Join the Vampire / Aros 68k - Team

[OlafSch]

Aros is the future OS for Vampire and the new standalone devices. The Vampire devs want to support Aros development as a win-win scenario with Vampire getting a open platform and development on Aros accellerated and many users added. There are different tasks to get Aros in a state where it can replace 3.X and it is possible for developers to get Vampire cards when assigned for specific tasks. Who is interested should contact me and then gets informations...

[Dunny]

I think that speed is probably a must - it's just too damned slow at the moment, and that applies to AROS as a whole. I installed it on my 486 DX2/50Mhz - It performed much, much slower than my A1200 with 030/50Mhz does when running 3.1. So slow that it was unusable, in fact.

I'm not sure that adding more developers will remedy that, though, without restarting AROS development from scratch?

D.

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by Dunny

I think that speed is probably a must - it's just too damned slow at the moment, and that applies to AROS as a whole. I installed it on my 486 DX2/50Mhz - It performed much, much slower than my A1200 with 030/50Mhz does when running 3.1. So slow that it was unusable, in fact.

I'm not sure that adding more developers will remedy that, though, without restarting AROS development from scratch?

D.

Aros 68k inherits everything including the weak points and speed is a issue there. On X86 you have not this problem because the hardware is so fast, even on UAE when running it on not too old hardware you have no problems. There are certain components responsible that have to be improved. I do not expect it to beat 3.X or older on real hardware but hopefully to get it as good as possible.

[Toni Wilen]

I have probably said some of these previously what I need before I hopefully find some AROS interest again...

- Better compiler. GCC m68k output is crappy. (no register parameters, seems to prefer absolute addressing instead of PC-relative, makes far too large code.. And so on.)
- Exactly defined small problem cases. Not "everything is too slow", "programs don't work".
- Less annoying hype about Vampire and Aros
EDIT: - Amiga side drivers, especially small low level ones are always fun to do.

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

I have probably said some of these previously what I need before I hopefully find some AROS interest again...

- Better compiler. GCC m68k output is crappy. (no register parameters, seems to prefer absolute addressing instead of PC-relative, makes far too large code.. And so on.)
- Exactly defined small problem cases. Not "everything is too slow", "programs don't work".
- Less annoying hype about Vampire and Aros
EDIT: - Amiga side drivers, especially small low level ones are always fun to do.

ok

Aros in RTG mode was tested on Vampire and GUI was/is slow
I do not yet know if it is related to the desktops or certain parts like graphics library

I did not want to nerve you with that but of course it would be great if you would help us

without hype of course

[wawa]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

I have probably said some of these previously what I need before I hopefully find some AROS interest again...

- Better compiler. GCC m68k output is crappy. (no register parameters, seems to prefer absolute addressing instead of PC-relative, makes far too large code.. And so on.)

afair deadwood and phex teamed up some time ago. vasm and vbcc was improved as effect and the difference of effectivity of generated code was marginal. however how is this what you propose to be achieved?
1) gcc team doesnt accept 68k frontend patches? has anyone tried? do they want a fulltime maintainer or what?
2) someone has compiled individual aros binaries with vbcc, i could actually try that here. the question is if it occures to work better (for certain modules, maybe not for all), if aros team accepts vbcc as an optional compiler in their build system)

- Exactly defined small problem cases. Not "everything is too slow", "programs don't work".

you can count on me, but usually you said that the problem is too boring.

btw we are narrowing the problem zones. one suspect is uaehidd, its roughly programmed to work with uae (according to georg) but if it works with a real rtg card its by accident (says jason). as example the modes you coded into it, were all kinds of frequencies i have now edited them to work with 60hz displays. and have most resolutions working with my lcd. have a rough plan to be offered in the prefs only modes supported by a particular graphic card and a bottom line display. ill try to learn and code towards it but im not sure if i can make it, ill definitely need a hand.

the other issue is layers, resizing and mowing windows, georg may look into. thor has published some documentation what concerns his implementation on aos.

- Less annoying hype about Vampire and Aros

i dont think i have ever hyped any of those for what they werent. rather the contrary.

EDIT: - Amiga side drivers, especially small low level ones are always fun to do.

hmm..

[huepper]

AROS 68k is just too slow on real Classics, RTG(in FPGA) will not help here.
Is it possible, that wanderer makes this so slow?

Or is the code himself not optimized for real Classics?

Workbench 3.1 only needs ~5MB for a full installation, how much needs pure AROS68k?
Is there an image that only holds pure AROS68k without programs and gimmicks?

[OlafSch]

Originally Posted by huepper

AROS 68k is just too slow on real Classics, RTG(in FPGA) will not help here.
Is it possible, that wanderer makes this so slow?

Or is the code himself not optimized for real Classics?

Workbench 3.1 only needs ~5MB for a full installation, how much needs pure AROS68k?
Is there an image that only holds pure AROS68k without programs and gimmicks?

Aros needs in any case more than 5 MB but less than the other NG OSs need. I would need to test that, would depend on the desktops, f.e. Magellan needs 7 MB but my guess is that it is around 40-50 MB except using Workbook that boots from disk.

Wanderer (desktop) certainly is not fast but also code is not optimized for real classics. The most important tasks for near future is to improve there. Additional RTG on Aros 68k is a wrapper on P96 (developed for the P96 emulation in UAE ) and that needs to be replaced. Aros must be started from HD whereas big parts of AmigaOS were in the kickstarts so there is a difference.

[wawa]

Originally Posted by huepper

AROS 68k is just too slow on real Classics, RTG(in FPGA) will not help here.
Is it possible, that wanderer makes this so slow?

partly, according to jason there are too many oop calls. but also there are rather situations where it becomes slow rather than it is much too slow in general imho. this has been discussed on a1k between georg and thor. also of course its some additional functionality, big png imagery and the llike, which can be met with using scalos smaller icons and the like practical improvements.

Or is the code himself not optimized for real Classics?

i think the optimization is part of the issue toni referred to earlier in his complaints about the compiler, but as he says first comes ready implementation, then testing and then optimizations and testing again.
remember aros is now compiled for 68000 afaik. perhaps i could compile it for 68040 and we could see if and how much difference it makes. using bitfields, if they are going to be used then may actually make huge difference on apollo, as it has a fast implementation afaik.

Workbench 3.1 only needs ~5MB for a full installation, how much needs pure AROS68k?
Is there an image that only holds pure AROS68k without programs and gimmicks?

the nightly is without gimmicks. and i have my own lighter compile to test. its much faster to load aros own programs. but what concerns the size, im sorry i have heard nd had to answer to this dumb argument as well as why it doesnt come on floppies so many times over and over..

just keep in mind what if os3.1 came with network and usb stack, with a whole rtg solution, with 3d subsystem, a suite of tests and with the development headers archive so on and so on...

[Amiga1992]

Can there never be an AROS kickstart and associated OS that doesn't need an upgraded machine? i feel like that's the ideal scenario.
I don't understand why we should be talking about added features first before the same functionality as 3.x is achieved.

[huepper]

Originally Posted by Akira

Can there never be an AROS kickstart and associated OS that doesn't need an upgraded machine? i feel like that's the ideal scenario.
I don't understand why we should be talking about added features first before the same functionality as 3.x is achieved.

Thats what i talk about, first lets "fight" "AROS68k" vs. "WB3.1" fully pure.
No P96 or CGFX or other things.
If in this scenario AROS68k comes nearly on WB3.1 (Speed and compatibility and size),
then we can talk about features like CGFX or P96.

What to do in this case is, bring AROS68k as fast as possible like WB3.1 without any GFX-Sh**.

If AROS with lets say 20 MB is fast as WB3.1, then we can work on other things.

[wawa]

Originally Posted by Akira

Can there never be an AROS kickstart and associated OS that doesn't need an upgraded machine? i feel like that's the ideal scenario.
I don't understand why we should be talking about added features first before the same functionality as 3.x is achieved.

there is. aros runs on my a1200 and a4000 machines.
i have here few videos that werent meant for public, but well

[wawa]

Originally Posted by huepper

Thats what i talk about, first lets "fight" "AROS68k" vs. "WB3.1" fully pure.
No P96 or CGFX or other things.
If in this scenario AROS68k comes nearly on WB3.1 (Speed and compatibility and size),
then we can talk about features like CGFX or P96.

What to do in this case is, bring AROS68k as fast as possible like WB3.1 without any GFX-Sh**.

If AROS with lets say 20 MB is fast as WB3.1, then we can work on other things.

sigh. how many times do i need to repeat this till you get it??? aros iso for amiga-m68k is about 20mb inclusive all the features you listed and more, even if not all active. true, the speed may not be on pair with 3.1, but the footprint is way less than os4 even if you got it on 68k no matter faster cpus.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by wawa

there is. aros runs on my a1200 and a4000 machines.
i have here few videos that werent meant for public, but well

That's... disappointingly slow. What CPU are you running with your 137MB of RAM?

The point of all this is that for AROS to become a viable kickstart/workbench replacement then it needs to be able to run on original hardware.

That means that it must perform as fast as an original A1200 (68EC020, 2MB Chipram) running WB3.1. I think we can safely discount the 68k/1.3 comparison.

If it runs at the same speed as the original A1200, but with a Vampire attached then what's the point of having the Vampire? Might as well run vanilla 3.1.

I suspect that AROS is trying to do things that the original hardware couldn't do without assistance - 256 colour screens (or higher bitdepths), complex icons etc, etc. That's fine, but when given the same resources and assets as an original 3.1 install, it should perform at the same speed or better. Anything less and it's going to get laughed at.

Like I said previously, when I ran AROS on my 486 DX-2/50MHz, it should have flown in comparison to an A1200. It did not; it was so slow that you could count the lines being drawn as it refreshed a window.

I suspect that there are fundamental flaws in the implementation - heavy reliance on oop, poor compiler performance, who knows?

But it needs to get fixed if it's going to deserve the title of "fastest OS in the west", to paraphrase the hype on the AROS website.

First get the compatibility up, then make the ROM fit in 512KB and the OS install in <10MB, then get it running at speed. Only after all that can anyone start to think about improving it.

D.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by wawa

there is. aros runs on my a1200 and a4000 machines.
i have here few videos that werent meant for public, but well

Your machine is upgraded, you proved nothing but my point. I said unexpanded hardware. And it's running incredibly slow on your heavily expanded setup, even an 060 A4000.

[wawa]

its running on an a4k. 060/50

and yes. all or almost all your points are right. abour what needs to be done. except you now have a comparison to see a system and compare the responsiveness on the same genuine hardware (in an obvious beta stage), while you dont have this option to judge os4 or mos. and this is disappointing so far and needs to be improved i agree.

however you dont need to direct your comments at me, as if the situation is my doings and need to improve it myself. i indicate an option. yes i have put some effort in it personally. but aros is a community project im only loosely involved with. you are free to stick with what you have.

[Photon]

Originally Posted by OlafSch

Aros is the future OS for Vampire

So why the poll 3.1 / Aros ?

I like the very fast Vampire 2, and want to buy one for my A600, after plane tickets and hotel are paid for for a famous demoparty in Germany... You have asked me if I can help with software, and I answered tentatively as I have a few projects running on top of my job.

But contact me after Revision 2016, and let's see what we can do

[Overflow]

Originally Posted by Photon

So why the poll 3.1 / Aros ?

I like the very fast Vampire 2, and want to buy one for my A600, after plane tickets and hotel are paid for for a famous demoparty in Germany... You have asked me if I can help with software, and I answered tentatively as I have a few projects running on top of my job.

But contact me after Revision 2016, and let's see what we can do

I think the "AROS" is future, with regards to more advanced features not supported by the OS, is reflected with the stagnant situation AOS3.x finds itself in.
Ofcourse, many of us are more than happy to stick to 1.3, 3.1 or 3.9.
And some/many are intrested in more features... or even running both

I dont see them mutually exclusive.

Looking forward to any Revision productions!

[Dunny]

I also think that AROS should be the future, but it's just not worth it as it stands right now - if it's slower than unexpanded hardware, then most of the advantages of running it on the Vampire with its vastly increased speed are lost. That's what happened to most other OS's - you need a faster machine to be able to run Win10 than you do to run WinXP.

Much, much more development of AROS is needed but the Vampire will be ready for the real world much, much sooner than it is realistically possible to get AROS ready for the Vampire.

D.

[wawa]

Originally Posted by Dunny

I also think that AROS should be the future, but it's just not worth it as it stands right now - if it's slower than unexpanded hardware, then most of the advantages of running it on the Vampire with its vastly increased speed are lost. That's what happened to most other OS's - you need a faster machine to be able to run Win10 than you do to run WinXP.

Much, much more development of AROS is needed but the Vampire will be ready for the real world much, much sooner than it is realistically possible to get AROS ready for the Vampire.

D.

therefore i think too that the os must be efficient on baseline hardware. which is why i keep testing on my amigas without vampire. however i doubt we will get any further without the interest and support from the genuine amiga community. im doing my share as much i can but i st ill need to learn c coding basics before i can seriously contribute. sure, there are people around better suited than me, and yet you will find already some commits from me in aros repo aiming at amiga compatibility.