Hardware accelerated 3d for amithlon. What would be the best way?

[fishy_fiz]

As some of you may be aware Im somewhat of an amithlon fan. Ive used it on various machines over the years starting with an athlon xp 1800+ , through to an athlon64 3400+, and now my core2duo@3.86ghz. Finally with the last upgrade Im content with the performance of anything I throw at it. 68k UAE works nicely with aga games, even those that require a bit more grunt (breathless, xtrememe racing, etc.), fpse runs nicely, quake 1 and 2, descent freespace, etc. all run well at high resoultions, pctask runs at higher end 486 type speeds (havent benchmarked it, but Id suspect its at least that from the software I ran), even payback runs great at 640x480 using software rendered wazp3d with mipmapping, anti-aliasing, etc. enabled.

In short Im perfectly content with my amithlon box. It's not so much about the speed itself, but the ability to run software without thinking "if only it were a little faster".

Anyway, that said and done I'll get to the main point of this thread.

While impressed with the speed of wazp3d when software rendering, even with eye candy enabled Ive always been curious about hardware 3d acceleration for amithlon. There's plenty of rumors and suggestions around, but the only clue Ive ever found that I trust is in the docs of euae, although being that amithlon and uae work somewhat different Im not sure they'd exactly apply, and besides, it's not exactly what Im after (essentially being able to assign a pci lane to use elbox drivers).

Ultimately what Im trying to find out is where to start if someone was inclined to try to create thier own 3d drivers for use with amithlon. An Openpci driver using stormmesa seems the logical choice, making it not just for amithlon use, but hypothetically if I was to start a bounty for such a driver, what would need to be done exactly?

There's no reason os3.x users with suitable hardware couldnt be enjoying some of the titles os4.x/mos/aros people are. Winuae users in theory already could be given the ability to use hosts 3d hardware for warp3d. (infact I believe there's a 68k version of cube and tuxracer already, not to mention the titles Ive earlier mentioned).

Anyway, thanks for listening to me ramble and I'd appreciate any feedback on what exactly is required to get 3d acceleration working with amithlon.

[fishy_fiz]

The thing is though Id prefer to do things through the amiga os side, this is why openpci seems the best option, Id like any work done to work on both amithlon and any other amiga system using openpci. Given amithlons direct hardware access when not using linux drivers Id imagine it'd be a "cleaner" way of doing it as well. Pretty much all the framework is in place. There's already stormmesa and warp3d (waprd3d does indeed use a subset of gl).

To my knowledge its as "simple" as writing a driver for warp3d (wazp3d is probably the better bet as its easier to change if need be).

Thanks though for your input. While Im not 100% sure on the amiga os side of things I had even less of an idea about the linux side of things.

[fishy_fiz]

In regards to AROS, I already have an AROS box, but amithlon + os3.x is still my fav. amiga system. For all thier pros and cons none of the NG options really appease me the way os3.x does. I like the almost d.i.y. nature of os3.x, the millions of little bits and pieces to handcraft your system, and with the sort of grunt amithlon provides make the 2 a great combination (for my tastes). Basically Id just like to be able to extend my os3.x usage, even if it means I have to do some work, or pay others for that to happen.

And yes, I realise it's not simple to write a driver, hence my use of quotes around "simple"  

[fishy_fiz]

@Crumb

I vaguely remember something about Bernd showing amithlon running with an existing 68k voodoo driver, but my memory is a bit hazey as to the details. There was a little controversy about it though if I recall correctly. After reading the uae-jit docs in euae I started thinking maybe it was through the elbox drivers, as he gives a description there how to assign a pci slot that can use amiga drivers there. Whether or not its related to how he used a 3d accelerated voodoo3 in amithlon or not Im not sure.

Id like the find out the real story here. Ive heard many variations on it over the years, but never seen any proof to clarify the real story for me.

That aside though for now Im more interested in how to get 3d acceleration working in amithlon without the need for these sort of "hacks". A lot of it is beyond me at the moment, but the more I learn the more I can research it

[fishy_fiz]

Ive just used the 68k hosted cross compiler to generate x86 amiga os bins (http://aminet.net/package/dev/gcc/x86-ami-gcc). Once its compiled a person just needs to use runelf to run the exe. There's also linux and ygwin hosted cross compilers, but Ive never used them.

Is that what you was asking? Id be a happy man to have an amithlon native wazp3d, even software rendered, so if there's anything I can do to help please let me know

[fishy_fiz]

@woof

The main 2 "substantial" big endian x86/amithlon things I can think of off the top of my head are ahi and povray. Would looking at the sources of them be of any use (particularly ahi maybe?).

Oh, and I thought you might be interested to hear that v50 of wazp3d is working much better for me now. Some of the glitches were from an unrelated problem.