So much memory... what to do?

[ChaosLord]

I'm guessing that will limit you only to Amiga users who have Mediator/Radeon configs, then, and eliminate any Amiga users with graphics cards like Cybervision, Picasso, etc.?  Oh well, it's your game!  

Correct

Picasso is too lame to ever be interesting.  I could maybe possibly make a 256 color version of the game for Picasso but it would definitely be worse, lower resolution and slower than the AGA version so I don't see the point.  I could force a Picasso version to use the same hires gfx as the AGA version but then everyone would have to create a custom screenmode, which of course they won't do so the game wouldn't work.  Then there is the fact that sprites don't work on gfx cards so the AGA version will be much better.  Then there is the part about it being much slower so the AGA version would be much better.  And all the parent/child screens BREAK on all gfx cards so the AGA version is better.  And the perfectly smooooooth 50fps AmigaOS autoscroll full screen scrolling is broken on gfx cards so the AGA version is better.  argh!

In order for gfx cards to be better than AGA they need 16.7 million colors and 1280x1024 resolution.  Once you do that then you need giant amount of memory to hold all the gfx for the animations.  Like, say 128MB minimum.

Luckily Elbox has provided us with a gfx solution that has finally achieved actual real bonafide advantages over AGA.

[slaapliedje]

So, according to this post;

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=563681&postcount=15

The Zorram should be around 13.5mb/s.  The Mediator claims (from elbox's site) that it has a full bandwidth of 132MB/s (or 264MBs/ with the mythological SharkPPC board!).

Of course they also say that the A4000Di has 4 PCI slots, but I can't use my Radeon in slot 1 because the heatsink is too fat, so it touches the main Mediator board that has all the controller chips.

According to Elbox;

Code: [Select]

SDRAM/SGRAM of PCI gfx card as                      a DMA buffer
                    Mediator PCI 4000Di can use part of the graphic card memory                      for Amiga system needs. Thus, the entire system gains in performance                      as graphic card's SDRAM/SGRAM memory modules are about 10x                      faster than FastRAM memory in Amiga turbo cards. With very                      short access time in SDRAM/SGRAM, several PCI busmaster cards                      may use this memory simultaneously. The PCI cards may then                      rush at the data transfer rate of up to 132MB/s without any                      CPU load.[/SIZE][/FONT]
I couldn't quickly find info on how fast the motherboard "Fast" Ram is, but I have always known that the CPU card memory is the fastest (despite claims of the Radeon's speed).

For what it's worth TotalChaos, I don't think the Mediator is at fault for the Radeon's split 256MB, I think it's just the way the cards are created (possibly for Dual-Head, not sure though) but they are in different memory 'banks'.

You're probably right though, in that if I gave all 128mb of the first bank to Video RAM, it'd make the second bank of 128MB faster.  

I would gladly be rumored to or not rumored to be testing or not be testing an RTG version of the game!  

Right now I am running an A3640 board with the 040/25mhz on it.  I was extracting it with only it running, I believe I had quit AWEB and Genesis before I started it the extracting.  Haven't ran it yet, maybe I'll wait 'til the 060 is in my machine!

slaapliedje

[ChaosLord]

So, according to this post;

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=563681&postcount=15

The Zorram should be around 13.5mb/s.

Sounds about right.

  The Mediator claims (from elbox's site) that it has a full bandwidth of 132MB/s

That would be internal bandwidth from itself to itself.

When using the CPU to access the memory on a mediator card you will only get about 10MB/sec.  I can't remember the exact number but that is approx  what I get on my Mediator.  Of course mine is A1200.



According to Elbox;

SDRAM/SGRAM of PCI gfx card as                      a DMA buffer
                    Mediator PCI 4000Di can use part of the graphic card memory                      for Amiga system needs. Thus, the entire system gains in performance                      as graphic card's SDRAM/SGRAM memory modules are about 10x                      faster than FastRAM memory in Amiga turbo cards.

Sure they are 10x faster from themself to themself.  From themself to yourself you will only get around 10MB/sec which is much much slower than the ram on any decent accellerator card.

For what it's worth TotalChaos, I don't think the Mediator is at fault for the Radeon's split 256MB,

True.  Its just the way the cards are built.

I would gladly be rumored to or not rumored to be testing or not be testing an RTG version of the game!  

hehehehehehhehe

Right now I am running an A3640 board with the 040/25mhz on it.

Ok kewl.  040 was a great chip in 1990.  Fast, beautiful, lots of L1 cache.

  I was extracting it with only it running, I believe I had quit AWEB and Genesis before I started it the extracting.

Once the memory list of the OS is fragmented, quitting AWEB will not solve the problem.  It takes a reset.  Use the Frags cli command free from aminet to see how many fragments your memory has been thrashed into.


I also recommend to run TLSFmem which greatly fantastically reduces memory fragmentation problems.

[adrian82]

I've always wondered how fast Debian would run on my Amiga

It's quite usabale, actually. At least on my A1200 with ACA-1230/56 and on an A4000 with 68060/50.

but wouldn't providing build daemons using one of UAE's many ports be faster than real hardware?

One of the buildds is actually ARANym with an emulated 68040@170MHz and >700MB RAM (see the link I posted). However, some people provide real hardware.

Not to mention on Linux I could probably just leave it going all the time and provide multiple emulations running to compile it all.

Well, all of the Amiga buildds are running Debian Linux with Kernel 3.2.0.

Or I always thought the Buildds were running cross-platform compilations.

That doesn't work in all cases. Sometimes the compilation requires to run some tests of the binaries after compilation which won't work when cross-compiling.

Adrian

[adrian82]

Is there a dummies "click here to download" and "do this to start installer" guide?   I'm very familiar with Linux but it's the install (from AmigaOS) I'm unsure about.  The files listed in the FAQ no longer seem available from the ports tree.

The current recommended and easiest way is to use the filesystem tarball created by Thorsten Glaser. You hook up your Amiga harddive to a PC running Linux, create the additional Linux partitions and extract the filesystem tarball to the newly created Linux partition which will be your root partition.

Then you copy amiboot-5.6 (the beta version of 6.0 crashed for me) plus the kernel onto your AmigaOS partition and run amiboot like this:

amiboot -d -k //kernels/vmlinuz-3.2.0-4-amiga -r //cdrom/initrd.gz root=/dev/ram fb=false

Adrian

[lionstorm]

shouldnt the PPC version of Debian more suited than the 68k ? of course you need a PPC equipped Amiga.

[slaapliedje]

Once the memory list of the OS is fragmented, quitting AWEB will not solve the problem.  It takes a reset.  Use the Frags cli command free from aminet to see how many fragments your memory has been thrashed into.

I also recommend to run TLSFmem which greatly fantastically reduces memory fragmentation problems.

Holy crap, right when you mentioned 'frags' I had a 20+ year flash back of using that, I'd completely forgotten about it!

I'll have to remember that, 'cause I was thinking the other night that with so many different banks of memory, something has to be getting confused somewhere.  Are there really any fixes for MUI to prevent memory fragmentation?  Like maybe using Zune?

slaapliedje

[slaapliedje]

The current recommended and easiest way is to use the filesystem tarball created by Thorsten Glaser. You hook up your Amiga harddive to a PC running Linux, create the additional Linux partitions and extract the filesystem tarball to the newly created Linux partition which will be your root partition.

Then you copy amiboot-5.6 (the beta version of 6.0 crashed for me) plus the kernel onto your AmigaOS partition and run amiboot like this:

amiboot -d -k //kernels/vmlinuz-3.2.0-4-amiga -r //cdrom/initrd.gz root=/dev/ram fb=false

Adrian

Would be nice for ClassicWB to add quick howto for multiboot, I know there is some sort of multiboot already set up for it, I just haven't gotten around to trying it out yet.

So what sort of Desktop Environments run on an Amiga w/Debian?

slaapliedje

[slaapliedje]

Sounds about right.
That would be internal bandwidth from itself to itself.

When using the CPU to access the memory on a mediator card you will only get about 10MB/sec.  I can't remember the exact number but that is approx  what I get on my Mediator.  Of course mine is A1200.

[/q]If I recall correctly, the overall bus speed on the A4000 is faster than the A1200, right?  (I swear I remember reading it was more like 30mb/s, but maybe I'm pulling that out of some dark recess of my brain).

[q]Sure they are 10x faster from themself to themself.  From themself to yourself you will only get around 10MB/sec which is much much slower than the ram on any decent accellerator card.
[/q]

Ha, yeah that's why I said it's 'According to Elbox'.  Internally doesn't mean jack, when you are dependent on the bus speed between the PCI backplane and the CPU.  It's like I've always said about PCs, the real bandwidth bottleneck is now the hard drives.... SSDs are helping with that, but if we had 12GB/s SATA 4 or whatever, the systems would be way faster.  Then again if we had Amiga sized software, everything would be basically instant.  Instead we get fatter bandwidth, but games that are getting around 30GB in size!

On a side note, why settle for 1280x1024 and 16.7 million colors?  I run my desktop at 1920x1080 at 16.7 million colors  I even have a 2D-3D conversion style monitor.  Workbench looks pretty sick on it

slaapliedje

P.S.  Important safety tip, don't type a forum reply while having an Ale in front of you.  I had the lid on partially and tipped it over, and while I caught it quickly enough that it initially didn't spill, the jolt caused the carbonation to fizz up and overflow all over my table and drip onto my lap so it looked like I just wet myself.  Either that or I was thinking about the 68060 that's on the way.

[magnetic]

A BIG FAT

NOTHING!

the video ram on the ati is only rtg ram, only rtg games would use it anyway.
so you can knock that off the list.

but yeah nothing mate.

Errr... why do you guys post things like this that arent accurate at all? I dont understand that?  

If you use your amiga for something other than gaming or os hacking/tweaking or whatever there are many uses for a lot of ram.

VIDEO TOASTER, LIGHTWAVE, ANIMATIONS, MUSIC RECORDING, HI RES GRAPHICS, DTP, ETC ETC  these things all need a lot of ram.. Even Demo watching sometimes needs 64mb of ram...

[Kawazu]

Would love to help out with the debian prodject but i need a step by step installation instruction on how to get things working.

Have a 3000T with an 060@ 72mhz and atm i have nothing to do with it

[Coolhand]

Even playing some games today, I have 128mb and recently nearly filled it all with the 'talky' WHDload version of beneath a steel sky - i wondered why it was taking so long to load and then saw all the memory being slowly eaten up!

[slaapliedje]

Would love to help out with the debian prodject but i need a step by step installation instruction on how to get things working.

Have a 3000T with an 060@ 72mhz and atm i have nothing to do with it

Whoa!  Get that bugger building some packages!    That's a nice beefy processor for it.  I'm going to see if I can't get Debian-m68k on a UAE install (or Aranym) and start helping with the builds.  I use Debian everywhere where I want a dependable operating system.

slaapliedje

[slaapliedje]

So according to this thread;

http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=54411

My system is slightly faster than HammerD's, which is odd, considering I have the 68040@25mhz and he has a 68060@66.7mhz.  

For a proper comparison, this is with CPU Cache turned off with the boot menu, and I ran this in 1920x1080x32bit resolution on the Radeon.

Code: [Select]

10.System:Temp> showconfig
PROCESSOR:      CPU 68040/68040fpu/68040mmu
CUSTOM CHIPS:   AA PAL Alice (id=$0023), AA Lisa (id=$00F8)
VERS:   Kickstart version 45.57, Exec version 45.20, Disk version 45.4
RAM:    Node type $A, Attributes $505 (FAST), at $7000000-$7FFFFFF (16.0 meg)        
        Node type $A, Attributes $405 (FAST), at $70000000-$77FFFFFF (128.0 meg)
        Node type $A, Attributes $2005 (FAST), at $40C00000-$47EFFFFF (115.0 meg)
        Node type $A, Attributes $703 (CHIP), at $4000-$1FFFFF (~2.0 meg)
BOARDS: Board (Index Information Ltd):   Prod=2206/161($89E/$A1)
     (@$40000000, size 512meg, subsize same)
        Board (Index Information Ltd):   Prod=2206/33($89E/$21)
     (@$60000000, size 16meg, subsize same)
RAM     (unidentified):   Prod=3643/32($E3B/$20)
     (@$70000000, size 256meg, subsize autosized Mem)This is the ZorRam memory

Code: [Select]

10.System:Temp> bustest addr=71000000
BusSpeedTest 0.19 (mlelstv)   Buffer:     262144 Bytes, Alignment: 32768
========================================================================
memtype   addr       op         cycle     calib         bandwidth
user      $71000000  readw     247.6 ns   normal       8.1 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $71000000  readl     489.0 ns   normal       8.2 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $71000000  readm     491.0 ns   normal       8.1 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $71000000  writew    439.3 ns   normal       4.6 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $71000000  writel    878.3 ns   normal       4.6 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $71000000  writem    869.6 ns   normal       4.6 * 10^6 byte/sThis is the Radeon's memory (second bank?  I set the RadeonMem file to 128MB)

Code: [Select]

10.System:Temp> bustest addr=41c00000
BusSpeedTest 0.19 (mlelstv)   Buffer:     262144 Bytes, Alignment: 32768
========================================================================
memtype   addr       op         cycle     calib         bandwidth
user      $41C00000  readw     831.2 ns   normal       2.4 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $41C00000  readl     842.6 ns   normal       4.7 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $41C00000  readm     844.8 ns   normal       4.7 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $41C00000  writew    567.4 ns   normal       3.5 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $41C00000  writel    567.9 ns   normal       7.0 * 10^6 byte/s
user      $41C00000  writem    564.0 ns   normal       7.1 * 10^6 byte/s
slaapliedje

P.S. Sorry if you read this mess while I was trying to fix the formatting.  I tried to post it with the Amiga.org Proxy and it turned out to be a horrible mess.

[ChaosLord]

All your speeds were 8MB/sec or less when using the 040 on your A3640 card.

The speeds will be a bit different once you upgrade to your 060 card.  That is because every accelerator card has different statistics and your memory tests will go up or down a bit here and there on different tests.

For example some 060 cards access chipram really really fast like the Apollo cards, while other 060 cards are noticeably slower at accessing chipram.

[slaapliedje]

That sounds logical.  I can't recall where I read it at, or even the specifics, but someone I thought had said something about the cyberstorm mk2 being faster than the mk3?  (as I said, I could be getting that wrong, it could have been the mk1 was faster than the mk2).

So I did know that it really was dependent upon the particular model of accelerator.

Which is why something like the Natami or other newer full Amiga platforms would completely rock, updated memory bandwidth!

Should be getting the 68060 tomorrow.  Then I'll be sure to fire your game up and give it a play.  From what few screen shots I've seen of it, it looks awesome!

slaapliedje