What are the advantages of the present/future Amiga?

[DavidF215]

Steril707 wrote:
I wonder if some people will only be happy, where we have one OS and one hardware running everything. We are nearly there, almost everything is running on x86 now, and we have mostly Windows, and the "Unix/BSD" derivative world (i am including linux and Mac OS X in this category as well, forgive me).

I can accept that opinion, i just wonder why people like that  are on a forum like this...

To me, an Amiga is my small A1200 with enough modernization for me to use it in my basic computing work. For me an Amiga is the slick Operating System, a small footprint which allowed quick boot times, the small case, and the ease of use. My Amiga allowed me to write papers for college classes and to play games while my college mates were trying to figure out how to get their PCs to work through modifying config.sys and autoexec.bat.

So for me it doesn't really matter what hardware is beneath AmigaOS so long as the system architecture design is highly efficient and it is designed to work with the OS for smooth, quick operation.

[persia]

@DavidF215

Yeah, I did my Uni studies with an Amiga 2000.   Hard to believe, but it was back in the '80s...  Maybe that's it, the Amiga lives in all of us, even though we've moved on professionally we owe that initial push to the Amiga, without it I would be working as a chemist (the Chemistry kind) or more likely dead from acetone fumes...

[DavidF215]

@persia

Acetone, nice.  :-D    I too think the Amiga lives in us. It was a superb system that was fun to work with. Something about the interaction with the computer made computing fun. It was a really simple computer that was designed in such a way that it was also powerful, expandable, and fun.  

For some reason the C64 really spoiled me and gave me little patience for booting a computer. On the 64 you turned the power on, and within 2 seconds it was ready for commands. My A1200 spoiled me more when it booted to a GUI within 5-6 seconds, and the only reason it didn't boot faster was because the RPM on the HDD was slow. I've yet to find a computer that can boot like them.

I remember wanting an A2000, but my dad bought a Gateway 2000 386 DX-33 instead while I was in High School. I tried to persuade him to buy the A2000 with the IBM XT bridge card, but he wouldn't do it. So after about a few years of the GW2K, I bought an A1200 after the 486DX-33 chip didn't impressed me. And, my luck, about two years after I bought the A1200 C= went bankrupt. I was hoping Amiga Technologies was going to take up the slack and re-establish it, but we know what happened with them. Good product with unfortunately management decisions coupled with a fiercely changing marketplace.

Anyways, back on topic. ...

[DavidF215]

If AmigaOS4.x is still in development, then I presume that it follows along the path of the future AmigaOS5. ??  AmigaOS5 is platform independent, so when will these new updates be available for us without the Classic Amigas equipped with PPC cards?

Is there any way to make the Minimig or SAM440ep appear to be a classic Amiga PPC transparently to AmigaOS 4.x?

IMO, allowing an AmigaOS4 update to run on such new PPC hardware would be beneficial and attract new customers, and it's something that could be completed within the next 12 months or so.

[persia]

AmigaOS 5 = Tao Group Intent

Taos Intent Os
Tao Intent

[DavidF215]

@persia
>AmigaOS 5 = Tao Group Intent

I wonder what version of AmigaOS4 will start to show signs of the new AmigaOS5, particularly regarding to the requirements of the underlying processor and platform.

[downix]

persia wrote:
AmigaOS 5 = Tao Group Intent

Taos Intent Os
Tao Intent

No, it's not.  AInc lost their license for Tao's technology.  (Tao is also out of business to boot)

[persia]

Tao Group is now Antix


http://antixlabs.com/

[amigadave]

DavidF215 wrote:
Is there any way to make the Minimig or SAM440ep appear to be a classic Amiga PPC transparently to AmigaOS 4.x?

You must mean Efika instead of "Minimig", as the Minimig is not PPC and does not have the computing power to run AmigaOS 4.x.

[DavidF215]

@amigadave
>You must mean Efika instead of "Minimig", as the Minimig is not PPC and does not have the computing power to run AmigaOS 4.x.

Yes.

[alexh]

persia wrote:
Tao Group is now Antix

Not true. Tao Group is gone. As is their IP, which they sold.

Antix is a new company formed from it's ashes doing something "totally" different.

[shoggoth]

amigaksi wrote:
That's true since Mac has less custom hardware supporting it, it's easier to emulate whereas Amiga is impossible to emulate for certain things on a PC. I would like to know what target machine (spec) you are comparing to since I have seen Macs emulated on Atari ST, Amiga, and various PCs and newer so-called "Macs".  That way we can better tell whether they can be called "Macs".

Amiga isn't impossible to emulate accurately. Emulation is always a trade between performance and accuracy. I've seen claims like this numerous times for different platforms, but technically I haven't seen anything that explicitly prevents accurate Amiga emulation. The possibility of emulating Amiga hardware doesn't make the Amiga less attractive, quite the contrary imo.

amigaksi wrote:
For example, you can't show real-time sprites all over a screen on a machine that does not have sprites.

Sure you can. Just look at other platforms from the same era, or even earlier. On a modern machine it's not an issue at all.

Not true. It all depends on how much CPU power per VBL you have, what RAM bandwidth you have, what VBL synchronisation you have.

Yeah. But you can achieve that even on a sprite-less mid/low-spec 68k machine.

Sprite hardware is cool, and on a 7Mhz 68k machine it really makes wonders. It's not some holy grail of performance in todays computing, however.

Do you really think that setting 30 X,Y registers of sprites even on a 7.16Mhz OCS Amiga 1000 can be beat by a standard CPU/Graphics Card doing erasing/repainting of software sprites?  Think again.  It only takes a few microseconds on an Amiga 1000.

You can achieve the same in software even on a mid-spec 68k machine. Either you have no clue, or I completely misjudged the core argumentation here.

[amigaksi]

>by mdwh2 on 2008/9/4 17:14:49

>>Quote:
>>    amigaksi wrote:
    Of course, as far as Amiga sprites go they still won't function in software on modern graphics cards even with the overhead of Amiga API taken into account and even at 320*240 resolution. Just tried it on NVIDIA GEFORCE 6100, but be my guest to try it on your system.

>Do you have a program (and preferably the source code too) for us to test? I'd be curious to see what you are trying to do, and maybe someone can see why it isn't working so well.

Why don't you just do some random search and get a URL like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_4000 and "PROVE" that there are no sprites on the Amiga 4000 (or similar system) to argue about.  Instead the Amiga 4000 has 48-bit color, 256 Hardware audio channels, ...

I tested it with a software sprite engine contained within the Gita CDROM produced by our company (see our website) which has been thoroughly optimized and allows you to select Windows API method of rendering imagery or by writing directly to the video card hardware and also lets you select various VESA modes where supported.  

[amigaksi]

>by shoggoth on 2008/9/6 6:25:20

>Amiga isn't impossible to emulate accurately. Emulation is always a trade between performance and accuracy. I've seen claims like this numerous times for different platforms, but technically I haven't seen anything that explicitly prevents accurate Amiga emulation. The possibility of emulating Amiga hardware doesn't make the Amiga less attractive, quite the contrary imo.

Do you agree that technically it's more accurate to measure something with a ruler marked with cm rather than inches?  If so, then you will also agree that having a timing mechanism to accuracy of 1/3.579545Mhz (Amiga) is more accurate than one at 1/1.19318Mhz (PC).  Opinions are only good if you don't have the facts.

>>    amigaksi wrote:
    For example, you can't show real-time sprites all over a screen on a machine that does not have sprites.

>Sure you can. Just look at other platforms from the same era, or even earlier. On a modern machine it's not an issue at all.

Whether in the earlier era or now, hardware sprites are always better than software ones.  I saw the terrible/flickering games on earlier systems w/software sprites.  Anyway, the keyword you missed there is real-time...

>>>>>    Not true. It all depends on how much CPU power per VBL you have, what RAM bandwidth you have, what VBL synchronisation you have.

>Yeah. But you can achieve that even on a sprite-less mid/low-spec 68k machine.

>Sprite hardware is cool, and on a 7Mhz 68k machine it really makes wonders. It's not some holy grail of performance in todays computing, however.

You can use about 30 Amiga hardware sprites to cover up almost the entire screen using about 40 microseconds of CPU time.  There's no way you can stamp sprites on a background image (320*240 or 640*400) and send the data to the video card in 40 microseconds or less.  You'll be counting in milliseconds.

>>    Do you really think that setting 30 X,Y registers of sprites even on a 7.16Mhz OCS Amiga 1000 can be beat by a standard CPU/Graphics Card doing erasing/repainting of software sprites? Think again. It only takes a few microseconds on an Amiga 1000.

>You can achieve the same in software even on a mid-spec 68k machine. Either you have no clue, or I completely misjudged the core argumentation here.

Well the argument became dual core as the thread went-- drifted from original focus.  You can compute the stats yourself.

[persia]

Tao Group closed it's doors last year and sold off it's assets, the creative talent behind Tao Group formed Antix.  Antix produces a product that allows you to write a game once and play it on different operating systems, very much like Intent and very much like Amiga Anywhere (if it exists).

[Hammer]

Does not matter really since it has to work in most PC systems which would require doing it in software not relying on some sort of "sprite" hardware being present.

Refer to texture mapped 3D surface in modern GPUs.

As for pure software renderers;

With an appropriate SIMD capable X86 CPU (e.g. Intel Core 2) and Swiftshader 2.0 DX9b JIT X86 "driver", this setup rivals NV’s Geforce FX 5200/5600 GPU.