potential PPC Amiga REAL CHEAP

[koaftder]

I figured i'd make a post here, since everybody else and their grandparents have. I wouldnt want to miss out on the fun.

*bump*

[koaftder]

Maybe i'm a wierdo, but i play games on my gamecube.... Running AOS4 on my game cube would make it less usefull to me... If i could install AOS4 on one of the 6 macs i got laying around, now that would be cool.

[koaftder]

lou_dias wrote:

Karlos wrote:

Piru wrote:

This OT discussion should be posted as new threads.

And no, I won't take the bait. Artificially bumping the thread to top of the forum is {bleep}ing lame.

Sorry that was me. I wasn't really paying attention and just commented about the interrupt thing :-/

Actually I would say that was on topic.
There interrupts are the base of any OS.

The 1.7MB linux kernal boots up in my GC and connects to my ndbserver in less than 7 seconds total.

A much smaller Amiga OS 3.x ported to PPC or AROS PPC could do the same much faster...  Even combining the 512k 3.1 ROMS with the OS bootup, AOS3.1 takes up ~768k.  That's more than enough to fit on my modchip's flashram and that just gets copied to mainram on bootup...if it were ported...

Now, I don't know anything about WarpUp or any of those PPC hack-ons...  But are they running a AOS on the PPC side?  Or are they just a co-processor set-up?

There is no set rule that an OS has to use software interrupts to provide services, and not all processors have instructions for software based interrupts.

[koaftder]

lou_dias wrote:
Yeah, to say the GC's CPU couldn't be used to run an OS is just a trollish statement.  All CPU's have interrupts.  People critisize the GC's 486Mhz speed and power and completely ignore the ultra low latency T1 Mosys RAM that the GC has that obliterates SDRAM in performance.  I think it also has a 1MB cache.  The GPU has 3 MB of texture memory that allow for generating and texturing polygons in a single pass rather than the separate passes required by other GPU's.  The drive is lightning fast as well.  Again, it's about low seek times not raw max streaming that is rarely achieved when other platforms post there "theoretical" yet completely unrealistic system specs.

The GC was designed to be responsive.  To run at maximum efficiency at all times.  This seems like the perfect platform to run a multi-tasking OS.

The comments regarding putting an OS on the game cube were more like, "Why bother" then "you cant". Lets face it, the gamecube is a highly specialized piece of equipment designed for running video games. Shure, some guys shoehorned linux on it but it's still not very usefull. No harddisk, you gotta NFS mount a volume over your network if you want storage. The display interface is low resolution, designed for use with a television set. ( who wants to use their computer with a lorez tv?) The memory may be fast but theres only 40mb of it and no way to expand it.

Basically what you have is a limited computer that requires another computer to provide services for it, and a network to be usefull.

Video game consoles tend to have a life of around 3-5 years, with each new version being a completely new hardware architecture. Basicaly it's a one time hardware platform.

In the end, it costs more trying to use a game console as a general purpose computer, all the sh*t you have to buy, the other machine to provide it with services, all the time people will have to spend porting code every 3-5 years, etc, etc. And you still end up with a machine that cant run most apps without serious modification of the code base to get it to work with such limited memory, a display interface that get like 480 lines on a tv ( would you like to browse the web at such a low resolution? )

And for the record, not all processors have interrupts! I'm currently working with a platform that has hardware interrupts, but no software interrupts. I am aware of several processor architectures that have neither hardware interrupts or software interrupts. Theres a lot of cores out there, interesting stuff.

[koaftder]

lou_dias wrote:
Well, you missed my posts about it being extremely portable and as the center-piece of a car's entertainment system at a low cost.

Also, you say it's low resolution, 720x480 in progressive scan looks great on my 50" DLP widescreen TV.  Also, 720x480 looks great on a 7" in-dash widescreen LCD.  Considering the Amiga was made for 640x200 or a flickering 640x400, going to 720x480 progressive doesn't sound like alot on paper but in the real world it's a world of difference.

Also, I'm not looking for it to be my main PC.  But it could be a way to re-introduce people to the Amiga and like I said be a baby-version of OS4.  Let them get their feet wet for the day when suitable hardware exists to host OS4.

You can purchase dedicated NFS devices that involve no PC at all

You can make or buy SD card adapter that read AND write to even the latest 1GB cards.  you can make one out of an old GC 4Mbit $5 memory card and an SD card socket.  Again, the idea here is portability and reliability.

The DVD drive is always there that holds 2CD's worth of reliable information, though some have claimed to write up to 3GB on full-size DVD's using the case mod.  It seems like the head has room to move all the way out to 12cm if you look at it.

A modded GC seems like quite a capable AROS box.  Isn't the point of AROS to moderize AOS 3.1 and move it to a platform that can expand the market?

Oh and personally, I'm not going to blow $400 on a new 360/PS3/Revolution and hack it to run AROS.  I'd much rather hack into a $60 Gamecube that I've owned for 4 years and I can take anywhere and not worry about theft or damage.

As long as your having a good time hacking it, thats all that counts.  :-)  

I'd say why bother with aros or AOS 4 on gamecube. You already have linux on there, and with linux you have software avaiable to you to do almost anything. With AOS4 or aros you will be able to do a lot less...

[koaftder]

lou_dias wrote:
Wow, I just stumbled upon this:

http://www.sandisk.com/pressrelease/20050106a.htm

combine the SD card adapater with this product and now you can hook up any USB device to a gamecube.

Now you've got your USB storage and your ethernet.

That's everything.

here's an 80GB USB 2.0 hard drive for $83 http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=1538966&CatId=530

Yea, great. So where are the drivers? Wheres the OS port? Go learn C, post back when you are able to do more than "Wouldnt it be great if?". Generally speaking, nobody cares.

[koaftder]

KThunder wrote:
dude do you dig this thread up every time you find something interesting? you can start a new thread you know. they let you do that :-o

But then he wouldnt have the thrill of seeing his latest troll at the top of the pile *again*. The threads message count increases by one, the post count on the user account increases by one. The total views increases by several with each troll. Oh my, the excitement!

[koaftder]

lou_dias wrote:
Everything you always wanted to know about the PPC chip inside the GC but didn't know you could ask:

http://voxel.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/gc-linux/06ibm-gekko.pdf


ps,
I'm staying on topic.  If all the useless comments were removed from the thread, I wouldn't complain...

from the link:

Could not read file.

Go back. /home/ftp/pub/sourceforge//s/so/sourceforge/gc-linux/06ibm-gekko.pdf
Nov 17, 2005 19:13

[koaftder]

lou_dias wrote:
http://devkitpro.sourceforge.net/devkitProWiki/libogc/a00144.html

That's a link that describes the aram.h header file for accessing the 'Cube's 16MB of audio RAM.  Yes, that is the hoop you jump through to access it.  As anyone with basic understanding of programming can see, a simple function call can copy data from memory there or copy data there to memory just by specifying the 2 address ranges and a direction.

very unusable indeed

feel free to browse the rest of the supposed non-existant documentation...

It's just a stack. A 16MB stack. The way the library is written makes it unsuitable for multiple processes to use this space.

Even if you did adapt a malloc lib to use that space, and made a super easy wrapper to fetch/store data there, you wouldnt end up with 16mb of space there, as you would still want some memory avaiable for the sound support.

Suppose you leave 4mb for the sound and use the 12MB as heap space for processes though a seperate malloc implimentation. What is going to motivate a programmer to jump through hoops to fetch some memory out of a measly 12mb block, and jump through more hoops passing data back and forth from it? The code wouldnt be portable, and most applications would never be adapted to use it as it would be too much work and almost no benefit anyway.

Scarfing memory from other subsystems was clever 15 years ago, these days it's kind of a waste of time. I can find a system better suited for aros or linux from a near by trashcan ( with 4 times the memory of a game cube! )

[koaftder]

lou_dias wrote:

koaftder wrote:

lou_dias wrote:
http://devkitpro.sourceforge.net/devkitProWiki/libogc/a00144.html

That's a link that describes the aram.h header file for accessing the 'Cube's 16MB of audio RAM.  Yes, that is the hoop you jump through to access it.  As anyone with basic understanding of programming can see, a simple function call can copy data from memory there or copy data there to memory just by specifying the 2 address ranges and a direction.

very unusable indeed

feel free to browse the rest of the supposed non-existant documentation...

It's just a stack. A 16MB stack. The way the library is written makes it unsuitable for multiple processes to use this space.

Even if you did adapt a malloc lib to use that space, and made a super easy wrapper to fetch/store data there, you wouldnt end up with 16mb of space there, as you would still want some memory avaiable for the sound support.

Suppose you leave 4mb for the sound and use the 12MB as heap space for processes though a seperate malloc implimentation. What is going to motivate a programmer to jump through hoops to fetch some memory out of a measly 12mb block, and jump through more hoops passing data back and forth from it? The code wouldnt be portable, and most applications would never be adapted to use it as it would be too much work and almost no benefit anyway.

Scarfing memory from other subsystems was clever 15 years ago, these days it's kind of a waste of time. I can find a system better suited for aros or linux from a near by trashcan ( with 4 times the memory of a game cube! )

The hoops you mention are a function call.
Let's look at video editing.  How does that happen.
Well, usually a frame at a time.
Do you think that the entire video is loaded into memory or are a certain amount buffered.  That's exactly what you would use that memory for.  You define a simple allocation table, then request x amount of memory allocate for your "worksspace".  This is what happens with "main" memory now.  The OS is a memory mamanger.  Only difference is now is has a separate/extra bank of memory to reserve and allocate.  It could happen at the kernel level and unless you are "banging the hardware" an application programmer doesn't need to worry about it unless their app occuppies 24 MB of physical memory.  99.9% of Amiga apps will run in well under 2mb of memory.

All a cpu knows about is what's in it's cache.  The OS is responsible for the rest.  Don't get it mixed up.

Of course you would want to ask the kernel to allocate/deallocate blocks from that region. Thats how you would make access to it from multiple processes sane. You are still going to end up with 2 mallocs though, one for main memory and one for that measley 16mb area. The library you mentioned earlier is no good for this.

Immagine a 1000 node linked list setup in your elite 16mb audio ram space. Traversing the linked list will be a pain because i have to setup a buffer in the main memory space, then call a function to move a node from the audio memory into the buffer i created in main memory.

It's just retarded. Id pay a nice performance penalty to use the audio memory. I have to copy blocks from one area to the next just to use it. And it's not portable, or trasnparent.

You cant make it transparent to the c/c++ programmer writing application layer stuff. It doesnt matter what kind of libs and kernel services are avaiable. You still have to go out of your way to use it, and it would be slow, and still require you to allocate in main memory to make use of it.

it sucks

[koaftder]

lou_dias wrote:
@koaftder

About 8 years ago I did set up gcc on my CD32 + SX-1 Amiga OS 3.1 system because I was taking a C++ class in school.  I also bought the GameSmith C/C++ development system.  In that, I remember a function that allocated memory and I also remember being able to specify chip ram always or fastram if available...or something to that effect.  So I don't see this situation as anything different.

It's very different, because you are talking about two hardware architectures here. Amiga and game cube. On the amiga you can access chip and fast through a generic pointer, on the game cube you cannot access aram through a generic pointer. This is why you have to use a special interface to make use aram. It's not the same situation. The aram area is not suitable for general purpose use.

The concerns you have about performance are only relevant when you are either using a 20 year old machine with low processing power or are creating an A+ video game.

Immagine a tight loop crawling a chain, having to do a dma transfer for each inspection of a 13byte node. It would be god awful slow. And if you were using this area as a general purpose store, you would be doing this *all the time*.

When "running" application, 99% of cpu time is wasted waiting for user input.

So what if most of a computers time is unproductive. When people want a machine to do a particular function, they want it done fast.

On a side note, the GC has the most cache of that generation of game machines and that is what helps it perform better than it's clock speed shows it can.  The same will be true of Revolution (rumors are 2MB).  Can you imagine that?

I can immagine that when it comes out we will have some asinine discussion about porting amiga os to the new nintendo platform. Of course you will focus much on some obscure capability of the microprocessor and make lots of comments about programming concepts you dont understand.

[koaftder]

lou_dias wrote:

Waccoon wrote:

That's why you are what I've always said you are. You made the claim, YOU need to back it up.

I made no claim about in-order or out-of-order execution.  I don't see you posting any proof to back up your claim.

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2379&p=8
oops maybe I got the 2 mixed up

68k emulation is no big deal. There are open source 68k emulators and there is currently a homebrew GC developer writing one.

So, emulators are available.  What I said is that you still need memory to run them.

you need memory for anything but you don't need more memory until you actually run out

They make it sound like a PSP is as powerful as a PS2

In what way?  I certainly didn't bring this up, nor do I follow PSP advertisements.

their claim was the same or more power than a ps2 in a handheld

The exact number is irrelevant. The fact that it's not 100% is the point.

How Sony holds up to the competition is the point.

no, the point is Sony's claims compared to reality

It's kind of funny to hear an Amiga fan complaining about compatibility, isn't it?

no, I'm complaining about their marketing claims.  Get it staraight.  Taking me out of context again, what a suprise...

Actually the 2 Zelda N64 games released on the GC as a ore-order bonus for pre-ordering Zelda:The Wind Waker were emualtor based.

Emulator-based is not always backwards-compatible, because you're actually getting re-licensed games on a native medium.

You said it wasn't possible to play N64 games on the GC...but it is.  Don't dance around it.  The GC is powerful enough to do so an enhance it a bit as was done.  Obviously the medium required either another hardware like the GBA player or just bundle an emulator with your roms.  Nintendo owns all the properties and did as they saw fit.

Also, on there website at one time was a poll of actually getting a N64 compatible player on the GC.  Infact Nintendo does alot of polls of it's customers.  That's how it keeps them satisfied.

Lots of companies re-release their old games.  I didn't have to repurchase my PSX titles or sign up to some subscription service when I got a PS2.

they enhanced the textures and added the "Master Quest" which was previously unreleased.  It also was pretty inexpensive.

the Atari 5200 had a plug-in module for 2600 backwards compatibility.

I suppose this is equivalent to the Game Boy Player for the GameCube, as the hardware implementation is the same.  I had an Atari plug-in module for my Coleco Vision.  Does that count as backwards compatibility, or just emulation?

who cares, no one had to buy the extra hardware if you owned the original

why are you beating a dead horse?
oh, I forgot, that's the rental fee you pay for living under the bridge.

3" discs rare? Yeah, Ok. 3" CDs and DVDs have been around a long time. Look at the center 3" of you PC's DVD player, they all support them. Ritek it the preferred brand for GC pirates.

I think you overlooked something important in my post.  :-)

that's ok, with every post in this thread you overlook the actual topic

Elder Scrolls is supposedly on 4 DVDs right now

That's because the developers suck.  If I can get a 625x500 JPEG photo down to 80K without any visible artifacts, any game developer should be able to make a game that will fit on one count of whatever medium a console uses.

All this horsepower is cool, but it makes developers lazy.  I wish developers would look into things like fractal-generated textures.  It would help to make the games look more unique every time you play them, too.

I presume cut-scenes are largely to blame.  Game developers should stop making "interactive movies" and keep making games.

not my problem

As for the catride issue...so what, it happened, it's been over with for 7 years.

Well, the cartridges are partly to blame for the company losing their massive market share.  They haven't gotten that market back, so it's arguable as to whether the issue is "over."

not my problem, however - my benefit is that the GC is cheap

Because Nintendo is sticking with 480p max, there games will fit on 1 DVD like current gen Xbox games.

The total size of a game is determined by its screen resolution?  Low resolution is a virtue?

Yes, I see your point.  But, I thought the whole reason for using 3D graphics and vectors and nurbs and all this new-age crap was to make everything resolution independent.  Only cut-scenes and other movie clips really justify your argument about low resolution.

Come on now.  We know just because you tell a gpu to draw a circle, it will look circular or octogonal depending on things other than the resolution of the screen.  Let's not get into that.

My bad.  I have a Rev C GameCube, so I can't get a cable to do that.  I'm not into used hardware, though, so I guess I'll stick with S-Video.

I do find it annoying that newer versions of hardware, from any manufacturer, might lack features compared to the original design.  Also, the VGA cable is pricey.

hey it's Nintendo's fault for not making it available at retail - only through there online store

eventually since not that many consumers invested in it, the feature was removes as a cost-cutting measure.

You can still send them you GC and pay a fee to get a Rev B with the digital video out if you want it.  I love it.

I'm arguing the application of it. I'm saying it's marketing spin by Sony. You want a PS3, buy it. You don't want a Revolution, don't buy it. I don't care.

Is this a rebuttal or not?

chalk it up as a "don't care"

Don't expect Revolution lauch titles to be as good as the ones developed years later.  Nintendo programmers are not immune to the problems faced by XBox 360 and PS3 programmers.  Hell, it's pretty much the same hardware, really.  It's the dev tools that count.

Well actually some of the best GCN games came out in the first 2 years.  Also since the devkits are the same but with added api's, I do expect Revolution games to be excellent from the start.  If I am disappointed - oh well.

Lou (@ me):  I'm still waiting for him to show me a cell phone with 256MB of ram.

I didn't make that claim.  Ask adolscent.

eh - sorry, it's easy to get you 2 confused - if you know what I mean  :-P [/quote]

I'm supprised you guys didnt run out of memory binging this post back and forth. Good god, look at all the quotes and requotes.

[koaftder]

lou_dias wrote:
Yes, we need a market where new software AND hardware is being purchase.  Developers aren't making money when you want to run a 20-year old app.

I mean, you can add all the accelerators you want to the old hardware...but wouldn't some nice new software that takes full advantage of the new hardware be better?

Look at the console industry.
Hardware is upgraded about every 5 years.
Many software titles are released...with upgraded versions over time (as in like Madden '05 -> Madden '06)

New software is what drives the business.  One major harware purchase, many software purchases.  Infact, the hardware upgrade is driven by the demands of the software.

People still run classic hardware because - and only because - they want to run classic software.

BTW, an operating system is software...lest anyone forget.

As for console hardware being updated every 5 years, pc hardware is updated all year round, mac hardware a little less. I'd love to see aros on GC, it would bring some attention to the aros platform. Thats about all it's worth, attention. I wouldnt use it, but it would be mad cool, and lots of people would mess with it, and maybe a few of thoes people would contribute towards aros progress.

I support amiga and amiga like systems, along with all the other platforms, as i would definately not like to see a computing monoculture where everybody runs the same proc and OS. Security and interoperability are best realised through having many different architectures interacting with one another via clearly defined standards.

Amiga wont live unless it opens up, and thats not likely to happen. Aros is going about things the wrong way by staying in the stonage.

Consoles may be updated every 5 years, but they are limited devices, developed for specific purposes. People want a general purpose machine at a reasonable price. Many people i know have run linux or netbsd on their dreamcast/xbox/ps2/gamecube. None of thoes people are still messing with it. It's just not usefull. Most geeks will buy a new PC every 2 years. (i'm a little slow, i get a new box about every 5 years, i dont need stuff for games)

I ran netbsd on my dreamcast. It was cool. I even have the keyboard and ethernet device. Totally useless. Gotta NFS for  store, use a TV for display... Limited memory.... I have a 75MHz laptop with 32mb memory and 1gig drive which is more usefull... Again linux on gamecube, the 75MHz pentium laptop is much more usefull, and i got that laptop for free. Many such laptops can be bought for next to nothing.

What amiga needs is a BSD layer. This way they would suck in a hudge developer base, like apple did. The geeks would fawn over it, and the commercial types would learn the proprietaty amiga stuff. Then they might do a GC port, and utiliize that 16mb audio buffer for a special port of GCFireFox.

yes, ive been drinking(heavily)

Corona, Heniken, guiness, and ice house. Beer is good, amiga needs more beer. I think i will pour beer into my game cube now.

[koaftder]

bloodline wrote:

koaftder wrote:

Amiga wont live unless it opens up, and thats not likely to happen. Aros is going about things the wrong way by staying in the stonage.

Suck my what?

I'll take it your commenting about the aros statement.

I like aros, now that gcc runs on it, it's been much much more useable for what i do.

My gripe with aros is the lack of memory protection and other things. I really would like to see aros on the L4 kernel.

[koaftder]

lou_dias wrote:

koaftder wrote:

bloodline wrote:

koaftder wrote:

Amiga wont live unless it opens up, and thats not likely to happen. Aros is going about things the wrong way by staying in the stonage.

Suck my what?

I'll take it your commenting about the aros statement.

I like aros, now that gcc runs on it, it's been much much more useable for what i do.

My gripe with aros is the lack of memory protection and other things. I really would like to see aros on the L4 kernel.

LOL, gcc's been running on GC-Linux for some time now.  But since it's Linux I guess that doesn't count.  On a brighter note, there is some interest in  GC-AROS.

I run linux on several machines, the one i use most is a mac mini with ubuntu. I could run linux on my gamecube, but it doesnt make sense to do so ( for me anyway ) as i have some 2 dozen machines laying around ( check out http://koft.net/pix/setup.jpg , see what i mean?)

If i went to the boss and suggested buying some 300 dollars worth of kit to get a gamecube running linux so i could do some development work, he would think i started smoking crack.

when gcc was finally working on aros, it was good news. It made some headlines and attracted some attention to the aros project, which was a good thing.