Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: arnljot on January 31, 2009, 06:22:18 PM
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Hi
I´ve been surfing around looking for the Driver SDKs for these just for fun lately.
And I haven´t found anything. The only thing I found (ref1 (http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.amiga.hardware/browse_thread/thread/aa73552ac42bf122?pli=1)) was that Toni Wilen (ref2 (http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=400495&postcount=110)) (WinUAE) mentioned that he had the P96 SDK, and that he had asked to it to be GPL´ed.
What´s the chances of tracking up current rights holders, and persuade them to GPL it for AmigaOS 3.x?
Personally I´d like it for educational purposes, and people like Plato42 who are looking into USB video on the amiga would have an easier life.(ref3 (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=37954))
EDIT:
I sent the following short mail to Cloanto
Hi,
From a forum post by Toni Wilen I understand that you are the current lisence holders of the Picasso96 RTG software.
I was wondering if it could be possible to get a copy of the Driver SDK package for my own educational reasons, and if you would consider to GPL or LGPL the software?
Kind regards,
Arnljot Arntsen
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Update:
Today I received a reply from M. C. Battilana of Cloanto where he says that my request is forwarded to Tobias and Alexander, he also says that Cloanto have proposed to them that Picasso96 should be open.
I hope Tobias and Alexander answers as fast as Cloanto did. Very good of Cloanto answer this fast.
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What´s the chances of tracking up current rights holders, and persuade them to GPL it for AmigaOS 3.x?
CGX is unlikely to go GPL, but as you can see from the ref3 it's no problem (in that particular case).
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Well, time goes by :)
I haven't heard anything from the P96 copyright holder.
Also, the issue is once again relevant with the new graphics.library effor by cosmos.
eab thread (http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?p=654712#post654586)
It would be awesome to see CGX4 extended to support Mediators and WinUAE.
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@arnljot
I emailed a little ago (7-FEB-2010) Tobias Abt (P96) about the driver sdk. What follows is the exact transcription.
From:
"Tobias Abt"
Add sender to Contacts
To:
"Ignacio"
Hello Ignacio!
-------- Original-Nachricht --------
> Hi, I am an Amiga user that wishes to have access to your Picasso96 driver
> developer archives, which may seem difficult to find, just to have the
> possibility to develop more drivers for Amiga graphic cards.
>
> Thank you for your time, expecting a positive answer,
> Regards,
> Ignacio Gully
Sorry, development of Picasso96 has stopped years ago, its code base has been integrated into the sources for the next Amiga OS releases, and to be honest I do not even have the necessary files accessible any more because of inaccessible hardware. And besides I could not give you any support you would surely need because I probably have forgotten all about it.
I am really sorry, but you are about ten years too late... ;-(
--
Mit freundlichen Grüßen,
Tobias Abt
GRATIS für alle GMX-Mitglieder: Die maxdome Movie-FLAT!
Jetzt freischalten unter http://portal.gmx.net/de/go/maxdome01
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I havent got the email address of Frank Mariak, but as he did CGX 5 for Morphos maybe @Piru, if kindly asked can contact him. It would be cool if we have at least the permission to freely distribute CGX 4 binaries and of course its sdk.
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Re Tobias and P96.
Please explain to him that both Cloanto and Toni Wilen has the needed SDK, and others have the binaries.
What we need is permission to use it as we'd like from him and Alexander. :)
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No problem, i will email him again, and ask him if we can put the sdk and relative documentation and sourcecode on public domain.
Update: Email sent. Lets cross fingers!
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Great, lets hope for a positive reply.
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@Gulliver
Good luck!
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Guys, I am really sorry to bring you the bad news. Let me quote the email I sent, and the one received regarding the Picasso96 SDK:
"Tobias Abt"
Add sender to Contacts
To:
"Ignacio"
Cc:
"Alexander Kneer"
Hi Ignacio!
Am 23.03.2010 21:31, schrieb Ignacio:
> Hi, I am sorry to bother you again with this ten year old stuff. The
> thing is that I have found the Picasso96 driver developer archives,
> along with some sourcecode, binaries and documentation. Will you
> please allow me to put these files on the Public Domain, so that they
> are freely available to everyone? I would also add if you think it is
> necessary, that you wont provide any suport whatsoever, and not be
> liable for any damage at all. So please, just say yes, and you will
> get rid of me ;)
Sorry, but I have to decline your request. Unlike the application
package the driver package was never meant to be freely available.
The driver package contains our intellectual property and we always
intended it to be restricted so that any party willing to create
such a driver has to contact us and get approval.
That we do not further develop or support Picasso96 does not mean
that we forfait our rights regarding the intellectual property.
Therefore we can not allow you to redistribute it or change the
distribution conditions. In other words, no, the driver package
must not be put into the public domain.
> Thank you for your time, Regards, Ignacio
Thank you for understanding and respecting our point of view,
Tobias
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Perhaps it's time to create a free RTG system that supports P96/CGX library calls.
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Yes, Karlos !
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the permission to freely distribute CGX 4 binaries
No permission granted.
and of course its sdk.
No permission granted.
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Yes, Karlos !
I didn't say I was going to do it... I paid good money for CGX4 :-)
It was pretty obvious that neither development camp would allow free redistribution of the drivers themselves, but if someone has a copy of the relevant SDK, I take it they can still apply for approval to release a driver they've developed for a new card? Or does the license of the RTG system cover all drivers written for it?
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Perhaps it's time to create a free RTG system that supports P96/CGX library calls.
One word: AROS
Staf.
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@fats: thats actually four words.
but yes, i suppose so. dont know much of aros but the cgx system is said to be api compatible. i do not understand why none takes look at it.
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I don't know for sure, but I imagine that AROS's implementation of CGX is a thin layer around the HAL and that perhaps you'd end up having to recreate the latter, which may be quite difficult.
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@Piru
Thank you for trying! :)
@All
I believe that Karlos has hit the nail. We need a new freely available open source rtg system, preferably one that can support both P96 and CGX functionality. The CGX layer AROS has can perhaps be a starting point.
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This just shows, again, the obvious. Old amiga devs these days, are mostly a bunch of arses. All the more reasons not to support neither MorphOS nor OS4, since they will just follow this good old tradition :)
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@Piru
Thank you for trying! :)
@All
I believe that Karlos has hit the nail. We need a new freely available open source rtg system, preferably one that can support both P96 and CGX functionality. The CGX layer AROS has can perhaps be a starting point.
Why bother? It's better to get AROS in better shape than to waste time "backporting" AROS' RTG to 68k. RTG on 68k is at a dead end.
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I wouldn't say that. Adding an RTG card to my A1200 was one of the single most significant upgrades I ever made. It made a very big difference to my everyday use and prolonged the life of my A1200 as my "primary machine" by several years.
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I wouldn't say that. Adding an RTG card to my A1200 was one of the single most significant upgrades I ever made. It made a very big difference to my everyday use and prolonged the life of my A1200 as my "primary machine" by several years.
Sure, but that is not relevant at this point. The developers of the software in question are not interested in anyone continuing to use it, on the contrary, they rather see that noone use their software at all anymore. That's the only conclusion one can draw from this, as I see it.
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Why is everything so closed ?
Most stuff haven't been used for 10 years, isn't used anymore... but still, it must be kept secret :(
I guess I'll never understand... I know it's their IP and they can do whatever they want. But since it could help and interest people I don't get why it's not released for free... They'd have nothing to lose by doing so.
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RTG on 68k is at a dead end.
neither you will convince me on this nor i will try to prove the contrary. improving 68k may be a objectively a waste of time yet some are interested in this. you will have to live with it.
and i do not believe the former amiga devs are ars*s jusst because theý refuse to release something for free. it is their good right to do so. even now there might be interested parties who would like to license from them for money although not very likely so why are they not allowed to stick to their ip?
anyway cooperation between aros and 68k might be fruitful for both, not to mention other branches.
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@kolla
I think it's more "political" than that. CGX and P96 have become the respective RTG standards for MOS and OS4, thus all development of each API has become tied to each platform.
Nobody ever installed RTG software for it's own sake, rather they installed it to allow them to run all their existing software in higher resolutions and/or greater colour depths. Just because the developers of the existing standards aren't interested/able to continue support doesn't mean the original motivation behind RTG has gone away. People still want to be able to use higher resolution screen modes with faster refresh rates etc.
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Why is everything so closed ?
Most stuff haven't been used for 10 years, isn't used anymore... but still, it must be kept secret :(
I guess I'll never understand... I know it's their IP and they can do whatever they want. But since it could help and interest people I don't get why it's not released for free... They'd have nothing to lose by doing so.
ok. right, but lets stop blaming people. this will not change their minds. this way is closed. better think of constructive ideas.
@karlos: exactly.
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Personally, I was never entirely happy with either RTG system on 3.x (I've used both for years). Whilst they worked, every system I ever used felt as if they only accelerated the most basic functions using the available hardware. On my CGX 4.2/Permedia 2 install, for example, it was obvious that scaled/transparent blits weren't remotely accelerated, despite the fact the hardware is perfectly capable of it.
Other than basic integration, what I'd always wanted to see was a retained mode graphics library (basically one where you'd queue up some rasterization commands, then have them issued inside a hardware lock using whatever acceleration exists) designed especially for RTG hardware. Instead all we ever really got was a few chunky pixel copy functions.
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neither you will convince me on this nor i will try to prove the contrary. improving 68k may be a objectively a waste of time yet some are interested in this. you will have to live with it.
Sure, everyone is free to waste ones time on whatever one likes.
and i do not believe the former amiga devs are ars*s jusst because theý refuse to release something for free. it is their good right to do so. even now there might be interested parties who would like to license from them for money although not very likely so why are they not allowed to stick to their ip?
Ofcourse they are allowed to do so, I dont suggest that they arent allowed to do it, but it does render them a bunch of arses in my view.
anyway cooperation between aros and 68k might be fruitful for both, not to mention other branches.
Ofcourse, please go ahead.
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Why is everything so closed ?
Most stuff haven't been used for 10 years, isn't used anymore... but still, it must be kept secret :(
I guess I'll never understand... I know it's their IP and they can do whatever they want. But since it could help and interest people I don't get why it's not released for free... They'd have nothing to lose by doing so.
It's because they are arses, that's what I'm saying :laughing:
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@karlos: isnt it how aros handle it? if you mention its gfx systeb above hal?
the reason of this thread if im not mistaken is that over at eab cosmos puts together his graphics.library replacement. he intends to incorporate gfx support directly into it. i dont know if this is a good idea in first place. i also do not know how he wants to accomplish it. one library for all seems a little bloathed idea. hardware and hw acceleration should be specifically handled by system specific drivers i believe. but i have actually no knowledge of this.
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It's because they are arses, that's what I'm saying :laughing:
please go ahead, yourself. ;D
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@kolla
I think it's more "political" than that. CGX and P96 have become the respective RTG standards for MOS and OS4, thus all development of each API has become tied to each platform.
Exactly, this is also why I suggest not supporting any of them.
Nobody ever installed RTG software for it's own sake, rather they installed it to allow them to run all their existing software in higher resolutions and/or greater colour depths.
Not quite correct. There's a trade-off since lots of software doesn't work on RTG, and also because many got graphics card in order to run certain software.
Just because the developers of the existing standards aren't interested/able to continue support doesn't mean the original motivation behind RTG has gone away. People still want to be able to use higher resolution screen modes with faster refresh rates etc.
Yes, so someone has to reinvent the wheel yet again, since the two previous wheel inventors are such arses :laughing:
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@karlos: isnt it how aros handle it? if you mention its gfx systeb above hal?
Well, my understanding was that the CGX implementation was a thin layer on top of the HAL. Which would imply that to back port AROS's CGX implementation would at least require a fair amount of work.
the reason of this thread if im not mistaken is that over at eab cosmos puts together his graphics.library replacement. he intends to incorporate gfx support directly into it. i dont know if this is a good idea in first place. i also do not know how he wants to accomplish it. one library for all seems a little bloathed idea. hardware and hw acceleration should be specifically handled by system specific drivers i believe. but i have actually no knowledge of this.
Well, in fairness, most of RTG is something you don't "see". What I mean is that it replaces graphics.library functionality, thereby ensuring that graphics.library calls are sent to the graphics card. The existing RTG implementations do this by patching (AFAIK).
A replacement graphics library might offer the opportunity of doing it a lot more cleanly.
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Exactly, this is also why I suggest not supporting any of them.
Not quite correct. There's a trade-off since lots of software doesn't work on RTG, and also because many got graphics card in order to run certain software.
Yes, so someone has to reinvent the wheel yet again, since the two previous wheel inventors are such arses :laughing:
wasnt there something like that certain company, product of which i use, have incorporated p96 into support of their product without paying licences in the end? if so i could actually understand tobias alone because of that. since giving away his ip might be used for further support of the product in question and thereby justify injustice that happend to him.
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Yes, giving away the P96 SDK would suddenly make all Elbox products work. It took them more than two years to get a working driver for my Voodoo5 card, even with a pirated SDK - how could releasing the SDK help them?
And yes, Elbox are huge arses :laughing:
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well, not likely but lets assume some third party mad activist like cosmos suddenly issued a proper driver?
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well, not likely but lets assume some third party mad activist like cosmos suddenly issued a proper driver?
How would that be possible considering Elbox doesn't give out any HW documentation?
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open pci?
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open pci?
OpenPCI doesn't support mediator.
Information: The mediator support of a well-known company is definitively canceled because of their poor developer policy and their questionable attitude towards customers.
Elbox was very clear when they did their menaces. They allow him to write drivers for mediator, but not to write something like openpci. Even if this can give them more drivers later. It's nice to see the same driver running on all the differents bus. Titan's rtl8139 driver is even currently developped on a mediator1200. But openpci will not be released for Mediator, so no rtl8139 driver for Mediator in the final release. Same thing for the OCHI USB drivers, nothing for Mediator. Elbox doesn't allow it.
The obvious reason Elbox doesn't want this is that they sell expensive kits of (modified) common PC hardware and drivers tied to this hardware. OpenPCI would kill this market for them.
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according to this thread openpci supports mediator at least partly:
http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?t=18257
(the thread is in german but note benjamins quotes are in english if you scroll down)
i ve nerver seriously tried it but there should be several drivers that work, but no gfx card.
also i know at least one 3rd party developing (experimental) drivers for mediator like for scsi adapter and such. ive ben asked to test it although have had no time yet. i dont know what agreement this is based on.
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OpenPCI doesn't support mediator.
The obvious reason Elbox doesn't want this is that they sell expensive kits of (modified) common PC hardware and drivers tied to this hardware. OpenPCI would kill this market for them.
this is dumb tactics of course, they most likely would sell much more units if there were more pci drivers for different extentions writen by 3rd party devs :(
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I doubt Elbox sell anything these days.
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they might be selling rebranded microwaves as we speak
(dont underestimate us, polish people)
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they might be selling rebranded microwaves as we speak
Could be!
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=270542002903
..yes, I bought two, and I would buy a Commodore microwave.
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I don't know for sure, but I imagine that AROS's implementation of CGX is a thin layer around the HAL and that perhaps you'd end up having to recreate the latter, which may be quite difficult.
yes AROS use a HAL it is written in OO and i think its not very fast and do slowdown on slow systems.
the best way is to support the P96 driver interface and write a wrapper so for classic or winuae the P96 drivers can use.
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One word: AROS
Staf.
Follow-up: There is discussion about gfx on the AROS dev list and sonic said that he is in contact with cosmos to see how to cooperate.
greets,
Staf.
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For classic amiga computing there are some operating system components that should be in the public domain.
RTG, P96 or CGX4
AHI, it is open source!
Miami or AmiTCP, don´t care which
Poseidon USB stack, it´s open now for AROS.
And I think AROS and Poseidon USB stack is the example to look to. Chris has made a fantastic piece of software, and it´s his. And at the same time it´s vital to the community, and it needed to reach to other platforms than those he´d be able to support both as a free time project or as a commercial venture.
So a bounty was set up... Now, I know that there might bee too many bounties out there. But I think that RTG and TCP/IP would be two decent things to have opened up. Not only for classic amigas, but for the whole Amiga ecosystem.
I´m not going to push for this, but if a bounty can be agreed upon with the IP holders then I´ll happily contribute. Because as they say, it´s their IP. And they legally own it. So we should look into an incentive for them to open it up.
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@arnljot: the thing is that chris has set this bounty himself. and it was wegetating for quite some time filled to one fourth or so and if not deadwood's initiative and the current of hype it generated for its crazyness it woulddnt probably be met till today.
it doesnt seem that p96 or cgx ip holders are ready to accept such a bounty. most possibly for the reasons karlos was already talking about.
nevertheless i would support such a bounty (if it was sure to be fulfilled, like in chris' case), i think.
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It is obvious that we need hardware support from wherever possible. In these difficult times we live in, some people cant/wont think positively perhaps due to lack of love to the platform, or maybe for minor economic reasons. No matter how long someone keeps their code private, it doesn't look like they'll be making a fortune out of it any time soon. But i respect that it's theirs, and we can't change that. Anyway, i was thinking about another piece of hardware out of which we could benefit: Firewire. Not sure how easy it would be to get support for that one, but since there's already a quite old "Amiga-ish" history in the form of Macrosystem's Casablanca, wouldn't that help a developer do something for the rest of the Amiga platforms? Casablancas were 040 and 060 machines, that had an option for a Firewire module, based in a SONY pcb. Just an idea there, but whatever we can get additional support for won't hurt us...
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Why firewire? Granted it's a better serial standard than USB was, but USB has surely taken over.
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I'm not saying FW is better than USB or comparing it with anything, i only wanted to stress that we need hardware support from everything possible. By the way, there's so many makes of DV cameras out there, it might help users do more on the video side.. :)
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Well, with respect, I think things like RTG, USB etc should probably take priority - better to focus on what people already have that could do with improved support before moving on to what they could have.
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yet again karlos is completely right
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But I think that RTG and TCP/IP would be two decent things to have opened up. Not only for classic amigas, but for the whole Amiga ecosystem.
As regarding TCP/IP, someone might have luck contacting Olaf Barthel for his RoadShow/Roadster TCP/IP stack. While the former was released with OS4.x, the latter never saw the light of day probably mostly due to Harald Frank being unable to come up with a GUI. Maybe Olaf is willing to open source it and make it available for Classic Amiga and/or other systems. Might be worth a try.
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@platon42: cool idea, but is there anyone who knows him personally?
otherwise, gulliver, while you are at it..
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@platon42: cool idea, but is there anyone who knows him personally?
otherwise, gulliver, while you are at it..
Olaf Barthel just posted on http://utilitybase.com yesterday. He is one of the most die hard Amiga developers out there. I don't know him personally but I wish I did :).
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The obvious reason Elbox doesn't want this is that they sell expensive kits of (modified) common PC hardware and drivers tied to this hardware. OpenPCI would kill this market for them.
The obviously sad part of this is the simple question of exactly how big is this particular market, and how much blood does Elbox expect to squeeze from it.
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People have been doing all kinds of clever, open source stuff with FPGAs recently. I'm surprised nobody has attempted an open PCI bridge.
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Olaf Barthel just posted on http://utilitybase.com yesterday. He is one of the most die hard Amiga developers out there. I don't know him personally but I wish I did :).
I have just sent a message to Olaf Barthel regarding Roadshow thru sourceforge.net.
Lets hope he agrees to make it public domain! :)
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Miami or AmiTCP, don´t care which
Older versions of AmiTCP are already open source. The AROSTCP and MOSNet stacks are based on it.
@salax54:
Isn't there already a (third-party) Firewire stack for MorphOS?
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Just to let you know I emailed Heinz Wrobel and asked him about releasing Envoy 3 in the public domain and its sources if possible.
On another matter, I received an email from the author of a Picasso96 driver for a particular graphics card, and he told me he developed the driver by doing reverse engineering! :o
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Bad news again, Heinz Wrobel said no:
From:
"Wrobel Heinz-xxx"
Add sender to Contacts
To:
"Ignacio"
Ignacio,
the answer has to be "No" for the time being.
Regards,
Heinz
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ignacio [mailto:xxx@yahoo.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 07, 2010 05:34
> To: Wrobel Heinz
> Subject: Request to make Envoy Amiga network solution, Public domain
> software
>
> Hi, I am sorry to bother you with this ten year old stuff. The thing
is
> that I have bought Envoy 3 networking solution a couple of years ago.
It
> is great sofware for networking Amigas, and since you have been in the
> past a great supporter and developer for this now small Amiga
community,
> I dare to ask you if will you please allow me to put these files on
the
> Public Domain, so that they are freely available to everyone? I would
> also add if you think it is necessary, that you wont provide any
suport
> whatsoever, and not be liable for any damage at all.
> By the way, if at some point, you are willing to give out the sources
for
> no commercial purposes, that would be even better.
> So please, just say yes.
>
>
> Thank you for your time,
> Regards,
> Ignacio
>
>
>
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It´s a bit poor that the IP holders doesn´t provide any reasons. Not that they have to, but some reasons are more understandable than others, say if for instance envoy contains lisenced code that he cannot give away.
Perhaps we should just all pay Karlos and Cosmos a bundle of cash to make a new RTG system ;-) And Piru and Plato42 one to backport ArosTCP with a GUI :-D
The developer who reverse engineered the P96 system to develop a gfx card driver could have peaked at the WinUAE/UAE code I guess (perhaps that´s what he did). But it´s not the way it should be.
Also, it would be far better if CGX4 and P96 could be unified. Since P96 is exclusive on some hardware(Mediator/UAE) and CGX4 on other(CVPPC and GRex).
How much code from AROS is usable on classic for a CGX back port?
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Creating a new RTG system is not without serious problems either. Ideally, you'd want to support existing cards, but finding the requisite documentation wouldn't be easy.
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It´s a bit poor that the IP holders doesn´t provide any reasons. Not that they have to, but some reasons are more understandable than others, say if for instance envoy contains lisenced code that he cannot give away.
It might be that it legally still is IAM that hold rights.
Perhaps we should just all pay Karlos and Cosmos a bundle of cash to make a new RTG system ;-) And Piru and Plato42 one to backport ArosTCP with a GUI :-D
I would rather see a new TCP stack for amiga systems written from scratch, instead of messing around with this 20 year old ancient stuff. Miami was such a rewrite.
The developer who reverse engineered the P96 system to develop a gfx card driver could have peaked at the WinUAE/UAE code I guess (perhaps that´s what he did). But it´s not the way it should be.
In amiga land, very little is as it should be.
Also, it would be far better if CGX4 and P96 could be unified. Since P96 is exclusive on some hardware(Mediator/UAE) and CGX4 on other(CVPPC and GRex).
Ofcourse, but remember what the prime objectives for those projects were - both started as driver systems for dedicated hardware that were in direct competition with one another, and then expanded into being competing standards for "all amiga graphics cards". A bunch of egotripping jackasses, the lot of them, could ofcourse not agree on anything, and when P96 was chosen for OS3.5+ it was ofcourse ridiculed by the "blue" side (like anything beyond OS 3.1). How P96 SDK could continue to be closed even after being pulled into OS3.5+ is beyond what I can grasp, but in amiga land, anything silly is possible, and even very likely.
A merge of south and north Korea is probably more likely than any merge of CGfx and P96 (aka MorphOS and AmigaOS)
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Yes, I realise that.
Some documentation could be retreived from the linux world. Some even from the Amiga 68k linux I guess.
More importantly is to select what to support.
I think it should have an abstraction layer for amiga bussboards ("native" Zorro) and PCI bussboards (Mediator, GRex, Prometheus). That would be probably an framework on top of expansion.library, pci.library and openpci.library.
Then which cards. Cybervision family cards(64, 643d, PPC), Picasso family cards(II, 4), Voodoo cards and Radeons should come first. Then other related cards (chipset wise).
And screens should be able to be in a grid (side by side, above/below) and stacked(amiga like).
Back to the documentation side of things. Like I said, if it were to be an LGPL product in the end, much could possably be gleamed from open source.
As for bounty funding, I think both Vesalia and AmigaKit could find it in their hearts to get the ball rolling, perhaps even Elbox and Individual Computers too.
I do think that the users would welcome it too.
This time it could be done propperly with more accellerated rasters too like you mentioned in another thread here :)
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@kolla
P96 provides an implementation of the cybergraphics.library for applications that make cgx specific calls. I'm not sure about the converse, but either way the two standards being in competition isn't quite the end user problem you might otherwise think.
Some documentation could be retreived from the linux world. Some even from the Amiga 68k linux I guess.
I was thinking about the documentation for things like mediator/grexx, let alone specific cards.
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A merge of south and north Korea is probably more likely than any merge of CGfx and P96 (aka MorphOS and AmigaOS)
I think you might be right. But hopefully we´ll be able to agree on what should be, and then perhaps motivate someone next to build it.
I think that if we could specify a new API which could have emmulation for CGX and P96 on top of it, it would be a relief to the Amiga community.
Remember, AROS has discussed making Cairo the base and have a CGX emmulation layer on top of that. ATM it´s kinda "side by side" which isn´t optimal. I don´t know if Cairo could be suitable as a basis for an Amiga RTG, probably we´d want to start designing all from scratch.
I´m not too familiar with what´s wrong with current amiga TCP IP implementations, besides them not being open. Which stops them from being ubiquitous in Amiga land like Poseidon could be now. That code is 20 years old shouldn´t mean that it´s bad. After all many parts of the Amiga operating system is, and we´re not opening that can of worms now :)
The reason why I´m brining up RTG as a pressing issue is Comos´ efforts to improve the graphics.library. To make it RTG compliant. It´s a great effort and best of luck to him! This shows however that some Amiga coders have matured to a level where perhaps elefants can be eaten...
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I have to admit, I rather like the idea of a replacement graphics.library as a solution, in theory it can be implemented more cleanly than existing RTG for classic systems.
In practise, it might be more difficult to implement than a "work alike" RTG system, ie one that simply patches the OS in a manner similar to P96/CGX.
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I was thinking about the documentation for things like mediator/grexx, let alone specific cards.
If anyone attempts this, it´s going to be a huge project.
However, I think that the openpci guys(guy?) would be the right one to have an alliance with. There is good support for GRex in openpci, and provisional support for mediator in the latest version of openpci.
I dunno if Elbox will come down from the fence and join the lgpl open source party, or if any qualified coders would welcome them if they would given all the bad blood. But lets face that if any of this comes to fruition.
I think that if this were to go ahead, then it first should have a six month designing stage where in parallel a team source needed documentation and structure it in a wiki for the devs.
Any bounty raised should go to a lead developer or a small number of developers.
I know, I´m a dreamer... :)
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I have to admit, I rather like the idea of a replacement graphics.library as a solution, in theory it can be implemented more cleanly than existing RTG for classic systems.
I don´t know the Amiga APIs or libraries well enough to understand this concept :)
How, in this "vision" is support for various buses and cards achieved in your mind? I would think that this would be delegated to a driver that know the chipset. The next problem is that this chipset can reside on a zorro bus, pci bus - or heaven forbid usb bus - LOL
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So where or to whom do I have to give some $ to the Unified RTG opensource bounty? :)
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hehe, I feel the same Gulliver. But at the moment we´re just throwing around some ideas here.
It´s really helpfull to pick Karlos´ brain, because he´s knowledgeable on the subject. Would be fun if also Piru and Plato42 had some dreams and ideas... (fishing expedition here guys ;))
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I don´t know the Amiga APIs or libraries well enough to understand this concept :)
How, in this "vision" is support for various buses and cards achieved in your mind? I would think that this would be delegated to a driver that know the chipset. The next problem is that this chipset can reside on a zorro bus, pci bus - or heaven forbid usb bus - LOL
The key to this, I think, is one of abstraction. This "new" graphics.library would itself be agnostic to the underlying hardware and thus need to sit on top of something lower level, in my mind. The additional functionality presented by existing rtg libraries would sit on top of the same layer and just expose the relevant features of it that the new graphics.library doesn't.
This lower layer would be responsible for detecting/managing the hardware bus and memory space, thus providing a consistent API for actual chip drivers, such that it doesn't matter if your graphics chip is attached by zorro or PCI. For the most part I see bus and memory management as different aspects of the same task - essentially how you map the device's memory/register space into the system memory map such that the chip driver knows where the hardware registers/memory are located as well as the graphics.library's BitMap allocator knowing where to get video memory from.
I think a lot more thought is required though ;)
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Maybe a good place to start is to doodle some design documentation, just for the heck of it. To get a mental picture of what the new system would be like. Perhaps a google code page, or a soureforge page?
Then when we know what it´ll look like we´ll know if we can attract a bounty for it and a coder or three?
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TBH, I would suggest the first thing should be to gauge the level of interest.
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Perhaps you´re right. But I think that it would be easier to gather support if people knew what they were taking a position on. And also pie in the sky dreams could be grounded first so that the project could have a hint of realism.
But either way, the nay sayers could perhaps overrun the project and discourage coders before it takes off.
Would you be interested in participating with design or code? I don´t know Amiga APIs or C coding, but I´d be happy to contribute with sourcing documentation and doing other leg work as needed or instructed to :)
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Interested, yes. Able, maybe not. I really don't seem to find the time for anything like this any more :-/
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To me only thing that comes to mind regarding layers is that they are very dangerous to performance, just like the current bottleneck for 3D in OS4 IIRC was the extra 2D layer (i.e. MiniGL constantly calling P96).
Not saying that it can't be done or anything similar, it just reminds me of that right away...
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What does the CGX superlayers do? That is one of the CGX P96 differences?
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What does the CGX superlayers do? That is one of the CGX P96 differences?
I think it's an optimisation made to the handling of layers to reduce the amount of blitting/copying when refreshing many overlapping areas. Don't quote me on that, though.
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I remember that CGX put forwards the layers as their strong point.
What did P96 use as their selling point? Any features, or was it "just faster and better"? Something that both can claim.
I´m not trying to identify one as better or inferrior, just trying to get a rough idea of the feature matrix.
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Okay, I had to create a thread, to create a poll to gauge interest. Please explain a bit more on that thread what this is about, and I invite you to continue discussing this issue on that thread.
Thanks
PS: If we want things to get done, we actually need to do something about it :)
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One of P96's features was that it supported CGX software too. Certainly everything I ever wrote for CGX (not including video overlay which I never investigated) also worked on P96.
I haven't really tried the other way around.
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Yes, I remember the P96 compatability mode for CGX. But I remember that software that used overlay (like video playback software) was initially in two versions, one for CGX4 and one for P96.
It´s a long time ago, so my memory might trip me on this one.
Back then I was a user who followed the RTG of my card, first P96 with my P-IV, then CGX4 with my CyberStormPPC.
@Gavillan, I´ll certainly vote. But I only have a half formed idea at the moment what this is about. :)
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My graphics card didn't even have a video overlay. It was faked using texture mapping, by the looks of things.
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I read the emails sent. I wondered perhaps the p96 developer, might compromise with a source license for the SDK where he retains full copyright/ownership etc, but allow drivers build on it to be fully open ? I just wondered if they got scared off by the wording.
However, I am not surprised permission wasn't granted. Only for the fact that this is Amiga land, where the idea of sharing information, and helping each other doesnt exist! (mostly)
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What does the CGX superlayers do? That is one of the CGX P96 differences?
IF (GfxCardDetected and BlittingToGfxCardScreen) THEN
BlitIntelligentlyUsingGfxCardBlitter();
ELSE_IF (BlittingToAGAScreen) THEN
BlitIntelligentlyUsingCPU();
END_IF
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What does the CGX superlayers do?
It replaces layers.library with a faster one. Also the replacement has support for simple (1-bit) transparency.
Superlayers and layers.library itself isn't related to blitting at all.