AGA integration in Apollo core : work in progress

[Overflow]

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Vampire 600 V2 / GOLD3 bring-up - no more Turtle Mode

GOLD3 does not contain Turtle Mode for the stock a1200 speed. Here are a couple of WHDLoad games that will benefit of it. Audio and video comes through HDMI.

[Sinphaltimus]

That's pretty slick, can we expect the same performance from the A500 vampire?

Hi
here is the second video with 8 other games, the early startup menu and a closer look at the scanline effect:
[ Show youtube player ]

[UberFreak]

I hope this changes,
No option to use real chipset is a deal killer for me, as I dont see the point in using the Amiga as a case+keyboard for the Vamipre.

Will patiently wait for V1200/4000 and see what happens with those.

Originally Posted by guibrush

@ UberFreak :
the chipset on the motherboard is totally desactivated, therefore the output of the Vampire can only be achieved on the HDMI plug. We can't run both chipset in parallel, because they are not the same (AGA in the Vampire, ECS on the MoBo).

[Sinphaltimus]

68080 huh? Hmmm...
(0:36)

Originally Posted by guibrush

Hi
here is the second video with 8 other games, the early startup menu and a closer look at the scanline effect:

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by UberFreak

I hope this changes,
No option to use real chipset is a deal killer for me, as I dont see the point in using the Amiga as a case+keyboard for the Vamipre.

Will patiently wait for V1200/4000 and see what happens with those.

That's not really unexpected, I don't think the Amiga chipset is set up in such a way that some sort of "additive" mode is possible. As in mixing Amiga blitter and sprites with Vampire blitter such a thing seems way too complicated. Sound though if you could imagine it shouldn't be such a big deal something like mixing the 4ch 8bit Amiga Audio with whatever the Vampire can put out, but same problems exist. How does the OS know which audio.device is going to the Vampire and which is going to the Vampire. Nor our AHI apps aren't really set up to send to multiple audio cards at once.

But it's not like it's hard to flash a non-ECS emulation core back to the Vampire for normal Amiga chipset use, takes about a minute and a reboot.

The camera in those videos make me irrationally angry but the scanline effect looks nice and working well from what we can see.

It certainly fixes the rather small issue of how to autoswitch between RGB and HDMI output in that just all output is going through the HDMI. Though that causes other problems like how do you tell the Vampire what HDMI modes your monitor supports.

The V500 is basically the same as the V600 so performance should be same on either 68EC080.

[thgill]

What about the Parasite add on board for the V2? Is that still in development? It was suppose to clip over Denise and pass through the native chipset video to the Vampire.

[talybont]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

It certainly fixes the rather small issue of how to autoswitch between RGB and HDMI output in that just all output is going through the HDMI. Though that causes other problems like how do you tell the Vampire what HDMI modes your monitor supports.

That should be handled by a feature of HDMI called DDC (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_Data_Channel), but I don't know how the Vampire deals with it.

[BSzili]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

That's not really unexpected, I don't think the Amiga chipset is set up in such a way that some sort of "additive" mode is possible. As in mixing Amiga blitter and sprites with Vampire blitter such a thing seems way too complicated. Sound though if you could imagine it shouldn't be such a big deal something like mixing the 4ch 8bit Amiga Audio with whatever the Vampire can put out, but same problems exist. How does the OS know which audio.device is going to the Vampire and which is going to the Vampire. Nor our AHI apps aren't really set up to send to multiple audio cards at once.

But it's not like it's hard to flash a non-ECS emulation core back to the Vampire for normal Amiga chipset use, takes about a minute and a reboot.

The camera in those videos make me irrationally angry but the scanline effect looks nice and working well from what we can see.

It certainly fixes the rather small issue of how to autoswitch between RGB and HDMI output in that just all output is going through the HDMI. Though that causes other problems like how do you tell the Vampire what HDMI modes your monitor supports.

The V500 is basically the same as the V600 so performance should be same on either 68EC080.

Which means sticking with the GOLD2 core in perpetuity?

[Jope]

When can we expect a standalone piece of HW for these? It seems like there's no point in connecting an Amiga to the board soon.

[alexh]

I am sure Apollo team wouldn't do this but if they used any code from MiniMig or Chaos' AGA on MiST then they can't even send test binaries without also sending the full source code for Apollo unless they have negotiated new licenses.

[Samurai_Crow]

The Apollo core contains no GPL VHDL.

[Locutus]

Originally Posted by alexh

I am sure Apollo team wouldn't do this but if they used any code from MiniMig or Chaos' AGA on MiST then they can't even send test binaries without also sending the full source code for Apollo unless they have negotiated new licenses.

I dont see a problem there.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

The Apollo core contains no GPL VHDL.

Including the new stand-alone version? It would be all too easy to re-use MiniMig's ECS or Chao's AGA HDL. But if they haven't then they haven't.

@ alexh
Including the new stand-alone version, yes. BigGun don't use any existing AGA implementation, all is done from scratch. Only this way he can know what's going on in the core, and therefore track bugs.

[Sinphaltimus]

Originally Posted by Jope

When can we expect a standalone piece of HW for these? It seems like there's no point in connecting an Amiga to the board soon.

Can't plug your Amiga specific peripherals into a stand alone fpga box. Unless they make that available. Midi, genlocks, digiview, etc....

[grond]

Originally Posted by alexh

Including the new stand-alone version? It would be all too easy to re-use MiniMig's ECS or Chao's AGA HDL.

It's easy to tell the difference between SAGA and the other AGA implementations out there because the other AGA cores are trying to replicate the original behaviour cycle by cycle while SAGA does not. If SAGA did the same, you wouldn't get the smooth framerates that are to be seen in the vector games in guibrush's fine videos. SAGA works on Vampire RAM which is 100x faster than chipmem and also does blits much faster than the original blitter. Theoretically you could do a Frontier with far higher polygon count with SAGA and make it look to the programmer like programming for standard AGA.

[Jope]

Originally Posted by Sinphaltimus

Can't plug your Amiga specific peripherals into a stand alone fpga box. Unless they make that available. Midi, genlocks, digiview, etc....

You won't be able to plug the genlock to it anyway, serial and parallel ports are not very special in the amiga. :-)

[Sinphaltimus]

Originally Posted by Jope

You won't be able to plug the genlock to it anyway, serial and parallel ports are not very special in the amiga. :-)

Ok maybe not the genlock because it uses the video port but yes on the midi for sure. And floppy drives, gotek, etc... There is a lot more you can do with an vampire Amiga than a stand alone vampire unless they integrate all these ports. Not sure what the side expansion is good for besides memory and scsi but even with a slower scsi, that's more hdd storage than just an sd or cf card. Especially if you utilize a scsi2sd adaptor.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by guibrush

Hi
here is the second video with 8 other games, the early startup menu and a closer look at the scanline effect:
[ Show youtube player ]

I'm sorry, but all these demos running shit from 1992 really don't do anything to show what power the Vampire has.
Wheee, Frontier runs smooth. Really? Is that all there is to having this accessory? I think you're selling it short. But I realize the problem: almost nobody is making things that take advantage of this device (I can only think of the guy making the open Outrun and BOR ports).

You need to get people on board making cool NEW things. The past doesn't reflect well on the Vampire.


Have we not reached the point where people realize that mixing old hardware/software and new hardware starts sounding like a terrible idea?

The sound of using decades-old hardware accessories like Genlocks and their supporting, incompatible with new processors, not updated for decades software is a recipe for disaster. Even if you can connect those old things to an A1200 or A500, doesn't mean they will work at all with a Vampire.

I am also in the camp waiting for a standalone version because there's no point in connecting this to an Amiga if it's just gonna take over. But also I realize how much more powerful it is and the possibilities it could bring, and will have to wait and see until people start doing things WITH IT and not just running old shit. I have plenty of Amigas, I can run all the old stuff already.

Hoping the Apollo and Vampire teams can dare to break off from nostalgia and the past.