagine a 250$ amiga ! Who will buy a 600$ (or more) computer that is dead 14 years ago !
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jlariv8957 wrote:
His only chance is x86 there are many x86 compatible processors, take a look at cpu market these days:
- Power pc : doesnt exist anymore on desktop
- Sparc : incertain future (does sun will continue to develop him ?)
- Mips : the only computers that used them are retired since 2 years
- ARM : Could be a good choice but doesn't exist on desktop.
I would consider PS3 as a desktop device and it does have a PPC processor. Mighty powerfull one indeed :) Too bad I haven't seen any efforts from MOS or OS4 team to port their OS to that system. Oh well I just managed to buy a G4 Mac Mini so while waiting for MOS on that platform I can play with OSX and MOS with my Efika.
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>by alexh on 2008/8/31 13:40:42
>It doesn't matter what hardware it uses. To be honest if you're even THINKING what the underlying hardware is then the OS + applications have not done their job correctly.
...
>You could argue that the spirit and soul of the Amiga was not in the OS level but in the bang the metal programming that grew up around the earlier computer systems. But I doubt very much you are a programmer or know anything about this area. You are just a user. (As am I)
Yeah, so stick to being a user then and stop telling people about what is the right way to program or better programming because your statements reflect your inexperience. For some tasks you need to know the hardware behind the software. If someone wrote a medical system to control medical instrumentation or some power plant relying to timing issues, he can't just get a new system that's not backward compatible (on the hardware level). The Amiga systems retained their hardware register level compatibility, so it's more optimal to use it and NOTHING wrong with it. Read the PREFACE to Hardware Reference Manual for Amiga and it tells you the same.
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>The software is everything. Today the hardware is nothing.(Although I admit that without the hardware in the first place there would have been no software).
Wrong. If software was everything, people would still be using Commodore 64 since when new machines came out, they had very little software and C64 had tons of it. And you can apply the same principle to any later time a new machine was introduced. Nobody should have bought the new "Macs" or faster PCs since older PCs already had more software. Perhaps, if you are running stuff like a Word Processor or some Browser, you don't care about the hardware behind the application, but many tasks require one to know what the target machine (hardware) they are writing their applications for.
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DavidF215 wrote:
Along that line, is there even an IDE available for AmigaOS development? Is StormC even still being updated or available? I recall SASC, but is it even still available? Are there any decent development tools for AmigaOS3.9 or 4.0?
For OS4 there's a forthcoming IDE called CodeBench (http://www.amigans.net/modules/myalbum/photo.php?lid=175).
Varthall
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>by alexh on 2008/8/31 15:09:22
>>Quote:
amigaksi wrote:
PCs are backward compatible for about 30 years; I can still run 8088 code on a Pentium IV.
>No you cannot.
It's my code that I wrote when I was in college and it still runs; here's a sample:
;BX=FLOOR(SQRT(AX))
Sqrt Proc Near
Xor BX,BX
SqrtAX: Sub AX,BX
Inc BX
Sub AX,BX
Jns SqrtAX
Dec BX
RET
The keyboard access to port 60h, timer access to 40..42h, etc. all are still the same.
>The caches and internal pipeline structure means that a lot of code does not run as it was supposed to. I dont think you were a PC user during the transition to 32-bit x86 architecture and once again to the Pentium architecture. Either that or you've forgotten.
Even the 8088 had various speeds so if you tried to time things with instructions, you probably had problems or with self-modifying code; however, the instructions set was purposely kept backward compatible like it was with 680x0 series (on Macs/Amigas/Atari STs). That's different from making a new processor and then doing some software emulation where you probably can't even map the timer or other hardware the software accesses.
>>Quote:
amigaksi wrote:
It does not matter the number; in fact, there can even be none-- just theoretically exist (someone may write one) and that would show it's not backward compatible.
>Of course it matters. Creating a system that performs terribly for all applications just to support one or two rogue applications that are very rarely (if never) used (and have working equivalents) is just stupid.
If the application was the only thing one required to get a task done, the numbers don't matter. It's a rogue application is your opinion especially if the hardware was being kept standard for a bunch of models. It's always more optimal to go directly to hardware registers if the hardware is standardized and you also know exactly what is happening in your code and how many cycles it will take.
>Like everything in life its a matter of numbers.
That's even more absurd. It's okay to claim "Not everything is a matter of numbers" as an absolute claim since you only need one item to prove it like "love" or where quality is better than quantity.
>>Quote:
amigaksi wrote:
Well, unless the audio/kb/etc. of the new machine is a superset of the old machine, it would be hard to do any sort of emulation accurately.
>Hard yes, but people have been working on them for decades. They are very good. Certainly good enough for a regular user. Because the MAC used libraries to abstract everything and there was far less "bang the metal" programming a highly accurate and compatible MAC emulator is far easier than say an Amiga emulator.
That's true since Mac has less custom hardware supporting it, it's easier to emulate whereas Amiga is impossible to emulate for certain things on a PC. I would like to know what target machine (spec) you are comparing to since I have seen Macs emulated on Atari ST, Amiga, and various PCs and newer so-called "Macs". That way we can better tell whether they can be called "Macs".
>>Quote:
amigaksi wrote:
For example, you can't show real-time sprites all over a screen on a machine that does not have sprites.
>Not true. It all depends on how much CPU power per VBL you have, what RAM bandwidth you have, what VBL synchronisation you have.
Do you really think that setting 30 X,Y registers of sprites even on a 7.16Mhz OCS Amiga 1000 can be beat by a standard CPU/Graphics Card doing erasing/repainting of software sprites? Think again. It only takes a few microseconds on an Amiga 1000.
>You think high level Amiga games use only hardware sprites? Of course not when the accelerated CPU's could pump 10x of them around in 1/10th the time.
Never said sprites had to be used for games. What's high level game for you might not be for others. And doing 10x in 1/10th of the time, first answer the part of doing 1X in the same time or less.
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@jlariv8957
You’ve made several interesting points and suggestions but I don’t fully agree with your last conclusion. Amiga is a brand name. You buy a PC, you buy a Mac, and you buy an Amiga. If it’s powered by an Intel x64 multicore it doesn’t matter. You buy an Amiga that’s capable of running the best and most demanding games and software in the world in an Amiga OS.
That’s an Amiga.
That’s what Amiga was 20 years ago, capable of running the best and most demanding games and software in the world.
Amiga today just have to use different parts to accomplish the same thing.
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quarkx wrote:
without ordering it from halfway around the world and paying hundreds of dollars in shipping
I buy things from the USA all the time and do not pay lots of money on shipping. Put it on the boat with a 3 week delivery time costs very little!
quarkx wrote:
(and good luck getting that NTSC).An NTSC 1200 is also rare, but not as hard to get as a 600.
Awe..
quarkx wrote:
Also, the software is worth NOTHING!
Did I say anything about worth? I said it MEANS everything.
quarkx wrote:
It's very hard to pirate Hardware
But as the years go buy it's more and more easy to emulate as the horsepower of the modern computers goes up and so does the number of hours of emulator programming.
amigaksi wrote:
Yeah, so stick to being a user then and stop telling people about what is the right way to program or better programming
Don't see me doing that ever... gimme some links. Answer: You cannot. All I said was you do not need a system with hardware sprites for realtime gfx. And you don't. FACT.
amigaksi wrote:
your statements reflect your inexperience. For some tasks you need to know the hardware behind the software.
Sometimes. Vary rarely at the user OS level.
amigaksi wrote:
If someone wrote a medical system to control medical instrumentation or some power plant relying to timing issues, he can't just get a new system that's not backward compatible (on the hardware level).
They have Amiga's controlling medical systems and power stations?
Yeah, I didn't think so. (AmigaOS is not an RTOS btw)
amigaksi wrote:
The Amiga systems retained their hardware register level compatibility, so it's more optimal to use it and NOTHING wrong with it. Read the PREFACE to Hardware Reference Manual for Amiga and it tells you the same.
Yeah right... not! They tried their best, but anyone who was present during the transition between OCS and ECS and once again between ECS and AGA will think differently. Numerous games failed to work or displayed graphical glitches. Admittedly it was usually the fault of the programmer who had set-bits in reserved fields in registers or used reserved hardware addresses (which were a mirror of another address)to get a few extra cycles of speed. 100% register compatibility... nope, didn't happen!
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>Don't see me doing that ever... gimme some links. Answer: You cannot.
"To be honest if you're even THINKING what the underlying hardware is then the OS + applications have not done their job correctly." from the very thing you replied to.
>They have Amiga's controlling medical systems and power stations? I didn't think so. AmigaOS is not an RTOS btw.
Don't misquote me; take your time in replying. I never said there was an Amiga controlling them.
>Admittedly it was usually the fault of the programmer who had set-bits in reserved fields or used invalid address ranges to get a few extra cycles of speed but 100% register compatibility... nope!
The defined bits are 100% backward compatible. Undefined bits have problems even on the PC parallel port where bit 5 at 37Ah was used for I/O mode on IBM PCs. But you see the point that some applications are not even possible without going directly to hardware registers; even my floppy simulator does not work if I go through Windows API.
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amigaksi wrote:
alexh wrote:
"To be honest if you're even THINKING what the underlying hardware is then the OS + applications have not done their job correctly."
From the very thing you replied to.
But we were talking about from the USER perspective! (OS + applications). The discussion concerned "Was a MAC was really a MAC if it had an INTEL processor?"
amigaksi wrote:
But you see the point that some applications are not even possible without going directly to hardware registers; even my floppy simulator does not work if I go through Windows API.
And you see the point that at the user level no-one cares! And if the OS designers and application programmers have done their jobs properly they do not even notice.
amigaksi wrote:
The defined bits are 100% backward compatible.
True, but the softies never listened.. they never do. Why use extra cycles to mask off those reserved bits when you can just overwrite them and it doesn't do anything :-)
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I agree with you alexh. Having this opinion doesn't offend the great vintage hardware the slightest bit. It is just a way of looking at it from another perspective.
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Beast96GT wrote:
The Amiga graphics chips could optimize for Quaternions which are much better than matrices (especially for rotations).
In what sense "optimised", that isn't already done on modern hardware? Presumably if there was some obvious way to speed things up here, NVIDIA etc would already be doing it.
Quaternions are only a representation of 3x3 matrices for rotations, they still need to be converted to 4x4 matrices to represent general transformations anyway.
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amigaksi wrote:
It's always more optimal to go directly to hardware registers if the hardware is standardized
But it's even more optimal to go directly to the library level if the hardware is not standardized. Especially today.
amigaksi wrote:
and you also know exactly what is happening in your code and how many cycles it will take.
I can appreciate there are some very strange situations where that would be good. But I doubt you can count cycles on todays processors with all their caching, out of order execution and branch prediction? Or would I be surprised?
amigaksi wrote:
alexh wrote:
Like everything in life its a matter of numbers.
That's even more absurd. It's okay to claim "Not everything is a matter of numbers" as an absolute claim since you only need one item to prove it like "love" or where quality is better than quantity.
All decisions today, especially in business are a matter of numbers. In our discussion I was trying to express that the decision makers at Apple decided that the customers need for the speed improvement offered by Intel processors was a bigger number than the customers need for 100% compatibility. And they were right, as the sale figures show.
amigaksi wrote:
Amiga is impossible to emulate for certain things on a PC.
Yes? Excluding I/O.. what would that be?
amigaksi wrote:
I would like to know what target machine (spec) you are comparing to since I have seen Macs emulated on Atari ST, Amiga, and various PCs and newer so-called "Macs". That way we can better tell whether they can be called "Macs".
I was thinking modern x86 based systems.
amigaksi wrote:
Do you really think that setting 30 X,Y registers of sprites even on a 7.16Mhz OCS Amiga 1000 can be beat by a standard CPU/Graphics Card doing erasing/repainting of software sprites?
Surely it can? The bandwidth of DDR2 + 16x PCIe + 2.4GHz Core2Duo means the CPU can erase and repaint a 320x240x8 screen many thousands of times per VBL?
amigaksi wrote:
Think again. It only takes a few microseconds on an Amiga 1000.
I'll try and do a little experiment and post back. Got to remember how to use VRAM shared memory extension :-)
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alexh wrote:
amigaksi wrote:
Do you really think that setting 30 X,Y registers of sprites even on a 7.16Mhz OCS Amiga 1000 can be beat by a standard CPU/Graphics Card doing erasing/repainting of software sprites?
Surely it can? The bandwidth of DDR2 + 16x PCIe + 2.4GHz Core2Duo means the CPU can erase and repaint a 320x240x8 screen many thousands of times per VBL?
Indeed, his claim is ludicrous. Moreover, there's no reason it has to be done in software anyway - on modern hardware, this sort of thing can easily be done in hardware (the sprites are stored in graphics memory, and rendered directly by the graphics hardware). Therefore you don't even have the bottleneck of PCIe, and graphics memory is even faster than DDR2. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_200_Series , the memory bandwidth on modern graphics cards is ~100GB/s, with 240 processors giving a peak fillrate of about 20 billion pixels per second (which would fill that 320x240 screen about 260,000 times a second). What was that about being able to set a measly 30 registers?
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by mdwh2 on 2008/9/1 21:10:36
>>>Do you really think that setting 30 X,Y registers of sprites even on a 7.16Mhz OCS Amiga 1000 can be beat by a standard CPU/Graphics Card doing erasing/repainting of software sprites?
>>Surely it can? The bandwidth of DDR2 + 16x PCIe + 2.4GHz Core2Duo means the CPU can erase and repaint a 320x240x8 screen many thousands of times per VBL?
>Indeed, his claim is ludicrous.
When you don't understand the point, you should first try to understand it before replying. Alex is right in trying to repaint the screen because the ORIGINAL point is showing a screen full of sprites on a system that does not have sprites.
>Moreover, there's no reason it has to be done in software anyway - on modern hardware, this sort of thing can easily be done in hardware (the sprites are stored in graphics memory, and rendered directly by the graphics hardware).
Moreover, you missed another point-- that you have to use a standard graphics card/CPU not something that works on maybe your system and you are NO LONGER using a system that does NOT support sprites. It won't work on modern hardware that I have-- my ATI card does not support sprites in hardware so you have to repaint the screen or some other algorithm.
>Therefore you don't even have the bottleneck of PCIe, and graphics memory is even faster than DDR2. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_200_Series , the memory bandwidth on modern graphics cards is ~100GB/s, with 240 processors giving a peak fillrate of about 20 billion pixels per second (which would fill that 320x240 screen about 260,000 times a second). What was that about being able to set a measly 30 registers?
It's NOT 100GB/second from CPU accessible memory to graphics card; stop picking up things randomly from the web and trying to argue against a point you don't understand. You don't even understand how amiga sprites work; they can be rendered even on a 640*400 screen at their 320*200 resolution so the worst case is repainting 640*400. It's the Amiga that only has to set 30 registers not the PC; PC has to repaint the area.
This is your understanding of the argument:
I say: system without hardware sprites would have a hard time showing a screen full of sprites in real-time (on a standard CPU/Graphics card).
You say: that's ludicrous, just use the hardware sprites in the graphics card and use the latest and greatest graphics card.
Duh! Perhaps, I should put in Video Toaster in my machine and use that to my advantage as well and some other souped up attachment that only works on my Amiga.
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amigaksi wrote:
by mdwh2 on 2008/9/1 21:10:36
>>>Do you really think that setting 30 X,Y registers of sprites even on a 7.16Mhz OCS Amiga 1000 can be beat by a standard CPU/Graphics Card doing erasing/repainting of software sprites?
>>Surely it can? The bandwidth of DDR2 + 16x PCIe + 2.4GHz Core2Duo means the CPU can erase and repaint a 320x240x8 screen many thousands of times per VBL?
>Indeed, his claim is ludicrous.
When you don't understand the point, you should first try to understand it before replying.
But you have proven time and time again not to understand modern hardware... Perhaps it is you who should do some reading before you post?
Alex is right in trying to repaint the screen because the ORIGINAL point is showing a screen full of sprites on a system that does not have sprites.
Yes... and there are two ways I can think of with a modern GFX card... see below...
>Moreover, there's no reason it has to be done in software anyway - on modern hardware, this sort of thing can easily be done in hardware (the sprites are stored in graphics memory, and rendered directly by the graphics hardware).
Moreover, you missed another point-- that you have to use a standard graphics card/CPU not something that works on maybe your system and you are NO LONGER using a system that does NOT support sprites. It won't work on modern hardware that I have-- my ATI card does not support sprites in hardware so you have to repaint the screen or some other algorithm.
With your ATI card which I shall assume you purchased within the last 8 years, you can either use the blitter, which has a much higher bandwidth than anything the Amiga ever had, and so could easily repaint the screen with far more objects than the amiga could manage using both the Sprite hardware and the blitter... or use the 3D hardware, learn DirectX or OpenGL and use surfaces... they function exactly the same as sprites with the added advantage that they can be scaled, rotated and alphablended all in realtime...
LEARN ABOUT MODERN HARDWARE BEFORE YOU POST NONSENSE! :-)
>Therefore you don't even have the bottleneck of PCIe, and graphics memory is even faster than DDR2. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_200_Series , the memory bandwidth on modern graphics cards is ~100GB/s, with 240 processors giving a peak fillrate of about 20 billion pixels per second (which would fill that 320x240 screen about 260,000 times a second). What was that about being able to set a measly 30 registers?
It's NOT 100GB/second from CPU accessible memory to graphics card; stop picking up things randomly from the web and trying to argue against a point you don't understand.
I wouldn't bother rendering in the System RAM... I'd use the gfx hardware to render gfx...
You don't even understand how amiga sprites work; they can be rendered even on a 640*400 screen at their 320*200 resolution so the worst case is repainting 640*400. It's the Amiga that only has to set 30 registers not the PC; PC has to repaint the area.
This is your understanding of the argument:
I say: system without hardware sprites would have a hard time showing a screen full of sprites in real-time (on a standard CPU/Graphics card).
Get a clue...
You say: that's ludicrous, just use the hardware sprites in the graphics card and use the latest and greatest graphics card.
Duh! Perhaps, I should put in Video Toaster in my machine and use that to my advantage as well and some other souped up attachment that only works on my Amiga.
The concept behind the Video Toaster is long gone... everyone has been using digital video for 10 years now!!
Your argument makes no sense...
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>by alexh on 2008/9/1 6:23:10
Quote:
>>amigaksi wrote:
It's always more optimal to go directly to hardware registers if the hardware is standardized
>But it's even more optimal to go directly to the library level if the hardware is not standardized. Especially today.
You know what people did when there was only a few things nonstandard is that they give a list of sound cards or graphics card, so they could be used optimally.
>I can appreciate there are some very strange situations where that would be good. But I doubt you can count cycles on todays processors with all their caching, out of order execution and branch prediction? Or would I be surprised?
You can estimate the upper bound (worst case analysis), but if it's a library call, you can't really tell what exactly is happening behind the call-- some sort of emulation or exact hardware support.
>>amigaksi wrote:
Amiga is impossible to emulate for certain things on a PC.
>Yes? Excluding I/O.. what would that be?
Yeah, I posted some things in some places; but going by standards, sprite example would be one of them. On my ATI graphics card, I get less than 100MB/second which would make a full screen of sprites impossible. Then again there's the reading of joysticks, timers, sound sampling rate accuracy, etc.
>>amigaksi wrote:
I would like to know what target machine (spec) you are comparing to since I have seen Macs emulated on Atari ST, Amiga, and various PCs and newer so-called "Macs". That way we can better tell whether they can be called "Macs".
>I was thinking modern x86 based systems.
My brother got rid of original mac/documentation so can't really try out to see whether it's specs are subset of modern x86 systems.
>Surely it can? The bandwidth of DDR2 + 16x PCIe + 2.4GHz Core2Duo means the CPU can erase and repaint a 320x240x8 screen many thousands of times per VBL?
Try it out. I could not get it done on modern systems.
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amigaksi wrote:
Alex is right in trying to repaint the screen because the ORIGINAL point is showing a screen full of sprites on a system that does not have sprites.
Right, I understand this - and even if you have to repaint every pixel by CPU, this is easily possible on modern hardware.
Moreover, you missed another point-- that you have to use a standard graphics card/CPU not something that works on maybe your system and you are NO LONGER using a system that does NOT support sprites.
What do you mean "works maybe your system"? 3D graphics cards that do texture mapping in hardware have been around for over a decade!
How old is your ATI card exactly?
Software written for graphics cards will work on any make of graphics cards (although there may be some differences, this is in areas that is way beyond what any Amiga chipset ever did) - unlike banging the hardware, which won't work on anything, possibly not even a newer version of that chipset from the same company (consider all the OCS vs ECS vs AGA incompatibilities).
It's NOT 100GB/second from CPU accessible memory to graphics card
If you're rendering from hardware, the CPU doesn't need to do a thing.
I say: system without hardware sprites would have a hard time showing a screen full of sprites in real-time (on a standard CPU/Graphics card).
You say: that's ludicrous, just use the hardware sprites in the graphics card and use the latest and greatest graphics card.
You don't need "sprites", because any bog standard (or even several years old) PC will do it in hardware. You don't need latest and greatest - that was just an example of what modern hardware is like today - a 10 year old Voodoo would do it.
But even if we restrict ourselves to a CPU solution, I don't see why this is not possible. The obvious example would be a software 3D renderer, which has to redraw the entire screen many times a second. That was being done a decade ago with Quake - now computers are doing things like real time raytracing!
Duh! Perhaps, I should put in Video Toaster in my machine and use that to my advantage as well and some other souped up attachment that only works on my Amiga.
Okay, fine - and what will it be able to do better, compared with modern hardware?
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Yeah, low-res analogue non-HD video, that'll confuse the heck out of most people today, maybe you could add a punched card reader too...
Duh! Perhaps, I should put in Video Toaster in my machine and use that to my advantage as well and some other souped up attachment that only works on my Amiga.
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Piru wrote:
@Georg
if MorphOS development had started today (not x years ago) - or maybe put differently: if cpu situation when MorphOS development started back then would have been as it is now - which CPU family would in your opinion have been the best choice?
Assuming that there would be no backwards compatibility issues to consider, clearly x86 (or x86-64 probably).
Are you crazy?!
MorphOS would then be in *direct* competition with Windows.. oh, and MacOS! _Noone_ would use it!
Hahahaha.... :-D
Btw, after having read this entire thread - I just realized that it is September again. Is this... :idea:
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kolla wrote:
Are you crazy?!
MorphOS would then be in *direct* competition with Windows.. oh, and MacOS! _Noone_ would use it!
Hahahaha.... :-D
Btw, after having read this entire thread - I just realized that it is September again. Is this... :idea:
This is a common anti-x86 argument that I've never understood. By this argument, no one should use MacOS X, because it's now in "direct competition with Windows". Moreover, MorphOS was in "direct competition" with MacOS for years when it used PowerPC.
But none of this is true in any case - platforms are in just as much competition with each other whether or not they use the same CPU.
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mdwh2 wrote:
kolla wrote:
Are you crazy?!
MorphOS would then be in *direct* competition with Windows.. oh, and MacOS! _Noone_ would use it!
Hahahaha.... :-D
Btw, after having read this entire thread - I just realized that it is September again. Is this... :idea:
This is a common anti-x86 argument that I've never understood. By this argument, no one should use MacOS X, because it's now in "direct competition with Windows". Moreover, MorphOS was in "direct competition" with MacOS for years when it used PowerPC.
But none of this is true in any case - platforms are in just as much competition with each other whether or not they use the same CPU.
See, here's the confusion. Mac's might run Intel CPU's, but they are not IBM compatible, missing several key 8-bit components. Hence why the Hypervisor mode to enable Windows to run, emulating the missing pieces. But whenever anyone mentions an x86 Amiga, they figure on bog standard boards. That will not work. At the minimum we'd need a custom boot loader, Kickstart embedded in the mobo you could say.
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>by A6000 on 2008/8/31 11:52:47
>@DavidF215
>Good post, wrong website - this one's filled with amiga haters.
Some are poor souls mislead by misinformation or their own misunderstandings.
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>by persia on 2008/9/2 19:09:15
>Yeah, low-res analogue non-HD video, that'll confuse the heck out of most people today, maybe you could add a punched card reader too...
Believe it or not for compatibility reasons, I would still go with NTSC non-HD video and MPG4 has its own unknown loss in the spatial domain associated with editing. I have seen deltas ranging from -128..127 on primaries after decompressing/recompressing and comparing with the original data.
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>by mdwh2 on 2008/9/2 19:00:43
>>amigaksi wrote:
Alex is right in trying to repaint the screen because the ORIGINAL point is showing a screen full of sprites on a system that does not have sprites.
>Right, I understand this -
You don't because later in your post you state the samething-- let the hardware do it. You can't let the hardware do it, if the argument is how to render sprites on a system that does not support hardware sprites.
>and even if you have to repaint every pixel by CPU, this is easily possible on modern hardware.
That's not the argument either. This is a straw man argument. When you emulate accurately some aspect of the system, you have to meet or exceed the requirements; here I PURPOSELY used the words REAL-TIME sprites meaning you have to meet the real-time constraints of the original item you are trying to emulate. So back to the point, if the Amiga 1000 OCS can render 30 sprites in around 40 microseconds, you have to do the same in the new system in 40 microseconds or less. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH REFRESH RATE. Imagine a scenario where besides the 40 microseconds, all the other time is being used to send pulses through the I/O ports or the Amiga is in HALTed state and some other machine is controlling some medical heart/lung machine.
>> Moreover, you missed another point-- that you have to use a standard graphics card/CPU not something that works on maybe your system and you are NO LONGER using a system that does NOT support sprites.
>What do you mean "works maybe your system"? 3D graphics cards that do texture mapping in hardware have been around for over a decade!
I know cards are around, but we're talking about standards. AGP is the standard since most people nowadays have AGP or better cards. I'll answer this further below.
>How old is your ATI card exactly?
Does not matter really since it has to work in most PC systems which would require doing it in software not relying on some sort of "sprite" hardware being present.
>Software written for graphics cards will work on any make of graphics cards (although there may be some differences, this is in areas that is way beyond what any Amiga chipset ever did) - unlike banging the hardware, which won't work on anything, possibly not even a newer version of that chipset from the same company (consider all the OCS vs ECS vs AGA incompatibilities).
That's wrong. OCS banging works just fine for ECS/AGA as far as I have tried it and thus good for this argument. On the contrary, you can't be sure the graphics cards will support certain hardware features that you may be relying on. And some software/OS/drivers may shut down certain hardware features without you knowing it. And there are more bugs in these software/OS/drivers than in OCS/ECS/AGA compatibility. So maybe it will work using a device driver and maybe it won't. Hardware banging is allowed for by Commodore themselves in the Hardware reference manual as I already explained.
>If you're rendering from hardware, the CPU doesn't need to do a thing.
We're not sure if hardware is present, so we need to take the worst case and do some algorithm like (after pasting sprites in appropriate areas):
Mov ECX,640*400/4
CLD
Mov EDI,VidMem
Mov ESI,BitMapPtr
Rep Movsd
>You don't need "sprites", because any bog standard (or even several years old) PC will do it in hardware. You don't need latest and greatest - that was just an example of what modern hardware is like today - a 10 year old Voodoo would do it.
It's not a standard and some AGP cards do not support hardware sprites. Regardless, the argument is to emulate sprites in systems that DO NOT support it in hardware.
>But even if we restrict ourselves to a CPU solution, I don't see why this is not possible. The obvious example would be a software 3D renderer, which has to redraw the entire screen many times a second. That was being done a decade ago with Quake - now computers are doing things like real time raytracing!
See now why this is called a straw man's argument.
>> Duh! Perhaps, I should put in Video Toaster in my machine and use that to my advantage as well and some other souped up attachment that only works on my Amiga.
>Okay, fine - and what will it be able to do better, compared with modern hardware?
Another straw man argument. Never said I'm trying to beat out modern hardware; since you kept picking some 100GB graphics card, I started picking up some hardware which is nonstandard for Amigas. I purposely picked OCS Amiga as an example not even AGA to stick with bare standard where you know exactly what is happening in a REAL-TIME set up.
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amigaksi wrote:
>by A6000 on 2008/8/31 11:52:47
>@DavidF215
>Good post, wrong website - this one's filled with amiga haters.
Some are poor souls mislead by misinformation or their own misunderstandings.
You have more insight into your condition than I had imagined!
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amigaksi wrote:
That's not the argument either. This is a straw man argument. When you emulate accurately some aspect of the system, you have to meet or exceed the requirements; here I PURPOSELY used the words REAL-TIME sprites meaning you have to meet the real-time constraints of the original item you are trying to emulate. So back to the point, if the Amiga 1000 OCS can render 30 sprites in around 40 microseconds, you have to do the same in the new system in 40 microseconds or less.
That's 25 frames per second - which is no trouble on modern hardware. Or old hardware. Or even ancient hardware where you have to do it in the CPU.
Imagine a scenario where besides the 40 microseconds, all the other time is being used to send pulses through the I/O ports or the Amiga is in HALTed state and some other machine is controlling some medical heart/lung machine.
Again no problem - especially given that modern hardware (or even old hardware) is vastly faster than any Amiga CPU.
Does not matter really since it has to work in most PC systems which would require doing it in software not relying on some sort of "sprite" hardware being present.
They do not have "sprite" hardware, they do texture mapping in hardware. The CPU can do exactly the same functionality - albeit slower, though still way faster than any Amiga hardware ever could.
I don't see why "most PC systems" includes "utterly ancient systems" - and wasn't the issue talking about potential new Amiga hardware, in which case, you'd obviously pick some 3D hardware to go with it?
That's wrong. OCS banging works just fine for ECS/AGA as far as I have tried it and thus good for this argument.
It didn't work for many games...
On the contrary, you can't be sure the graphics cards will support certain hardware features that you may be relying on. And some software/OS/drivers may shut down certain hardware features without you knowing it.
Have you done 3D programming on modern hardware? Of course you can check for whether features are supported - not that it matters here, since simple texture mapping is standard on 3D hardware.
And there are more bugs in these software/OS/drivers than in OCS/ECS/AGA compatibility.
Evidence?
Hardware banging is allowed for by Commodore themselves in the Hardware reference manual as I already explained.
And what a poor decision that was - it left us stuck with aging Amiga custom hardware, unable to fully take advantage of newer graphics chipsets.
It's not a standard and some AGP cards do not support hardware sprites.
Which cards?
See now why this is called a straw man's argument.
No, I don't see, as the real time software rendering easily meets the 40ms requirement.
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Well, with modern TVs at least the PAL versus NTSC question no longer exists, but do you really have an analogue video source? I can't think of anything video I encounter nowadays that is analogue. The Amiga Video Toaster really does only one thing that is hard to do in current technology, that is to insert characters in a live analogue video stream. Everything else is far better and faster on a modern computer.
I love the Amiga for it's retro feel but let's not delude ourselves, the world has come a long way in a decade and a half.
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amigaksi wrote:
>by mdwh2 on 2008/9/2 19:00:43
>>amigaksi wrote:
Alex is right in trying to repaint the screen because the ORIGINAL point is showing a screen full of sprites on a system that does not have sprites.
Well... when you say "a screen full" you do mean 8. The Amiga could only dispaly 8... though I know if you are prepared to limit their vertical motion you can reuse the unused sprite areas... but really that's not very useful, I know when I was programming Amigas, I would not use hardware sprite very offten, blitter objects were much more flexible (I would often use my Blitter objects on a foreground dual playfield so they behaved more like sprites).
But anyway, sprites were simply a solution to the problem of low ram bandwidth... as ram bandwidth increased, they become less useful. The colour colour depth limit alone makes them impractical for most tasks.
>Right, I understand this -
You don't because later in your post you state the samething-- let the hardware do it. You can't let the hardware do it, if the argument is how to render sprites on a system that does not support hardware sprites.
Either you are stupid, of you are doing this on purpose.
Modern gfx hardware can display graphics objects all by itself... These grahpical objects are far in advance of anything the Amiga hardware can do. I have explained all this in my earlier post, which for some reason you ignore?
>and even if you have to repaint every pixel by CPU, this is easily possible on modern hardware.
That's not the argument either. This is a straw man argument. When you emulate accurately some aspect of the system, you have to meet or exceed the requirements; here I PURPOSELY used the words REAL-TIME sprites meaning you have to meet the real-time constraints of the original item you are trying to emulate. So back to the point, if the Amiga 1000 OCS can render 30 sprites in around 40 microseconds, you have to do the same in the new system in 40 microseconds or less.
The OCS A1000 can display 8 hardware sprites (at low resolution and of 4 colours each) per refresh...
Any modern system can easily exceed that number at full screen resolution and at 24bit colour depth... even just using the CPU, and will perform even better if you use the GFX hardware.
You are the one shifting the argument... by bringing Emultion into this... then you have the overhead of all system interactions to wait for. But with a modern system, emulation is easy, I had A500 emulation running any progam I threw at it at full speed in 1999 on an old P233...
IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH REFRESH RATE. Imagine a scenario where besides the 40 microseconds, all the other time is being used to send pulses through the I/O ports or the Amiga is in HALTed state and some other machine is controlling some medical heart/lung machine.
You are deflecting... It has everything to do with refresh rate. We are talking about the Gfx system, in such a system the Quantum is the refresh rate.
>> Moreover, you missed another point-- that you have to use a standard graphics card/CPU not something that works on maybe your system and you are NO LONGER using a system that does NOT support sprites.
Is this even a vaild English sentence?
>What do you mean "works maybe your system"? 3D graphics cards that do texture mapping in hardware have been around for over a decade!
I know cards are around, but we're talking about standards. AGP is the standard since most people nowadays have AGP or better cards. I'll answer this further below.
Even my oldest PC, is PCI-E... but why are you talking about a conector interface. Had you said VESA 2.0 (the standard for all gfx cards) I could have taken your post with more creedence...
>How old is your ATI card exactly?
Does not matter really since it has to work in most PC systems which would require doing it in software not relying on some sort of "sprite" hardware being present.
Then use a suface normal object with the 3D Hardware... But the blitter is more than capable of this task, and this the method I would choose on the Amiga too... hardaware sprites are lame for most tasks.
>Software written for graphics cards will work on any make of graphics cards (although there may be some differences, this is in areas that is way beyond what any Amiga chipset ever did) - unlike banging the hardware, which won't work on anything, possibly not even a newer version of that chipset from the same company (consider all the OCS vs ECS vs AGA incompatibilities).
That's wrong. OCS banging works just fine for ECS/AGA as far as I have tried it and thus good for this argument. On the contrary, you can't be sure the graphics cards will support certain hardware features that you may be relying on.
Modern systems are highly integrated software/hardware combinations. The Driver provides an abstraction away from the hardware, from an engineering point of view this is vastly superior solution.
Once you add a feature to the hardware, where the hardware is exposed to the developer... that feature can never be removed... if you only offer software interfaces, the hardware can be improved and the feature depreciated (for removal in future).
And some software/OS/drivers may shut down certain hardware features without you knowing it.
You what?
And there are more bugs in these software/OS/drivers than in OCS/ECS/AGA compatibility.
Software can be updated, simply and quickly. Hardware is set in stone (or rather silicon)... If I buy a device with a broken driver, a simple sfotware update fixes it... buy a device with broken hardware... that device is always going to be broken.
So maybe it will work using a device driver and maybe it won't. Hardware banging is allowed for by Commodore themselves in the Hardware reference manual as I already explained.
Yes Commodore did allow hadware banging... and Apple didn't... which one is still around?
As you improve the hadware, and programers are used to an exposed hardware interface, you have to keep the old circuits in place... filling the chip up with antiquated functions that steal space from modern features.
>If you're rendering from hardware, the CPU doesn't need to do a thing.
We're not sure if hardware is present, so we need to take the worst case and do some algorithm like (after pasting sprites in appropriate areas):
IOn a modern system, you don't need to worry if a hardware feature is present, the driver either uses the hardware or emulates the feature, as best it can. That way software always runs as best it can!
Mov ECX,640*400/4
CLD
Mov EDI,VidMem
Mov ESI,BitMapPtr
Rep Movsd
Don't post random crap in forums, it annoys me.
>You don't need "sprites", because any bog standard (or even several years old) PC will do it in hardware. You don't need latest and greatest - that was just an example of what modern hardware is like today - a 10 year old Voodoo would do it.
It's not a standard and some AGP cards do not support hardware sprites. Regardless, the argument is to emulate sprites in systems that DO NOT support it in hardware.
Hardware sprites are a solution to a problem that doesn't exist anymore... Sprites were only useful in low memory, low bandwidth systems...
>But even if we restrict ourselves to a CPU solution, I don't see why this is not possible. The obvious example would be a software 3D renderer, which has to redraw the entire screen many times a second. That was being done a decade ago with Quake - now computers are doing things like real time raytracing!
See now why this is called a straw man's argument.
The Quake example gives was a perfect counter to your argument. This is shown clearly by your inability to refute it.
>> Duh! Perhaps, I should put in Video Toaster in my machine and use that to my advantage as well and some other souped up attachment that only works on my Amiga.
>Okay, fine - and what will it be able to do better, compared with modern hardware?
Another straw man argument. Never said I'm trying to beat out modern hardware;
Yes you did, you said modern hardware can't display 8 low res 4 colour Graphical Objects (i.e. Sprites) on screen and move them every screen refresh. But a 25 year old Computer system can. Your premis is wrong.
since you kept picking some 100GB graphics card, I started picking up some hardware which is nonstandard for Amigas. I purposely picked OCS Amiga as an example not even AGA to stick with bare standard where you know exactly what is happening in a REAL-TIME set up.
Real Time in computer science simply means Achieving a task within a set time contraint. The task must complete by its deadline, or it has failed.
Also please learn to quote... it's not rocket science, yet somehow you don't seem to be able to achive this simple task.
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downix wrote:
See, here's the confusion. Mac's might run Intel CPU's, but they are not IBM compatible, missing several key 8-bit components. Hence why the Hypervisor mode to enable Windows to run, emulating the missing pieces. But whenever anyone mentions an x86 Amiga, they figure on bog standard boards. That will not work. At the minimum we'd need a custom boot loader, Kickstart embedded in the mobo you could say.
I see nothing in Piru's reply that implies porting to standard PCs - the question was about CPUs. I don't see why adding those things is hard - it's no harder than making your own custom motherboard with any other CPU.
The issue of making your own custom motherboards vs using other companies' motherboards can even apply to other CPUs (e.g., when BeOS wrote their OS to run on PowerMacs for a while). This issue shouldn't be confused with CPU choice.
So basically - yes, I agree that being a software only OS company and writing software to run on other people's hardware is a risk, but using x86 as a CPU whilst producing your own hardware is still an option, as Apple have shown.
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mdwh2 wrote:
downix wrote:
See, here's the confusion. Mac's might run Intel CPU's, but they are not IBM compatible, missing several key 8-bit components. Hence why the Hypervisor mode to enable Windows to run, emulating the missing pieces. But whenever anyone mentions an x86 Amiga, they figure on bog standard boards. That will not work. At the minimum we'd need a custom boot loader, Kickstart embedded in the mobo you could say.
I see nothing in Piru's reply that implies porting to standard PCs - the question was about CPUs. I don't see why adding those things is hard - it's no harder than making your own custom motherboard with any other CPU.
The issue of making your own custom motherboards vs using other companies' motherboards can even apply to other CPUs (e.g., when BeOS wrote their OS to run on PowerMacs for a while). This issue shouldn't be confused with CPU choice.
So basically - yes, I agree that being a software only OS company and writing software to run on other people's hardware is a risk, but using x86 as a CPU whilst producing your own hardware is still an option, as Apple have shown.
Oh, I was not referring to Piru's comment in specific. He has shown himself over the years being fully logical in his arguements even when he and I did not see eye to eye. I am referring instead to the masses of others I've argued with that seem to feel that Intel is a gee-whiz-fix-it-all solution, giving uber-cheap everything by running on bog standard PC's.
A proposal I made a few years back was this: Find and test a specific lineup of motherboards, GFX cards, etc, and select a subset from that group. Example, if it were me calling the shots, I would be picking the J&W series of AMD chipset motherboards, the 740G, 780G and 790FX based models. That gives a great range of options, ranging from MiniITX to full sized workstation motherboards, and even offering up laptop options using. You can even have pre-built systems and put our logo on it, from companies such as ASUS and MSI which operate as suppliers for 3rd party companies.
Still say a crying shame about Amithlon, the ideal base for such a platform. Embed the kernel into the BIOS, (LinuxBIOS baby) along with the kickstart, and we'd be cooking with gas...
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Surely if you go to all the trouble of converting to X86 you can get rid of Kickstart! There's no point in a system rom image in this day and age.
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I missed this post from you.
>by alexh on 2008/9/1 4:40:52
>But we were talking about from the USER perspective! (OS + applications). The discussion concerned "Was a MAC was really a MAC if it had an INTEL processor?"
Okay, user does not have to know specifics but in general so at least the user can buy the machine.
>> amigaksi wrote:
But you see the point that some applications are not even possible without going directly to hardware registers; even my floppy simulator does not work if I go through Windows API.
>And you see the point that at the user level no-one cares! And if the OS designers and application programmers have done their jobs properly they do not even notice.
Okay, as above.
>> amigaksi wrote:
The defined bits are 100% backward compatible.
>True, but the softies never listened.. they never do. Why use extra cycles to mask off those reserved bits when you can just overwrite them and it doesn't do anything
Okay, but that does not change the fact that they can be used as backward compatible. Personally, the only bugs I saw in running my OCS games on ECS/AGA were fastmem/chipmem allocation, calling older version OS routines and other stuff unrelated to the spec of OCS. And going to the hardware will always be more efficient than going through an API especially in a real-time system where you need to estimate a worst case scenario. And even if there were a few bugs in the chips, one can test the application easily on the OCS/ECS/AGA (and use it as per spec) whereas it would be harder to estimate the worst case for hundreds of graphics cards w/drivers and various versions of OSes especially since there's always some sort of list of bugs and due to some system-specific effects.
Of course, as far as Amiga sprites go they still won't function in software on modern graphics cards even with the overhead of Amiga API taken into account and even at 320*240 resolution. Just tried it on NVIDIA GEFORCE 6100, but be my guest to try it on your system.
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persia wrote:
Surely if you go to all the trouble of converting to X86 you can get rid of Kickstart! There's no point in a system rom image in this day and age.
Absolutely untrue. Infact, manufacturers (Dell + HP) are migrating TO an onboard OS. Jump ahead of them and define the market now I say.
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I wonder if some people will only be happy, where we have one OS and one hardware running everything. We are nearly there, almost everything is running on x86 now, and we have mostly Windows, and the "Unix/BSD" derivative world (i am including linux and Mac OS X in this category as well, forgive me).
I can accept that opinion, i just wonder why people like that are on a forum like this...
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Steril707 wrote:
I wonder if some people will only be happy, where we have one OS and one hardware running everything. We are nearly there, almost everything is running on x86 now, and we have mostly Windows, and the "Unix/BSD" derivative world (i am including linux and Mac OS X in this category as well, forgive me).
Well that is the basic idea, Make the Hardware/OS irelavent so that the applications become the most important factor...
I have no problem with a single CPU architecture (x64), and a single OS type (UNIX)... as long as there are different vendors developing and pushing their own brands... It makes perfect sense really. Technology always tends to a single point, because you can't change the laws of physics/economics/etc.
Look at aircraft design... we used to have plenty of strange and wonderful designs... now pretty much every fighter is a twin engined Canard Delta... All Air liners are virtually identical to look at...
I can accept that opinion, i just wonder why people like that AlexH or Piru) are on a forum like this...
Because they like Amigas?
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I agree with you Bloodline and, sorry for the Mac joke you know I respect your vast knowledge and contributions to Amigandom.
G.d I wish Amiga will adapt and have a future.
Soon It will be down to the IP holder to change into an IP active user.
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amigaksi wrote:
Of course, as far as Amiga sprites go they still won't function in software on modern graphics cards even with the overhead of Amiga API taken into account and even at 320*240 resolution. Just tried it on NVIDIA GEFORCE 6100, but be my guest to try it on your system.
Do you have a program (and preferably the source code too) for us to test? I'd be curious to see what you are trying to do, and maybe someone can see why it isn't working so well.
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I think Clone A type products have the best chance. Too much time has passed for much else unless someone donated a lot of time and money to create a machine. I really wonder how many people currently use an Amiga emulator or computer these days.
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Steril707 wrote:
I wonder if some people will only be happy, where we have one OS and one hardware running everything. We are nearly there, almost everything is running on x86 now, and we have mostly Windows, and the "Unix/BSD" derivative world (i am including linux and Mac OS X in this category as well, forgive me).
I can accept that opinion, i just wonder why people like that are on a forum like this...
To me, an Amiga is my small A1200 with enough modernization for me to use it in my basic computing work. For me an Amiga is the slick Operating System, a small footprint which allowed quick boot times, the small case, and the ease of use. My Amiga allowed me to write papers for college classes and to play games while my college mates were trying to figure out how to get their PCs to work through modifying config.sys and autoexec.bat.
So for me it doesn't really matter what hardware is beneath AmigaOS so long as the system architecture design is highly efficient and it is designed to work with the OS for smooth, quick operation.
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@DavidF215
Yeah, I did my Uni studies with an Amiga 2000. Hard to believe, but it was back in the '80s... Maybe that's it, the Amiga lives in all of us, even though we've moved on professionally we owe that initial push to the Amiga, without it I would be working as a chemist (the Chemistry kind) or more likely dead from acetone fumes...
(http://static.fertilityfriends.co.uk/forum/Smileys/classic/xmas-smiley-032.gif)
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@persia
Acetone, nice. :-D I too think the Amiga lives in us. It was a superb system that was fun to work with. Something about the interaction with the computer made computing fun. It was a really simple computer that was designed in such a way that it was also powerful, expandable, and fun.
For some reason the C64 really spoiled me and gave me little patience for booting a computer. On the 64 you turned the power on, and within 2 seconds it was ready for commands. My A1200 spoiled me more when it booted to a GUI within 5-6 seconds, and the only reason it didn't boot faster was because the RPM on the HDD was slow. I've yet to find a computer that can boot like them.
I remember wanting an A2000, but my dad bought a Gateway 2000 386 DX-33 instead while I was in High School. I tried to persuade him to buy the A2000 with the IBM XT bridge card, but he wouldn't do it. So after about a few years of the GW2K, I bought an A1200 after the 486DX-33 chip didn't impressed me. And, my luck, about two years after I bought the A1200 C= went bankrupt. I was hoping Amiga Technologies was going to take up the slack and re-establish it, but we know what happened with them. Good product with unfortunately management decisions coupled with a fiercely changing marketplace.
Anyways, back on topic. ...
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If AmigaOS4.x is still in development, then I presume that it follows along the path of the future AmigaOS5. ?? AmigaOS5 is platform independent, so when will these new updates be available for us without the Classic Amigas equipped with PPC cards?
Is there any way to make the Minimig or SAM440ep appear to be a classic Amiga PPC transparently to AmigaOS 4.x?
IMO, allowing an AmigaOS4 update to run on such new PPC hardware would be beneficial and attract new customers, and it's something that could be completed within the next 12 months or so.
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AmigaOS 5 = Tao Group Intent
Taos Intent Os (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TaoIntentOs)
Tao Intent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao_Group#intent)
(http://www.cosgan.de/images/kao/froehlich/d040.gif)
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@persia
>AmigaOS 5 = Tao Group Intent
I wonder what version of AmigaOS4 will start to show signs of the new AmigaOS5, particularly regarding to the requirements of the underlying processor and platform.
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persia wrote:
AmigaOS 5 = Tao Group Intent
Taos Intent Os (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TaoIntentOs)
Tao Intent (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tao_Group#intent)
(http://www.cosgan.de/images/kao/froehlich/d040.gif)
No, it's not. AInc lost their license for Tao's technology. (Tao is also out of business to boot)
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Tao Group is now Antix
http://antixlabs.com/ (http://antixlabs.com/)
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DavidF215 wrote:
Is there any way to make the Minimig or SAM440ep appear to be a classic Amiga PPC transparently to AmigaOS 4.x?
You must mean Efika instead of "Minimig", as the Minimig is not PPC and does not have the computing power to run AmigaOS 4.x.
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@amigadave
>You must mean Efika instead of "Minimig", as the Minimig is not PPC and does not have the computing power to run AmigaOS 4.x.
Yes.
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persia wrote:
Tao Group is now Antix
Not true. Tao Group is gone. As is their IP, which they sold.
Antix is a new company formed from it's ashes doing something "totally" different.
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amigaksi wrote:
That's true since Mac has less custom hardware supporting it, it's easier to emulate whereas Amiga is impossible to emulate for certain things on a PC. I would like to know what target machine (spec) you are comparing to since I have seen Macs emulated on Atari ST, Amiga, and various PCs and newer so-called "Macs". That way we can better tell whether they can be called "Macs".
Amiga isn't impossible to emulate accurately. Emulation is always a trade between performance and accuracy. I've seen claims like this numerous times for different platforms, but technically I haven't seen anything that explicitly prevents accurate Amiga emulation. The possibility of emulating Amiga hardware doesn't make the Amiga less attractive, quite the contrary imo.
amigaksi wrote:
For example, you can't show real-time sprites all over a screen on a machine that does not have sprites.
Sure you can. Just look at other platforms from the same era, or even earlier. On a modern machine it's not an issue at all.
Not true. It all depends on how much CPU power per VBL you have, what RAM bandwidth you have, what VBL synchronisation you have.
Yeah. But you can achieve that even on a sprite-less mid/low-spec 68k machine.
Sprite hardware is cool, and on a 7Mhz 68k machine it really makes wonders. It's not some holy grail of performance in todays computing, however.
Do you really think that setting 30 X,Y registers of sprites even on a 7.16Mhz OCS Amiga 1000 can be beat by a standard CPU/Graphics Card doing erasing/repainting of software sprites? Think again. It only takes a few microseconds on an Amiga 1000.
You can achieve the same in software even on a mid-spec 68k machine. Either you have no clue, or I completely misjudged the core argumentation here.
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>by mdwh2 on 2008/9/4 17:14:49
>>Quote:
>> amigaksi wrote:
Of course, as far as Amiga sprites go they still won't function in software on modern graphics cards even with the overhead of Amiga API taken into account and even at 320*240 resolution. Just tried it on NVIDIA GEFORCE 6100, but be my guest to try it on your system.
>Do you have a program (and preferably the source code too) for us to test? I'd be curious to see what you are trying to do, and maybe someone can see why it isn't working so well.
Why don't you just do some random search and get a URL like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_4000 and "PROVE" that there are no sprites on the Amiga 4000 (or similar system) to argue about. Instead the Amiga 4000 has 48-bit color, 256 Hardware audio channels, ...
I tested it with a software sprite engine contained within the Gita CDROM produced by our company (see our website) which has been thoroughly optimized and allows you to select Windows API method of rendering imagery or by writing directly to the video card hardware and also lets you select various VESA modes where supported.
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>by shoggoth on 2008/9/6 6:25:20
>Amiga isn't impossible to emulate accurately. Emulation is always a trade between performance and accuracy. I've seen claims like this numerous times for different platforms, but technically I haven't seen anything that explicitly prevents accurate Amiga emulation. The possibility of emulating Amiga hardware doesn't make the Amiga less attractive, quite the contrary imo.
Do you agree that technically it's more accurate to measure something with a ruler marked with cm rather than inches? If so, then you will also agree that having a timing mechanism to accuracy of 1/3.579545Mhz (Amiga) is more accurate than one at 1/1.19318Mhz (PC). Opinions are only good if you don't have the facts.
>> amigaksi wrote:
For example, you can't show real-time sprites all over a screen on a machine that does not have sprites.
>Sure you can. Just look at other platforms from the same era, or even earlier. On a modern machine it's not an issue at all.
Whether in the earlier era or now, hardware sprites are always better than software ones. I saw the terrible/flickering games on earlier systems w/software sprites. Anyway, the keyword you missed there is real-time...
>>>>> Not true. It all depends on how much CPU power per VBL you have, what RAM bandwidth you have, what VBL synchronisation you have.
>Yeah. But you can achieve that even on a sprite-less mid/low-spec 68k machine.
>Sprite hardware is cool, and on a 7Mhz 68k machine it really makes wonders. It's not some holy grail of performance in todays computing, however.
You can use about 30 Amiga hardware sprites to cover up almost the entire screen using about 40 microseconds of CPU time. There's no way you can stamp sprites on a background image (320*240 or 640*400) and send the data to the video card in 40 microseconds or less. You'll be counting in milliseconds.
>> Do you really think that setting 30 X,Y registers of sprites even on a 7.16Mhz OCS Amiga 1000 can be beat by a standard CPU/Graphics Card doing erasing/repainting of software sprites? Think again. It only takes a few microseconds on an Amiga 1000.
>You can achieve the same in software even on a mid-spec 68k machine. Either you have no clue, or I completely misjudged the core argumentation here.
Well the argument became dual core as the thread went-- drifted from original focus. You can compute the stats yourself.
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Tao Group closed it's doors last year and sold off it's assets, the creative talent behind Tao Group formed Antix. Antix produces a product that allows you to write a game once and play it on different operating systems, very much like Intent and very much like Amiga Anywhere (if it exists).
(http://antixlabs.com/images/home/grb2Img.gif)
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Does not matter really since it has to work in most PC systems which would require doing it in software not relying on some sort of "sprite" hardware being present.
Refer to texture mapped 3D surface in modern GPUs.
As for pure software renderers;
With an appropriate SIMD capable X86 CPU (e.g. Intel Core 2) and Swiftshader 2.0 DX9b JIT X86 "driver", this setup rivals NV’s Geforce FX 5200/5600 GPU.
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YoDo you agree that technically it's more accurate to measure something with a ruler marked with cm rather than inches? If so, then you will also agree that having a timing mechanism to accuracy of 1/3.579545Mhz (Amiga) is more accurate than one at 1/1.19318Mhz (PC). Opinions are only good if you don't have the facts.
Do you agree that technically it's more accurate to measure something with a ruler marked with cm rather than inches? If so, then you will also agree that having a timing mechanism to accuracy of 1/14.3818 MHz (PC) is more accurate than one at 1/3.579545Mhz (Amiga)?
There are several timers in the X86 PC..
One should read up on Pentium era APIC timer.
The minimum resolution with this APIC-based timer is in the magnitude of microseconds. With the bus speed of
100 MHz for 2001 era X86 PCs, the minimum resolution should be 0,1 microseconds (1/100 MHz). But due to the calculation time needed for switching to the interrupt service routine (e.g. saving context info) the achievable accuracy is about 1 microsecond. This is a 1,000 to 10,000 times higher precision than the pre-APIC PC timer.
There's High Precision Event Timer (HPET) in Windows.
To quote Microsoft
Timer Requirements
Chipset vendors should implement an HPET to comply with Intels "IA-PC HPET (High Precision Event Timers) Specification". This spec will be available on Intels web site in the second quarter of 2002 with royalty free licensing terms.
Microsoft is in the process of adding the requirements for the HPET to the Windows Logo Program for Hardware to check for the presence and quality of the HPET in chipsets. Although no timeline has been set in regard to when this hardware will be required for a logo, Windows Hardware Quality Lab (WHQL) tests will begin testing the quality of the HPET, if it is implemented, in the timeframe of the release of Windows Vista. Some of the requirements stated in Intels HPET spec are re-articulated below.
Windows Vista, Windows 2008, x86 based versions of Mac OS X, Linux 2.6 are known to use HPET.
"The accuracy of the main counter is as accurate
as the 14.3818 MHz clock." - Intel Corp.
HPET is included in following chipsets/southbridges
Intel ICH5
Intel ICH6
Intel ICH7 (e.g. Napa platform),
Intel ICH8(e.g. SantaRosa platform)
Intel ICH9 (e.g. Montevina platform).
AMD/ATI 690 chipsets
AMD/ATI 7x0 chipsets
AMD 8111 chipsets
nVidia nForce 5 chipsets
nVidia nForce 4 chipsets
Refer to http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/isn/Community/en-US/forums/thread/30225022.aspx
To quote Intel support
Intel's answer:. The HPET (High Precision Event Timers) is a component that is part of the chipset. However, the firmware (BIOS/EFI) needs to enable it, and will provide you with the means to get to it via the various ACPI methods.
Intel(R) chipsets, since quite some time ago (at least a year, if not more), have HPET on board. However, not all vendors that sell machines with Intel(R) chipsets enable HPET in their firmware. Some have it as a BIOS option, and sometimes it defaults to Off.
Edited to add: HPET has been productized and supported in chipsets since Intel® ICH5 (at least from a client perspective -- embedded and server/workstation specific chipsets may be different).
==
Lexi S.
Intel(R) Software Network Support
PS; To test HPET, Intel recommends Linux.
In this forums, you'll notice engineers from Mitac Technology Corporation i.e. ODM laptop vendor.
If you want to hack/learn the latest X86 hardware, its better you go via Linux.
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See, here's the confusion. Mac's might run Intel CPU's, but they are not IBM compatible, missing several key 8-bit components. Hence why the Hypervisor mode to enable Windows to run, emulating the missing pieces. But whenever anyone mentions an x86 Amiga, they figure on bog standard boards. That will not work. At the minimum we'd need a custom boot loader, Kickstart embedded in the mobo you could say.
Instead of BIOS, Mactel uses Intel's UEFI.
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Believe it or not for compatibility reasons, I would still go with NTSC non-HD video and MPG4 has its own unknown loss in the spatial domain associated with editing. I have seen deltas ranging from -128..127 on primaries after decompressing/recompressing and comparing with the original data.
Instead of re-encoding, refer to transcoding.
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amigaksi wrote:
>by mdwh2 on 2008/9/4 17:14:49
>>Quote:
>> amigaksi wrote:
Of course, as far as Amiga sprites go they still won't function in software on modern graphics cards even with the overhead of Amiga API taken into account and even at 320*240 resolution. Just tried it on NVIDIA GEFORCE 6100, but be my guest to try it on your system.
>Do you have a program (and preferably the source code too) for us to test? I'd be curious to see what you are trying to do, and maybe someone can see why it isn't working so well.
Why don't you just do some random search and get a URL like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_4000 and "PROVE" that there are no sprites on the Amiga 4000 (or similar system) to argue about. Instead the Amiga 4000 has 48-bit color, 256 Hardware audio channels, ...
I can't see what that has to do with what I wrote?
I tested it with a software sprite engine contained within the Gita CDROM produced by our company (see our website) which has been thoroughly optimized and allows you to select Windows API method of rendering imagery or by writing directly to the video card hardware and also lets you select various VESA modes where supported.
Do you have any of:
* A description of what it is you are trying to achieve?
* A link to the software you are running?
* Along with source code?
Because then perhaps we can see (a) what it is you are claiming, and (b) why it isn't working. If you are unwilling to do that, then we can't.
You can use about 30 Amiga hardware sprites to cover up almost the entire screen using about 40 microseconds of CPU time. There's no way you can stamp sprites on a background image (320*240 or 640*400) and send the data to the video card in 40 microseconds or less. You'll be counting in milliseconds.
As we've said, the existence of 3D software renderers (which are far more complex than just pasting 2D images) running on PCs over a decade ago at >25FPS shows this claim to be false. Unless we have misunderstood you claim, which is why I asked you above to explain what it is you are after.
Even the Amiga often used "software" sprites (blitter objects) because they were often more flexible.
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amigaksi wrote:
Do you agree that technically it's more accurate to measure something with a ruler marked with cm rather than inches? If so, then you will also agree that having a timing mechanism to accuracy of 1/3.579545Mhz (Amiga) is more accurate than one at 1/1.19318Mhz (PC). Opinions are only good if you don't have the facts.
Since when did hardware timer granularity dictate how accurately one machine can emulate another?
Opinions are only good if you don't have the facts. Your words. To what extent have you engaged in emulator programming yourself? Any first hand experience?
Whether in the earlier era or now, hardware sprites are always better than software ones. I saw the terrible/flickering games on earlier systems w/software sprites. Anyway, the keyword you missed there is real-time...
Realtime in this context is most likely connected to the VBL frequency (or HBL frequency for that matter). Having enough juice to provide a result equal to a machine having hardware sprites while still keeping an equivalent amount of spare CPU time to the application should be enough to qualify as "realtime" in this particular context. And that's not a utopia at all.
You can use about 30 Amiga hardware sprites to cover up almost the entire screen using about 40 microseconds of CPU time.
No. But put CPU cycles per microseconds into that equation - and add a 2-3x faster CPU. Sure, rendering the sprites constitutes overhead, but you'll still end up with more spare cycles for your application.
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It's NOT 100GB/second from CPU accessible memory to graphics card; stop picking up things randomly from the web and trying to argue against a point you don't understand. You don't even understand how amiga sprites work; they can be rendered even on a 640*400 screen at their 320*200 resolution so the worst case is repainting 640*400. It's the Amiga that only has to set 30 registers not the PC; PC has to repaint the area.
Hint; texture compression. Which part of the "PC"?
One has to pre-load the graphic/data (e.g. textures) assets into GpGPU's memory. Anyway, Radeon HD 3200 IGP(shared with main memory) handles Blu-Ray H264/VC1 @1080p without problems.
In http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/38145/135/
"Radeon 4800 supports a 100% ray-traced pipeline".
Under CPU's command (i.e. using it as a "command processor"), the GPU handles the bulk of the workload.
NVIDIA's PhysX GPU offloads the physics calculations from the CPU i.e. the GPU directs vertices. Vertices can be generated or manipulated by tessellation unit, vertex/geometry shaders or stream processors in GpGPUs. Pixel shaders handles the look of the pixel. A texture mapping units rotates and resizes a bitmap to be placed onto an arbitrary plane of a given 3D object(a set of vertices) as a "texture".
I say: system without hardware sprites would have a hard time showing a screen full of sprites in real-time (on a standard CPU/Graphics card).
*Cough* Capcom System 2 emulators .
How about ray-tracing in realtime @720p HD like Transformers movie trailers? Ops that's overkill.
Anyway, run Swiftshader 2.0 DX9b(Shader Model 2b) "X86 JIT driver" on Core 2 Duo @2.4Ghz and 4MB L2 cache. You will find that this Intel Core 2 based "GPU" kills OCS/ECS/AGA, 3DFX Voodoo 1/2/3/4, Capcom System 2, S3 Virge3D, S3 Salvage3D, S3 Uni-Chrome, NV RIVA/TNT/TNT2, NV Geforce 1/2/3/FX 5200, Intel Real 3D, Sony PS1/PS2, SNES and 'etc'. Any GPU below Geforce FX 5200.
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Sprites are to modern graphics systems as buggy whips are to space shuttles. Sprites were a cheat in a way, you didn't have to power to really manipulate the image so you moved a few objects around it instead.
Sprites give that retro feel that we've come to appreciate as collectors of 80's computers but it really can't compare to current technology.
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>by Hammer on 2008/9/6 9:54:24
>>Do you agree that technically it's more accurate to measure something with a ruler marked with cm rather than inches? If so, then you will also agree that having a timing mechanism to accuracy of 1/3.579545Mhz (Amiga) is more accurate than one at 1/1.19318Mhz (PC). Opinions are only good if you don't have the facts.
>Do you agree that technically it's more accurate to measure something with a ruler marked with cm rather than inches? If so, then you will also agree that having a timing mechanism to accuracy of 1/14.3818 MHz (PC) is more accurate than one at 1/3.579545Mhz (Amiga)?
>There are several timers in the X86 PC..
But there are a couple of issues you missed: (1) Sure, Amiga is hardware and one can build hardware that is equal to or better than it. However, I picked a standard OCS bare-bone Amiga 1000 when compared to a standard PC whose timers are at 1.19318Mhz as late as the latest one I bought a couple of years ago. I can't take some application that uses some new "14Mhz" timer and walk into someone's home/office and run it assuming it's useable to it's full accuracy. In fact, I don't even I see any API reference for it in the XP SDK. (2) The timing accuracy is not just for the timer IRQ, the Amiga timing also applies to the audio sampling rate, copper-based register modifications, reading certain registers, etc.
>The minimum resolution with this APIC-based timer is in the magnitude of microseconds. With the bus speed of
100 MHz for 2001 era X86 PCs, the minimum resolution should be 0,1 microseconds (1/100 MHz). But due to the calculation time needed for switching to the interrupt service routine (e.g. saving context info) the achievable accuracy is about 1 microsecond. This is a 1,000 to 10,000 times higher precision than the pre-APIC PC timer.
Ahm, the old PIC is accurate to 838 nanoseconds not microseconds.
>There's High Precision Event Timer (HPET) in Windows...
It has to be in hardware first to be in Windows. Not supported in XP which most people that I know have still. Let's stick to standards here as I can also plug in some easy-to-build timing card into an Amiga and start timing things at 1/28Mhz accuracy (whose clock line is available on the system board). But it won't work on standard Amigas.
>If you want to hack/learn the latest X86 hardware, its better you go via Linux.
No, not hacking/learning X86 hardware, just trying to use the standard X86 hardware directly so it works on most systems.
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>by Hammer on 2008/9/6 10:38:02
>>Quote:
Believe it or not for compatibility reasons, I would still go with NTSC non-HD video and MPG4 has its own unknown loss in the spatial domain associated with editing. I have seen deltas ranging from -128..127 on primaries after decompressing/recompressing and comparing with the original data.
>Instead of re-encoding, refer to transcoding.
I don't see how that would help in preventing further loss if you modified the image according to transformations allowed for in real-time on Video Toaster or put some overlay text on the image. It would only help if certain 16*16 blocks (or whatever block size you used) remained the same after the image transformation.
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>by mdwh2 on 2008/9/6 10:44:23
>>...Just tried it on NVIDIA GEFORCE 6100, but be my guest to try it on your system.
>> Why don't you just do some random search and get a URL like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_4000 and "PROVE" that there are no sprites on the Amiga 4000 (or similar system) to argue about. Instead the Amiga 4000 has 48-bit color, 256 Hardware audio channels, ...
>I can't see what that has to do with what I wrote?
Just warning you not to quote some random article on web like you did previously as I will accept deductive logic, something I can experiment on, and/or legitimate company document from Intel/Microsoft/etc.
>> I tested it with a software sprite engine contained within the Gita CDROM produced by our company (see our website) which has been thoroughly optimized and allows you to select Windows API method of rendering imagery or by writing directly to the video card hardware and also lets you select various VESA modes where supported.
>Do you have any of:
>* A description of what it is you are trying to achieve?
Yes, software sprites on a PC at better or equal speed than Amiga 1000 OCS machine. I spelled it out exactly by stating 30 sprites across the screen in 40 microseconds.
>* A link to the software you are running?
http://www.krishnasoft.com/krsna.htm. This software contains the software sprite engine I am using. It allows up to 256 software sprites w/priority settings and if you run it on your system and then go to preferences, it will give you the frame rate.
>* Along with source code?
Well, I gave you the Rep MOVSD example already. All I was doing was copying a buffer and it can't achieve the 30 sprites in the 40 microsecond timing limit. I am not even considering collision detection, priority settings, transparency, etc.
>> You can use about 30 Amiga hardware sprites to cover up almost the entire screen using about 40 microseconds of CPU time. There's no way you can stamp sprites on a background image (320*240 or 640*400) and send the data to the video card in 40 microseconds or less. You'll be counting in milliseconds.
>As we've said, the existence of 3D software renderers (which are far more complex than just pasting 2D images) running on PCs over a decade ago at >25FPS shows this claim to be false. Unless we have misunderstood you claim, which is why I asked you above to explain what it is you are after.
Well, whoever that "we" refers to, they have misunderstood. 25 fps is only 40 MILLIseconds not 40 MICROseconds. You may need to go back and edit your replies. I am not interested in the frame rate, I am interested in meeting or exceeding the Amiga sprite speed.
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But there are a couple of issues you missed: (1) Sure, Amiga is hardware and one can build hardware that is equal to or better than it. However, I picked a standard OCS bare-bone Amiga 1000 when compared to a standard PC whose timers are at 1.19318Mhz as late as the latest one I bought a couple of years ago
Are you claiming nForce chipset having 80 percent of annual X86 chipset unit sales?
The PIC is included for legacy reasons.
Remember, annual sales for X86 PC are numbered into ~200 million i.e. just one month of unit sales exceeds the entire CBM Amiga unit sales. Most of them are based on Intel chipsets e.g. "Centrino" or "VPro" brand.
Ahm, the old PIC is accurate to 838 nanoseconds not microseconds.
Does it include interrupt service routine? The maximum frequency supported by the standard PIC is 8192 Hz, which would result in interrupts generated each 122 us.
It has to be in hardware first to be in Windows
Why Windows? What happend to AmigaOS or non-Windows X86 options?
If it's Windows, use DX API for gaming or multi-media titles. Refer to Hurrican (Turrican clone) as an example of "old" school style gaming.
Modern PCs can handle Capcom System 2 in emulation.
Hurrican (Turrican clone)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jk3DNTYx_w
http://www.hurrican-game.de/
No, not hacking/learning X86 hardware, just trying to use the standard X86 hardware directly so it works on most systems
Unless you can claim nVidia having 80 percent of the X86 chipset market, nForce chipset is hardly the "standard" X86 chipset.
Refer to http://www.windowsfordevices.com/articles/AT2503923807.html
Achieving hard real-time on Windows XP, XP Embedded via Venturcom's RTX extensions.
Seriously, if one wants to build a mission critical X86 platform with hard real time focus, refer to QNX X86 as an example.
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In fact, I don't even I see any API reference for it in the XP SDK.
It has to be in hardware first to be in Windows. Not supported in XP which most people that I know have still.
Try ACPI. Windows XP's QueryPerformanceCounter API uses PMT.
The various release of Windows differ in implementation
PIT (Win2k),
PMT (WinXP),
HPET (Vista).
Other X86 PC timers;
The Power Management Timer(PMT) was added to the ACPI standard. Its purpose is to deliver timestamps. Improvements over the PIT (8254 Programmable Interval Timer) are to be found in its higher frequency (3x), larger counter width (e.g. 24 or 32 bits). Can be acessed via 32-bit port I/O (address given in the ACPI FACP table); which takes 0.7 μs.
High Precision Event Timer (HPET) can be access is via memory-mapped I/O (address indicated by the ACPI HPET table), which takes 0.9 μs.
(2) The timing accuracy is not just for the timer IRQ, the Amiga timing also applies to the audio sampling rate,
copper-based register modifications, reading certain registers, etc.
X86 PC world prefers devices that are not tightly tied together i.e. so the platform can adapt and assimilate newer technologies (e.g. next GPU release in 6 month cycle).
Windows XP Embedded SP2 Feature Pack 2007 includes
"High precision event timer" (HPET)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa939400.aspx
2D sprites are a joke compared to 3D surfaces (Z-axis push/pull, rotate, mesh warp, per pixel lighting, alpha, and ‘etc’). 3D surfaces can be manipulate by shaders(stream processors).
On Amiga’s front, why not compare AmigaOS 4.1 with hardware compositing (Radeon R100/R2x0 GPU) vs AmigaOS 3.9 with AGA.
AmigaOS 4.1 Composition Engine's desktop effects
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MhrbzWePz0&feature=related
MorphOS 2.0's desktop effects
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CelcOZMrjuY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg8JkBa32Wg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wbg07NqDmzU&feature=related
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http://www.krishnasoft.com/krsna.htm. This software contains the software sprite engine I am using. It allows up to 256 software sprites w/priority settings and if you run it on your system and then go to preferences, it will give you the frame rate.
The link seems to be dead...
In that case, I’ll be using vertex instancing features (reuse and copying the same object 256 times) or create simple 256 3D surfaces with different 640x480 textures. Alternatively, open 256 calculator apps (open @640x480 size) on Vista then click on Win key + Tab.
If I have a job to do quick 2D game, I'll look into DarkBasic or VisualStudio .NET/XNA.
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amigaksi wrote:
>I can't see what that has to do with what I wrote?
Just warning you not to quote some random article on web like you did previously as I will accept deductive logic, something I can experiment on, and/or legitimate company document from Intel/Microsoft/etc.
Which link? About the NVIDIA card - are you disputing that it has those capabilities?
Yes, software sprites on a PC at better or equal speed than Amiga 1000 OCS machine. I spelled it out exactly by stating 30 sprites across the screen in 40 microseconds.
How many sprites does the Amiga allow? I thought it was 8 on OCS?
How are you measuring the speed on the Amiga side? Or indeed, how are you measuring the speed on Windows? The usual way to measure performance on Windows is the fps, which is unlikely to ever be as high as 25,000 - but then I'm not convinced that the Amiga could ever do this either.
Why is the performance of one particular thing important? All that matters is overall framerate, which just needs to be at least as good as the refresh rate of the screen.
Well, whoever that "we" refers to, they have misunderstood. 25 fps is only 40 MILLIseconds not 40 MICROseconds. You may need to go back and edit your replies. I am not interested in the frame rate, I am interested in meeting or exceeding the Amiga sprite speed.
Sorry, I misread as at one point you said 40ms, which means milliseconds. Still, the theoretical peak output of the fillrate of modern graphics cards should equal this if not beat it, but measuring it is hard when you usually only look at final FPS.
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>by shoggoth on 2008/9/6 11:07:14
>> amigaksi wrote:
Do you agree that technically it's more accurate to measure something with a ruler marked with cm rather than inches? If so, then you will also agree that having a timing mechanism to accuracy of 1/3.579545Mhz (Amiga) is more accurate than one at 1/1.19318Mhz (PC). Opinions are only good if you don't have the facts.
>Since when did hardware timer granularity dictate how accurately one machine can emulate another?
I gave you an example of something you would have to emulate using hardware that does not have that accuracy. If you think drifting timers, audio playback, etc. aren't necessary, well then I disagree.
>words. To what extent have you engaged in emulator programming yourself? Any first hand experience?
I have infinite experience. How much experience do you have that 2+2=4? Deductive logic does not depend on experience.
>Realtime in this context is most likely connected to the VBL frequency (or HBL frequency for that matter). Having enough juice to provide a result equal to a machine having hardware sprites while still keeping an equivalent amount of spare CPU time to the application should be enough to qualify as "realtime" in this particular context. And that's not a utopia at all.
In this case real-time is defined as 40 microseconds to display 30 sprites using a standard machine.
>> You can use about 30 Amiga hardware sprites to cover up almost the entire screen using about 40 microseconds of CPU time.
>No.
What are stating no to-- that you can't display 30 sprites or to the 40 microseconds?
>But put CPU cycles per microseconds into that equation - and add a 2-3x faster CPU. Sure, rendering the sprites constitutes overhead, but you'll still end up with more spare cycles for your application.
Sorry, you don't. Do the calculations and experiment yourself.
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>by Hammer on 2008/9/6 11:45:24
>> It's NOT 100GB/second from CPU accessible memory to graphics card; stop picking up things randomly from the web and trying to argue against a point you don't understand. You don't even understand how amiga sprites work; they can be rendered even on a 640*400 screen at their 320*200 resolution so the worst case is repainting 640*400. It's the Amiga that only has to set 30 registers not the PC; PC has to repaint the area.
>Hint; texture compression. Which part of the "PC"?
A graphics card that handles sprites in hardware is not part of a standard PC. Let's talk about Amiga/PC not digress to Capcom as I am not familiar with it's timers, sprites, audio sampling rates, etc. nor did I state anything regarding it.
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>by Hammer on 2008/9/7 2:30:08
>> But there are a couple of issues you missed: (1) Sure, Amiga is hardware and one can build hardware that is equal to or better than it. However, I picked a standard OCS bare-bone Amiga 1000 when compared to a standard PC whose timers are at 1.19318Mhz as late as the latest one I bought a couple of years ago
>Are you claiming nForce chipset having 80 percent of annual X86 chipset unit sales?
If I write a sprite program on an OCS Amiga 1000, it works on all Amigas; if I write a sprite emulation it should work on most of the PCs. I don't care what graphics card you have and what it can do.
>Remember, annual sales for X86 PC are numbered into ~200 million i.e. just one month of unit sales exceeds the entire CBM Amiga unit sales. Most of them are based on Intel chipsets e.g. "Centrino" or "VPro" brand.
It's not the number; it's the compatibility. If I target the best graphics card in the market, the software will fail in most machines.
>> Ahm, the old PIC is accurate to 838 nanoseconds not microseconds.
>Does it include interrupt service routine? The maximum frequency supported by the standard PIC is 8192 Hz, which would result in interrupts generated each 122 us....
You must be using the Vista HLIs (Hardware Limiting Interface, a.k.a API). You can get more than 8192Hz interrupts with old PIC. Even the Atari Disk Drive simulator I wrote uses 63Khz.
>Modern PCs can handle Capcom System 2 in emulation.
Don't see what the point is here unless you are claiming Capcom is better than the Amiga in all respects.
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>by Hammer on 2008/9/7 3:41:43
>Try ACPI. Windows XP's QueryPerformanceCounter API uses PMT.
>The various release of Windows differ in implementation
>PIT (Win2k),
>PMT (WinXP),
>HPET (Vista).
You know newer PCs don't change as much as they used to-- like going from EGA to VGA or ISA to PCI. So many people don't upgrade to the latest machine especially if it's just for a timer or some CPU speed. So just because some new timer standard is available, it does not mean you can assume most of the PC owners will have it.
>High Precision Event Timer (HPET) can be access is via memory-mapped I/O (address indicated by the ACPI HPET table), which takes 0.9 μs.
Well, that seems bad 0.9 us as just the emulation of an instruction like Move.w VHPOSR,D0 would require a higher accuracy.
>> (2) The timing accuracy is not just for the timer IRQ, the Amiga timing also applies to the audio sampling rate, copper-based register modifications, reading certain registers, etc.
>X86 PC world prefers devices that are not tightly tied together i.e. so the platform can adapt and assimilate newer technologies (e.g. next GPU release in 6 month cycle).
Some people prefer not to throw away their machines as they are good enough for what they are doing. I don't think they should have to throw them away. And if the newer machines are not backward compatible, you would have to support the features that are.
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>>http://www.krishnasoft.com/krsna.htm.
>The link seems to be dead...
Okay, it's without the period at the end:
http://www.krishnasoft.com/krsna.htm .