Amiga Coldfire project dead?

[Tension]

PPC laptops don't exist

Are you mad?

[Karlos]

Guys... The falcon used MultiTOS and later MiNT...

I just couldn't use an OS called "TOS"... :lol:

[bloodline]

I just couldn't use an OS called "TOS"... :lol:

To be fair on Atari, MiNT (MiNT Is Not TOS) was actually a pretty good OS... And the Falcon was far better than the A1200 (and the A4000 IMHO)... Had they not cancelled it in favour of the Jaguar it might have run! :-o

[Piru]

PPC laptops don't exist

[youtube]V89YwHFoXyw[/youtube]
[youtube]tYeZCsKvjSg[/youtube]

[Karlos]

@Piru

It's Photoshopped, look! :lol:

[Karlos]

To be fair on Atari, MiNT (MiNT Is Not TOS) was actually a pretty good OS... And the Falcon was far better than the A1200 (and the A4000 IMHO)... Had they not cancelled it in favour of the Jaguar it might have run! :-o

Actually, I have to disagree. The principal things the Falcon had going for it were the DSP and chunky/RGB graphics support, both of which were very nice. Unfortunately, the 16MHz 68030 it came with (considered a selling point over the A1200's 14MHz 020) was rather crippled considering it was wired into the rest of the entire system, RAM included, by a 16-bit data bus.

Having said that, a Falcon with one of those CT60 boards is a proposition

[bloodline]

Actually, I have to disagree. The principal things the Falcon had going for it were the DSP and chunky/RGB graphics support, both of which were very nice. Unfortunately, the 16MHz 68030 it came with (considered a selling point over the A1200's 14MHz 020) was rather crippled considering it was wired into the rest of the entire system, RAM included, by a 16-bit data bus.

Having said that, a Falcon with one of those CT60 boards is a proposition

You forgot the proper 16bit audio of the falcon too... Yeah, the killer was the 16bit bus... But come on, while that is a limitation, it is a VERY easy fix for a future hardware revision... The rest of the falcon hardware was an order of magnitude superior to AGA...

[Tension]

The rest of the falcon hardware was an order of magnitude superior to AGA...

I hope you're wearing your flame-proof jacket!

[bloodline]

I hope you're wearing your flame-proof jacket!

I have always made it clear that I feel the AGA chip set should have been released in 1988 or 1989 at the very latest... IIRC the C= engineers had this in mind but engineering management said "no new chips"... That day, the Amiga was doomed.

[Karlos]

You forgot the proper 16bit audio of the falcon too...

I didn't forget, I just regarded it as a subset of the DSP feature. Of course the DAC was a separate component, but it was the DSP that gave it the capability to do multichannel audio playback at CD quality.

Yeah, the killer was the 16bit bus... But come on, while that is a limitation, it is a VERY easy fix for a future hardware revision... The rest of the falcon hardware was an order of magnitude superior to AGA...

Not sure it was that easy to fix, it can't have been a decision their hardware designers were thrilled about releasing it in that configuration in the first place.

By the same token, the shortcomings of the A1200 were easily remedied by 3rd party expansions. It's all a question of how much you're prepared to pay for it. I'd but an 060+PCI (RTG, soundcard) A1200 up against an equivalently clocked 060 Falcon with it's out-of-the-box hardware any day.

[bloodline]

I didn't forget, I just regarded it as a subset of the DSP feature. Of course the DAC was a separate component, but it was the DSP that gave it the capability to do multichannel audio playback at CD quality.

You know better than most that the DSP was useful for more than just Audio, and given the fact that the A1200 had nothing like a DSP an was stuck with 8bit audio... It is worth mentioning

Not sure it was that easy to fix, it can't have been a decision their hardware designers were thrilled about releasing it in that configuration in the first place.

If wikipedia is to be believed then the 16bit was was simply to ensure better compatibilty with the ST... Suggesting this hardware revision was a transitional machine. Seinberg's Falcon clone didn't use a 16Bit bus IIRC...

By the same token, the shortcomings of the A1200 were easily remedied by 3rd party expansions. It's all a question of how much you're prepared to pay for it. I'd but an 060+PCI (RTG, soundcard) A1200 up against an equivalently clocked 060 Falcon with it's out-of-the-box hardware any day.

Yeah, but A1200 RTG boards came about quite a bit later than 1992, which is the time period I'm talking about here... And also we are taking about base spec machines... Damn... We need to compare a standard Flacon running AROS with a standard A1200 running AROS to really see how the two machines compare

[Amiga_Nut]

Some Apple Notebooks running MoS

If I meant Mac I would have said Mac, I meant PPC as in OS4 compatible or any embedded controller type setup people might want to make useable with OS4/AROS/MoS ie non-Apple Mac hardware.

But even if you include Apple notebooks, compared to the entire range of x86 Windows targeted notebooks during the lifespan of 680x0 and PPC based Mac notebooks it is still a tiny drop in the ocean in combination of hardware drivers required to work so a rewrite of KS/Wb 1.3/2/3 is not feasible AND anyway MoS on Macbook won't play Rocket Ranger natively as there are no AGA/OCS chipsets in PPC Macs so it fails the requirement

Like I said I am only talking about a Coldfire accelerator card solution and modified KS/Wb on classic ie real Amigas from Commodore not all this OS4/MoS stuff on Apple or other PPC hardware with no actual Agnus/Paula/Denise in sight on the m/b and no way to load up original floppies.

If I am wrong then I suspect you are 90% complete with an x86 version of MoS and native drivers for every notebook and PC ever sold from 1999 to 2010? lol

[Amiga_Nut]

@Bloodline

Indeed, DSPs helped that crappy 3mhz Super Nintendo CPU to do games like Star Fox/Pilot Wings or even the 68000 in Sega's consoles do Virtua Racing.

Never mind A1200 the bloody A4000 should have had a DSP as standard given the price of the machines IMO.

[Karlos]

You know better than most that the DSP was useful for more than just Audio, and given the fact that the A1200 had nothing like a DSP an was stuck with 8bit audio... It is worth mentioning

Hey, don't get your knickers in a twist I'm not knocking the Falcon. Of course the DSP is certainly useful for more than just audio, but since we're talking about the time it was first released, there wasn't a lot (IIRC) that used the DSP for non-audio purposes. Just as much later, the A1200 found new capabilities through third party expansions, so people also found new uses for the Falcon's DSP.

If wikipedia is to be believed then the 16bit was was simply to ensure better compatibilty with the ST... Suggesting this hardware revision was a transitional machine. Seinberg's Falcon clone didn't use a 16Bit bus IIRC...

Not sure how much I believe that. Since we're comparing same era hardware here, AGA managed to retain a respectable degree of backwards compatibility without resorting to using a 16-bit data bus between the CPU/custom chips and certainly not for it's interface to normal (fast) RAM.

Yeah, but A1200 RTG boards came about quite a bit later than 1992, which is the time period I'm talking about here... And also we are taking about base spec machines... Damn... We need to compare a standard Flacon running AROS with a standard A1200 running AROS to really see how the two machines compare

Sure, I acknowledge the time gap, but since we are now in the present, we can compare what the machines have become since. I stand by the observation that you can now build a significantly more powerful A1200 than you can a Falcon, with the exception of which has the fastest 68K processor; there's just nothing comparable to the CT60 board in the Amiga scene. I'd love to see something similar

[bloodline]

Hey, don't get your knickers in a twist I'm not knocking the Falcon. Of course the DSP is certainly useful for more than just audio, but since we're talking about the time it was first released, there wasn't a lot (IIRC) that used the DSP for non-audio purposes. Just as much later, the A1200 found new capabilities through third party expansions, so people also found new uses for the Falcon's DSP.

Hmmm... Not sure of your train of thought here... Third party expansion is quite different to finding new uses for already existing hardware... I would agree with you if someone had managed to figure out how to do double precision floating point math with the copper (to the non technical: you can't, don't try ).

Not sure how much I believe that. Since we're comparing same era hardware here, AGA managed to retain a respectable degree of backwards compatibility without resorting to using a 16-bit data bus between the CPU/custom chips and certainly not for it's interface to normal (fast) RAM.

I'm not sure either here, but I don't know anything about the ST or the Falcon's schematics so I can't. Say anything for sure... But (basically) doubling the number of traces on a circuit board is more of a cost issue than a technical one.

Sure, I acknowledge the time gap, but since we are now in the present, we can compare what the machines have become since. I stand by the observation that you can now build a significantly more powerful A1200 than you can a Falcon, with the exception of which has the fastest 68K processor; there's just nothing comparable to the CT60 board in the Amiga scene. I'd love to see something similar

Careful not to confuse the issue though! My assertion was that the Atari Falcon's hardware was an order of magnitude better than the A1200... I think that point still stands.

Put more simply, had commodore realeased both the A1200 and the falcon (running AmigaOS of course, possibly with a cost option for ECS compatibility)... I would have opted for the Falcon... How about you?

[Karlos]

Put more simply, had commodore realeased both the A1200 and the falcon (running AmigaOS of course, possibly with a cost option for ECS compatibility)... I would have opted for the Falcon... How about you?

Well, I nearly bought a Falcon instead of my first accelerator card, so I guess I was always a bit on the fence. I'd have absolutely no qualms with an AROS based Falcon / CT060

All things being equal, if we're talking ideals here, I would have preferred an A1200 with at least a SIMM slot on the motherboard, even if it only took a maximum 4MB (for PCMCIA friendliness) with the 020 clocked directly from the motherboard's 28MHz signal, rather than 14. Of course, that might actually have made it a bit faster than some of their big box 030/25MHz machines. It would have been nice if it had some chunky support, even if it was just hardware C2P and not a framebuffer.

Speaking of which, the Akiko's C2P was another massive let-down. Instead of writing 8 32-bit words of chunky data to it and reading it back as 8 32-bit words of planar data then pushing that to your Chip RAM, it should have had 8 address registers that you set up to point to your planes and then write to it and it writes the planar data to those addresses (incrementing as it goes). At worst, you'd need to reset the pointers once per scanline, or more likely once per frame. You might have some wait states whilst it's busy but a properly constructed loop could always find some other useful stuff to do whilst the hardware was converting/writing.