P96 RTG driver development for new hardware

[wawrzon]

Have you considered using AROS/m68k instead? It is quite capable. I have a plan to build a minimalistic OS3.1 like AROS distribution, targeting MIST and Minimig for now as those are systems I have.

i think they are dismissing it since mikej said in the initial post:
"it seems daft for us to re-invent the wheel when there are other fun things to be done."
so i wouldnt try to pursue this further.

what concerns minimal aros that runs on an unexpanded amiga or the like, im also messing a bit with that. though currently im stuck because of few issues. for instance my desktop of choice, scalos is causing an illegal instruction fault. if you like we could make a separate thread on this subject.

[wawrzon]

"Have you considered using AROS/m68k instead? "
Happy for people to run whatever they wish! I can help with drivers etc as required.

it is not a problem with aros68k, it will accept a driver in a p96 format if you succeed to build one;)
my aros proposal was only meant as general solution to a repeated problems different parties are facing. but i have created a separate thread in case anyone has something to say in the matter:
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=70091
please let us stay on topic. im eager to see you succeed, mike.

[wawrzon]

@kolla

tbh, i dont know how to boot your arcade with rtg support. i guess you have an 1mb kickstart? if you were softkicking from amiga kickstart you would have to:
AROSBootstrap ROM boot/amiga/aros.hunk.gz somecard.card somecard.chip
at the beginning of the s-s, but maybe it can be just compiled in, better ask toni;)

[wawrzon]

@mikej

the problem is that aros rom is full being 1mb, i suppose. and especially since drivers come separately and under different licenses from the hardware vendors they have to be loaded from disk, no matter if we are talking about graphic or a lan card. i think it is also a reasonable way. aros and its kickstart should provide only a basic and common set of drivers, the amiga hardware ones and maybe a vesa one for rtg cards. third party drivers should be loaded from disk imho.

[wawrzon]

AROS should run on Replay as-is (64M of RAM). I'm happy to give it a go if you mail me the files. 1M ROM is already supported.
/Mike

in case you want to run a current nightly build they are here:
http://aros.sourceforge.net/nightly1.php

the rom images are either on the floppy or on the boot iso, boot/amiga directory, but i dont know if its a in a proper format you need. you dont need the floppy otherwise, if you can boot from hd. decompress the iso to a bootable partition and off you go.

there is currently aome problem with screenmode prefs, but otherwise it should work.

[wawrzon]

I am guessing that .elf = is the PPC version, since that is what the PPC code hunks are called.?

no, it was used for ppc, but elf is simply binary code format as opposed to amiga hunk format. gcc generates currently binaries in this format. aros68k can load both (in my experience elf loading is faster) but to be run under amiga binaries need to be converted to hunk. aros provides a tool elf2hunk and converts also the aros binaries contained in the iso to hunk. practically when softkicking aros only needs arosbootstrap to be in hunk.

i dont know about the floppy, but the iso/boot/amiga contains either aros.elf (not converted, as i compile it) or aros.hunk.gz images.

Where is the AROS rom.bin and ext.bin get mapped into the Amiga's address space?

i guess kickstart needs to be mapped to an address where it is expected to boot from, but i dont know. best ask toni on eab.

[wawrzon]

NOTE!! Apparently AROS already works fine with the Replay board... from the AROS website:

AROS at AmiWest 2012

     Author:Jason McMullan  Date:2012-11-02    At AmiWest 2012, Samuel Crow and Jason McMullan demonstrated AROS v1 running on the Sam460ex from ACube, the FPGA Arcade Replay from FPGA Arcade, and the Raspberry PI from the Raspberry PI Foundation.

sure it should, as fpgaarcade provides amiga compatible hardware. jason even presented it on amiwest, but then there was only 68000 implementation without aga i guess, so it might not have been that impressive. jason have been amiga68k developer together with toni.

[wawrzon]

I don't expect any issues.

if there is any, aros nightly has enabled debug output on serial, baudrate 115200

[wawrzon]

Hm, isn't that a wee bit too high baudrate for an Amiga?

too high? why? i have been using serial logging with this setting on aros from the beginning with no problem, i guess i tested even with an 68020.

[wawrzon]

Some people in the community are just control freaks and prefer to keep 15 years old code in their closets.

The model that was originally used by Tobias possibly could have some sense back in 1995 when Amiga market was much, much bigger and there were actual companies doing new development for classic Amiga. That licensing model is completely unfit for the current market and limits access to P96 only for the biggest players. I considered developing a new RTG card for classics but I am unwilling to participate in this absurdity.

Currently, we are all just hobbyists working on Amiga stuff whenever our time permits.

@Thomas
How about a bounty to open P96 code? If the money is really an issue, this could solve it.

sigh.. slowly im tired of reminding everybody who wants to liberate p96 or create a driver for it that there is aros cybergraphics, that would very likely be less hassle to port over to genuine amiga system than getting actual p96 sources released. hell, it even has a wrapper that accepts p96 drivers..

i really dont understand why to make things more complicated and even less likely to happen, even though there are already open solutions out there.

[wawrzon]

Where can this be fou cannd?

https://trac.aros.org/trac/about

you can download the nightly sources here:
http://aros.sourceforge.net/de/download2.php

id look for files in question in here:
https://trac.aros.org/trac/browser#AROS/trunk/AROS/rom/graphics
perhaps also around here:
https://trac.aros.org/trac/browser/AROS/trunk/AROS/workbench/libs/cgxvideo

to get detailed information its best to join aros dev-ml or ask toni wilen, who delivered amiga hidd. initially its probably best to compile files within aros build system, which is pretty easy and even i can help with it. but there are instructions, how to do it outside i can point to.

[wawrzon]

im not familiar with aros cgx but i think it can be thought about as reimplementation of graphics library with full color graphics in mind, because it was done for systems equipped with such graphics to start with. amiga chipset graphics frontend has been implemented on top of this (i dont remember the name and am not sure where to look for it in the source right now, i suppose the name was somehow like fake cgx or so). of course this is currently not optimal for planar graphics as most if not all is handled internally in 24bit, but rtg graphics is working fine and fast even on amiga hardware, except some exotic pixel formats, like those 15 and 24 bit of picasso4

some accompanying info i ve just found:
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Aros/Platforms/68k_support/Developer/HIDD

[wawrzon]

Obviously not, it's just the easiest option as it already exists.

if you just need documentation to write drivers for it, perhaps.
but if is is supposed to go again into the full maintenance modus as thor suggests, it may become more difficult. for starters it would likely have to be made compilable with todays compilers, say gcc 4.x-5.x and so on..

[wawrzon]

Amiga developers, on the other hand, seems to do do everything within their power to *not* make money on their stuff.  :p

sounds as if you knew better how to make money here. which i doubt that there is any generally sensible method for. including so called amistores or the like, but that can be confirmed or argued against by actually involved with such alternatives.

[wawrzon]

Picasso96Mode

this program is probably almost completely unnecessary as of today. when using flatscreens with their normed frequencies, almost no tolerances, and fixed native resolutions, user defined display modes will likely rather lead to problems then solve any. hard coded standard resolutions is much more sensible approach in this respect.