MiniMig with AGA

[little]

Since the spartan 3e wont give use speeds beyond 20Mhz (or so I read in a prior post) wouldn't it make sense that someone worked in porting the DCTV hardware (that would allow high color resolutions without requiring lots of memory or bandwidth) and hopefully someone would write a RTG driver for it. The Phillips CDi used such screen modes for its gaming library, who knows, maybe some programmers will find it attractive to write ports of games to such a low spec system (but with high color output). That bundled with the AHI sound system should be a nice combo IMO.

[little]

Actually there is a hope it will work at 28 MHz. I have it currently running at that speed and with a very small cache (for code only) of 16 bytes it outperforms an 030@25MHz.

That is great news!

Let's better spend that time on a real RTG frame buffer implementation.

+

@little
Now that AGA and additional chipram are available, it won't be long before some enterprsing coder figures out how to add Super-AGA to the same core

On the surface it sounds cool to create a new framebuffer, AGA+, etc. but the problem I see with that approach is that by creating new hardware, hardware that effectively only a few have access and that no one has ever worked with before, you reduce exponentially the number of people  that can write code for it. It might sound easy enough to say "We will simply expand UAE to emulate it also", the problem being that emulation of low level features is either imperfect or way too complicated/slow. The only solution I can think for such dilemma would be that the AROS 68k port implements all the required low level tinkering so that there is no need to make calls directly to the hardware, so a program written for x86 aros would work in 68k aros using the new audio/video hardware, totally transparent to the original programmer.

[little]

@little

No one is creating new hardware by extending the Minimig cores.

Huh? The moment you speak about something better than AGA it is new hardware, plain and simple. Do not confuse the fact that you can program the FPGA to recreate an amiga with the fact that you can add hardware to said computer that never existed before.

And no one is concerned about x86 Aros running 68K Aros programs because x86 AROS was never intended to have binary compatibility with 68K AROS.

I apologize for not saying this before (I thought it was quite obvious but this proves the opposite), I was never talking about x86 binaries running in 68k hardware, I merely was talking about recompiling the source to run them in 68k.

And if you find that there's an application that doesn't behave well on one of the modified AGA/SuperAGA Minimig cores, then just revert back to a stock A500 softcore on your Minimig....problem solved.

Let me spell this clearly, if someone writes a game with 24bit graphics and sound for AROS x86 and manages to recompile it for AGA/ECS/OCS it will look/sound bad. Even if AROS is successfully ported to 68k said game will still look god awful in an improved AGA core if the OS does not know how to access the improved graphics/sound hardware. Asking a programmer to make a game for a hardware platform with a user base below a thousand is sheer madness.

The Amiga is and will remain a system for hobbyists.

No question about it, but hobbyists are the kind of people like the idea of getting some OSS software and recompiling it to run in this supposedly dead platform.

[little]

@little

And again,  I say no new hardware is being created at all by modifiying an FPGA core.  FPGA cores are software VHDL code.  There is absolutely NO hardware being created when someone modifies a core.  Please do some more study about FPGAs before you start spreading misinformation.  Creating new hardware would be adding additional ICs, capacitors, resistors, etc.  That does not happen when someone modifies a softcore.  That's why it's called a "soft" core.

You don't know how thankful I am for clarifying that for me, for a moment I thought this was a piece of hardware.

No, you are confusing the goals of AROS 68K and classic Amiga.  The goal of AROS 68K is to run classic Amiga software completely unmodified.  The target program will look and operate identically on an Amiga that's running AROS 68K or OS3.X.  In fact, it will be running on identical hardware. Instead of OS 3.X on your Amiga, you simply choose to run Aros 68K instead.  Or if you have an FPGA based Amiga, you can do the same there as well.  Run AROS, or run OS3.X or less.  The software application is still using Amiga hardware, but you can opt for an FPGA Amiga as well.

You heard it first, AROS 68k will not have new capabilities, nor fix any bugs/incompatibilities, don't you feel reassured now?

And I haven't seen nor heard of anyone here asking a programmer to make a 24-bit game for a hardware platform with a user base below a thousand.....No one here with disagree with you that asking such a thing is madness.

So what would be the point then of improving AGA at all if no one is going to benefit from the extra features? You have already said that AROS will not support the AGA and I can assure you that AmigaOS 3.1 (even 3.9) cannot support said hardware.

And who is developing ANY 24-bit screen mode games for classic Amigas anyway? (Answer:  Nobody)  And why would they?  There's simply no market for it, and the CPU horsepower for such a game on a classic Amiga doesn't exist.

It is called freeware and it existed even when my amiga 1200 was brand new

So your argument makes no sense.  So the FPGA devs are supposed to keep their next generation Amiga hardware and softcores stunted/handicapped for software that doesn't even exist?  The entire point of next generation hardware is to move forward with greater capabilities while retaining the ability to run older classic software if you choose to do so.

I salute you, I haven't met someone with tea and no tea at the same time in quite a while.

[little]

The real show stopper is the number of configurable gates (400k vs 1200k).

IMO they should already go with the 1600k FPGA.

[little]

There's another catch there.. the tool to use it cost like 3000 USD/year.

If I understand correctly said tool is required for the virtex and spartan 6. AFAIK the biggest spartan 3e model has 1600k (and not 1200k) gates and last time I checked the price was not too high (of course YMMV).

[little]

Just a small update. The CPU core is still clocked at 28 MHz but this time with two separate 256-byte instruction and data caches.

That looks awesome and begs the ambitious question, how big a cache can be added?  Would it have about the same performance as the coldfire if you add the same size caches (let's say 16kb instruction and 8kb data cache like the 5207)?

[little]

This VHDL stuff is looking very tempting though, anyone suggest a first-timers FPGA kit to buy or perhaps shuld I just get one of MikeJ's boards?

IMO it would be better to get the fpgaarcade board, not only it is cheaper, but anything meaningful you achieve could be tested by others people.