Details for the next generation of Flickerfixers from Individual Computers

[amigakit.com]

@Retrofan @Riempie

We have a policy on taking preorders and advertising stock that is actually in production and confirmed as arriving at AmigaKit.com imminently. There is no point advertising Indivision MKII and taking pre-orders when it hasn't yet even got off the drawing board. Advertising speculative future products that haven't even been produced yet would not do our reputation any good.

Before going ahead and taking any pre-orders we always get authorisation from Individual Computers.

[Riempie]

I absolutely agree! It seems no sense to already offer a product which hasn't been made yet.

[gibs]

@Jens

Is there some documentation available of the Indivision ECS (in case some people wants to ports games or something else) like Oliver is actually doing for ADOOM ?

[Schoenfeld]

Originally Posted by gibs

@Jens

Is there some documentation available of the Indivision ECS (in case some people wants to ports games or something else) like Oliver is actually doing for ADOOM ?

Documentation for the framebuffer mode is not yet available. There's a few things that Oliver and I had been talking about, such as increasing the speed of transferring data to the framebuffer. It's not really fast at the moment, because it's going through a chip register which is as slow as chipmem. However, you get the full 3.5M per second even with highest resolutions.

The idea would be to use a simple runlength-encoding with the spare bits that you transfer with every cycle. This would let you transfer up to 16 pixels of 12 bit colour resolution with a single write access, which would surely benefit many games. I'd expect that the gain from the write performance is higher than the loss from the conversion (which would probably fit into the cache of a 68030).

Now that development of the ACA cards is finished, I should push Olíver to write that documentation and follow up on our thoughts :-)

Jens

[gibs]

[Oliver_A]

Jens already has the documentation for the Indivision ECS GFX mode ( it has been part of Indivision ECS since February), however, at this point I still like to reserve the right to make further changes to the FPGA core.

Is there anything particular you guys want to write for Indivision ECS, or is it something like: "release the docs, and maybe someone else will do something for it" ?

[britelite]

Originally Posted by Oliver_A

Is there anything particular you guys want to write for Indivision ECS

I'd be interested in adding support for Indivision ECS chunky mode to my demosystem, for those lucky ones with a 060 and Indy ECS =)

[NovaCoder]

I'd be interested in using the Indivision AGA Mrk 2 mode when it comes out.

[Retrofan]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

I'd be interested in using the Indivision AGA Mrk 2 mode when it comes out.

Now that

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

...development of the ACA cards is finished, ...:-)
Jens

he can go on with it

[Oliver_A]

Originally Posted by NovaCoder

I'd be interested in using the Indivision AGA Mrk 2 mode when it comes out.

Sadly, the Indivision AGA MK2 won't have such a mode, because the FPGA won't have direct access to the chip bus. There are just too many pins involved. On Indivision ECS, we actually saved pins by implementing the whole Denise in the FPGA.

Besides, another problem is that the CPU can only write to AGA registers using a 16 bit bus, limiting performance to 3.58 MB/s, while 32 Bit CPU Chip-Ram access is 7.14 MB/s. What can, and will be, implemented in Indivision AGA MK2 is Graffitti support. On ECS, Graffitti is of limited use, because you have to set up a hires, 4 bitplane screen, which eats almost all DMA bandwidth. Hence the new Indivision GFX mode, which always allows access to the framebuffer at maximum bus speed, no matter what resolution and colour depth.

On AGA however, hires 4 bitplanes is less DMA time consuming than lores 8 bitplanes. Meaning that 256 colour Graffitti mode is faster than 256 colour AGA mode, even if you manage to do C2P in copy time.

Originally Posted by britelite

I'd be interested in adding support for Indivision ECS chunky mode to my demosystem, for those lucky ones with a 060 and Indy ECS =)

Well, when the new ADoom is finished, I'm going to release the sourcecode along with the Indivision ECS register description. The most important routines for initializing the new mode can be found in the "indivision.h" file.

[Photon]

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

It'll be DVI-I, because I want this thing to work on both digital flat screens and analog CRTs.

<3

[NovaCoder]

Originally Posted by Oliver_A

On AGA however, hires 4 bitplanes is less DMA time consuming than lores 8 bitplanes. Meaning that 256 colour Graffitti mode is faster than 256 colour AGA mode, even if you manage to do C2P in copy time.

Well if you release some sample code with the Indivision Mrk2, I will add Graffitti to ScummVM AGA then

[Cammy]

I wonder if it would be possible to make a Shapeshifter driver that uses the Indivision ECS' direct framebuffer mode? I imagine if this worked it would open a whole world of new games to play on an A600 with ACA630, A603 and IndivisionECS.

[Oliver_A]

Originally Posted by Cammy

I wonder if it would be possible to make a Shapeshifter driver that uses the Indivision ECS' direct framebuffer mode? I imagine if this worked it would open a whole world of new games to play on an A600 with ACA630, A603 and IndivisionECS.

Hi Cammy,

this is something I am actually working on.

[Cammy]

Thank you Oliver!!! My A600 is going to rule!

What maximum resolution do you think will be usable? Is 800x600 in 256 colours too much to ask?

[Oliver_A]

Originally Posted by Cammy

Thank you Oliver!!! My A600 is going to rule!

What maximum resolution do you think will be usable? Is 800x600 in 256 colours too much to ask?

Good question, the honest answer is: I don't know yet. What I'm intending to do is using the MMU to split the screen into segments, which are partially updated only when something has changed. That way, performance might be sufficient. I am also trying to use the hardware sprite as the mouse pointer, which should enhance the responsiveness even further.

However, it's still in very early stages and it might take some time to get it done properly.

[amigoun]

If not Hires, even the Lowres modes would be very helpful for ShapeShifter & Indivision ECS w. Graffiti emulation. Not many people know, that ShapeShifter runs even in 320x256 mode and can run for example Dungeon Master II full screen this way, which is super and low-res is always faster than hi-res.
So keep up the good work Oliver, it will be really appreciated, I am sure.

[Nikolaj_sofus]

Originally Posted by Riempie

I absolutely agree! It seems no sense to already offer a product which hasn't been made yet.

Well, since they don't take any money yet, i guess it's a good way to know how many units to actually order.

So i don't think it's that bad an idea.

[gibs]

Originally Posted by Cammy

I wonder if it would be possible to make a Shapeshifter driver that uses the Indivision ECS' direct framebuffer mode?

[Exit]

a backplate would be nice (no hassel to install) , just to use the space where the scsi-card should have been for my blizzard 1230iv...