[UserReview] Vampire V2-128 received and it's just pure p0rn.

[kolla]

The only downside I can see with this is that they have been pretty clear that they aren't too bothered with 100% compatibility (especially MMU) and using AROS rather than AOS will make that easier.

If they committed to 68060 MMU compatibility then I would be less cynical. I find it morally annoying that Apollo is and never will be opensource, so nobody else can make it compatible either and making it incompatible is made easier by the work put into AROS for free. I suppose one day someone will reverse engineer their FPGA bitstream and fix it.

I would find it highly ironic if Apollo core is to depend on AROS because of compatibility issues. The entire point of Apollo should be to provide a compatible 68k core, right? If it is incompatible to the point where running existing operating systems becomes a hassle, then why bother? We can run AROS on much, much faster and cheaper hardware anyways

[Niding]

@kolla

Regardless of knowledge of MMU, Ive gotten the impression that Apollo-Team is focusing on other aspects of the core/FPGA at the moment.

There is a old thread regarding MMU on EAB with Toni weighting in;

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=44003

And again, if people want to run AOS on Vampire, noone is stopping them, now or in the future. But for longterm development of more advanced features, AROS might be the way forward.

[kolla]

@kolla

Regardless of knowledge of MMU, Ive gotten the impression that Apollo-Team is focusing on other aspects of the core/FPGA at the moment.

Sure, they never really cared much about MMU.

There is a old thread regarding MMU on EAB with Toni weighting in;

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=44003

And again, if people want to run AOS on Vampire, noone is stopping them, now or in the future.

Even if the Vampire requires a special kickstart on board, with patched/replaced exec.library?

BTW - that eab-thread is way old, Toni may have other opinions today

[nicholas]

As I understand that is a P96 driver for Apollo developed by Jason McMullan. Why does it also exist another P96 driver by Thomas Richter dated 27/12/2015 ?

What happened? I am a bit confused. Two P96 drivers? Why?
Could anyone shed some light on this matter?

One is Free with a capital F, the other isn't I guess.

[wawrzon]

@kolla

Regardless of knowledge of MMU, Ive gotten the impression that Apollo-Team is focusing on other aspects of the core/FPGA at the moment.

There is a old thread regarding MMU on EAB with Toni weighting in;

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=44003

for what i see tonis comments in this thread exactly reflect gunnars and the apollo teams members view on the issue. i dont think anything has changed since then.

And again, if people want to run AOS on Vampire, noone is stopping them, now or in the future. But for longterm development of more advanced features, AROS might be the way forward.

at this point there is no talk about running aros on vampire as default. if im correct, what happens is that there are currently certain extensions to kickstart based on aros code, but still in order to have genuine workbench and whole os run on it, only with additiona features. as soon as aros kickstart be improved, it can wholly replace the genuine one, and then aros can perhaps replace 3.x or whatever system revision one would be running on vampire. this should be left to users and be proposed at a point when using aros has no negative implications for the user in terms of speed or compatibility. but if we want it to happen in the future the work on it must be undertaken immediately.

[guest11527]

One is Free with a capital F, the other isn't I guess.

No, none of them are legitimate, unfortunately. Gunnar decided against licensing P96, which means that the drivers cannot be used on solid grounds.

[wawrzon]

As I understand that is a P96 driver for Apollo developed by Jason McMullan. Why does it also exist another P96 driver by Thomas Richter dated 27/12/2015 ?

What happened? I am a bit confused. Two P96 drivers? Why?
Could anyone shed some light on this matter?

im not involved or have any internal knowledge, but it looks like that there is a p96 driver (developed by thor) that has been presented previously in high resolution videos about vampire functionality. this driver is subject to licensing issues and was only available for testing so far. the licensing parties could no be found or issues could not be solved to the advantage of parties, so as i have also proposed in another thread about an fpga-arcade rtg driver, apollo team has in the meantime got into an agreement with another developer to develop a free driver. since the developer in question is a core member of aros team, its pretty certain that the driver is based on aros cybergraphics framework which is free but should be compatible to genuine cgx and therefore to p96.

[kolla]

So how about the licensing issue with "Workbench kickstarts" on apollo core?

Does the apollo core need a patched exec.library or not?

[kolla]

No, none of them are legitimate, unfortunately. Gunnar decided against licensing P96, which means that the drivers cannot be used on solid grounds.

How is an AROS based driver not legitimate?

EDIT - oh, it is still P96? Crap

How can it be P96 driver if it is based on AROS? AFAIK AROS does not use P96, but their own RTG based around CGfx3.

[guest11527]

So how about the licensing issue with "Workbench kickstarts" on apollo core?

Again, Gunnar decided against licensing, so you'll have to use AROS.

Does the apollo core need a patched exec.library or not?

The current version does, due to its inability to implement autoconfig for its on-board RAM.

[guest11527]

How can it be P96 driver if it is based on AROS? AFAIK AROS does not use P96, but their own RTG based around CGfx3.

If the driver implements the P96 API, the problem remains - no license. If it only uses CGfx, I guess they'll have to deal with whether or not this is a legitimate option for CGfx. The latter I do not know. For P96, the situation is quite clear: No license, not legal.

[mikej]

The "Free RTG SAGA Driver" is a P96 card driver. I just had a quick look through and compared it to mine.


"Does the apollo core need a patched exec.library or not?
The current version does, due to its inability to implement autoconfig for its on-board RAM. "

Replay doesn't

[nicholas]

No, none of them are legitimate, unfortunately. Gunnar decided against licensing P96, which means that the drivers cannot be used on solid grounds.

AROS Cybergraphics is illegal?

Has Frank Mariak claimed so? If so, then is P96 itself illegal for the same reason?

[Terminills]

If the driver implements the P96 API, the problem remains - no license. If it only uses CGfx, I guess they'll have to deal with whether or not this is a legitimate option for CGfx. The latter I do not know. For P96, the situation is quite clear: No license, not legal.

The current P96 driver is one thing(Though TBH you cannot say what Jason based his design on.  I'm sure I could ask and give you his answer.)... the future AROS driver is a completely different story as it is to be based on the AROS hidd design.

[wawrzon]

If the driver implements the P96 API, the problem remains - no license. If it only uses CGfx, I guess they'll have to deal with whether or not this is a legitimate option for CGfx. The latter I do not know. For P96, the situation is quite clear: No license, not legal.

aros includes cybergraphics which is open source reimplementation of cgx standard since ever. aros native drivers are based on this. do you argue that this is illegal? if so you must argue aros is illegal as a whole because it reimplements amiga functionality.

once again. i dont know details, but i doubt the driver jason wrote consists of p96 .card and .chip files. if its aros driver that just iterfaces to the system in form of another patch as cgx or p96 did, but independently of these, i dont see licensing issues.

[guest11527]

AROS Cybergraphics is illegal?

As long as it is based on the P96 API, it is. There is likely a native CGfx API, though.

Has Frank Mariak claimed so?

I do not know what the conditions are for a third party to offer a CGfx driver. I can only tell you want the conditions for the P96 API are.

 Currently, the drivers use the P96 API, and *that* is not valid.