More Chipram

[leirbag28]

@motorollin

No I am not talkig about emulating WinUAE.........only the part that allows 8mb ChipRAM to be accesed.


@Flashlab

Im not a Jehovah's Witness (yes they are stuborn for slightly different reasons than evangelsists...they are a Cult)
........the reason for the "hardheadedness" of evangelsists is not because they are stubborn........it is because of their strong conviction in God.

Try convincing a person who saw a aghost and knows he saw a ghost, that he didnt actually see one.  Your gonna lose especially when it comes to the matter of the most important quetion in the universe "what happens after we die?"  you dont want to be second guessing this..........you want to actually "Know for sure"  Your soul depends on it.  its a matter of being wise and making sure your eternal destiny is secure........no matter who ridicules you....if there is a God, a Heaven and hell, then I will tell you what. They could care ess if there are people who dont believe...They want to make sure They dont find out the hard way.......by then its too late.

Their logic and most evangelist anyway, is: if you found a cure for AIDS, would you keep it to yourself? that would be awful.........God actually commands in the Scriptures......that if you have been forgiven..how can you not forgive? and the Good News you have heard about Christ.......go tell it to others.

understand my point?


I dont have any hardheadedness about this issue. I just think it should be done and it can be.... despite every logical reason mentioned here that it cant. If WinAUE can fool my Amiga applications.....then so can a peice of hardware.

[motorollin]

leirbag28 wrote:
No I am not talkig about emulating WinUAE.........only the part that allows 8mb ChipRAM to be accesed.

And how would existing software written for the Amiga, which addresses the hardware directly, know that it is supposed to use the emulation instead of the hardware? It wouldn't. It would have to be rewritten. And if you're going to rewrite it anyway, it would be far better to rewrite it  to use fast ram than some slow chip RAM emulation.

leirbag28 wrote:
I dont have any hardheadedness about this issue. I just think it should be done and it can be.... despite every logical reason mentioned here that it cant. If WinAUE can fool my Amiga applications.....then so can a peice of hardware.

You're not listening. WinUAE is a complete emulation environment which has NO DEPENDENCY ON HARDWARE. Therefore it can emulate anything. If a piece of software running on an Amiga writes data to chip mem directly, using the hardware, then no emulation can capture this and redirect to another part of memory.

Do yourself, and us, a favour: Listen to the information being given to you by people who know more than you do.

--
moto

[LoadWB]

Yo.  How about we just listen to what the architect says in the thread from June.

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=22715


This should be put into an Amiga FAQ, linked from the front page, tatooed on foreheads, etc.

[xeron]

Sega Genesis also had limited hardware.....then they came out with the 32X ! and the gfx improved.... and so did the speed....same machine!

But sonic the hedgehog didn't get any faster, and you couldn't run two megadrive games at once. The 32X was basically a new console; it was a new processor and new graphics chips that routed the video through a special pin in the Megadrive cartridge port that was DESIGNED for that purpose.

The 32X was only used by 32X games. As I have said many times before, you COULD bank in extra chip ram, but it would ONLY work with software written for that expansion, JUST LIKE THE 32X. So capital punishment, Scala, AmigaOS etc. etc. would not be able to use the extra chip ram. Period.

then came StarFox and Killer Instinct and Donkey Kong Country!  Add-ons in the Cartidge that exapnded the capability of the SNES

Yes. And those extra chips could run Starfox, Killer Instinct and Donkey Kong, BECAUSE THEY WERE WRITTEN FOR THE EXTRA HARDWARE.

Adding 8Mb of chip ram to a classic Amiga in such a way that the chipset, and existing apps can use it is impossible without redesigning the chips and adding extra memory bus wires all over the motherboard. And thats it.

The DCTV is an excellent example of what I am talking about! the Amiga Displays a 16 color picture..yet it is spit out in 16 million colors

Do you know how much extra chip ram the DCTV gives you? Go on guess. If you guessed more than 0.0 bytes, you are wrong.

Same can be done with ChipRAM

No it can't.

the Hardware would be like the MegaChip or even the Graffitti

Neither of which give you more than 2Mb chip ram.

and the Software would be like AmigaDE or Java.........making the computer think its something its not

But existing apps are already 68k native. Any layer between the apps and the actual 68k is only going to slow it down. Never mind the fact that no amount of software or emulation will ever make the actual chipset see more than 2Mb of RAM. Its just not possible.

It will be similar with ChipRAM...except in this case, the Software will let the REAL Amiga think it is WinUAE!.....  Possible???  I think definitely!

No. Definately not. WinUAE can only emulate 8MB of chipram because it also emulates the chipset itself. You can't use any kind of software emulator to make the actual physical chipset in your amiga "see" more than 2Mb of chip ram. At all. Ever. Period.

even if AAA has to be imitated in software or hardware.....

This sentence is complete nonsense.

It's not nonsense..............Im simply speaking of emulating the ChipRAM a AAA machine would have had and how it would have accessed it...........not the entire machine itself.

This paragraph is complete nonsense. You can't do that. Thats not how emulation works. You'd have to emulate the whole chipset, which would be VERY SLOW. It is simply impossible to make the actual physical chipset see more than 2Mb. You can't emulate a bigger memory bus for a physical chip. You just can't. You might as well ask for an emulator that emulates a pizza oven but actually physically produces real pizza out of your floppy drive. Its equally as nonsensical.

beg to differ!   behold!  the FMV card for the CD32!  Nuff Said!
Understand what I am saying here? a CD32 plays perfect VideoCD's...why?  because of a hardware addon....

But the Amiga has always had a genlockable video signal. You could always combine an external video source with the Amiga video signal. The FMV card for the CD32 is an mpeg decoder card that plugs into a socket designed to accept an MPEG decoder card and it uses already existing proven genlock technology to put the display on the screen. This is something trivial and totally and utterly different to adding chipram to the chipset on an amiga motherboard.

the same can be done with a USB card and made to be running at Full 2.0 speeds on a plain A600 @7mhz.

You know what? You could make a card with a USB port and some fast RAM and its own private DMA controller and transfer data from USB devices at full USB2.0 speed. When you actually want to save that data to a hard disk on your SCSI hard disk attached to the A500 side port, or read it into the processor to do some processing on it, the transfers will go a LOT slower since you'll have to transfer it across slower busses. This is a fact.

 it would be something similar to a VLAB parralel port version.

Wait. So you're saying that you can transfer data over the Amiga parallel port at FireWire speeds? Well I have news for you. That is COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE. There are well known bandwidth limits to all the Amiga connectors, and they're really not that high.

But thats what Im saying!  except it will be a completely seperate Graphics Chip if need be...........but indeed giving it more ChipRAM.

Graphics cards DO NOT ADD A SINGLE BYTE OF CHIP RAM. They have their own seperate video ram which the amiga chipset simply cannot access. The video chip on the card cannot access chip ram, either. Only programmes that use RTG friendly APIs can use the video cards.

[xeron]

No I am not talkig about emulating WinUAE.........only the part that allows 8mb ChipRAM to be accesed.

This is impossible.

[leirbag28]

@LoadWB

Thanks for that Link :-)

Quote from HazyDave:

In an emulator, of course, you can try to perfectly emulate an existing Amiga chip, but there's no reason you can also emulate chips that never existed. If it's a simple thing, like more Chip RAM, the OS already supports it, maybe with a little help (eg, it may not detect 8MB automatically, but it knows what to do with it when it's there).
----------------------------------------------------------------------

as you can see...according to him.......the OS already supports the 8mb ChipRAM!!  just like in WinUAE!   all my apps on WinUAE read the extra ChipRAM! and as you can see he says its possible :-P



Quote from HazyDave:
If someone built an add-on that could perfectly replicate the function of the custom chips, there no reason they couldn't support 8MB of Chip RAM, of course. However, this is inherently a hack, because the only place you can all the signals needed to replace the three chips is at the chip bus itself. You'd have to physically replace the custom chips, you couldn't do this on a Zorro card, at least not without big software changes (interrupts you can't generate on the expansion bus, things like that).
-----------------------------------------------------------------


As you can see....according to him it is possible by replcacing the custom chips! a not too difficult task on the A500 and some Amigas! just as I have been saying all along.

as someone here said:

The Master Has Spoken :-)


is this thread over?  Nothing is impossible!

[Piru]

@leirbag28

as you can see...according to him.......the OS already supports the 8mb ChipRAM!

Oh really? It supports roughly 2GB of chip ram. Now think about that. However, the OS itself does not scan more than 2MB, you need to manually add the rest. This is not the problem, the problem is that no-one is able to produce the  HW chipset replacement that can handle more than 2MB.

As you can see....according to him it is possible by replcacing the custom chips! a not too difficult task on the A500 and some Amigas!

This is not about being physically able to replace the chip, this has never been impossible. The impossibility is being able to produce such replacement chipset that can give you more than 2MB chip memory. It must be fully compatible with old chips, it must be signal compatible with old chipset. For A500 and "some Amigas" (ones with socketed chips) you also need to wire more physical addressing lines between the chips (however, this is trivial compared to creating the new chipset).

is this thread over?

It was over from the beginning. You can't have more than 2MB chip memory in real amiga.

[leirbag28]

@Piru

Quote:
However, the OS itself does not scan more than 2MB, you need to manually add the rest.
-------------------------------------------------------------


Oh really?  let me tell you a little story...........i once pulled out my Harddrive from my REAL Amiga and slapped it into a PC and ran WinUAE and ran my REAL Amiga hardrive in WinUAE.........I was using Workbench 3.1....I didnt change a darn thing about my Workbench...........but there it read on WinUAE  8Mb ChipRAM in all its glory!!!  so your telling me the OS itself does not scan more than 2mb ChipRAM?

It does!.........and according to HazyDave it does!.

Workbench will read more than 2Mb and it supports it just as he said. Put your very own Amiga OS hardrive from a real Amiga into a PC (dont use AmigaKit or AIAB)  then you will see Workbench definitely supports it...........and WinUAE emulates the Extra chipRAM.


Even all my applications ran and used the extraChipRAM without any patches and such. and the Games too!

[Karlos]

@leirbag

Since WinUAE emulates 8MB capable hardware. What makes you think it wouldn't patch _any_ kickstart version you provide it with in order to get it recognised?

[stopthegop]

@Blade:

Sorry, nice try.  Z3 and MK1 don't qualify as "digital" since they both used mecanical parts.  The z3 used mechanical relays and the Mk1 was used magnetic relays!  The Colossus was indeed purely digital but, according to what I've read, it was not fully funtional until January/February 1946, while the ENIAC was completed as of December of 1945.  If you're going to count mechanical machines as true "computers" then we'll probably have to hand the crown to the ancient Mayans or maybe the Chinese for some the their stick and rock contraptions!

[stopthegop]

@Blade:

The question of which computer came first, Colossus or ENIAC is polymical.  My original point is the same.  

[Piru]

@leirbag28

Oh really? let me tell you a little
story...........i once pulled out my Harddrive from my REAL Amiga and slapped it into a PC and ran WinUAE and ran my REAL Amiga hardrive in WinUAE.........I was using Workbench 3.1....I didnt change a darn thing about my Workbench...........but there it read on WinUAE 8Mb ChipRAM in all its glory!!! so your telling me the OS itself does not scan more than 2mb ChipRAM?

Because of: winuae/src/filesys.asm

Specifically:

Code: [Select]

       ; add >2MB chip RAM to memory list
        move.w #$FF80,d0
        bsr.w getrtbase
        jsr (a0)
        moveq.l #3,d1
        moveq.l #-10,d2
        move.l #$200000,a0
        sub.l a0,d0
        bcs.b FSIN_chip_done
        beq.b FSIN_chip_done
        moveq.l #0,d4
        move.l d4,a1
        jsr -618(a6) ; AddMemList
FSIN_chip_done


It does!

It does not. See above.

and according to HazyDave it does!.

Nope. Stop putting words to Mr Haynie's mouth.

Workbench will read more than 2Mb and it supports it just as he said.

Workbench will report whatever AvailMem call returns. 0 or 2^31-1, or anything in between.

Put your very own Amiga OS hardrive from a real Amiga into a PC (dont use AmigaKit or AIAB) then you will see Workbench definitely supports it.

Yes. Workbench has nothing to do with hardware though, or anything to do with adding the chip memory to exec memory lists.

The extra memory past 2MB is only visible because WinUAE specifically adds it. The applications work only because WinUAE actually emulates such hardware chipset that can use more than 2MB. There is no such chipset available for real Amiga, and there never will.

[LoadWB]

leirbag28 wrote:

Oh really?  let me tell you a little story...........i once pulled out my Harddrive from my REAL Amiga and slapped it into a PC and ran WinUAE and ran my REAL Amiga hardrive in WinUAE.........I was using Workbench 3.1....I didnt change a darn thing about my Workbench...........but there it read on WinUAE  8Mb ChipRAM in all its glory!!!  so your telling me the OS itself does not scan more than 2mb ChipRAM?

Sounds to me like you have your solution.  Since the Classic Amiga hardware cannot support more ChipRAM without a major hardware overhaul, your answer is to start using your Amiga OS applications in WinUAE.  It is probably many many times faster, anyway.

Case closed... ? :shrug:

[leirbag28]

@Piru

I am not putting words into his mouth:

" If it's a simple thing, like more Chip RAM, the OS already supports it, maybe with a little help (eg, it may not detect 8MB automatically, but it knows what to do with it when it's there)."


Thats what he said...............and I also believe its true....and WinUAE is proof of it.

one can even create a WinUAE tiny Hardware box if need be to emulate the ChipRAM the way WinUAE does without any strain on the REAL Amiga's CPU.

Is this not possible? I think it is.  Maybe that is what someone should do.  Create a WinUAE card that plugs into Parralel or serial or wherever it needs to go and Do ChipRAM some Justice!   I would see it as a box like the LightRAVE that allowed one to use the VideoToaster software on a Non Toaster equipped Amiga.  One might as well add extra features to while they are at it.

How about you Jens?  can you do something like this? a WinUAE ChipRAM emulator box?  as small as a MASPlayer maybe?

We need more ChipRAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

How I wish I was a coder and electronics engineer. ...

[Zac67]

[ ] leirbag knows what this is all about

• DFTT
• more than 2 MB chipmem can be emulated
• it's rather easy to add some address lines to the board to use more than 2 Meg if the chipset could address it
  
• there's no 8M Alice in this universe and probably never will be
• 16 vs 32 bit has (mostly) to do with data bus size and not necessarily address bus size
• if you like to have more chipmem, just set the MEMF_CHIP on a fastmem chunk and off you go!

[Flashlab]

How I wish I was a coder and electronics engineer. ...

That would have made this topic a lot shorter!