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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Lemaru on January 22, 2016, 12:29:09 PM

Title: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: Lemaru on January 22, 2016, 12:29:09 PM
Chaps,

So I am looking at getting back into the world of Amiga and am torn between just going the emulation route, or getting hold of a Vampire v2 for one of my A600's.

My question is regarding the performance, and which would give the better results. I am no longer interested in gaming on the Amiga so it would be used for productivity stuff, Amos, AmigaE, BBS, etc.

I know most people would say to go for the real hardware. I already have an A500 and a couple of A600's, and an old Apollo A630 50Mhz which i never got working stably in either machine.

So is the FPGA route going to give me anything that isn't available to me running WinUAE on my i7? What's the speed difference likely to be, does anyone have any benchmarks or Sysinfo grabs to show off?

Also if going for a Vampire when they are available I can see this costing a fortune as I have plans to tower my A600, get a custom backplate made up for the case, extend all ports to the back, few expansions and such which so far all the bits tallies up to £300ish

Anyways, any thoughts, comments or info most appreciated. Ta
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: Hattig on January 22, 2016, 01:08:05 PM
As always when upgrading old hardware, you are still working with old hardware.

The Vampire is an amazing card, but it's still coupled to the rest of the A600. On the other hand, at least it is a real Amiga still. Also I don't see this CPU core coming to other FPGA Amigas soon.

WinUAE works with your current PC, it is fast, it works at native resolutions. Underneath it all however is still Windows - albeit a far more reasonable Windows than in the past. Considering I thought UAE was pretty good 18 years ago running it on a P2-266, it's going to be more than adequate today!

There's always the middle ground of a Raspberry Pi 2 or Odroid C1+ board running a Linux UAE variant or Aros to consider too, if you just get that distaste about x86 and Windows.
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: Lemaru on January 22, 2016, 01:34:09 PM
Quote from: Hattig;802667
There's always the middle ground of a Raspberry Pi 2 or Odroid C1+ board running a Linux UAE variant or Aros to consider too, if you just get that distaste about x86 and Windows.


I did look into using the Pi as I have a couple doing nothing. It looks like all the emu builds are aimed more at gaming rather than using it for anything else though
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: Duce on January 22, 2016, 01:41:42 PM
Fun thing about UAE is you can disable all the Windows  bits you want and boot right into WB.

See the one x86/UAE guide for details.  I've had a Windows box booting into 3.9 that you never, ever see Windows in the least.  It's so Amiga like that if I hook an Amiga keyboard and mouse up to it and hide the PC tower under the desk it'll fool even the biggest Amiga purists into thinking they are running on the fastest Amiga they have ever run, lol.

Then again, I like modern hardware.  I detest the concept of paying $200 for a NIC for a 20 year old machine, or having to replace caps, or cobble together some A1200 tower that is assured to never be entirely stable.  I've run a BBS off this straight to UAE machine for over a year without ever rebooting the thing.  It's power efficient and entirely silent, an older AMD based rig that runs circles around even the fastest '060 boxes I ever owned.

I've never been too particular about what runs my Amiga experience, as long as it runs it well.  I've had terrific luck with emu boxes, and they are easy to set up without ever having to see one inch of Windoze past setting them up.

Never did understand the mental mindblock people have on the various different solutions, esp when all of them can be a sheer fun and bulletproof experience.  And I say that as someone who owns PPC 4.1 machines, MOS rigs, one lone legacy Amiga still, and a number of emu boxes, including a windows based straight to 3.9/never see Windows at all machine and an Amithlon machine.
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: Iggy on January 22, 2016, 02:32:31 PM
Quote from: Duce;802670
...Never did understand the metal mindblock people have on the various different solutions, esp when all of them can be a sheer fun and bulletproof experience.  And I say that as someone who owns PPC 4.1 machines, MOS rigs, one lone legacy Amiga still, and a number of emu boxes, including a windows based straight to 3.9/never see Windows at all machine and an Amithlon machine.


F'ing A right.
+1
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: DutchinUSA on January 22, 2016, 02:34:44 PM
"See the one x86/UAE guide for details"

Which one are you recommending? Link please :)
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: guest11527 on January 22, 2016, 03:03:55 PM
Quote from: ming;802666
Chaps,

So I am looking at getting back into the world of Amiga and am torn between just going the emulation route, or getting hold of a Vampire v2 for one of my A600's.

My question is regarding the performance, and which would give the better results. I am no longer interested in gaming on the Amiga so it would be used for productivity stuff, Amos, AmigaE, BBS, etc.

Frankly, I never had a vampire in my hand (I'm only programming for it. ;-), though it seems to be an amazing card. I would probably expect a couple of early-adaptor problems, i.e. there might probably be some issues here and there with the CPU or the graphics. But that will go away sooner or later.

I never really got happy with the emulators. Strangly enough, its the "small problems" that irritate me. Keyboard, to name one (my fingers are hard-coded to the Amiga keyboard, sorry, and the one extra key with the backslash near backspace), usability of the two-window solution on a shared desktop, shared mouse. I would have expected that performance problems should probably be resolved these days with more capable hardware, though strangly enough, the P96 emulation still crawls for bizarre reasons on my i5 desktop after startup. The problem goes away after a while. I don't know why and what's going on there. As soon as task-switching is involved, the emulation seems to hit its limits.

Then again, the vampire does not fit into my A2000, and I wouldn't expect a version for the big-box amigas any time soon, due to the increased complexity of the system (but one never knows.., so keep fingers crossed). I'm more a fan of the big boxes rather than the keyboard versions, and I wouldn't want to buy an A600 just to be able to run a vampire in it, so my A2000 will have to last for a while.

Thus, if you're a "keyboard Amiga user" and not afraid of a couple of typical "startup" problems, I would say you should go for it. It's at least a very cool development.
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: Aegis on January 22, 2016, 03:19:32 PM
For pure performance, your i7 running WinUAE will completely smoke the Vampire - that said, with a Vampire onboard, the A600 will be the fastest silicon Amiga ever made and there's something incredibly cool about that.

Vampire's only part of the equation though since the 600 is still a machine rooted in the 90's - sure you can get stuff done on it but there's little modern software available for OS 3.9 (and not that much choice on PPC/4.1 to be honest) - just trying to browse the web on a 68k Amiga is an exercise in futility.

WinUAE on a PC gives you a nostalgic Amiga fix whenever you feel like it and allows you run just about any piece of modern software available when the need's there - maybe something like A-Eon's upcoming ALICE laptop would work for you?
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: guest11527 on January 22, 2016, 03:47:20 PM
Quote from: Aegis;802760
For pure performance, your i7 running WinUAE will completely smoke the Vampire
Surprisingly, it does not always. It's really bizarre. After startup, I can see the workbench repaint the background tile by tile, really slooooow. Then, after a minute or so, the machine gets a boost and everything is fast. I don't know exactly what's the problem here - though this should probably go into a separate thread.

It isn't winuae, though, but one of the Linux clones of it.

Quote from: Aegis;802760
- that said, with a Vampire onboard, the A600 will be the fastest silicon Amiga ever made and there's something incredibly cool about that.
Even more so as it is a homebrew development.



Quote from: Aegis;802760
maybe something like A-Eon's upcoming ALICE laptop would work for you?

I don't know. Do you have a link handy?
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: wawrzon on January 22, 2016, 04:44:17 PM
Quote from: Thomas Richter;802763
Surprisingly, it does not always. It's really bizarre. After startup, I can see the workbench repaint the background tile by tile, really slooooow. Then, after a minute or so, the machine gets a boost and everything is fast. I don't know exactly what's the problem here - though this should probably go into a separate thread.

It isn't winuae, though, but one of the Linux clones of it.


you must be using some uae without jit. i know the pain on it running the fs-uae with jit off on debian within a vm on my tablet pc. its slow as hell, feels probably like an 020/14. unfortunatelly its necessary to let jit off to test my code, so in this respect vampire would be easily faster than even winuae on a reasonably fast pc hardware, i have compared the benchmarks. with jit turned on, though, its another matter. i cant seriously think of fpga catching up with that ever.

Quote

Even more so as it is a homebrew development.


right. this is awesome.

Quote

I don't know. Do you have a link handy?


i doubt a laptop preconfigured with uae is anything one couldnt do all by himself. executing application on a host from within the emulation seems to be a gimmick there. everybody needs to decide himself, how much such feature is desired.
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: Acill on January 22, 2016, 05:15:29 PM
I have an A4000T that has just about everything you can put in it for performance including a CSPPC with 4.1FE running, mediator with all the PCI cards you could ever want, nearly 1GB of fast RAM now and so on.

The latest version of UAE with CSPPC support is amazing. I have been playing with my WinUAE setup all week and making it match the real A4000T. I am using the same install cloned over. I can say it blows away the real hardware in every way. The coolest thing about it is the ease at adding new "hardware" and RAM is endless if I want I to be. I have 128GB on my Mac Pro. I boot into Windows on it for WinUAE and it runs FAST.

I am seriously considering getting a broken Amiga case and putting a modern PC motherboard into it and an interface to use a real keyboard. Once setup properly you can boot directly into the Amiga environment with no windows as mentioned. It feels just like a real Amiga at that point. I have seen others do it, and unless told you have no idea.
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: Aegis on January 22, 2016, 05:24:31 PM
Quote from: Thomas Richter;802763
Surprisingly, it does not always. It's really bizarre. After startup, I can see the workbench repaint the background tile by tile, really slooooow. Then, after a minute or so, the machine gets a boost and everything is fast.

Sorry Thomas, my post was directed at ming - shoulda been more clear :D

That said, yeah - WinUAE on an i7 is stupid fast - faster than there's any real need for an Amiga to be (unless you're doing 3D rendering on it I suppose) - not sure why your choice of UAE has issues but some ports take longer to get the latest developments/fixes from WinUAE.

Quote from: Thomas Richter;802763
I don't know. Do you have a link handy?

Again, that was a suggestion for ming :D A-Eon's ALICE is an Acer laptop running a custom build of Puppy Linux (AmiPup) and WinUAE with preinstalled AmiKit X and ROMs/AmigaOS 3.X from Cloanto.

It runs a full-screen AmigaOS environment but allows you to open native Linux apps and Wine-supported Windows apps directly on the AmiKit desktop - as wawzon mentioned, not much there you couldn't do yourself (apart from the seamless app stuff which is unique to ALICE) but as a complete package for someone that wants a pimped-out 68k Amiga laptop with the convenience of running modern applications I can see it having some appeal.

Oh, you have the option of running OS4.1 on it too but given that QEmu isn't blazing fast even on an i7 (though still faster than a Cyberstorm PPC) I suspect that's going to be a curiosity more than anything else.

*Edit* For anyone that's interested - here's a quick 50fps .mp4 (https://tinyurl.com/juhc6lc) I made (117 MB) showing WinUAE on an i7 running Quake/TVPaint/PPaint/Image FX - it's 720x540 'cause that's the resolution I run my desktop at (3.9 looks weird @ 1440x1080).

Best to download it 'cause Dropbox's movie player is terribad.
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: kipper2k on January 22, 2016, 08:05:07 PM
Quote from: Thomas Richter;802675


Then again, the vampire does not fit into my A2000, and I wouldn't expect a version for the big-box amigas any time soon, due to the increased complexity of the system (but one never knows.., so keep fingers crossed). I'm more a fan of the big boxes rather than the keyboard versions, and I wouldn't want to buy an A600 just to be able to run a vampire in it, so my A2000 will have to last for a while.


In theory the A500 version will also work/fit in the A2000, if you dont want to place it in the CPU socket due to a mini megi chip or other addon then it can be placed in the co=processor slot. It would be  simple enough to make a small little adapter to make it fit there :)
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: Oldsmobile_Mike on January 22, 2016, 08:16:43 PM
Quote from: kipper2k;802778
In theory the A500 version will also work/fit in the A2000, if you dont want to place it in the CPU socket due to a mini megi chip or other addon then it can be placed in the co=processor slot. It would be  simple enough to make a small little adapter to make it fit there :)

Curious on your thoughts how would that interact with Zorro expansions?
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: Duce on January 22, 2016, 09:34:23 PM
Quote from: DutchinUSA;802673
"See the one x86/UAE guide for details"

Which one are you recommending? Link please :)

http://wowohl.de/Amiga_XP_x86.pdf

An older one, and for XP, but can fairly easily be adapted for a more modern version of Windows.  Can strip the cruft out of Vista or 7 just as easily as you can XP, and get the underlying Windoze OS underneath (which if you do things right, you'll never see anyways) as lean as possible, then out of the way entirely.

Only reason I'd not recommend XP is due to MS no longer supporting it on the consumer side, and the risk of underlying security vulnerabilities that come with that.

I've used this guide many a time for a dedicated UAE box where Windows is entirely invisible in the end and had nothing but luck with it, anyways, so good luck!

Could just as easily do it with Amikit or something as well.  It's not as fast of a solution as a dedicated Amithlon machine, but it's a hell of a lot less work and infinitely less finicky, hardware wise.  An Amithlon box is hard to beat if you have the right hardware for it, though - but this stripped down version involving windows and UAE works just fine too.

I've just got an Intel NUC type system (think Mac Mini footprint - mine is a Zotac, actually, not a NUC) on a VESA mount on the back of my monitor.  While I prefer modern, mechanical keyboards and laser mouse to the old Amiga legacy stuff, there's no reason you couldn't hook a big box Amiga keyboard and Amiga mouse up to such a machine for a more authentic "feel", with the proper adapters.

That seems to be the main gripe against UAE, anyways - "but it doesn't feel like an amiga with a PC keyboard and mouse!".  Well, use an Amiga keyboard and mouse then, strip Windows out entirely and boot 'er into WB right off the bat, and most Amiga fanboys wouldn't know the difference if they couldn't see the physical box running it.  :)
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: kreciu on January 22, 2016, 11:04:45 PM
... and from my point of view. Real Amiga hardware gives this "fun" of building it, collecting parts over time etc. I'm personally more interested in hardware part of Amiga hobby then software.

In case of UAE... I can get per-configured AmiKit and be still disappointed that there is not useful web browser (software that 99% of people use today ALL THE TIME!). Even FAST, I mean SUPER FAST AmigaOS on PC is basically useless at this point.

Windows 95 would do better...

I also like to listen to modules on real Paula and be amazed how well they sound on my original (old caps) A1200 :) - just get some nicer speakers!
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: DutchinUSA on January 22, 2016, 11:32:02 PM
Ok, cool .. that's the same one that I found after reading your post Duce .. hehe.

I just like to find something to do with some of these older machines that I got, I hate throwing stuff out that is still functional ... which is a bit of a problem in itself :)

I think it all started when my mom & dad's dryer broke down and they were ready to throw it out and buy a new one .. instead I opened her up and installed a new belt and they used that dryer for several more years .. :laughing:
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: zylesea on January 23, 2016, 12:11:58 AM
Quote from: ming;802666
Chaps,

So I am looking at getting back into the world of Amiga and am torn between just going the emulation route, or getting hold of a Vampire v2 for one of my A600's.

My question is regarding the performance, and which would give the better results. I am no longer interested in gaming on the Amiga so it would be used for productivity stuff, Amos, AmigaE, BBS, etc.

I know most people would say to go for the real hardware. I already have an A500 and a couple of A600's, and an old Apollo A630 50Mhz which i never got working stably in either machine.

So is the FPGA route going to give me anything that isn't available to me running WinUAE on my i7? What's the speed difference likely to be, does anyone have any benchmarks or Sysinfo grabs to show off?

Also if going for a Vampire when they are available I can see this costing a fortune as I have plans to tower my A600, get a custom backplate made up for the case, extend all ports to the back, few expansions and such which so far all the bits tallies up to £300ish

Anyways, any thoughts, comments or info most appreciated. Ta


I was a happy WinUAE user on a PIII laptop back in the early 2000s parallel to my A1200/40+ppc. It was a pretty good workhorse and much faster than the A1200/40. It's the easy way to get back into Amiga. Close to no money investment.
If you then feel the desire to get real silicon you still can do.
Eventually I gave up WinUAE when MorphOS reached a good stability and switched completely to it. But I have good memories to WinUAE and I particularly liked it to use Windows and Amiga parallely on one machine.
I plan to get a Vampire myself though to get my fix in retro computing. Somehow this card appeals me. But rather for toying with it than to make my old A600 a workhorse again.
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: kreciu on January 23, 2016, 01:05:51 AM
Quote from: DutchinUSA;802794
I think it all started when my mom & dad's dryer broke down and they were ready to throw it out and buy a new one .. instead I opened her up and installed a new belt and they used that dryer for several more years .. :laughing:

It also started with my father and his cars... Now I have Chevy Impala 2000 with 187000 miles on it and I can do 1500 miles trip in -20C winter going 75miles/h constant and get 26 miles/gallon... I hope to get it up to let say 250000 or more. I think value of this car is like $1000 :).

Same with A1200, but I need to wait for new Vamipre for it... and I can "drive it" for next 20 years.

BTW. Best possible recycling is it reuse stuff or use it until DEAD.

BTW2. I will try not to write off topic :), it is sooooo tempting...
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: kipper2k on January 23, 2016, 01:29:13 AM
Quote from: Oldsmobile_Mike;802779
Curious on your thoughts how would that interact with Zorro expansions?


hmm, k, my thoughts on this are...


 what other options do i need  (at least for my own personal use), I'll have accelerator, RAM. HD, SD, Massive HDD space... i think that fulfils all my needs, not to forget SAGA and FPU as well, The core is still in its infancy, it is growing as we speak.
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: IanP on January 23, 2016, 03:36:12 AM
Since (win)UAE is free and most people have hardware to run it I see no reason not to install it. However, the Apollo core on the Vampire will open up new possibilities for the Amiga which if taken advantage of will bring new levels of performance to the classics. The Apollo core takes the 68K CPU forward several generations. If you want to use a real Amiga then the Vampire is the best upgrade path for it.
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: QuikSanz on January 23, 2016, 04:09:45 AM
Quote from: kipper2k;802801
hmm, k, my thoughts on this are...


 what other options do i need  (at least for my own personal use), I'll have accelerator, RAM. HD, SD, Massive HDD space... i think that fulfils all my needs, not to forget SAGA and FPU as well, The core is still in its infancy, it is growing as we speak.

Would be nice to have it share resources for lets say RTG, sound and other peripherals.

Chris
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: QuikSanz on January 23, 2016, 05:20:53 AM
I now looked and see you have "True Color" display but are there any aux audio inputs for example audio from CDROM?
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: slimf on January 23, 2016, 08:08:13 AM
If you were into gaming I would have said real Amiga or mist. / fpga replay with a real CRT like a 1084s.

But productivity, Win UAE will be a good start.
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: guest11527 on January 23, 2016, 08:24:04 AM
Quote from: kipper2k;802778
In theory the A500 version will also work/fit in the A2000, if you dont want to place it in the CPU socket due to a mini megi chip or other addon then it can be placed in the co=processor slot. It would be  simple enough to make a small little adapter to make it fit there :)

Let's put it like this: I do not know enough about the electrical and mechanical implications of it, but there are a couple of software implications I'm worried about. The major trouble is DMA on Zorro - you not only need to get the protocol for the CPU right, you also need to be aware of caching issues with zorro.

One way or another, you need some (albeit simple) MMU to control caching at DMA boundaries or you run into the risk of corrupting data due to DMA and cache interaction. The technical details are a bit complicated but I can explain them when needed.
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: OlafS3 on January 23, 2016, 11:15:30 AM
Quote from: ming;802666
Chaps,

So I am looking at getting back into the world of Amiga and am torn between just going the emulation route, or getting hold of a Vampire v2 for one of my A600's.

My question is regarding the performance, and which would give the better results. I am no longer interested in gaming on the Amiga so it would be used for productivity stuff, Amos, AmigaE, BBS, etc.

I know most people would say to go for the real hardware. I already have an A500 and a couple of A600's, and an old Apollo A630 50Mhz which i never got working stably in either machine.

So is the FPGA route going to give me anything that isn't available to me running WinUAE on my i7? What's the speed difference likely to be, does anyone have any benchmarks or Sysinfo grabs to show off?

Also if going for a Vampire when they are available I can see this costing a fortune as I have plans to tower my A600, get a custom backplate made up for the case, extend all ports to the back, few expansions and such which so far all the bits tallies up to £300ish

Anyways, any thoughts, comments or info most appreciated. Ta

I think UAE and Vampire/Apollo are so to say twins, both need each other. I think 68k as a target for new software is not taken seriously as long as it only works virtual, on the other side of course UAE on modern hardware is faster and has more ram so you can do things on it that are not yet possible on real hardware. My idea is new software is written that requires many resources and only runs on UAE at first, this again creates need for faster and better FPGA cards. This is what I would call innovation circle. Also not everyone is interested in new real hardware and many people are certainly happy with UAE.

To your question... I do not know. For productivity UAE is a very good and cheap solution if you do not need real hardware and the original keyboards before you. I think it is more a emotional than a rational decision.
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: psxphill on January 23, 2016, 11:22:05 AM
Quote from: OlafS3;802818
To your question... I do not know. For productivity UAE is a very good and cheap solution if you do not need real hardware and the original keyboards before you. I think it is more a emotional than a rational decision.

For games you ideally want to use real hardware, a crt and a standard joystick as this won't introduce any latency. For everything else UAE is adequate.

An FPGA accelerator is cool though, which bypasses rational logic.
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: wawrzon on January 23, 2016, 01:06:17 PM
Quote from: Thomas Richter;802812

One way or another, you need some (albeit simple) MMU to control caching at DMA boundaries or you run into the risk of corrupting data due to DMA and cache interaction. The technical details are a bit complicated but I can explain them when needed.


to put it down in german: "kommt zeit, kommt rat!"
i think we can lean back and observe the results of ongoing development of this core, as soon the available hardware and the target will reach the big box amigas, the problem will become apparent and the priority will probably shift to having some soft of mmu solution for this. i assume an appropriate module will be developed and added to the fpga. in the meantime there are likely more pressing issues, so why not keep it in the back of the head until the right time comes?
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: guest11527 on January 23, 2016, 01:17:00 PM
Quote from: wawrzon;802821
in the meantime there are likely more pressing issues, so why not keep it in the back of the head until the right time comes?

Certainly, I agree. At this time, no need to worry about it, at least not for the A600. However, it might not be quite as simple to create a version for the big boxes as probably hoped for. I'm not in a hurry either. Let's get this beast right, then worry about the details.
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: Aegis on January 23, 2016, 02:12:13 PM
I found some AIBB benchmarks for the Vampire and for the heck of it ran a few comparative tests in WinUAE - on an i7 with caches on in AIBB (v. important for JIT) WinUAE came out 5-7 times faster than the Vampire - with caches off JIT is actually slower.

Testing WinUAE with JIT disabled shows pretty comparable speeds so if you have a fast PC and you're curious to see how well a Vampire might perform for you just turn off JIT and run WinUAE at 'fastest possible' :)
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: Lemaru on January 23, 2016, 07:17:43 PM
Thanks chaps. Some interesting comments made, much appreciated! Will have me a play with WinUAE once I found my OS3.9 disc

Ta
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: kolla on January 24, 2016, 12:15:06 AM
Quote from: Thomas Richter;802675
Keyboard, to name one (my fingers are hard-coded to the Amiga keyboard, sorry, and the one extra key with the backslash near backspace), usability of the two-window solution on a shared desktop, shared mouse. I would have expected that performance problems should probably be resolved these days with more capable hardware, though strangly enough, the P96 emulation still crawls for bizarre reasons on my i5 desktop after startup.


For the keyboard issue, that can be solved several ways:
* keyrah2
* catweasel
* arduino (http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=139358.0)

But I agree, the grooviest would be brand new real Amiga keyboards, also in USB and PS/2 variants. And that may happen very soon (Amiga time line relative.)

As for your UAE P96 issues, I am tempted to say that it must be a PEBKAC thing. Do you have numbers? Have you tried with FS-UAE?
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: kolla on January 24, 2016, 12:23:10 AM
Vampire2 for A600 lacks many "wanted" features. It would have been awesome if there was a USB host controller (like there is on MIST), that together with a more open approach to what goes on with the FPGA, for example could boost development of much faster networking options than what using ancient PCMCIA cards does. And high quality sound. And what have you.
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: wawrzon on January 24, 2016, 01:32:52 AM
@thor
Quote
Keyboard, to name one (my fingers are hard-coded to the Amiga keyboard

btw, just noticed that lame excuse;)
so, how do you actually code at work? plugging in your own olde a2000 tooth everywhere? :D
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: kolla on January 24, 2016, 04:37:24 AM
Quote from: wawrzon;802852

so, how do you actually code at work? plugging in your own olde a2000 tooth everywhere? :D


Maybe you should not ask how, but rather how fast?

For what it's worth, for many years I had A2000 keyboard on my workstations at work, using first catweasel3 and 4. Then I moved to DEC vt220/320 keyboard for a while as PCI became rarity. Ironically, now I use ThinkPad keyboard with a Mac.
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: guest11527 on January 24, 2016, 10:19:19 AM
Quote from: wawrzon;802852
so, how do you actually code at work?
 > ls -l /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/de-thor

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 27425 Sep 25  2014 /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/de-thor  

No, AltGr-7 does not generate a backspace in FS-UAE either.
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: guest11527 on January 24, 2016, 10:23:48 AM
Quote from: kolla;802847
As for your UAE P96 issues, I am tempted to say that it must be a PEBKAC thing. Do you have numbers?
3 27 6 95 63

Should be enough numbers for today. Now what?

Quote from: kolla;802847
Have you tried with FS-UAE?
Yes.
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: wawrzon on January 24, 2016, 11:40:15 AM
Quote from: kolla;802863
Maybe you should not ask how, but rather how fast?

im really amazed to discover that typing is a limiting factor when coding;) pity you guys dont code on aros, i must admit, that as it snands currently, i spend most time mindlessly glaring at the code, which eventually result in few lines of a fix. or not. takes ages:/
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: wawrzon on January 24, 2016, 11:44:09 AM
@Thomas Richter

what concerns fs-use, you can enable jit somewhere, which should leave you with a rather fast emulation, but i have mentioned it already, and i dont want to talk you out of using your a2k. on the other hand, when underway, an emulation comes in handy, when you want to contribute something on a quicker schedule.
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: VingtTrois on January 24, 2016, 12:34:43 PM
Playing 32CH module with DigiBooster 3 1 + Amiga 600 + Vampire v2b
[youtube]mVG1eB2M_2o[/youtube]
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: kolla on January 24, 2016, 01:24:35 PM
Quote from: wawrzon;802884
im really amazed to discover that typing is a limiting factor when coding;)


It can be, but typically isn't :)

Quote
pity you guys dont code on aros, i must admit, that as it snands currently, i spend most time mindlessly glaring at the code, which eventually result in few lines of a fix. or not. takes ages:/


Definitely. And finding out why bits and pieces builds on one system, but not the other, working around things that are not as much related to the code itself, but rather the environment and toolchain :)
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: guest11527 on January 24, 2016, 02:20:39 PM
Quote from: wawrzon;802885
@Thomas Richter

what concerns fs-use, you can enable jit somewhere, which should leave you with a rather fast emulation, but i have mentioned it already, and i dont want to talk you out of using your a2k. on the other hand, when underway, an emulation comes in handy, when you want to contribute something on a quicker schedule.

It's a debian 8.3 64bit here, the jitter is not available. Concenring "not to code outside of my A2k" - that's not quite true. I'm just looking for better solutions, and I'm really working on better solutions and contributing to them.

I believe I posted this before, but I've invested quite some work into "vamos" and that *almost* works now as I'd like it to work.

The problem is not the emulation part. The problem is really the handling. I need an environment where I can switch quickly between the emulation and the native environment, an environment that I can script and that allows automated processing. The former for compilation and assembly, and the latter for all the software management around. I cannot conveniently do that with UAE (two different keymaps, mouse capture... this all breaks the "flow" if you get what I want to say, no scriptability, does not work over ssh...), but I can do that with vamos. I need an enviroment for development, not for gaming, and that's quite a different requirement.

"vamos" still has a couple of bugs unfortunately, but I really got a lot closer by spending my entire Christmas vacation on it. I've now a native Amiga shell, can write commands in there and *most* builds work. Unfortunately, AmigaOs does not yet build, but my vacation was over before I had the chance to find out more.
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: wawrzon on January 24, 2016, 04:50:42 PM
@thor
i dont know the state of affairs what concerns 64bit jit very well, because i dont need it, but i was under impression it was underway. other than that, i dont know vamos, is that an environment to run 68k amiga binaries on *ix? but good that you have found your way around.
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: guest11527 on January 24, 2016, 05:32:00 PM
Quote from: wawrzon;802903
other than that, i dont know vamos, is that an environment to run 68k amiga binaries on *ix?

Yes, it is. However, unlike UAE which runs the native AmigaOs functions in kickstart, vamos comes with a python (yes really) emulation of a (rather small) subset of the dos, exec and utility library which is large enough for most compilers, assemblers and linkers.

The support is complete enough to allow the (emulated) execution of the (native) Shell-Seg you need to take from your (native) Amiga. Currently, you need the V45 shell for that because I was too lazy to emulate the pre-V45 BCPL GlobVec loader in dos the older shell versions depend upon.
Title: Re: FPGA/Vampire vs WinUAE
Post by: wawrzon on January 24, 2016, 05:43:48 PM
btw, thomas, you have a pm.