Got a 3D card in your Amiga? I need you!

[Karlos]

Hi all,

I'm doing a little research for a project that I'm working on. I'm interested to know if anybody here, who has a 3D card in their system (using a Warp3D v4 driver) would be able to run a small benchmarking utility for me.

It's 68K only, runs in a workbench window and times a series of calls to some warp3d drawing functions.

It requires a 3D card (evidently), Warp3D v4 (version 3 will not work) and either CybergraphX or Picasso96.

Its extraordinarily unexciting to watch and generates some textual output that I'm interested in.
[color=990000]
Before anybody agrees, please let me state that this is a devloper tool only and MAY HAVE BUGS, so please be advised VOLUNTEER AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!
[/color]
The usual disclaimers apply - if it blows up then it's not my fault...

Phew, it's getting serious

Not like me at all ;-)

Having said all that, it has sucessfully ran under three different configurations:

BVision Permedia2+CGX 4.2+ 040@25MHz

Mediator1200 PCI Voodoo3 + P96 + 040@25MHz

Mediator4000 PCI Voodoo5 + P96 + 060@50MHz

Getting back to the point, I'm most interested in results for the following combos:

A1200 derived systems:

BVision Permedia2 + CGX + 040@33MHz
BVision Permedia2 + CGX + 060@50MHz
BVision Permedia2 + CGX + 060@66MHz

Mediator1200 PCI Voodoo* + P96 + 040@25MHz
Mediator1200 PCI Voodoo* + P96 + 040@33MHz
Mediator1200 PCI Voodoo* + P96 + 060@50MHz
Mediator1200 PCI Voodoo* + P96 + 060@66MHz

A3K/4K derived systems:

CVision Permedia2 + CGX + 040@25MHz
CVision Permedia2 + CGX + 040@33MHz
CVision Permedia2 + CGX + 060@50MHz
CVision Permedia2 + CGX + 060@66MHz

Mediator 4000 PCI Voodoo* + P96 + 040@25MHz
Mediator 4000 PCI Voodoo* + P96 + 040@33MHz
Mediator 4000 PCI Voodoo* + P96 + 060@50MHz
Mediator 4000 PCI Voodoo* + P96 + 060@66MHz

*any supported Voodoo chipset

If you can help, please send me an email and I can send you the program / instructions.

Once I gathered enough data I'll stick a message here...

Thanks for any help,

K

[Karlos]

Hi,

Could a guy named 'Steen' who emailed me about this please send his email address again, preferably in the message itself. For some reason your address didn't come with the message so I couldn't reply.

Thanks,

K

[Karlos]

*bump*

I just renamed this thread - any suitably equipped amiga will do as long as it has a 68040+ and 680x0 Warp3D drivers installed ;-)

[Karlos]

Hi PiR,

Wow, sounds like you got some problems there. First up, get CGX v4 if you can. Version 3 has lots of bugs. Also, there is a chance I got lazy and my code won't work with it anyway. Let me know if it complains/fails.

I have an 040/25 + BVision and a couple of cooling fans in the case - but not on the 040 (just a very big heat sink) - because the case design means a fan can't fit there.

Luckily, I managed to get the heatsink in thermal contact with the tower side panel which is 2mm thick aluminium and performs as an excellent passive cooler!

The 040 is even more power hungry than ther 060, but I don't get power problems. However do I feed power into the motherboard at two points, so that may help you too.

First up, I have all the required voltage rails (+12VDC, +5VDC, 0VDC, -12VDC) connected through the standard A1200 power connector.
The old A1200 PSU lead is connected to the tower PSU and fed though a hole in the back of the tower.
This one is essential as it's the only convienient place to feed the -12VDC rail you need for audio / serial.

Next up, I supply additional +5VDC and +12VDC (and the 0VDC rail) through the motherboard floppy connector. Lemme just take a look at it...



Aha...if you imagine the A1200 mobo in front of you such that the PCMCIA is on the left (like in the normal A1200 case), the +5VDC rail connects to the left hand pin of the floppy port. The two centre pins are 0VDC and the right hand one is +12VDC. These are fed from a standard IDE power cable from the PSU.

I mounted a power amplifer heatsink onto the Permedia2 (perfect fit!) and have a spare case cooling fan blowing air across the mobo/gfx card.

My machine is stable as a rock 99% of the time, except when I get tired whilst programming :-)

Hope this helps,

K

[Karlos]

olegil wrote:
pixeltest failed returncode -50659333

?

try openin a shell and running it manually

use

pixeltest width 640 height 480 -sysdebug

the last bit will force debug output from my code...

[Karlos]

olegil wrote:
It can't open cybergraphics.library v42...

Ah, that'll be my fault - I compiled for Cgx4, being a lazy git that I am.

It's not the application that relies on this, its the underlying graphics abstraction layer. I don't think I'm actually using any v4 specifics so I'll recompile it to check for an older version...

Expect an update in ur mail. However, you *must* have Warp3D v4 - the test code is using vertex arrays.

Thanks for the bug report!

At least nobody seems to have had a major burnout yet :-D

[Karlos]

kolla wrote:
Got an A3000 with CSPPC/CVPPC combo that can be of help perhaps?

Sure, that'll be ideal. Send me your email (heh, unless you already did). Not  got any results for a CSPPC/CVPPC combo yet.

Also got an A4000 wth Mediator 4000Di and Voodoo5 5500, however I havent managed to get this one working properly. Only manage to  get up 800x600 every now and then, most of the time everything is just garble. If I try something else than 800x600 I get black screen. more than 800x600, it even sometimes freezes completely) - but as I notice your software is tested on voodoo5 already.. any hint on getting it running?  

Cripes, that does sound dodgy. Could be a botched p96 installation? Not sure, to be fair I only have BVision. The A4K/Mediator4000/Voodoo5 tests were ran by someone else before I posted here. I do know it worked fine up to 1024x768 on that combination.

[Karlos]

Hi Adam,

There should be a version3 comptible pair in your email by now...

I'm so lazy, my gfx layer didn't even really need v4.


Part of the reason is that Warp3D p[referrs v4 (IIRC) so I figured it may prevent odd bugs I had no control over


Anyhow, my gfx abstraction layer now asks for v41 which means anything from now on should work on v3 too...''in theory'' ;-)

[Karlos]

LP wrote:
Ehm Karlos...

I get the exact same message as olegil:

It can't open cybergraphics.library v42...

I'm running P96 if it's any help, and got Warp3D v4...

I have to admit some igornance here. I don't know a great deal about p96. So far, you and olegil seem to be the only ones having this problem.

Perhaps there are updated versions ot the rtg.library that you could get?

I think I saw in a report from one of the p96 users that he was using p96 v2.1 and had no problems with the cybergraphics.library v42 requirement.

Really sorry, I've only coded for cybergraphX and left the rest up to p96's emulation. On the whole it's worked fine.

I do have a verion which asks only for CyberGraphX v3 libraries (to be fair apart from bitmap locking and a few queries I don't use much CGX stuff at all).

Maybe that would work? Or perhaps CGX emulation is something that has to be set up and for some reason it isn't in your cases.

Are there any p96 experts out there who can help?

[Karlos]

Thanks for the info, Kronos. If p96 only knows about v3, why did the code fail in such a minority of cases so far?

In any event, I don't use such a huge amount of cgx specifics and with my code still very much in development I'll maybe stick to v3 if it helps p96 systems.

[Karlos]

Well, I think I can get away with CGX3 for my layer OK - a few people who volunteered got that to work.

Incidentally, I just crashed my Amiga most spectacularly (dont worry guys, was another program). Some of the prettiest graphics I ever saw :-)...
Hmmm I love the smell of overheating permedia chips in the morning ;-)

[Karlos]

@GadgetMaster,

Hey, long time no see matey! Replies in the post :-)

@olegil

A1200s in the office? Definately leet! Your milage may be better with the newer version, it only asks for v41 which IIRC is CyberGfx v3

@woof

Congratulations sir, you are the first person to offer a CV643D test system! The tests go upto 800x600 - I don't know if the CV643D will be too happy but since the tests don't use texturemaps you may be ok. I'll send the benchmarks soon.

[Karlos]

Hi all,

Well I've gathered enough data for now. I'd just like to say a big thanks to all those who volunteered and offered help. You know who you are :-)

Thanks again chaps :-D

Karlos

[Karlos]

Hi Adam,

I dont see why not. I'll put a comparison together from the results I have. Once I've done it I can forward it to anybody interested - don't hold your breath however, I'm kinda busy just now :-)