in case you are interested to test new fpga accelerators for a600/a500

[xboxOwn]

I am calm. Do you see one exclamation point, upper case text or bold text from me? You accused me of twisting the truth and I am not supposed to defend myself? I ask questions to uncover the truth and I receive more questions in return. I worked to create an open enhanced 68k ISA and instead you use some of my ideas and analysis to make a secretive ISA. You try to make me look like an outsider who is not capable of understanding the complexity of your ISA yet I have much of it documented better than you. You ignore the suggestions and conclusions of the majority beneath you but make no apologies when you end up using what they suggested after you arrogantly run them off. Some people want a saviour so bad that they are willing to put up with anything but I am wary of the fruits of a false Messiah.................

So what you are saying is: biggun is a scamming us? I am no longer waiting for the vampire and ordering ACA1233 instead because matthey is giving me bad ideas about biggun's project.

[xboxOwn]

No, I am not saying that! I fully believe the Phoenix/Apollo project is real and has performance potential several times greater than a 68060 in an affordable FPGA. There is no scam. There is only Gunnar's lofty ambitions of which this is not the first time it has been a problem (research the Natami project). He needs an attitude adjustment is all. Majsta creates the Vampire accelerators and has been nothing but a good example of openness, cooperation and persistence against adversity. His accelerators offer tremendous value at the low end. The ACA accelerators are a more mature product but don't have the performance potential.



#2 is a real and common enough problem that every DIVSL.L and DIVUL.L has to be patched (it's probably easier to replace with a BSR to replacement code). #3 is actually pretty rare to use the CCR[V] from a multiplication but it is difficult to detect. #1 is a common problem also as every byte and word sized push and pop to and from the stack has to be fixed.



It was almost like Motorola/Freescale didn't want 68k compatibility for ColdFire. The 68k users were supposed to upgrade to PPC. Low end 68k users were looked at suspiciously for "wanting" 68k compatibility but the CF was advertised as being 68k like and easy to use. It made no sense and Motorola/Freescale ended up killing off many loyal 68k customers. The poor performance and minimal features of early CF processors didn't help either.

But the way you are hostile and pointing out all his faults and defects and pointing out all his errors and in a way you implied he does not know what he is doing you give them negative light. Personally I want to buy vampire 500 badly, but if you continue in this road you might destroy what potentially a live rescue boat for classic Amiga.

I mean when I read your sentence I sense toxic energy.

[xboxOwn]

Lets clear this up:

The Core and ISA definition is available for developers today.
It is NOT available today for download by the public
The reason is that the core is not officially released yet and that the core could still change and improve before release date.
Everyone should be able to understand the benefit of this reasoning.

As good news:
The Core is continously improved:
Yesterday the core was upgraded and can now execute 3 instructions each cycle

Also good news:
The core team with hardware designers had a long discussion and came to the mutual understanding and agreement that all CPU cards from now on will have a minimum FPGA size.
This means all cards for all platform will have a minimum sizes.
This size is big enough to fit the full Apollo core plus the 68k FPU.

This means all cards for all AMIGA systems e.g. A600/A500/A1200/... will support the same instruction set and the same features and have the same capabilities.
Software developers can write/compile for Apollo as target and this will run on all cards.
All features including FPU will supported both in budget and in high end cards.

Love it!

One question. What is the difference between budget and high end cards?

[xboxOwn]

I would love to be able to do that, I don't see the issue with this. Why are we even saying this is a bad thing?

I don't understand the negativity, price is right, performance is right and being able to slowly add features by firmware update?

A Amiga owners dream.

Exactly. There is nothing more orgasmic than going to a site, downloading the new firmware and upgrade your card....through workbench screen

[xboxOwn]

Think it's just time to cut loose and go all out none of this half arsed stuff. It's 2015 time for the MHz to hit 3 figures and then maybe new software and games will start making an appearance.

Just look at all the new games that are released on EAB because of the new cards produced by Jens being readily available.

Again ready to get involved and see where this goes :-)

Oh have a Rev6 A500 and another A500 plus on it's way :-)

Honestly, I do not mind that after the release of Vampire XXX series that starting from that time and going on all games demand the new CPU even if it is not pure 68k anymore.

I have no objection to that at all. I just want to see new games coming to my A500 again. I...I want to BUY games for my A500. I want that box again, that manual again, that disk again, that price tag again. I spend 70 dollars on PS 4 games...you don't think I can cough up 40 bucks for an Amiga game?? I will treat my A500 as a console that is all. Another console to buy games for it.

I hope this dream actually becomes reality.

[xboxOwn]

So wait. Why exactly do we need a "move zero extended" instruction again?

After all, "moveq #0,d0; move.b (a0),d0" could also be merged into a single "meta"-instruction, right?

Similarly, "move.w (a0),d0;ext.l d0" could also be merged into one instruction....

I see now even less the need to extend the ISA.

Can someone please tell me what this assembly source code does?

[xboxOwn]

For those of you who don't understand what is being discussed, I will now summarize:

Matt Hey has shown up to the debate with a library full of facts and figures and has won the debate on all counts.

Matt shoots.... he scores!  Matt Hey FTW!

PlaySound CrowdGoesWild.8svx

Hey ChaosLord, do you have any idea where I can buy the latest version of Total Chaos?

Thanks in advance

[xboxOwn]

THIS IS NOT TRUE

Matt all encoding which are new are gated with a Apollo-Mode switch.
You know this fact, this was discussed over a year ago.
This means there is no impopatibility old MacOS code.  
You should know that ALL your posts about incompatibility are NOT TRUE.

Matt how do you call people which on prupose while knowing better write not the truth?

Hold on a second, I thought this project is about Amiga and not Mac. Why is Matt is focusing on Mac emulation? To me even IF this card does not allow Mac emulation I don't care...I am into improving Amiga hardware to getting modern software for the Amiga system not Mac.

It seem this entire fight is about Mac.

[xboxOwn]

Yeah, if Matt isn't whining about Macintosh compatibility, he's whining about ColdFire compatibility.  He really needs to take his trash talk to a ColdFire forum or start hanging out at a classic Mac site.  He's gotten to be more than just tiring.  He's either trying to "wow" us with his assembler knowledge or he has a personal problem with Gunnar, or maybe both.  Just wish he'd leave it alone.

For me...even if Mac emulation is the greatest importance for me and even if this Vampire 500 is 0% mac compatible and I start pounding my head on the table..I WANT MAC, I WANT MAC EMULATION and I start pulling my hair and freaking out like enraged PMS woman...I have the solution to my problem:

A) Burn down the house with the Amiga in it..just because I could not get a Mac emulator that emulates a 20 year old Mac system

               OR
B) Have both ACA500+ACA1233 and Vampire installed at the same time.

You will say to yourself...will..how can that be? We know that Amiga 500 hardware is genius...if it detects said CPU in the zorro expansion it simply disables the CPU in the motherboard where the Vampire 500 is installed. Now I boot in full 68k accelerator and here I can run Mac emulation no problem.

If I get tired of the 68k+Mac emulation and I want to use the modern technology with modern RTG, SAGA, etc...I do not need to remove the ACA500 and install it again....that will cause wear and tear on both the card and my A500 computer...what I will do as soon as I turn my A500 on I get the ACA500 menu right? Will...all I have to do is hit F10...and Del to disable the ACA500 card while it is installed in my A500..the A500 resets...the ACA500 is disabled during the entire time it is turned on...and POOOF VAMPIRE 500 TAKES OVER.

When I am finished...i can either turn on Amiga 500 and turn it back on...and use ACA500 mode..or turn off A500 for the day.

IN THE END MY A500 CAN RUN EVERYTHING...from the OLD 68K to the new Phoenix...without any problem!!

CASE CLOSED!!!!!!!!

Guys...can we please move on in the future. Like i said before...if we need past technology...use ACA500+ACA1233...want modern technology, faster than ACA1233, wanna watch movies on Amiga classic, run DOSBox, run VICE, blah blah...switch to vampire 500 (Phoenix) and both of these are installed in your A500. Between menu configuration you can switch between old or new and without needing to remove or install hardware all the time and you get both of the two worlds. So no need to complain here and let Biggun do his job and we enjoy the result, ok?

[xboxOwn]

Actually yes, that's exactly how the first Apple computers were developed.  There was no team of developers and engineers doing any requirements analyses.  Same goes for the Amiga.  And yes, I've worked for several major companies as well as the government so I'm quite familiar with conducting requirements analyses.  Requirements analyses are great for government contracts and the bidding process...horrible for private enterprise and hobbies.

And I can ask you the same question!  How do you know what's best for us or for this project?  You keep whining about the instruction set.  If you don't like the new instructions, stick to the old ones or better yet, just stay away from this project completely and stop confirming your disdain for Gunnar and his work.

I have the feeling thanks to Thomas and Matt I will not see this project comes to reality. * sigh * I knew it was to good to be true. Always when something finally new shines up...someone in the community MUST DESTROY it and we will be forever stuck at specs of 68000 @ 7 Mhz 512 KB CHIP RAM.

* sigh * Anything new, anything that takes it a little far away from the 1980's must be destroyed or use the logic then use x86 instead. Sometimes I wonder why not?

[xboxOwn]

i think thomas is generally sceptical about added instructions at least before a full stable 020 compatibility is achieved. not sure if any of us is totally against it. he just mentioned an example what would be useful from his point of view, if it is unavoidable.

but isn't this project in alpha stage anyways? Wouldn't there be multiple core versions that will meet everyone's meet in the long rung? Wouldn't there be issues at first, then as we progress we fix these issues later? Much like PS 4 operating system, linux, windows, etc. All of them have issues at release and get patched as days come by.

ONE OF THE GREATEST pleasure is patching my hardware in my A500 through workbench in my A500 itself. I mean, guys discuss (in civilized way) but whatever concern, issue, etc...aren't all of these will be resolved by downloading a 10 MB compressed zip file and then flashing the card with the new firmware?

I guess the only suggestion I would like to add to biggun if he is willing to listen to me :$ if possible could you add a tiny mini PCI or something that can fit inside the A500 case that allows the person to upgrade the RAM from 128 to say 1 GB or 2 GB RAM.

In the future 128 MB may not be sufficient for latest browsers, youtube, etc. I am hoping with this technology...youtube can be finally achieved in my A500. So I am looking for the forward and would love to have the choice to be able to upgrade the RAM by inserting memory stick into the Vampire 500.

Maybe this RAM extension would be the for the bigger version of Vampire 500 and the budget version is restricted to the limited 128 MB RAM.

I discovered in OS 4.1 that 128 MB is nothing...so from experience I will find 128 MB to be too limiting...especially if I want to do DOSBox, heavy emulation in my A500 etc.

What if the in the future PSX emulator or PS 2 emulator will be ported or N64 will  be ported...128 MB is too limiting.

[xboxOwn]

XboxOwn: hey there, are you trolling too now?

I ask because the RAM limitation with these boards were discussed a couple of months ago, as normal here, it ended up in a hilarious "discussion" about what constitutes a 32bit computer. Hence I find it very amusing that you bring that up again.

Oh God I hope not!! That is not my intention honestly. I will be quite to avoid unintentional trolling

[xboxOwn]

Allright I was very tempted to to answer you that you sadly have to wait for Gunnar's promised 64bit addressing mode, which btw is something he may do on a whim any day now, so that you can even have 4GB and beyond. But that would have been trollish of me

I was not aware of that fact. Thanks for the great news regardless

[xboxOwn]

I hope you are as tongue-in-cheek as I am now

Uuh........:angry:...............okkaaay?.....uuuh........

[xboxOwn]

So you don't need an operating system?

Technically you do not need an operating system. Dos, windows, Linux, mac, amigaos, basic, etc are all luxury. You can have a computer without os period. NES and Snes are two great examples where OS does not exist and Games developed directly at machine language.