Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Software Issues and Discussion => Topic started by: Cosmos Amiga on September 11, 2015, 01:44:55 PM
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After the Warp3D 68k v4.2a, a new 4.2b was released : http://www.elbox.com/downloads_mediator.html
In this new version, the W3D_Picasso96MU.library v4.2 (5 Feb 2002) is updated to the v4.2 (17 Feb 2002)
I emailed Elbox about this new release, but no answer...
Anyone could check his version installed with a "version full Sys:Libs/Warp3D/HWDrivers/W3D_Picasso96MU.library" and see if it's the rare 4.2 (17 Feb 2002) I'm looking for ?
Very important for me, thank you !
:)
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PM sent.
Test it, it gives me just 4.2.
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PM sent.
Test it, it gives me just 4.2.
To get the date, you need to add "full" after the command "version" !
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Maybe inside the MediatorUP3.4.lha
Anybody have this archive somewhere ?
:)
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still no warp3d for Mediator and Radeon 9250 users:confused:
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After the Warp3D 68k v4.2a, a new 4.2b was released : http://www.elbox.com/downloads_mediator.html
In this new version, the W3D_Picasso96MU.library v4.2 (5 Feb 2002) is updated to the v4.2 (17 Feb 2002)
I emailed Elbox about this new release, but no answer...
Anyone could check his version installed with a "version full Sys:Libs/Warp3D/HWDrivers/W3D_Picasso96MU.library" and see if it's the rare 4.2 (17 Feb 2002) I'm looking for ?
I didn't find it here. I only have older MediatorUP archives and they do not have Warp3D in them. There is an archive which is referred to and I can get a download from Elbox for it.
http://www.elbox.com/download/Warp3D_for_Mediator.lha
This archive has W3D_Picasso96M.library 4.2 (02/17/02) so perhaps their listing has an error and there is no new version of W3D_Picasso96MU.library?
Maybe you could ask A-Eon about it since they are the new owner of W3D?
still no warp3d for Mediator and Radeon 9250 users:confused:
Matthew at A-Eon would also like Radeon support in Warp3D for the classic AmigaOS (he has an Amiga 1200 with Radeon). Seeing how much of a priority the classic Amiga is to A-Eon, I would expect Radeon W3D support right after the Prisma Megamix Music Card comes out for the classic. You can enjoy an A-Eon Boing Ball Mouse for the classic while you wait though. A-Eon should hire me to promote their products :D.
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I would expect Radeon W3D support right after the Prisma Megamix Music Card comes out for the classic. You can enjoy an A-Eon Boing Ball Mouse for the classic while you wait though. A-Eon should hire me to promote their products :D.
:laughing:
I wonder if any of us will still be alive when that Prisma Megamix card comes out? :rofl:
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This archive has W3D_Picasso96M.library 4.2 (02/17/02) so perhaps their listing has an error and there is no new version of W3D_Picasso96MU.library?
Hum, I guess no error because it's clearly written Warp3D 4.2b (and the release who everyone have is the 4.2a)
Matthew at A-Eon would also like Radeon support in Warp3D for the classic AmigaOS (he has an Amiga 1200 with Radeon)
Another excuse to do nothing, as always...
We have working drivers for the Permedia2 and the 3dfx, and now our "elite" want another driver hard & long to code...
Karlos have advanced reworked Permedia2 & 3dfx drivers but no autorisation to release... Everything is done to block the Amiga Classics.
(==> http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=773146&postcount=284)
We the users are VERY VERY VERY angry : it's always no, always blablabla and nothing change on Classics...
Really the Amiga "elite", you will not comme crying, we are tired of you...
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@Cosmos,
"Everything is done to block the Amiga Classics."
Classics look to be ignored by most, I find them useful and productive.
The private guys are pulling most of the weight, Terminils for example is doing Gods work with "Final Writer".
Looks a bit hopeless on most fronts ;-(
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Classics look to be ignored by most, I find them useful and productive(
We want the release of the Karlos Warp3D drivers, right now !
And a new batch of BlizzardPPC, CyberStormPPC, BVision and CyberVisionPPC at LOW prices for evreyone can purchase. Now, not in 10 years...
My very last warning...
I'm all except a joke man, you the "elite" are fully warned...
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And a new batch of BlizzardPPC, CyberStormPPC, BVision and CyberVisionPPC at LOW prices for evreyone can purchase. Now, not in 10 years...
Ha! That'll be the day. :lol:
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it's always no, always blablabla and nothing change on Classics...
Individual initiative is the future of the Amiga.
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Individual initiative is the future of the Amiga.
No, dividing in to secretive camps with fortifications protecting the antiquated Amiga technology from each other seems to be the Amiga way. This doesn't mean I agree with Cosmo's attitude even though I understand his feeling of the Amiga being held hostage. Honey catches more flies than vinegar. Hopefully, eventually. Amiga teaches us patience. We must meditate and focus on what was good about the Amiga. Where did my fricking Guru Meditation Joyboard go now?
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Hum, I guess no error because it's clearly written Warp3D 4.2b (and the release who everyone have is the 4.2a)
Another excuse to do nothing, as always...
We have working drivers for the Permedia2 and the 3dfx, and now our "elite" want another driver hard & long to code...
Karlos have advanced reworked Permedia2 & 3dfx drivers but no autorisation to release... Everything is done to block the Amiga Classics.
(==> http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=773146&postcount=284)
We the users are VERY VERY VERY angry : it's always no, always blablabla and nothing change on Classics...
Really the Amiga "elite", you will not comme crying, we are tired of you...
this isnt any amiga elite, just some pretenders. ;)
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:laughing:
I wonder if any of us will still be alive when that Prisma Megamix card comes out? :rofl:
I guess it must be worse knowing all those cards are sat there waiting for a new owners to take them home.
(http://obligement.free.fr/gfx2/fabrication_prisma.jpg)
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I guess it must be worse knowing all those cards are sat there waiting for a new owners to take them home.
(http://obligement.free.fr/gfx2/fabrication_prisma.jpg)
Okay, can't complain about that! :D But when will they be in the hands of distributors?
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No, dividing in to secretive camps with fortifications protecting the antiquated Amiga technology from each other seems to be the Amiga way. This doesn't mean I agree with Cosmo's attitude even though I understand his feeling of the Amiga being held hostage. Honey catches more flies than vinegar. Hopefully, eventually. Amiga teaches us patience. We must meditate and focus on what was good about the Amiga. Where did my fricking Guru Meditation Joyboard go now?
You are too gentle. We are waiting since too many time... They mock us...
Now I want new batch of BlizzardPPC, CyberStormPPC, BVision and CyberVisionPPC at LOW prices to introduce a new virtuous circle :
Very low prices hardware => big selling => new softwares => new users or old users come back : the machine lives...
BlizzardPPC : 150 euros maximum
CyberStormPPC : 220 euros maximum
BVision : 90 euros maximum
CyberVisionPPC : 90 euros maximum
If 68060 not available, a 68040@40 on socket is fine (better than nothing) with two JMPs to change to 060 if users find it...
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Oh for gods sake! Make a Fast FPGA card with sata, fast ram and lots of it with dma and a graphics card pci slot!
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Oh for gods sake! Make a Fast FPGA card with sata, fast ram and lots of it with dma and a graphics card pci slot!
Later. We are in the hurry now. New cards take too much time and too much money to develop...
BlizzardPPC : 150 euros maximum
CyberStormPPC : 220 euros maximum
BVision : 90 euros maximum
CyberVisionPPC : 90 euros maximum
Of course NOT selling by Amigakit : they will sell at insane prices... (==> http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=787964&postcount=23)
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if you are interested in warpos (im not) then strim is developing an open source compatible solution based on mediator and sonnet card. it is working already to certain extent and rather fast. csppc and bppc will not happen and it is not amigakit fault. the rights and documentation ist with a former amiga repair company in germany, probably lost. anyway they could not be produced again because of the lack of parts and because of rohs as far as it gas been discussed on a1k.
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Even a clone of old turbo cards that had socket and sockets for
standard (was it EDO?) memory would be fine.
It would be easier to get that 040s from old Macs or accelerators
for them but then it would solve all need for most lucrative market
so it's kinda problematic and there is a good explanation but it's
kinda ungrateful to be so demanding and ACA1220 is all you need
anyway and people should be lucky that those are still in production.
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No, dividing in to secretive camps with fortifications protecting the antiquated Amiga technology from each other seems to be the Amiga way. This doesn't mean I agree with Cosmo's attitude even though I understand his feeling of the Amiga being held hostage. Honey catches more flies than vinegar. Hopefully, eventually. Amiga teaches us patience. We must meditate and focus on what was good about the Amiga. Where did my fricking Guru Meditation Joyboard go now?
We can not blame the current holders of the Amiga to not want to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors (simultaneously produce and sell two competing architectures). We can not blame them for having abandoned the 68k platform. Business is business. But we could blame them for not facilitating the further development by one third partie.
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Later. We are in the hurry now. New cards take too much time and too much money to develop...
Not necessarily. The old cards could have legal problems attached which can take much longer than development time as we know from the C= bankruptcy years. Some chips would likely not be available anymore so the board layout would have to be changed and replacement chips or FPGAs used. The Phase 5 accelerator boards are likely expensive boards to produce in low quantities and more expensive yet on a tight schedule. Using a modern FPGA makes a lot of sense as it could simplify the design and cost. An FPGA with memory controller for modern memory (cheaper and more reliable to have soldered on the card) and high speed transceivers (SerDes) for SATA/PCIe is still affordable and reduces chip counts. Ethernet and HDMI/DVI can be directly controlled from the FPGA. The FPGA needs a little support for flash, debugging, etc. and it may be easier to leave USB as a custom chip but I hope you can see that the chip count and board layout size, complexity and cost could be significantly reduced. Development could be greatly increased with a little investment. Majsta is affordable because of the country he lives in although the corruption there has already slowed him down at times (mail bribes). Thomas Hirsch has a working work of art in the Natami which is wasting away but could be rejuvenated with investment. IMO, these would be better investments than trying to bring back the P5 hardware. I'm not sure production would be feasible even if the P5 designs were open sourced.
if you are interested in warpos (im not) then strim is developing an open source compatible solution based on mediator and sonnet card. it is working already to certain extent and rather fast. csppc and bppc will not happen and it is not amigakit fault. the rights and documentation ist with a former amiga repair company in germany, probably lost. anyway they could not be produced again because of the lack of parts and because of rohs as far as it gas been discussed on a1k.
The Sonnet is no longer in production (partially because PPC is dying), the classic Amiga needs a bottle-necked PCI solution for PCI and it is not optimum to go through PCI for all I/O. At least faster PPC processors are available in the Sonnet but I don't like the economics of the project and Elbox decided likewise.
It would be easier to get that 040s from old Macs or accelerators
for them but then it would solve all need for most lucrative market
so it's kinda problematic and there is a good explanation but it's
kinda ungrateful to be so demanding and ACA1220 is all you need
anyway and people should be lucky that those are still in production.
There is currently no shortage of affordable full 68060s except the rev 6 68060 which can be overclocked to 100MHz. The price and availability may change if thousands of the FPGA Arcade 68060 expansion are sold. An FPGA accelerator or board probably makes more sense. Even the FPGA Arcade and Mist FPGA performance should be able to exceed a 68040 with less heat. A larger and better performance FPGA (but still affordable) and/or a better designed FPGA core will probably be able to exceed 68060 performance.
We can not blame the current holders of the Amiga to not want to repeat the mistakes of their predecessors (simultaneously produce and sell two competing architectures).
I'm not so sure that selling both the Amiga and a PC were a mistake, especially early on. The C= PC was sold into professional and business markets where Amiga didn't have the software. This allowed C= to offer a wider spectrum of products. PCs had good margins before competition saturated the market. The Carly Fiorina purchase of Compaq by HP has been recently criticized by some people also. Notice that she defended her performance at HP by giving the top line revenue and cash flow gains while she was in charge. I want to hear about the bottom line when buying a lower margin business. It's still debatable if the deal was bad as their were likely some advantages from synergies and reduced competition. I think it would be an exaggeration to call the buy of Compaq a disaster but HP probably would have been better off focusing on their higher margin printers.
We can not blame them for having abandoned the 68k platform. Business is business. But we could blame them for not facilitating the further development by one third partie.
There was no way forward for the 68k and the PPC was promising and big endian. Now, the PPC route is not only less compatible but very expensive and it is possible to go back to the 68k because of modern FPGA technology. The big questions:
Is Amiga performance or hardware cost more important?
performance->PPC, hardware cost->68k
Is Amiga performance or compatibility more important?
performance->PPC, compatibility->68k
I believe PPC CPU performance/price ratio has reached its peak and will start declining in the next 10 years (PPC CPU costs will increase and availability will decline because of supply and demand). Developing the 68k could be done cheaply with relatively low performance (68040-68060 performance level) but performance would scale nicely to more powerful FPGAs (constantly getting cheaper and availability is excellent) with custom ASICs as an option if sales grew high enough to support them. The 68k option is more scalable and flexible where a business could have complete control of their destiny and products while the PPC is controlled by market forces with strong head winds against it. The other option would be to port the AmigaOS to ARM or x86_64 but this would take a long time, the Amiga loses its uniqueness (valuable!) and compatibility. AROS has so far failed to create a market large enough to attract major software developers on these other processors after many years.
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@Matthey
I'm talking about survival : we cannot wait 1 or 2 years more to have ready and working new 68k hardware... I think it's easy to understand.
I'm only a 68k hacker, I don't have the skill & knowledge already to build a new 060 or Fpga card from scratch...
I don't believe in PPC, and Amigakit screwed the X1000 with superhigh prices (2 975 euros !!!! Ouch !!) to make impossible a virtuous circle. And they will do same mistake for the X5000 soon...
The only chance is quickly a new batch of the last boards from Phase5/DCE at VERY LOW PRICES : sorry, I see only this very last hope for us...
:(
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I believe PPC CPU performance/price ratio has reached its peak and will start declining in the next 10 years (PPC CPU costs will increase and availability will decline because of supply and demand). Developing the 68k could be done cheaply with relatively low performance (68040-68060 performance level) but performance would scale nicely to more powerful FPGAs (constantly getting cheaper and availability is excellent) with custom ASICs as an option if sales grew high enough to support them. The 68k option is more scalable and flexible where a business could have complete control of their destiny and products while the PPC is controlled by market forces with strong head winds against it. The other option would be to port the AmigaOS to ARM or x86_64 but this would take a long time, the Amiga loses its uniqueness (valuable!) and compatibility. AROS has so far failed to create a market large enough to attract major software developers on these other processors after many years.
Thanks for this excellent analysis, matthey. Needless to say, I agree with it. I would probably not go for PPC anymore anytime and would suggest an FPGA solution that seems very promising. At this time, it's probably a bit too early for a mass market (the power/price ratio is probably still not good enough, but this will change by itself), but it's the right time to trigger an initial development.
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Thomas Hirsch has a working work of art in the Natami which is wasting away but could be rejuvenated with investment.
Make a gosh-darned Kickstarter for it. I'd throw in a couple thousand bucks, I'm sure others would as well. I thought Natami died due to in-fighting and petty squabbles, however? Just like all (most) good Amiga projects. *sigh* :(
Dreaming about cheap CSPPC's and whatnot is pointless, for all the aforementioned reasons. Pricing to buy the board designs, ROHS, etc., etc.
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Make a gosh-darned Kickstarter for it. I'd throw in a couple thousand bucks, I'm sure others would as well. I thought Natami died due to in-fighting and petty squabbles, however? Just like all (most) good Amiga projects. *sigh* :(
Dreaming about cheap CSPPC's and whatnot is pointless, for all the aforementioned reasons. Pricing to buy the board designs, ROHS, etc., etc.
No Natami was (in opposite to public impression) a one-man project by Thomas Hirsch, he could have published it in recent years but obviously did not manage to. I think I heared there were RAM-timing problems but do not know the "hardware stuff" too deep :). In short... reason certainly was not because of natami forum discussions or other people.
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for those who, like me, do not look out for ppc much, here is an open source 030 accelerator project, that can be later used to attach fpga to 030 cpu bus.
https://github.com/Sakura-IT/decelerator4030
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No Natami was (in opposite to public impression) a one-man project by Thomas Hirsch, he could have published it in recent years but obviously did not manage to. I think I heared there were RAM-timing problems but do not know the "hardware stuff" too deep :). In short... reason certainly was not because of natami forum discussions or other people.
Thanks for the clarification! I'm sure I will forget and post erroneous information again, maybe I should just bookmark this comment, lol. :D
Still disappointed about how that all played out. I have very little interest in MiniMig, MiST, FPGA Arcade, and whatever all the other gazillion Amiga clones and derivatives are. But I would've bought the heck out of Natami. :( :(
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I'm not so sure that selling both the Amiga and a PC were a mistake
It was not just to sell two competing platforms problematic. It was to manufacture AND sell them.
Is Amiga performance or compatibility more important?
Reducing a problem to one or two questions can sometimes be dangerous.
We should begin by defining compatibility type:
hardware or software (well, okay, here, there are only two questions)?
In general, compatibility and performance should not exclude each other, I would say they are complementary.
The problem lies rather be in their subordination.
And yes, yesterday the 68k was condemned to disappear, mainly because of technological limitations. But is it still valid?
Today, FPGA technology seems promising because it appears to allow to overcome certain constraints.
What is interesting with the FPGA is the abstraction part. This should help to reduce dependence on this technology.
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this is the closest i can find for you. i am sure i have this mmcd update ..somewhere.?
i will keep looking.
http://www.ppa.pl/programy/instalacja-warp3d.html
translated
Here are my versions of system files mediator (as at 19 July 2005.), Which ran the 3D support. Therefore, the files contained's see, among others, in the package MediatorUP_3.9.lha (my current version): February 17, 2002
W3D_Picasso96M.library 4.2 17 lutego 2002 Libs:Warp3D/GFXdrivers
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@matthey,
Well stated, thank you!
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this is the closest i can find for you. i am sure i have this mmcd update ..somewhere.?
i will keep looking.
W3D_Picasso96M.library 4.2 17 lutego 2002 Libs:Warp3D/GFXdrivers
This W3D archive listing at your link shows a W3D_Picasso96M.library with the new date but no W3D_Picasso96MU.library with a new date. This looks like more evidence that the updated library does not exist and the information on Elbox's web site is incorrect. IMO, the chances of the Elbox web site being wrong is greater than the chance that updated W3D archives were sent out missing this updated library. It may be that a bug or problem was found in the library and it was removed from the archive but the listing was never updated.
It was not just to sell two competing platforms problematic. It was to manufacture AND sell them.
Once again, there are synergies and economies of scale if properly managed. More of the same cases and power supplies with different stickers could have been used, a few of the same chips and screws could have been bought in larger quantity for both, larger manufacturers can negotiate better prices even if the products vary, etc. Did C= take advantage? Well, it looks like management is where they failed. I expect the PC manufacturing changed a lot over the years from doing a lot of in house production to contracting most of the work to Asia which is how it is done today (and with razor thin margins).
Reducing a problem to one or two questions can sometimes be dangerous.
We should begin by defining compatibility type:
hardware or software (well, okay, here, there are only two questions)?
In general, compatibility and performance should not exclude each other, I would say they are complementary.
Compatibility and improved performance are possible at the same time but rarely complimentary in my experience. Compatibility depends on what technology is used to improve performance. Replacing a CISC CPU (the brain of the computer) with a RISC CPU is not exactly a minor transplant and is bound to have compatibility issues even if it is also big endian. Removing the custom chips also unnecessarily decreases compatibility considering their minor cost in modern hardware.
And yes, yesterday the 68k was condemned to disappear, mainly because of technological limitations. But is it still valid?
The 68k disappeared for management and marketing reasons and not technological limitations. The 68060 overcame every 68k obstacle. It became RISC internally with a modern instruction pipeline. Instruction decoding was improved so that it was no longer a bottleneck but, rather, the naturally compact code became an asset saving caches and memory. The 68k has most of the advantages of the x86 except the code is simpler to decode, the code is more compact, the CPU has more mostly general purpose registers and it is easier to program and debug. The older x86 proved to be adequately powerful and the 68k is a more modern and logical design. The industry keeps ignoring the advantages of CISC while RISC designs like SPARC, MIPS and PPC (ARMv8 to be determined) never live up to expectations. IMO, the 68k has great potential.
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Thanks for the clarification! I'm sure I will forget and post erroneous information again, maybe I should just bookmark this comment, lol. :D
Still disappointed about how that all played out. I have very little interest in MiniMig, MiST, FPGA Arcade, and whatever all the other gazillion Amiga clones and derivatives are. But I would've bought the heck out of Natami. :( :(
Natami would have been very expensive in fact, you would have get a very good equipped PC for that (part prices without soldering) so I do not think that the market would have been very big. Some would have bought it of course. A standalone device would be nice in future and is one of the future ideas for the apollo project. But first they should get the accellerators out.
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Natami would have been very expensive in fact, you would have get a very good equipped PC for that (part prices without soldering) so I do not think that the market would have been very big. Some would have bought it of course. A standalone device would be nice in future and is one of the future ideas for the apollo project. But first they should get the accellerators out.
Thomas was making the Natami with the high quality and many features he wanted. Yes, it would have been expensive in small quantity orders that were expected but cheap compared to AmigaOS 4 hardware. No pre-order numbers for production boards were gathered that I know of but I believe the interest was under estimated. The Natami MX bringup thread has 729k reads!
http://www.natami.net/knowledge.php?b=1¬e=33366
If everyone looked at the thread 100 times, there would be 7296 interested people with no advertising! Natami cost estimates were likely conservative and based on small quantities. The Natami value is highly dependent on the performance of the CPU and the FPGA CPUs at that time were not as mature or fast (a real 68060 was much more cost). The price of FPGAs has dropped significantly since then. It may be affordable to use an FPGA with SerDes now for SATA/PCIe which may allow the board to be smaller and cheaper. It may be possible for the ethernet chip to be removed and driven by the FPGA directly as planned for the Apollo sandwich accelerator. The board would probably need at least a partial redesign depending on availability and price of parts like DDR2 to DDR3. The Natami, like the original Amiga, was ahead of its time but it would be easier to offer more value today.
http://www.natami.net/gfx/NatAmi64_MX/natamipinout.png
Weren't the Natami problems cache coherency problems? I had the impression that Thomas was trying to speed up the custom chips to what the hardware is capable of. Even the gfx speed up of the FPGA Arcade or Mist over AGA is huge and more would likely be possible in a higher spec Natami.
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Once again, there are synergies and economies of scale if properly managed.
Yes, this principle has worked so well that the Amiga has paid the price of these economies.
On another level, the first Amiga still operate today. Can we expect the same of today's components? I have serious doubts ...
Compatibility and improved performance are possible at the same time but rarely complimentary in my experience. Compatibility depends on what technology is used to improve performance. Replacing a CISC CPU (the brain of the computer) with a RISC CPU is not exactly a minor transplant and is bound to have compatibility issues even if it is also big endian. Removing the custom chips also unnecessarily decreases compatibility considering their minor cost in modern hardware.
I am neither for nor against the idea of using a processor again. I just think it's too early to think about it; the situation of the Amiga does not allow it.
The FPGA seems to me the best option.
If you want a hardware that is not 100% compatible, the problem would be to know where to place the cursor between compatibility and performance.
Now, if you want a hardware that is 100% compatible, this problem disappears.
The 68k disappeared for management and marketing reasons and not technological limitations.
The disadvantage was that the CISC warming faster than the RISC. Its operating frequency was clamped.
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Thomas was making the Natami with the high quality and many features he wanted. Yes, it would have been expensive in small quantity orders that were expected but cheap compared to AmigaOS 4 hardware. No pre-order numbers for production boards were gathered that I know of but I believe the interest was under estimated. The Natami MX bringup thread has 729k reads!
http://www.natami.net/knowledge.php?b=1¬e=33366
If everyone looked at the thread 100 times, there would be 7296 interested people with no advertising! Natami cost estimates were likely conservative and based on small quantities. The Natami value is highly dependent on the performance of the CPU and the FPGA CPUs at that time were not as mature or fast (a real 68060 was much more cost). The price of FPGAs has dropped significantly since then. It may be affordable to use an FPGA with SerDes now for SATA/PCIe which may allow the board to be smaller and cheaper. It may be possible for the ethernet chip to be removed and driven by the FPGA directly as planned for the Apollo sandwich accelerator. The board would probably need at least a partial redesign depending on availability and price of parts like DDR2 to DDR3. The Natami, like the original Amiga, was ahead of its time but it would be easier to offer more value today.
http://www.natami.net/gfx/NatAmi64_MX/natamipinout.png
Weren't the Natami problems cache coherency problems? I had the impression that Thomas was trying to speed up the custom chips to what the hardware is capable of. Even the gfx speed up of the FPGA Arcade or Mist over AGA is huge and more would likely be possible in a higher spec Natami.
a lot of "if" in your sentence... of course in bigger quantities production and component prices are cheaper but I have seen no realistic calculation of it only the situation at that point of time. And at that point of time it would have been too expensive for many. We need a lift of the whole hardware base and not just 100 or 200 sold systems.
Regarding problems I think I read RAM timing problems but I cannot say more about it because not being involved there. In any case the problems obviously were so relevant that the whole project stalled.
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The FPGA seems to me the best option.
If you want a hardware that is not 100% compatible, the problem would be to know where to place the cursor between compatibility and performance.
I guess you have zero idea of what is really the word "developping" on Classics...
For myself, it's extremly difficult : zillions problems all the time, insane bugs, forum trollers, no answer from those who can help you, very few users help, ennemis, hardware worked fine yesterday and fail the next day, false friends, psychic attacks, money problems and many many more crazy things...
Try to do something (coding, new hardware, various hacks...) on Classics, and you will see...
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Regarding problems I think I read RAM timing problems but I cannot say more about it because not being involved there. In any case the problems obviously were so relevant that the whole project stalled.
Not really RAM timing, but the problem was to pipeline the blitter *and* stay compatible with the original. The current FPGA implementation does not really use the full power of the FPGA for blitter emulation, it is more a step-by-step implementation. It could be made much faster by bundling the RAM accesses and fetch several words at once, similar to bursting (as far as I understand it).
The problem is that this also limits compatibility. With the original blitter, you can in principle configure your output register (channel D) such that it writes "in front of" the input registers (A,B,C), i.e. the input channels can see what the output writes, *if* you know the exact timing of the blitter, and which channel allocates which DMA time slot.
With any type of pipelining in place, this type of "trick" no longer works. The input registers would have their input already buffered since a long time before the buffered output ever appears on the bus, and hence blitter functionality would then be different.
As always "no sane programmer" would have done that, but a lot of insane programming (called "hacking") was done on the Amiga... So it was again a problem of finding the right balance between speed and compatibility. With blitter prefetching active, probably a handful of "programs" (as in demos) would not run anymore correctly, but this would again cause an outcry of those who love that stuff...
Thus, one of the big problems here is really of finding the "sweet spot" between compatibility and speed. All Os4 and friends/foes cut compatibility at "source code level" (as in "you have to recompile"). This would be ok for an open source platform, but Amiga was none. Natami tried at "hardware register level", but maybe that's already asking a bit too much, and probably the cause for its failure.
Having a blitter is probably a "must have", but do we really need to emulate every nonsense that was done back then in the early days? *That* is the big question.
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Not really RAM timing, but the problem was to pipeline the blitter *and* stay compatible with the original. The current FPGA implementation does not really use the full power of the FPGA for blitter emulation, it is more a step-by-step implementation. It could be made much faster by bundling the RAM accesses and fetch several words at once, similar to bursting (as far as I understand it).
The problem is that this also limits compatibility. With the original blitter, you can in principle configure your output register (channel D) such that it writes "in front of" the input registers (A,B,C), i.e. the input channels can see what the output writes, *if* you know the exact timing of the blitter, and which channel allocates which DMA time slot.
With any type of pipelining in place, this type of "trick" no longer works. The input registers would have their input already buffered since a long time before the buffered output ever appears on the bus, and hence blitter functionality would then be different.
As always "no sane programmer" would have done that, but a lot of insane programming (called "hacking") was done on the Amiga... So it was again a problem of finding the right balance between speed and compatibility. With blitter prefetching active, probably a handful of "programs" (as in demos) would not run anymore correctly, but this would again cause an outcry of those who love that stuff...
Thus, one of the big problems here is really of finding the "sweet spot" between compatibility and speed. All Os4 and friends/foes cut compatibility at "source code level" (as in "you have to recompile"). This would be ok for an open source platform, but Amiga was none. Natami tried at "hardware register level", but maybe that's already asking a bit too much, and probably the cause for its failure.
Having a blitter is probably a "must have", but do we really need to emulate every nonsense that was done back then in the early days? *That* is the big question.
thanks for explanation
interesting read
my personal 2 cents... who prefers compatibility as highest priority is better off with FPGA Arcade or Mist. The new apollo cards (and Natami) should be for new software mainly so in doubt having faster and more advanced hardware implementation is more important than that every old game or demo works correctly.
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If it's gonna end up as yet another NG system nobody will want it.
I don't think this is were it's headed though.Set goal was compatibility with old chipsets (as in recreated) and addition of fastest possible CPU and RTG.
That way you only increase number of (useful or not so much) applications.
As for Natami , what was the point of better Blitter anyway ? Was there gonna be a lot of new games written for it ? Better option was to add C2p (Akiko?) or just put FBlit in kickstart.
If you look at old Capcom System 1 games like Final Fight they actually use "slowness" of 68000 at some parts of game like when there is many enemies to give "slow motion" effect.I don't think that was bad coding and demos are made for specific hardware not for future compatibility.
Compatibility should be balanced between number of sw pieces that you "loose" to gain advantage.
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If it's gonna end up as yet another NG system nobody will want it.
I don't think this is were it's headed though.Set goal was compatibility with old chipsets (as in recreated) and addition of fastest possible CPU and RTG.
Well, that's probably a bit harsh. "Nobody" is surely not correct (I would have wanted one), and I wouldn't have been afraid of a bit of blitter incompatibility as long as the os level routines still work fine (which is surely true if you don't try stupid things). At least it would have made the blitter "useful" again, in the sense of "the blitter is faster than the CPU". As for Natami , what was the point of better Blitter anyway ? Was there gonna be a lot of new games written for it ? Better option was to add C2p (Akiko?) or just put FBlit in kickstart.
It's not about games. At least not for me. It's about having a 256 color workbench that renders at acceptable speed without depending on the full patch-o-rama an RTG system is.
And please, can be forget Aikiko? It really doesn't do anything useful. It's just a small set of passive registers that doesn't do much. If Aikiko would have included a DMA engine or could have been combined with the blitter, that would have created a couple of useful applications, but the "el-cheapo" implementation CBM went for was good for almost nothing. It's really only a single register where you push in "chunky data", serially, one by one, by the CPU, and another register where you can fetch the planar data from.
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Well not a problem if you loose even 10 or 30 % of hardcoded software titles but as long as you gain more usage out of those that benefit and you couldn't use before.
Problem I see is that DPaint or Protracker won't really need anything more than memory or faster CPU.Even faster CPU won't make anyone type/draw/create tracks faster.From what I've seen it either works with old stuff or it just doesn't , somewhere in between could be very nice and you can always fit FPGA with slower/more compatible core (I hope).
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Not really RAM timing, but the problem was to pipeline the blitter *and* stay compatible with the original. The current FPGA implementation does not really use the full power of the FPGA for blitter emulation, it is more a step-by-step implementation. It could be made much faster by bundling the RAM accesses and fetch several words at once, similar to bursting (as far as I understand it).
The problem is that this also limits compatibility. With the original blitter, you can in principle configure your output register (channel D) such that it writes "in front of" the input registers (A,B,C), i.e. the input channels can see what the output writes, *if* you know the exact timing of the blitter, and which channel allocates which DMA time slot.
With any type of pipelining in place, this type of "trick" no longer works. The input registers would have their input already buffered since a long time before the buffered output ever appears on the bus, and hence blitter functionality would then be different.
...
Having a blitter is probably a "must have", but do we really need to emulate every nonsense that was done back then in the early days? *That* is the big question.
I don't see this is a show stopper at all. I would leave a compatible hardware blitter, perhaps with a global turbo mode bit which can be set for some speedup with less compatibility. Add an SIMD to the 68k and patch/change the AmigaOS and blit functions to use it for new software. The hardware blitter takes minimal logic so there is minimal waste. Gunnar has suggested adding an SIMD and using it to replace the blitter. From his forum posts, it sounded like he had even suggested it to ThomasH. Supposedly, they worked out an agreement for SAGA and CPU technology sharing so maybe the idea was well received.
Well, that's probably a bit harsh. "Nobody" is surely not correct (I would have wanted one), and I wouldn't have been afraid of a bit of blitter incompatibility as long as the os level routines still work fine (which is surely true if you don't try stupid things). At least it would have made the blitter "useful" again, in the sense of "the blitter is faster than the CPU". It's not about games. At least not for me. It's about having a 256 color workbench that renders at acceptable speed without depending on the full patch-o-rama an RTG system is.
The classic AmigaOS needs to go back into development. Better compatibility between AmigaOS 4.x and classic would make developing for a larger user base much easier. FPGA technology may allow the larger classic user base to expand quicker also. AmigaOS 4.x has an updated graphics.library supporting RTG now. Standards would also be helpful so we don't have a bunch of incompatible patched up classics. A-Eon could make it happen, and act half way interested, but the classic does not seem to be a priority.
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I guess you have zero idea of what is really the word "developping" on Classics...
Sometimes you seem rough.
For myself, it's extremly difficult : zillions problems all the time, insane bugs, forum trollers, no answer from those who can help you, very few users help, ennemis, hardware worked fine yesterday and fail the next day, false friends, psychic attacks, money problems and many many more crazy things...
Who said you it will be easy?
Try to do something (coding, new hardware, various hacks...) on Classics, and you will see...
Already done. Try to develop a network card for an A2000 OS 1.3, with an A590 and an A2090A as only examples. You will see, it's very funny. You will learn a lot of unnecessary things.