Unreleased Amiga chipset better than anything today?

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

V1000 was an outlier. The exception proves the rule!

It was MIPS based RISC CPU @ 25 Mhz with 3D instruction extensions.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Parallax scrollingThe Amiga's 2D parallax effects are not 'fake', they are an accurate representation of the effect used in traditional animation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallax_scrolling
Parallax scrolling is a technique in computer graphics where background images move past the camera more slowly than foreground images, creating an illusion of depth in a 2D scene of distance

I was referring to perspective parallax as the real parallax. The traditional animation's onion layer parallax is the faked version.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Perspective parallax is a different effect which is inherent to 3D. But Doom didn't do a particularly good job of it. The textures of the mountains in the background are very poor, and appear to be very close, unlike eg. the distant mountains in Shadow of the Beast. The PlayStation had a similar problem with with games like Tomb Raider. Fog or darkness was often applied to hide the limited depth, but It wasn't uncommon to 'hit the sky' at the walls of an 'outside' room.

PS1's 3D focus gaming and unit sales superiority (+140 million) wreaked your argument.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

'Only' 3 million units.

This was the PC's problem too. Clone cards used various CRTC chips just like the CPC did. With EGA and VGA it was even more of an issue because CRTC functionality was embedded into custom gate arrays. Many cards were not fully compatible with the original IBM adapters. Some specified 'full register compatibility' as an advantage over other cards that weren't, but sensible coders avoided doing tricky stuff that might break on some cards.

IBM PS/1 Model 2133 has shipped with clone SVGA cards e.g. Cirrus CL-GD5410, Cirrus CL-GD5424, and Tseng ET4000.

1990s Wing Commander DOS and 1994 JAZZ Jackrabbit still work on modern GPUs and various clone VGA cards.

Non-interactive demos are not system sellers.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

TIGA was PC compatible. You see, any card that can be plugged into a PC is PC compatible by definition. Most business PCs in the 80's (and many in the early 90's too) had MDA or Hercules mono. Most games used CGA or EGA. That's a huge incompatibility right there, but nobody said that MDA was a 'wannabe PC standard'.

For perspective, PC's Doom 1 and 2 have more than 4 million units in sales with idSoftware estimated further unpaid 15 million copies.

A1200/CD32 didn't reach 1 million units let alone CPU accelerated configuration. I'm aware of a high proportion of AGA install base in Germany has CPU upgrades.

1993 gaming PC minority exceeds the entire Amiga install base.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

TIGA was actually the impetus for Microsoft to make Windows graphics card agnostic, a smart move that 'accelerated' the development of more powerful graphics chips because the designers didn't have to worry about being compatible at the hardware level. Graphics card manufacturers then provided drivers as binary 'blobs' that further discouraged banging the hardware directly, giving them total freedom to design it however they liked.

Texas Instruments knows they don't have market power and wanted to remain relevant in Windows 3.x era.

SVGA cards from S3 didn't strictly follow IBM 8514. 1989 Tseng Labs ET4000 wasn't 100% compatible with IBM 8514, but Windows 3.0 was released in May 1990.

Desktop Computing's AGA 1024 card can run both IBM 8514 and TIGA.

Microsoft's Windows 3.0 is the "big elephant" in the room.

Windows 3.0 sold 10 million copies before it was succeeded by Windows 3.1 in 1992, not including pirated Windows 3.0 copies.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Printing text through the BIOS was horribly slow, especially on a 4.77MHz 8088. Programs that wanted good performance generally wrote directly to video memory. Lotus 1-2-3 is one famous example.

IBM PC compatible

To speed up BIOS operation, there was a "Shadow BIOS" feature i.e. copy BIOS into faster RAM e.g. C000, 32K Shadow.

https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/b/biosshad.htm

System BIOS shadowed
Video BIOS shadowed


PC with SRAM cache has a cacheable BIOS feature.

4.77MHz 8088 PC completed against other 8-bit micro-computer competition.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by hammer

I was referring to perspective parallax as the real parallax. The traditional animation's onion layer parallax is the faked version.

Any 2D representation of a 3D scene is 'fake'. If you move your head relative to the screen in Doom, can you see behind objects?

PS1's 3D focus gaming and unit sales superiority (+140 million) wreaked your argument.

The PS1 had pretty poor 3D. Tomb Raider suffered from quite distracting graphical glitches. Only the exceptional talents of Toby Gard, Paul Douglas, Gavin Rummery, Jason Gosling, Neal Boyd and Heather Gibson made it worth playing.

IBM PS/1 Model 2133 has shipped with clone SVGA cards e.g. Cirrus CL-GD5410, Cirrus CL-GD5424, and Tseng ET4000.

...and apparently some came with no video at all!

IBM PS/1 (model 2133)
Release date 1992
Discontinued 1993

Sales? We don't have any sales. We don't need no stinkin' sales!

Originally Posted by hammer

1990s Wing Commander DOS and 1994 JAZZ Jackrabbit still work on modern GPUs and various clone VGA cards.

Wing Commander Combat Information Center

Getting Wing Commander games to work on modern Windows systems can be trickier than running older DOS games. While DOSBox provides a stable and consistent environment, the huge variety of hardware and software configurations in Windows makes troubleshooting more difficult. Provided they have sufficiently fast CPUs, virtually all players have the same experience with DOSBox. On the other hand, some obscure or motherboard based sound and video adapters conflict with certain WC games in Windows.

Originally Posted by hammer

Non-interactive demos are not system sellers.

They were on the Amiga.

1993 gaming PC minority exceeds the entire Amiga install base.

Probably always did. I sold very few commercial PC games in my shop (1991-2002) but shareware game packs were very popular.

SVGA cards from S3 didn't strictly follow IBM 8514. 1989 Tseng Labs ET4000 wasn't 100% compatible with IBM 8514, but Windows 3.0 was released in May 1990.

ET4000 was problematic in Windows, and that was all that mattered to most users. The majority of DOS users didn't even know that some cards were better than others.

Microsoft's Windows 3.0 is the "big elephant" in the room.

Windows 3.0 sold 10 million copies before it was succeeded by Windows 3.1 in 1992, not including pirated Windows 3.0 copies.

... bundled with new PCs. But most users didn't run Windows, especially gamers (except me. I can play Windows Solitaire for hours!).

There was an old saying back in 1992 - never buy a Microsoft product until it reaches version 3.1 - that's how bad earlier versions of Windows were.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by hammer

To speed up BIOS operation, there was a "Shadow BIOS" feature i.e. copy BIOS into faster RAM e.g. C000, 32K Shadow.

https://www.computerhope.com/jargon/b/biosshad.htm

System BIOS shadowed
Video BIOS shadowed

This was a later development. Of course Amiga fans know all about this technique, called 'MapROM' on the Amiga.

On a 16 or 32 bit PC this was vital for performance because even 16 bit VGA cards typically only had an 8 bit BIOS ROM, running at 8 MHz (or slower) on the ISA bus.

BTW my 16 MHz 386SX motherboard died today. If I can't figure what's wrong with it there won't be any speed tests coming from me. Just about had enough of PC crap now - time for a spring clean?

4.77MHz 8088 PC completed against other 8-bit micro-computer competition.

No, it didn't. There was no competing against the PC no matter how poor its hardware was. It's what the market wanted (a personal computer from IBM) and once PC fans got it they had no eyes for anything else!

[freehand]

Seriously why is this troll Bruce Abbott allowed to post on the forum with his constant verbal diarrhea?

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

We are talking about player preferences, not platforms. I fully accept that fighting games were more popular on consoles than they were on PCs.

No, you're changing the topic. Let me quote you in the great-great-grandparent of this post:

That's not surprising considering the CD32's short life, but also because many of us were not interested in fighting games anyway. Even the most arcade-perfect port of Street Fighter wouldn't impress me that much, and games like Virtua Fighter even less so. The Amiga was made for better things...

Note that we are talking about the CD32 platform, which is a console platform. What was popular on the PC clones is not really relevant, given that the audience differs, the price differs, their expectations thereby differ, and even the control methods differ to favour different game styles.

The CD32 was built to capture the ever-growing console market, not the PC buyers.

A few fighting games were popular. Many more other genres were more popular.

On the PC clone, not on consoles. The CD32 was a console. The genres popular on consoles also weren't ones where the CD32 compared favourably.

But a mouse and keyboard can easily be plugged into it, and 'older gamers' was a market conventional consoles weren't tapping into. My argument is that the CD32 could have captured that market, especially since it was an Amiga (whose capabilities were well known to both 'older' and 'younger' players).

You can easily plug a mouse into the SNES and Megadrive as well, just as you can easily plug a joypad into a PC. The standard equipment (keyboard/joystick/mouse/joypad) will still add some inertia to what games are successful. It's not as though every CD32 or SNES owner has a mouse or the possibility to operate it in his living room in front of the family TV. Do, for instance, note the dearth of light gun games for the PC.

The CD32 was built to capture the ever-growing console market, not the PC buyers.

BTW I did buy a mouse for my PlayStation, thinking it would be useful playing more sophisticated games. But I never did because nothing suitable came my way. That mouse is going to be rewired for the Amiga.

More Bruce Abbott personal anecdotes. Good for you, Bruce.

Because ROTR was exalted as being a game ideally suited to the CD32, but it flopped.

Because it was shit. Do note that the CD32 also flopped, and Commodore with it.

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

The PS1 had pretty poor 3D.

Compared to what system? The CD32? The A1200? The SNES? The Megadrive? The Saturn? The Jaguar?

[idrougge]

Originally Posted by freehand

Seriously why is this troll Bruce Abbott allowed to post on the forum with his constant verbal diarrhea?

When it comes to verbal diarrhoea, I thought you were referring to "Phase5 tax" Hammer.

[grelbfarlk]

You guys, could you at least bite into a raw onion with skin still on for a minute.
Anyway I was always hopeful we could get a fully working PSX emulator. It runs fast enough on my A4000 with PPC PCI but there's no sound support. Some of this would be nice to play with a mouse.
PS1 Mouse Supported Games:


A Nanjarin

A-Train

A IV Evolution

A IV Evolution Global

Are! Mo Kore? Mo Momotarou

Actua Pool

Ai Shogi 2

Arcade's Greatest Hits: The Atari Collection 2

Arcade Party Pak

Arkanoid Returns

Alien Resurrection

Amerzone

Area 51

Ark of Time

Arthur To Astaroth No Nazo Maikamura - Incredible Toons

Atari Anniversary Edition

Atari Anniversary Edition Redux

Atlantis: The Lost Tales

Aztec - The Curse in the Heart of the City of Gold

Baldies

Backgammon

Bedlam

Blockids

Break Thru!

Block Kuzushi - Deden no Gyakushuu

Breakout

Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars

Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror

China

Chaos Control

Center Shiken Trial - Eigo no Tetsujin

Clock Tower: The First Fear

Clock Tower

Clock Tower II: The Struggle Within

Command & Conquer: Red Alert

Command & Conquer: Red Alert - Retaliation

Constructor (Europe)

Cyberia

Chibi Maruko-Chan - Maruko Enikki World

City Bravo!

Crypt Killer

Cat the Ripper 13 Ninme No Tanteishi

Dengeki Construction - Ochige - Yarouze!

Daisenryaku - Master's Combat

Daisenryaku - Players's Spirit

Doki Doki Shutter Chance - Koi no Puzzle o Kumitatete

Dark Seed 1

Disney's Learning Mickey Mouse

Disney's Learning Winnie the Pooh

Disney's Winnie the Pooh Kindergarten

Disney's Winnie the Pooh Preschool

Die Hard Trilogy

Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas

Discworld

Discworld II: Missing Presumed...!?

Discworld Noir

Dracula: The Resurrection

Dracula 2 - The Last Sanctuary

Dune 2000

Doukyuusei 2

Dezaemon Plus

Elemental Gearbolt

Eisei Meijin

Eisei Meijin III - Game Creator Yoshimura Nobuhiro no Zunou

Egypt 1156 BCE - Tomb of the Pharaoh

Final Doom

Front Mission Alternative

Go II Professional Taikyoku Igo

Galaxian 3 (Japan & Europe)

Global Domination

Ghoul Panic

Game no Tetsujin - The Shanghai

Gotha II - Tenkuu no Kishi

Gekka Ni no Kishi - O Ryusen

Guy Roux Football Manager Saison 97/98

Game no Tetsujin 1

Game no Tetsujin 2

Houma Hunter Lime with Paint Maker

Hatsukoi Valentine

Hatsukoi Valentine Special

Kekkon Marriage

Keiba Saisho no Housoku '96 vol.1

Keiba Eito '98 Akyfuyu

Klaymen Klaymen: Neverhood no Nazon (Japan)

Kato Hifumi Kudan - Shogi Club

Koten Tsumego Shuu - Shijin no Maki

Kouryuu Sangoku Engi

Kids Station - Kuma no Pooh-San - Mori no Tomodachi

Kids Station - Mickey to Nakamatachi - Kazuasobi IroIro

Kids Station - Kuma no Pooh-San: Mori no Kyoushitsu

Jingle Cats - Rabupara Daisakusen No Kan

Jigsaw Land - Japan Graffiti

Jigsaw World

Louvre - The Final Curse

Las Vegas Dream 2

Lemmings

Lemmings 3D

Lulu

Luciferd - Psychological Adventure

Lupin III Sansei Cagliostro no Shiro Saikai

Meta-Ph-List - Gamma X 2097

Meguri Aishite

Monopoly

Mighty Hits Special

MTV Music Generator / Music 2000

Music - Music Creation for the Playstation (Unverified)

Myst

My Disney Kitchen

Mobile Suit Gundam - Perfect One Year War

Moorhuhn 2 - Die Jagd Geht Weiter

Moorhen 3 - Chicken Chase

Moorhuhn X (Released in 2004, this must be the last game to support the mouse)

Missland 2

Necronomicon: The Dawning of Darkness

Neorude (Japan)

Neorude 2

Neorude: Kizamareta Monshou

Neo Planet

Oh No! More Lemmings

Oh! Bakyuuun

Osaka Naniwa Matenrow

Ojyousama Express

Perfect Assassin

Policenauts

Policenauts Private Collection

Project: Horned Owl

Puchi Carat

Prism Land

Premier Manager 98

Premier Manager Ninety Nine

Premier Manager 2000

Prisoner of ice

Quake II

Railroad Tycoon II

Rescue Shot

Risk

Riven: The Sequel to Myst

RPG Maker

Serofans

Sentinel Returns

Shanghai: True Valor

Shanghai - Banri no Choujou - The Great Wall

SilverLoad

SimCity 2000

Sakamoto Ryouma - Ishin Kaikoku

Snatcher (Japan)

Spin Jam

Syndicate Wars

Shichisei Toushin Guyferd Crown Kaimetsu Sakusen

Tempest X3

Tenshi Doumei

Tenga Seiha

Theme Aquarium (Japan)

Tokimeki Memorial (Japan)

Transport Tycoon

Telefoot Manager

Ubik(Europe)

Virtual Pool

Voice Paradice Excella

Warhammer: Dark Omen

Warzone 2100

X-COM: UFO Defense

X-COM: Terror from the Deep

Z

Quantum Gate I: Akumu no Joshou

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by idrougge

Note that we are talking about the CD32 platform, which is a console platform. What was popular on the PC clones is not really relevant,

No, we are talking about Hombre, the 'unreleased Amiga chipset better that anything today'. And the platform is Amiga, not consoles.

You can easily plug a mouse into the SNES and Megadrive as well,

The Mega Drive Mouse was released in 1994, 5 years after the Mega Drive itself. Understandably, very few games supported it.

Do note that the CD32 also flopped, and Commodore with it.

The CD32 didn't flop - It died because Commodore died. The reason were are talking about it here is that if Commodore had not died they intended to bring out a 'CD64' that would give the Amiga presence in the next generation console market.

The idea was that the Amiga would straddle the gap between consoles and computers by having one architecture that did both. In 1993 it achieved that goal. Other architectures still haven't achieved that today.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

No, we are talking about Hombre, the 'unreleased Amiga chipset better that anything today'.

Which everyone knows doesn't exist and is completely impossible.

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Other architectures still haven't achieved that today.

You can't be serious?

[Promilus]

The idea was that the Amiga would straddle the gap between consoles and computers by having one architecture that did both. In 1993 it achieved that goal. Other architectures still haven't achieved that today

LoL, so PS and Xbox on Zen with Radeon aren't unified architecture to PC, embedded and consoles? The best thing - specific solutions on the same architecture are designed for HPC and occupy more and more positions and both Top500 and Green500... What did amiga achieve in comparison?

[Dunny]

I would argue that the Steam Deck straddles the computer/console gap rather nicely, and has the handheld aspect sewn up too.

And it's not even the first to do that, by a long shot.

[AestheticDebris]

The Xbox and PS4/5 architecture are much closer to the PC but they're not quite the same. However, I'd say a bigger deal in bringing the two closer was Microsoft ditching support for every controller under the sun and instead forcing controllers to essentially match the Xbox 360 (and onwards) layout for buttons when they brought in XInput. It made it a lot easier for Devs to just carry the control scheme over from console versions.

And that's probably the second reason. 90% of PC games now are really just ports from the consoles, because that's where the lions share of the market is.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

And that's probably the second reason. 90% of PC games now are really just ports from the consoles, because that's where the lions share of the market is.

The lion's share of the market is mobile gaming. Asia is the fastest growing market. Not sure where you got the 90% figure from, but here's some data for you: https://financesonline.com/video-gam...ry-statistics/

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Dunny

I would argue that the Steam Deck straddles the computer/console gap rather nicely, and has the handheld aspect sewn up too.

And it's not even the first to do that, by a long shot.

"This item is not available for reservation in your country"

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

And that's probably the second reason. 90% of PC games now are really just ports from the consoles, because that's where the lions share of the market is.

Why ports? Shouldn't I be able to just run an Xbox game directly on my PC? And I should be able to run Windows apps on the Xbox too, right?

[lmimmfn]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

"This item is not available for reservation in your country"

Strange considering Gabe lives there.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Thorham

Which everyone knows doesn't exist and is completely impossible.

I wouldn't say completely impossible. A few years ago an 800 mips 68k CPU was impossible on the Amiga.

Hombre was subject to revision so the actual implementation wouldn't be the same as the tentative spec in 1995. Today we would use a different CPU, different memory etc., and probably change a few of the graphics and sound specs too. We could probably do it right now with PiStorm.

But of course it then wouldn't be 'better than anything released today', because it would have been released!

[Promilus]

Originally Posted by AestheticDebris

The Xbox and PS4/5 architecture are much closer to the PC but they're not quite the same. However, I'd say a bigger deal in bringing the two closer was Microsoft ditching support for every controller under the sun and instead forcing controllers to essentially match the Xbox 360 (and onwards) layout for buttons when they brought in XInput. It made it a lot easier for Devs to just carry the control scheme over from console versions.

And that's probably the second reason. 90% of PC games now are really just ports from the consoles, because that's where the lions share of the market is.

What's PC architecture nowadays anyway? It's based around x86 CPU. Those CPUs integrate nowadays not only memory controller and graphics but also pcie controller and usb controller making everything on motherboard basically peripheral on pcie or usb3 bus. That's the current PC architecture. You can bet it's built around the same functional blocks in SoC in PS5. They just block installing other OS in firmware. They do that since PS2 I think.