More Chipram

[xeron]

@leirbag

As discussed many times, it IS possible to add more chip RAM to the Amiga, but its not realistically feasible. Lets look at the options for the thousandth time shall we?

1) Banking.
Have n banks of 1Mb in the upper 1Mb space of Chip RAM.
This is feasible, and probably cheap to do. The problem? You'd have to patch AmigaOS and recompile every single piece of software to cope with it. So its not worth it.

2) Create a pin-compatible 8Mb Alice.
This would actually work in an A4000, which is the *ONLY* classic Amiga with enough address lines to the chipset. Good luck, though, the schematics for the chipset are long lost and it would take many years and probably hundreds of thousands of pounds to complete the design from scratch. By then a lot of A4000s will have died. For so many reasons, its just not worth it.

There is no "magic" solution to this problem. You can't "emulate" chip ram for the physical chipset; the idea is complete nonsense to anyone with an ounce of technical knowledge. You might as well wish for a dual core 18THz 68080 and Zorro V slots while you are at it; its just a meaningless nonsense idea.

The only realistic solutions are to just run UAE, or make a new board with the minimig chipset, modified for 8Mb of chip ram.

[xeron]

it...........if the MegaCHIP can be invented to give A500 2mb Chip............then so can the ULTRA MegaCHIP with 8mb ChipRAM be invented.

This is called flawed logic. Look it up.

Do my Words defy logic?

Yes.

But seeing and experiencing is believing.

So you, personally, have actually seen God? Actually seen the actual deity of the christian* religion? (*insert alternative here if you are of a different faith).

seen.... so hence we think it's not possible.   No scientist can do tests on a Spiritual realm.............so their explanation is: It Doesn't Exist.

The hardware limitations of the classic Amiga has NOTHING to do with spiritualism or religion. It is an electronic board who's basis and foundations are entirely built upon logic. It is possible to map more memory into the chip ram window; but to use it every single piece of software would have to be patched and modified to make use of it. Every. Single. One. Is it worth the effort? To run a few apps and capital punishment at the same time? Errr.... NO. Especially when it would take a lot less years and money to just make a MiniMig based board with 8Mb on board.

I believe this can be achieved on an AGA machine,

Fine. Proove us wrong. Learn electronics, design the upgrade and make one. I bet you can't.

even if AAA has to be imitated in software or hardware.....

This sentence is complete nonsense. Complete. Nonsense. Do you understand? Emulating a more powerful computer on a less powerful computer doesn't work. Do you think E-UAE running on an A500 would let you run AGA games at full speed? No. Even if you managed to get it to run somehow, you'd be talking hours per frame, not frames per second.

bottom line is I believe the CD32 I own and the A600 I own can be made to have more ChipRAM one way or another without replacing the entire motherboard.

Sure. You can keep the connectors, some of the resistors, maybe even some glue logic. But you'd have to replace most of it. It would essentially be a whole other motherboard bolted onto the original one.

I even believe you can use USB and make it work to the full on aplain A600 @ 7mhz, despite the fact they say you need at least 68030.  Baloney!

USB doesn't go "to the full" on a 68030. The only USB 2.0 card for the Amiga is the Spider. You simply will not reach USB2.0 speeds on an 030. There is nothing stopping USB from working on a 7Mhz 68000 other than the lack of a 68000 USB stack. Write one and it'll work, but it won't be as fast as a USB card on a faster amiga.

Explain to me how is it I am playing 18bit Mp3's on my plain A600 @ 7mhz?   its called the MASPlayer!.... yes I know your thinking....."ah but thats external hardware blah blah blah"  Yes.......but its done aint it?

Fine. Thats a whole seperate independant audio chip outside of the Amiga. You want more "graphics memory"? Put a graphics card in your Amiga. Thats a completely seperate independant graphics chip with seperate video memory. You'll be able to run more graphic oriented apps at the same time. YOU WILL NOT HAVE A SINGLE BYTE MORE CHIP RAM, THOUGH.

and the same can be done with ChipRAM

No, it absolutely, positively, CANNOT be done that way. It is physically impossible to add chip ram to an amiga using any of the signals on the external connectors. You'd have to botch a whole new chipset onto the PCB itself.

and external Card, if need be.... like the Graffitti Gfx Box..........that plugs into the RGB port and gives more color and more ChipRAM.

Do you want to know how much Chip RAM the graffiti adds to the Amiga it is attached to? I'll give you a clue. Its an integer between -0.01 and 0.01 bytes.

[xeron]

Sega Genesis also had limited hardware.....then they came out with the 32X ! and the gfx improved.... and so did the speed....same machine!

But sonic the hedgehog didn't get any faster, and you couldn't run two megadrive games at once. The 32X was basically a new console; it was a new processor and new graphics chips that routed the video through a special pin in the Megadrive cartridge port that was DESIGNED for that purpose.

The 32X was only used by 32X games. As I have said many times before, you COULD bank in extra chip ram, but it would ONLY work with software written for that expansion, JUST LIKE THE 32X. So capital punishment, Scala, AmigaOS etc. etc. would not be able to use the extra chip ram. Period.

then came StarFox and Killer Instinct and Donkey Kong Country!  Add-ons in the Cartidge that exapnded the capability of the SNES

Yes. And those extra chips could run Starfox, Killer Instinct and Donkey Kong, BECAUSE THEY WERE WRITTEN FOR THE EXTRA HARDWARE.

Adding 8Mb of chip ram to a classic Amiga in such a way that the chipset, and existing apps can use it is impossible without redesigning the chips and adding extra memory bus wires all over the motherboard. And thats it.

The DCTV is an excellent example of what I am talking about! the Amiga Displays a 16 color picture..yet it is spit out in 16 million colors

Do you know how much extra chip ram the DCTV gives you? Go on guess. If you guessed more than 0.0 bytes, you are wrong.

Same can be done with ChipRAM

No it can't.

the Hardware would be like the MegaChip or even the Graffitti

Neither of which give you more than 2Mb chip ram.

and the Software would be like AmigaDE or Java.........making the computer think its something its not

But existing apps are already 68k native. Any layer between the apps and the actual 68k is only going to slow it down. Never mind the fact that no amount of software or emulation will ever make the actual chipset see more than 2Mb of RAM. Its just not possible.

It will be similar with ChipRAM...except in this case, the Software will let the REAL Amiga think it is WinUAE!.....  Possible???  I think definitely!

No. Definately not. WinUAE can only emulate 8MB of chipram because it also emulates the chipset itself. You can't use any kind of software emulator to make the actual physical chipset in your amiga "see" more than 2Mb of chip ram. At all. Ever. Period.

even if AAA has to be imitated in software or hardware.....

This sentence is complete nonsense.

It's not nonsense..............Im simply speaking of emulating the ChipRAM a AAA machine would have had and how it would have accessed it...........not the entire machine itself.

This paragraph is complete nonsense. You can't do that. Thats not how emulation works. You'd have to emulate the whole chipset, which would be VERY SLOW. It is simply impossible to make the actual physical chipset see more than 2Mb. You can't emulate a bigger memory bus for a physical chip. You just can't. You might as well ask for an emulator that emulates a pizza oven but actually physically produces real pizza out of your floppy drive. Its equally as nonsensical.

beg to differ!   behold!  the FMV card for the CD32!  Nuff Said!
Understand what I am saying here? a CD32 plays perfect VideoCD's...why?  because of a hardware addon....

But the Amiga has always had a genlockable video signal. You could always combine an external video source with the Amiga video signal. The FMV card for the CD32 is an mpeg decoder card that plugs into a socket designed to accept an MPEG decoder card and it uses already existing proven genlock technology to put the display on the screen. This is something trivial and totally and utterly different to adding chipram to the chipset on an amiga motherboard.

the same can be done with a USB card and made to be running at Full 2.0 speeds on a plain A600 @7mhz.

You know what? You could make a card with a USB port and some fast RAM and its own private DMA controller and transfer data from USB devices at full USB2.0 speed. When you actually want to save that data to a hard disk on your SCSI hard disk attached to the A500 side port, or read it into the processor to do some processing on it, the transfers will go a LOT slower since you'll have to transfer it across slower busses. This is a fact.

 it would be something similar to a VLAB parralel port version.

Wait. So you're saying that you can transfer data over the Amiga parallel port at FireWire speeds? Well I have news for you. That is COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE. There are well known bandwidth limits to all the Amiga connectors, and they're really not that high.

But thats what Im saying!  except it will be a completely seperate Graphics Chip if need be...........but indeed giving it more ChipRAM.

Graphics cards DO NOT ADD A SINGLE BYTE OF CHIP RAM. They have their own seperate video ram which the amiga chipset simply cannot access. The video chip on the card cannot access chip ram, either. Only programmes that use RTG friendly APIs can use the video cards.

[xeron]

No I am not talkig about emulating WinUAE.........only the part that allows 8mb ChipRAM to be accesed.

This is impossible.

[xeron]

@leirbag
and I know for a fact it won't. Anyone with the technical knowhow to bodge an entire replacement chipset (basically most of the motherboard) on top of an Amiga to gain 6Mb more chipram will realise the utter futility of the exercise when it would be easier, faster and cheaper to just make an "Amiga on an FPGA" from scratch.