More Chipram

[LoadWB]

Now this is just academic, for the sake of argument.

On my big box systems (2000 with MegAChip and 4000) with graphics cards, my ChipRAM RARELY dips below 1.8MB or so.  My 1200 is a different story as it has nothing more than standard AGA.  I will leave the 500 out of the discussion ;-)

Out of sadistic curiousity, with the number of people working on hardware emulations of the Amiga system, would it be possible to design a cheap replacement Alice to allow the 8MB Chip RAM for those using standard AGA, or would more need to be done?

Since the chips on the 4000 are not socketed, a MegAChip-style upgrade is not viable -- the upgrade would need to be an over-chip design, like accelerators for the 600.  It is also apparent to me that the 1200's design lacks the support for such a hack.

[B00tDisk]

LoadWB wrote:
Now this is just academic, for the sake of argument.

On my big box systems (2000 with MegAChip and 4000) with graphics cards, my ChipRAM RARELY dips below 1.8MB or so.  My 1200 is a different story as it has nothing more than standard AGA.  I will leave the 500 out of the discussion ;-)

Out of sadistic curiousity, with the number of people working on hardware emulations of the Amiga system, would it be possible to design a cheap replacement Alice to allow the 8MB Chip RAM for those using standard AGA, or would more need to be done?

Since the chips on the 4000 are not socketed, a MegAChip-style upgrade is not viable -- the upgrade would need to be an over-chip design, like accelerators for the 600.  It is also apparent to me that the 1200's design lacks the support for such a hack.

It isn't just the chips.  It's the data lines as well.  

Honestly, if I had the time and resources I'd focus on a mini-miga like project and in the FPGA emulation crank the chip-ram up to 8mb there.  Forget taking the old classic hardware that far.


Now that would be sweet.  A little mini-ATX board MiniMig with full AGA + 8mb chip RAM hack, a couple PCI slots (and appropriate controller to make 'em active), and a 100mhz 060 (assuming you could ever find 'em again).

THAT would be a fun little hobby box.

[Zac67]

... and additional AGA modes like real chunky, lores truecolor etc. plus a Coldfire with hardware assisted 68k emulation (there were only 75 MHz EC060 or 66 MHz 060 around)...

[rare_j]

Piru wrote:
I wish people would learn to use the search

Dave's post should be a sticky!

[Zac67]

Stacking four Agnuses/Alices could actually work
- completely separated chipset areas
- four complete (!) sets of custom chips
- stacking those chips wouldn't help too much, since you'd need four sets of chip busses as well
- complete rewrite of all hardware dependant parts in AOS (mucho gusto on that)
- rewrite of APIs to take care of allocating the right chipmem to get the right screen output/same with sound/floppy
=> no AOS compatibility on application level

I'm sure it's much easier to redesign Alice in FPGA - and that'd be a nice task anyway. Better redesign the system in whole like Dennis does. Chipset level compatibility must be a pain.
I'd like to get a solid foundation from Dennis' project to start from and then add expansions to that as needed. Might even get somewhere 'modern'...

[leirbag28]

@stopthegop

I am with you 100%   I totally believe it can be done........and quite easily too.........I dont care what anybody says..even if it seems to defy logic...........if WinUAE can do it.so can a real Amiga.even if it has to be emulated.......the system doesnt seem to be told that there is extra chipRAM.......it just uses it....as in WinUAE............so it will be the same o Amiga I think..................you can just Run for instance CAPITAL PUNISHMENT while having 10 applicatons running without having to tell the system anything..........at leats thats how it is on WinUAE.

I have heard so many people throw Technical Jargon my way throughout my life.............they were all mostly wrong......

I guess us New Yorkers Think alike eh?  what part of New York are you in?  


@Flashlab
Quote:
 There shouldn't be a specific need for it either. Why do you want it?
----------------------------------------------------------


There is definitely a need for more ChipRAM......Amigas would be so much more productive.especially for me in which I run about 4 applications at once an Night Clubs and Parties.................I VJ and I use SCALA MM300, Elan Performer, MindEYE, and Trip-A-Tron all at once.....and it totally helps especially SCALA if I have more ChipRAM.

Nevertheless.............Imagine using Final Writer and True Brilliance to create stuff to place in Final Writer?  you run out of ChipRam easily.

I specifically like switching from SCALA and Brilliance or True Brilliance to see what I create for SCALA.

Trust me....its usefull!

[Piru]

@leirbag28

You have been told repeatedly it won't happen. It will not happen. The only way it can happen is emulation (either in sofrware, or hardware (MiniMig)). Real Amigas will never have more than 2MB chip memory.

I dont care what anybody says.even if it seems to defy logic

I can see that. If you don't listen to Dave Haynie, who actually designed some parts of those machines, you're indeed beyond hope.

[Blade]

OT, but:

ENIAC was the world's first 100% digital computer

Nice try, nevertheless, completly wrong. There is so many stuff
predating the ENIAC, it is fascinating how it ever could become known
as the first computer. (or "full digital computer" as you refer)

For Example, The Harvard Mark One 1944, the British
Colossus, same year. And finally the German Z(use)3, 1941,
all where before the ENIAC (1946).
Even the Term Bug is not related to the ENIAC, but the Mark two (same year as ENIAC was done)

[recidivist]

 People have got to face the fact that the Amiga hardware design was great in its time but much better is available now. Wishing  for more chipram is understandable but as realistic as wanting automatic transmission, air conditioning,  and power steering in a Ford Model T:it could be done,but it won't be authenic.

 To my mind,the reason Amiga were so great is that the design interfaced very well with the TV standards of the time and was ahead of the pack in OS elegance and graphics.

 Barring the resurrection of AAA chips plus improvements the future is going to be Amiga OS running on "standard" hardware already widely produced .

 It would be interesting to know if more Amiga Forever on Windows OR classic Amigas are being used today.

 Personally I'd love to see one of those Chinese factories churn out a few million Retro+ A1200s only with built-in CD/DVD drive(skip the built-in floppy),HD loaded with a sampling of the fun games and productivity software,50(or higher)mhz '030(highest compatibility) or better and 128 or more ram running OS3.9 or 4.Sell 'em for $199 and they'd fly off the shelves. They have already made retro game machines for the C64 and Atari classics in which  dozens of games,the equivalent to the old computer,and a joystick are combined and sold for $19.99 !

[xeron]

@leirbag

As discussed many times, it IS possible to add more chip RAM to the Amiga, but its not realistically feasible. Lets look at the options for the thousandth time shall we?

1) Banking.
Have n banks of 1Mb in the upper 1Mb space of Chip RAM.
This is feasible, and probably cheap to do. The problem? You'd have to patch AmigaOS and recompile every single piece of software to cope with it. So its not worth it.

2) Create a pin-compatible 8Mb Alice.
This would actually work in an A4000, which is the *ONLY* classic Amiga with enough address lines to the chipset. Good luck, though, the schematics for the chipset are long lost and it would take many years and probably hundreds of thousands of pounds to complete the design from scratch. By then a lot of A4000s will have died. For so many reasons, its just not worth it.

There is no "magic" solution to this problem. You can't "emulate" chip ram for the physical chipset; the idea is complete nonsense to anyone with an ounce of technical knowledge. You might as well wish for a dual core 18THz 68080 and Zorro V slots while you are at it; its just a meaningless nonsense idea.

The only realistic solutions are to just run UAE, or make a new board with the minimig chipset, modified for 8Mb of chip ram.

[recidivist]

 The only way I can conceive for the classic Amigas would be through the use of an accel/graphics/memory card add-on and a wedge program that would intercept all relevant calls and process them on-card.Isn't this what a Mediator type system does?

There is so much difference  between possible and practical!
Hobbyists can do try/all sorts of things on their own time and money that would never be approved in a profit-making corporation

[Piru]

@recidivist

The only way I can conceive for the classic Amigas would be through the use of an accel/graphics/memory card add-on and a wedge program that would intercept all relevant calls and process them on-card.

No, this will not work. No external HW can patch the internal chipset dependecies, nor can software account for HW banging applications/games/demos. You would end up emulating the whole system, and then you're back with UAE anyway.

Isn't this what a Mediator type system does?

No, it isn't.

[d0pefish]

Whether WinUAE can do it or not is completely irrelevant - WinUAE is an emulator, and it is creating a virtual set of hardware. WinUAE gets to decide the spec of the machine. Amiga motherboard custom chips are set in stone - isn't that obvious?

Being defiant and ignoring the designer of the machine is slightly idiotic, too, to say the least.

And who needs ChipRAM anyway? It's slow as hell compared to Fast. Ever see a piece of Amiga software that needs more than 2MB Chip?

Get yourself a RAM board and bask in the luxury of speedy memory. Add a graphics card and ChipRAM then rarely gets touched - as someone else said, my A4000 boots to Workbench with way over 2,000,000 bytes free and it never drops below 1.8 when I'm working.

[Karlos]

"Guess what?! I have a fever. And the only perscription is, more chipram!"




;-)

[Karlos]

This is one subject where you really ought to listen to the nay sayers.

Short of building a complete replacement set of custom chip hardware that supports 8MB of chip ram and writing the appropriate OS patches to get it recognised and doing what you can to fix what that breaks in the Z2 space (if it is even possible), it isn't going to happen.

UAE works simply because it doesnt have any real constraints. Real hardware does. Something like a MiniMig style system is the best possibility for this type of thing.

[motorollin]

recidivist wrote:
The only way I can conceive for the classic Amigas would be through the use of an accel/graphics/memory card add-on and a wedge program that would intercept all relevant calls and process them on-card.Isn't this what a Mediator type system does?

Oh FFS. I don't understand why this is so difficult. Let put it in electronic terms. The Amiga's Chip RAM bus is 16 bit because of the number of data lines running between the chips. In its most basic terms, there are a fixed number of wires running between the legs of the chips.

In order to address more than 2MB of RAM, the memory bus would have to be 32 bit. Changing the chips for 32 bit versions is not enough. You also have to increase the number of "wires" running between the chips to allow 32 bit communication between them.

Wedging some hardware between the accelerator can't increase the number of lines running between the chips on the motherboard. Neither can changing the chips themselves. Software won't help, because it's not a limitation of the OS - it's a physical limitation of the board.

recidivist wrote:
There is so much difference  between possible and practical!
Hobbyists can do try/all sorts of things on their own time and money that would never be approved in a profit-making corporation

That's true. But hobbyists can only achieve what is possible within the confines of physics - IOW they can't magically make 16bit motherboards 32bit :roll:

--
moto