FPGA Amiga

[psxphill]

Brit Elite, while I find most of what you write very reasonable, I don't understand why it disturbs you that the Apollo Core has some features the 060 does not have. You can safely ignore their presence.

It's not so much disturbing, I just wish he'd implement the important features so that I could justify buying one rather than all this fluffing crap.

Maybe there are people who want to be fluffed into a gigantic orgasm by an FPGA board. It seems ok for whdload and doing it's own thing, but it's kinda expensive for that.

[psxphill]

How many times has it been pointed out that the "important features" are just stripped down and limited variants of the "fluffing crap" and that implementing the "fluffing crap" makes it easier to then implement the "important features" deriving them from the "fluffing crap"?

I don't know, how many times are you going to trot out the lies?

Because gunnar is pretty clear that he isn't going to deliver the features I want.

Anyway, thank you for explaining your point of view which I consider a very well reasoned one. It is a nice break from all this "it must crash the same way as an 060 otherwise it isn't compatible" stuff I have been reading for a long time from others.

Well, it's not compatible. In very important ways, apollo is not compatible. That is just an easy one for the weak minded to understand.

[psxphill]

Thanks for proving my point...

If you go round insulting and bullying people, then expect it back. That is not a point.

[psxphill]

And what damage is there? The 080 will execute both 040 and 060 optimised code faster than any 040 or 060.

Cherry picked code. Anything interesting runs at 0% the speed of an 040 or 060

[psxphill]

but I recall PPC being joint design of Apple and Motorola with Apple effectively locking everyone else out of using it on the desktop.

PPC was originally IBM going to Apple and saying they could produce a chip, Apple wanted a second source and they didn't want to mess up their relationship with Motorola so they got IBM to bring Motorola in.

So you can't really blame Motorola for ditching 680x0 on the desktop and switching to PowerPC, they had a gun to their head.

They had produced a legit console, sure, but they were still treating it like a computer in allowing people to sort through software of varying quality and compatibility.

They were in dire need of content, they didn't have the time to enforce quality. Sony had a similar issue with PlayStation games with some of the early titles not meeting their strict development guidelines. Commodore had the additional problem of not having enough money to do anything if they had wanted.

A serious computer hardware vendor makes a market analysis and picks the chip that fits best to their requirements, after having made a market analysis what the customer wants. CBM did not, and went bankrupt.

commodores problems started after the A500 release when they came up with the idea of AAA instead of something a bit more like AGA. They might have then had the time to actually finish it, like adding the chunky pixel modes that they had wanted to add to AGA. If they had put in a blitter that could do simple texture mapping then they could have had a chance.

The new people would then not have been brought in to rescue development, which wasn't working effectively. They caused an even bigger mess. The CSG pollution and the xor patent were big problems too, it's a complex situation

[psxphill]

Here's another theory - Apple tried to stay relevant on the desktop by moving to an architecture with a more promising future than what 68k could offer.

They switched because of a wet dream over RISC, there was still life in the 68k series. The decision was made before the 68060 came out.

In my mind the Amiga was the best 2D computer and 3D is what killed it.

The Acorn Archimedes was technically better than the Amiga, but it was more expensive and didn't have the software. I agree about 3D, an off the shelf Amiga couldn't even do something like doom.

I'd blame Apple first for possibly wanting to handicap the Amiga and Atari by abandoning the 68k knowing it might effectively kill it.

I don't think Amiga or Atari were particularly troublesome for Apple. Especially by the time they decided to switch to PowerPC.

It wouldn't be emulation as they'd still be running on a real processor, but the lowest level of the OS would need be something entirely new and able to mature into the real UI over time.

You'd end up with emulation eventually. Once you add memory protection, you'd want to be able to run hardware hitting software in a way that would run but not take over the machine.

68k was continued, it was called ColdFire,

If only they'd made the chips 100% binary compatible with existing 68k software.

[psxphill]

It is a graphics chip designed for PCs with an ISA to Zorro-Bus adapter, a SCSI chip designed for PC, PC memory, and the Amiga custom chps are just idle.

SCSI chips and memory weren't really PC specific. An ISA bridge is no different from the glue used on early zorro cards.

The graphics chip will have been designed with the PC in mind, because it was the largest install base.

The same software could, with a couple of modifications in the hardware abstraction (such as expansion) also run on a 68K based Mac.

Hence Draco. However you would cut out a lot of hardware hitting software, which even some productivity software was doing. Which even though you weren't running them, they would still run on your Amiga. So it still is an Amiga.

I can't find an amigaos on atarist hack, which is kind weird as we seemed obsessed with going the other way round.