8 Mb CHIP RAM on All Amigas

[Hyperspeed]

A lot of things like scandoublers/ff and '030 accelerators for the A600 feature a chip that sits on top of another chip and bypasses the original.

I wish people would stop saying "can't be done". With enough resources and ideas I'm sure something could be worked out.

Trouble is, with BVision and PIV cards the urge to develop a hardware based solution to the 2MB limit is not strong enough.

I heard once there was an '040 sidecar for the A500 and the Bodega Bay tower for A500 allowed A2000 GFX cards right?

I can see that more ChipMem would be handy for classic apps, especially killer apps you'd like to 'nourish' with all the tricks you can use!

FBlit conflicts with things though and is a severe hack, I don't think Shapeshifter likes it.

Shame the AGA plans were lost, it could have made for great fun over the last decade. Didn't Mick Tinker have the plans for BoXeR? What happened to his work...

The fake GPU idea is a good one, tricking the Amiga into using GFX card memory as ChipMem - maybe with some sort of FBlit/Hardware combo. The board could have lightning fast DDR memory.

[Hyperspeed]

by Piru:
It's a very bad idea, reading graphics card memory is even slower than chip memory.

Ok I don't mind people having their dreams, but when the ideas conflict with reality I feel obliged to comment.

Ok, it's been said that the A4000's ChipMem resides on a removeable 72-pin SIMM right?

So what if a larger SIMM was used, possibly of a higher nanosecond rating then a piggy-back chip placed over Agnus?

:idea:

If you can add a 10 MIPS 32-Bit '030 to a 16-Bit 68000 A600 then I'm sure that at the very least the old 2MB/8MB jumper on the A4000 could be hacked.

Surely GFX card memory is only slower than the crap 80ns ChipMem memory because it has to go through the Zorro bus, what if it could bypass this with a piggyback board?

:inquisitive:

I think the Power Flyer and internal scandoublers work in a similar way. There are ROM switchers so why can't a MiniMig style Agnus switcher be thought through?

Just for laughs of course, to prove we can!


:laughing:

[Hyperspeed]

by Piru:
Use a program that reduces the picture size to fit the screen.

leirbag28: Get Visage and unbracket the tooltype [SCALE] in the Visage.info - this will give you the function to speedily scale and display 24-bit images to your current screen resolution (or a screenmode of your choice).

I like the way when programs iconify they free masses of ChipMem, some programs like DeluxePaint even offer to 'CloseWB'. I suppose this is a form of iconifying the OS, shame it didn't have this feature in the 'Window' menu of Workbench.

by motorollin:
1. The custom chips are physically only able to see a maximum of 2MB of chip RAM.

Well according to the Commodore manual, the A1200 is "only able to see a maximum of" 8MB of FastMem but an '030 in the trapdoor slot allows for greater address range.

A redesigned chipset piggybacked onto the motherboard could be put onto a single chip cheaply and be of enormous benefit and curiosity.

by motorollin:
4. Even if it was possible to use software to swap memory out, this would require the OS to be running. As soon as you run software which turns off the OS (read: a game), you lose your swapping ability, and you're back to 2MB of chip RAM.

It's not normally possible to boot a CD-ROM on Amiga before CD0: has been mounted and a CD filesystem loaded - Phase5 PPC cards had a ROM allowing you to view CC0: in the early boot menu. Any software intervention to get a replacement Agnus working with 8MB ChipMem could utilise a variety of early-boot techniques. There's another thread discussing the possibility of using a GFX card in the PCMCIA slot from a HP handheld PC.

Talking of UAE is just lazy, this discussion is about Amiga hardware not IBM x86 clones - a bit of fun and wonder, pushing boundaries and considering new possibilities is what leirbag28 is trying to encourage...

... and if the outcome has made someone consider the future of the MiniMig then that's a good thing. A totally redesigned A1200/3k/4k on a small chip/PCB would be so cool! Let's see how this OCS thing works out... then ECS/AGA is a possibility!

Decades after the C64 ceased production we have people doing far out things with it... people will be hacking the Amiga by the time men have landed on Mars probably!

:-D

EDIT:
So what are the chances of a replacement Lisa/Agnus to allow for 8MB? If the A500 MegaChip used an A2000 Agnus then couldn't a redesigned A4000 Agnus on a PIC chip or something be achieved?

Imagine an A1200 accelerator like the PowerVixxen or Dragon being touted with 8MB ChipMem/1GB FastMem/512MB GPU Mem/Faster CPU and a nice sized NAND chip with 2GB of solid state access.

:lol: