chipset question

[AAACHIPSET]

we had the ocs  ecs  an aga chipset  ..almost got the AAAchipset ..given  that unless you add a graphics  card to a big box  machine  an sound  cards  etc  you are stuck with whatever chipset the machine  has when it was made ..with all the emulators  an pga type boards  ..has anyone considered  reverse engineering  the AAA chipset  into the emulators  or pga boards ..??

[Iggy]

we had the ocs  ecs  an aga chipset  ..almost got the AAAchipset ..given  that unless you add a graphics  card to a big box  machine  an sound  cards  etc  you are stuck with whatever chipset the machine  has when it was made ..with all the emulators  an pga type boards  ..has anyone considered  reverse engineering  the AAA chipset  into the emulators  or pga boards ..??

Two problems.
First, compared to RTG, the AAA chipset isn't all that impressive.
Second, there is no software written for the AAA chipset.

[AAACHIPSET]

Two problems.
First, compared to RTG, the AAA chipset isn't all that impressive.
Second, there is no software written for the AAA chipset.

im a fan for powerpc  boards ..but that to me is a basically  almost dead upgrade issue ..but we see  0s4 being released    we see games an utez  appearing for the
power pc  machines ..cant be many out there .i cant find a powerpc board for my 1200   let alone a powerpc machine but it appears to be growing in interest an usages  if slowly.. ...i have zero interest in a pga board of a amiga 500  or any other model  ..if im gonna have a a1200/500 ..i want the real thing ,..surely a upgraded somewhat  pga board would generate more interest ..max  060 i guess ..but give me a reason to want it ..not just a rehashed board ..people are starting to write there own games for the a1200  ..an other software too ..the amiga is a hobbist machine  ..a upgraded one id buy..a lot of people use massively powered machines just to surf the web  ..a amiga that could do that would be a very usable machine..i live in hope for a powerpc aaa chipset board ..one day  ..maybe when i win lotto?

[Iggy]

im a fan for powerpc  boards ..but that to me is a basically  almost dead upgrade issue ..but we see  0s4 being released    we see games an utez  appearing for the
power pc  machines ..cant be many out there .i cant find a powerpc board for my 1200   let alone a powerpc machine but it appears to be growing in interest an usages  if slowly.. ...i have zero interest in a pga board of a amiga 500  or any other model  ..if im gonna have a a1200/500 ..i want the real thing ,..surely a upgraded somewhat  pga board would generate more interest ..max  060 i guess ..but give me a reason to want it ..not just a rehashed board ..people are starting to write there own games for the a1200  ..an other software too ..the amiga is a hobbist machine  ..a upgraded one id buy..a lot of people use massively powered machines just to surf the web  ..a amiga that could do that would be a very usable machine..i live in hope for a powerpc aaa chipset board ..one day  ..maybe when i win lotto?

Again, PPC is doing fine.
But I don't see what the AAA would bring to the table.
None of the old chipset features is that vital.
Personally, I'd rather have dual Sid chips (or a re-implementation of them) rather then rely on Amiga sound generation.
And I'm looking forward to the replacement of AHI in MorphOS.

You can wait for a PPC power AAA based system.

I'll settle for the G5 with Radeon 9800XT I'll have running MorphOS soon.

[bloodline]

AAA was abandoned because it was too little too late... Had it been out in 90/91, it would have been a killer... But by 1994 (or possibly the earliest date of release would have been 1995 according to DH), it was horribly out of date... It offered nothing over off-the-shelf graphics chips and did so at significantly greater cost.

[Matt_H]

And the most significant barrier to creating a AAA reimplementation: we don't have the base hardware/chips/details to rebuild from!

[Iggy]

AAA was abandoned because it was too little too late... Had it been out in 90/91, it would have been a killer... But by 1994 (or possibly the earliest date of release would have been 1995 according to DH), it was horribly out of date... It offered nothing over off-the-shelf graphics chips and did so at significantly greater cost.

Thanks bloodline,
That's kind of the point I've been trying to make.
AAA would not offer anything we couldn't get with RTG.
And as Matt has pointed out, we don't have the specs for it.

[bloodline]

Thanks bloodline,
That's kind of the point I've been trying to make.
AAA would not offer anything we couldn't get with RTG.
And as Matt has pointed out, we don't have the specs for it.

I'm sure Dave H did post a list of planned features, commodore did get as far as some early silicon!

[Iggy]

I'm sure Dave H did post a list of planned features, commodore did get as far as some early silicon!

Possibly used in those Walker prototypes?
And AmigaForever supposedly has a mode you can play with supporting this stuff.
I don't know how well it works though.
And I doubt it would be an improvement over a Voodoo3.

[Matt_H]

No, the Walker was 100% AGA. There were only a very small handful of AAA chips manufactured for the Nyx prototype. Even if Toni or another emulation/hardware genius had a functional Nyx (at least 1 of the 3 built are non-functional) I don't know if it would be enough to work from because the system itself was incomplete.

[bloodline]

Possibly used in those Walker prototypes?
And AmigaForever supposedly has a mode you can play with supporting this stuff.
I don't know how well it works though.
And I doubt it would be an improvement over a Voodoo3.

No, the AAA silicon was only part functional and was being worked up by Dave Haynie and some other Commodore engineers just before the bankruptcy, but was canceled so that attention could be focused on the Hombre Chipset, which was not Amiga Compatible but vastly superior to AAA. Had any of the commodore R&D been restarted, it would have been Hombre, not AAA that would have been developed.

Walker was basically an 030 based A1200 with some modern expansion busses like PCI and newer IDE etc...


-edit- a nice link to Hombre Chipset: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Hombre_chipset as you can see it goes in a different direction to the Amiga and AAA, and is basically like a modern gfx chip.

[bloodline]

Here is the AAA spec from the guy who designed it:

http://www.thule.no/haynie/research/nyx/docs/AAA.pdf

[bloodline]

And a AAA (or any other future "Amiga") system architecture document, if you can be bothered to read it

http://www.thule.no/haynie/research/acutiatr/docs/acu1.pdf

Even though this document is from 1991/2, Commodore never managed to get there, and we were left with the AA (AGA in European speak) chipset forever more.

-edit- It is interesting to note that AAA was ECS compatible, not AGA compatible... It wasn't considered worth supporting the AGA feature set as it was basically just a stopgap solution.

[Iggy]

PA-RISC?
Man, what a change.
Why was Haynie still working on AAA when Hombre' was in development?
In a PCI implementation, Hombre' could have breathed some life into the OS again.
And WinNT long before WinXT made the NT kernel common, too cool.

So guys, why are we PPC supporters so far off?
68K emulation, RISC, and discrete graphics?
Why don't you guys join US?
Even Commodore was giving up on extending the original Amiga architecture.

[bloodline]

PA-RISC?
Man, what a change.
Why was Haynie still working on AAA when Hombre' was in development?
In a PCI implementation, Hombre' could have breathed some life into the OS again.
And WinNT long before WinXT made the NT kernel common, too cool.

So guys, why are we PPC supporters so far off?
68K emulation, RISC, and discrete graphics?
Why don't you guys join US?
Even Commodore was giving up on extending the original Amiga architecture.

AAA and Hombre projects were running in parallel with the idea that the Amiga would be AAA powered and Hombre would be the next gen machine, possibly moving the Amiga platform (I.e. the OS) over to Hombre if anyone still cared about it... For Commodore Hombre and Win NT was the future platform (with cheap Hombre consoles covering the home market).


-edit- quick note to point out that PA-RISC was nothing like PPC. IIRC went on to become the Intel Itanium architecture... Could be off base about that...