A600GS Updates

[ernsteiswuerfel]

I suppose A600GS currently runs Amiberry 5.6.x as underlying core. Will there be an upgrade path to Amiberry 6.x which is currently in development (available as preview)?

Which leads to the next question whether the A600GS hardware is capable of running Amiberry 6.x at full speed? Upstream says the 6.x branch needs reasonably more CPU resources compared to 5.x branch.

This is rather important as staying with Amiberry 5.x also means staying with an older WinUAE core.

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* Edit Game:  add Faster Chipset option that switches on some chipset optimisations at the expense of
compatibility

Thanks! Now 'Reshoot Proxima 3 runs at least with decent speed. JIT + Faster Chipset needs to be enabled. 1st Lvl runs 100 %ok, 2nd Lvl stills runs at lower framerate (probably ~20fps) than a M68K A1200/4000/CD32.

Looks like the A600GS may lack some CPU power for modern chipset demanding AGA games? Perhaps building Amiberry with more aggressive CFLAGS on the arm side could improve this a bit?

* Refactor internal floppy drive settings setup to allow configuring multiple drives.

I hoped this change would have allowed to use DF1 per default. At least the changelog reads this way. But it seems that's not the case... still only DF0 enabled.

[ernsteiswuerfel]

@amigakit How very nice! Eager to play around with "Add Custom System" the next few days. 

Only Feature I am missing now would be .ipf support. And multiple floppy support does not seem fully implemented yet. Since Update 46.1.931 using 2 Disks simultaneously on Amibench works, but for ADF games from the Main Menu still only 1 floppy is usable: All 4 floppys are shown but DF1-DF3 are greyed out and non-selectable. There is no configure option in ADF menu to enable more than one floppy.

[ernsteiswuerfel]

What I did for my AmigaOS3.5 installation was:

copy the original uaegfx to storage
rename the copy in DEVS:Monitors to 'a600gs'
open icon information for the DEVS:Monitors/a600gs filr and chnage the BOARDTYPE tooltype to
BOARDTYPE=a600gs

Unfortunately this didn't work out for me on my OS 3.2.2.1 installation.

I installed Picasso96 v3.5.0, which copies the uaegfx driver in DEVS:Monitors already. Afterwards I set the boardtype to a600gs and renamed the uaegfx driver to a600gs. But the Screenmode preferences still does not pick it up, so I stuck to PAL/NTSC for the time being...

Anything I might have missed?

The Picasso96-installed uaegfx driver with default settings works fine on my Amiberry v7.0.1 installation on my Linux box.

[ernsteiswuerfel]

It works for my OS 3.2 setup.
In case you missed it, the update that enabled RTG will not enable RTG automatictly for setups that you created before the update. You must recreate your OS3.2 setup using the custom full setup option and tick the RTG option.

According to your hint I deleted my old Custom Setup and created a new one. RTG is enabled.

As you can see from my screenshot the RTG board is listed on ShowConfig and DEVS:Monitors/a600gs does have a600gs boardtype set. Unfortunately it still does not work on my setup. 

Which Picasso96 version did you use? Or did you get the uaegfx driver from somewhere else?

[ernsteiswuerfel]

I did a test just now, and it didn't boot, into RTG but then I removed the fast RAM so there was only Chip and Z3 and it booted again, so you could try that. (next test it booted with fast ram as well so might have been a spurious one off glitch)

Ah yes, thanks for the hint! I need to disable Use Zorro 3 RAM, then the a600gs Monitor driver shows up in Screenmode Prefs as it should! As soon as Zorro 3 RAM is enabled A600GS modes are not even listed among Screenmode Prefs modes.

Guess I found a bug? Just don't know whether it's an A600GS bug, an Amiberry bug, an OS 3.2.2.1 bug or a Picasso96 3.5.0 bug... 

Probably one of the components hits some internal memory limits? I see 128 MB are used for the RTG card and 1024 MB made available as Fast RAM with Use Zorro 3 RAM. Could you check if A600GS driver reliably works with e.g. just 512 or 768 MB Z3-RAM or 64 MB RTG as a workaround? IMHO that's more than enough for a Classic Amiga. For the time being I have to stick to 2 MB Chip and 8 MB Fast, which is a bit meagre when running IBrowse or pre-loading larger WHDLoad games with only 4 MB Fast free when using Workbench on 1280x720/8bpp.

[ernsteiswuerfel]

Winuae has same issues.

I can replicate it on Amiberry 7.0.1 too. When I set Z3-RAM to 1 GB uaegfx modes are no longer available. When I set it back to 512 MB an reboot, uaegfx modes are fine again.

Maybe you can help out with another Custom System config option then? Or stick to 512 MB Z3-RAM for the time being (as long as there is no upstream WinUAE bugfix which has trickled down to Amiberry-Lite)?

I'll check the WinUAE support forums whether this is known already and if not post a bug if I can replicate on latest WinUAE 5.3.1.

[ernsteiswuerfel]

Been like it for years, drove me nuts for hours. Then I tried lowering Z3 and RTG mem and it worked.

Ah, I didn't know that! All the more, a way to set Z3-RAM to 512MB on the A600GS would be extremely valued.

On a 2nd thought... if this happens only on Amiga OS (regardless of running on A600GS, WinUAE or Amiberry) - but _not_ on Amibench, it's more likely an AmigaOS or Picasso96 problem? 

[ernsteiswuerfel]

@SkulleateR Thanks for the hint! I must have overlooked this specific information... I'll report the issue to the P96 developer then, perhaps something can be done about it.

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Have tried copying my workbench hdf file to the A600GS as a custom system, sadly when booting I get a red screen. I have copied kick31, just wondered if anyone else had experienced a similar issue and found a fix? 

One thing causing the red screen is if your HDF files got "Full drive/RDB mode" enabled.

I wanted to do a OS 3.2 reinstall anyhow, so I setup the new system on Amiberry with all HDFs "Full drive/RDB mode" not enabled. These worked perfectly well on the A600GS.

If you use OS 3.1 please keep in mind your HDFs need to stay smaller than 4 GB. You may get around that limitation by using a modified custom ROM with suitable scsi.device (needed that on my original A1200 at least) and/or other stuff like the filesystem you want to use but that is rather cumbersome. As you need to stick to "Full drive/RDB mode" putting the filesystem in RDB via HDToolbox won't help.

[ernsteiswuerfel]

Maybe it´s a problem with "newer" P96 drivers ? I just installed OS3.2 with the P96 Archive from Aminet and I can use the 1GB Z3 Mem without a problem (as already stated above) ...

Tried v2.0 from Aminet just now (deleted v3.5.0 and uaegfx first, v2.0 install afterwards + reboot) but for me it doesn't work with 1 GB Z3. Interesting... 

[ernsteiswuerfel]

* Add option to limit Z3 memory space used to 1Gb, this should allow RTG and Z3 memory to be used on OS variants that inadvertently impose this limit.

Many thanks! I can now use the A600GS 'uagefx' graphics card on a bog standard OS3.2.2.1 install with Picasso 3.5.0 and 800 MB RAM.

However now when selecting 'Use Z3 RAM' option I get 800 MB Fast as default. What does the 'Limit Z3 to 1 GB' option do then?

Not that I am complaining as the now seemingly default 800 MB are more then enough for me and everything is working fine. Simply curious about what the new option might be good for when the former default 1 GB Fast got reduced to 800 MB Fast as default anyhow?

[ernsteiswuerfel]

It limits the *total* Z3 ram, including that used by the Z3 graphics card to less than 1GiB (exceeding the 1GiB "barrier" being the reason for the issue)

Thanks for explaining!

But the point why I was asking is that the P96 issue on my OS 3.2.2.1 install disappeared _without_ selecting the '1 GB Z3 RAM limit' option. Default Z3 setting, now supplying 768 MiB RAM seems enough.

In the is iteration it means you get a bank of 512MiB and 1 of 256MiB giving  756GiB of Z3 ram plus the 128MiB Z3 P96 card. (which leaves 128MiB spare )

Workebench will e reporting GB rather than GiB hence the 800+ instead of 756

Ah I see - thanks for the details!

[ernsteiswuerfel]

Are you saying that with limt Z3 to 1Gb unticked you only get 768 GiB ?

Exactly.