Picasso96 sold...

[grond]

Apollo-accelerators hosts the P96-package from aminet. This package offered a free license to anyone for redistribution as long as the package remained unchanged. We accepted this generous offer before ownership changed and thus the new owners are bound by contract. Even if P96 is pulled from aminet, redistribution through apollo-accelerators cannot be prohibited. Any new P96-versions will have to sell through actual improvements which is perfectly fine by me.

[Schoenfeld]

This has reached the public sooner than intended - we're not yet ready with a press release and the infrastructure of the shop system required for what I am planning: Sales of a slightly improved version on a pay-what-you-want basis.

Grond's point has been made a lot of times, and we're well aware that we can't change the status of the existing archives out there: It's shareware, and redistribution of this shareware is allowed. No need for panic-downloads :-)

Further, I will open up the API of P96 for free. Tobias&Alexander's model of "two sources of income" (one from shareware fees and the other from paid API support) didn't work out. The UAE driver was used many times to reverse the API, and it was not clear if this was fully legal, as the UAE driver has put parts of the closed-source API under GPL. I really don't want to start yet another discussion about "was it legal or not" and "is it legal to use this information". As a result of past discussions, the best we can agree on is that it's a legal grey zone, as all sides have valid points.

I will end this legal grey zone by opening the API in my tech Wiki (wiki.icomp.de). This will allow hobby-projects to write drivers with full 2D acceleration support. VA2000 and Vampire can already be considered "taken out of this legal grey zone" with this announcement. Just give me some time to make the Wiki page.

Jens

[spudje]

Great news Jens!

[ascp]

Sounds fantastic Jens!

[klx300r]

way to go Jens! this is a win for everyone :-)

[grelbfarlk]

That sounds pretty reasonable, however I think people are in panic mode anyway.

I think what would alleviate their fears and restore peace to the realm is if you, Jens, would read your statement on video while eating two dozen Cadbury Eggs and post it up on youtube. That way every time this topic comes up people can put on their tinfoil hats and watch the video. Yes we could link to what you just stated but often people do not want to read something that contradicts what they want to believe.

[emufan]

are we still talking about an April's hoax:

Hi,

Yo. Jens has informed me of it prior to about 6 weeks, however, this is with Hyperion for me, surprisingly. He desired of me that I purchases and licenses to sell Bulk licenses for future versions with him directly, but I've refused so far because of my retro stuff is pure Open-Source projects are supposed to be. Instead, I have offered the users to add my graphics card to a (not yet existing) new P96-site, or to recommend if you are interested to buy a newer Version then.

LG
Luke / mntmn

Originally Posted by Schoenfeld

This has reached the public sooner than intended

HAHA - next he damands a fake-news / hate speech button to counter those not in line with HIS political correctness.

#1) and why Hyperion - get one and pay two?

[pgovotsos]

I think that it is extremely gracious of Jens to specifically call out and clarify the situation with the Vampire. Their products are competitors and I think it speaks volumes that Jens does this.

[matthey]

Originally Posted by pgovotsos

I think that it is extremely gracious of Jens to specifically call out and clarify the situation with the Vampire. Their products are competitors and I think it speaks volumes that Jens does this.

Corporate image and PR are important, especially in a small market. Attacking and bad mouthing competitors can do more harm than good. Cooperating and working together with good ethical partners and customers is the way to a successful business. Amiga businesses need to bring the friendly back.

[gulliver]

I have been involved in unofficial Picasso96 updates in the past, and still might have some more left in the pipeline. That said, I am a willing customer and donor when software is reliable and meets my demands as a user. On Amigaland, finding active software development is difficult, and within that constraint, finding a valauable piece of software for me is an extreme oddity.

Picasso96 has proven to be a good solution for incorporating graphic cards to an Amiga system. There are other systems, but they seem to have languished into obscurity due to lack of active hardware development (CGX, ProBench, SAGE, RetinaEmu, etc). So wether you like it or not, hardware development is what drives any RTG solution and empowers it over the others.

Nowadays despite it numerous shortcomings, Picasso96 is the master of the game. It has many persistent bugs, the most counterintuitive screenmode prefs program ever, doesnt support a miriad of advanced features, and has a long list of dislikes in many areas. But despite all of this, it works, has new hardware that supports it, and integrates well within emulated enviroments (Amithlon, UAE, etc). And this is nothing any other RTG system can do on an Amiga.

I support the idea of making the API publicly open as Jens Schhoenfeld assured us he will, so that any hardware developer doesnt need to hack/reverse engineer the API itself ending with half baked drivers or in the best of cases with framebuffer style drivers. Having the option to create fully compatible accelerated (blitter) RTG drivers seems great for both new and old hardware.

Besides, still keeping the currently old v2.x line of Picass96 drivers and RTG system as shareware makes much more sense than anything else.

I really apreciate and enjoy open source endeavours, but disagree on some of this Open Source fascism. I will gladly pay a reasonable amount of money for a new Picasso96 version (3.x ?) that fixes old shortcomings and adds new features such as:

-The most painfull and user unfriendly program on Amigas is probably Picasso96Mode. It urgently needs to be redone from a user interface perspective. CGX for example, has a very easier counterpart (CGXMode). If you search the web a bit, you will find lots of complaints about this on P96.

-Add documentation on how to manage multiple gfx cards on P96

-Implement multi-monitor/multi-display support (extended mode - clone mode)

-Build a Picasso96 AGA driver (much like a CGXAGA driver counterpart). Even better if an OCS/ECS one, with of course, a limited feature set due to chipset restrictions.

By the way Jens Schoenfeld has mentioned he will proceed with Picasso96, I only see good things to come, and new opportunities will surely arise. I hope, for all of us, I am not wrong, and this is better handled by him than what he did and still does, with his ACT Apollo/Viper accelerator intellectual property.

[pgovotsos]

Originally Posted by matthey

Corporate image and PR are important, especially in a small market. Attacking and bad mouthing competitors can do more harm than good. Cooperating and working together with good ethical partners and customers is the way to a successful business. Amiga businesses need to bring the friendly back.

That's why I wanted to mention Jens' generosity and willingness to work with others in our community, even potential competition. That hasn't always (ever?) happened in the Amiga world and it's good to see. When it does happen like in this situation, I think it's important to recognize it and thank those involved in the hopes that more people will do the same.

[matthey]

Originally Posted by gulliver

Picasso96 has proven to be a good solution for incorporating graphic cards to an Amiga system. There are other systems, but they seem to have languished into obscurity due to lack of active hardware development (CGX, ProBench, SAGE, RetinaEmu, etc). So wether you like it or not, hardware development is what drives any RTG solution and empowers it over the others.

P96 needs to disappear like the other RTG systems for the Amiga. In this day and age, RTG should be built into an OS and not sold as a 3rd party product. Documentation for writing drivers should be included in the developer documentation for the AmigaOS. The largest 68k Amiga market is ignored though.

Originally Posted by pgovotsos

That's why I wanted to mention Jens' generosity and willingness to work with others in our community, even potential competition. That hasn't always (ever?) happened in the Amiga world and it's good to see. When it does happen like in this situation, I think it's important to recognize it and thank those involved in the hopes that more people will do the same.

It's a good sign but I'll wait to see the implementation before heaping too much praise.

[eXeler0]

Originally Posted by matthey

P96 needs to disappear like the other RTG systems for the Amiga. In this day and age, RTG should be built into an OS and not sold as a 3rd party product.
----><8

You are right in principle and I completely agree with this idea, but just HOW THE HELL would that happen in reality?

If Jens pick it up in a way that ends the tiresome legal hustling, opens it up for a small fee and revives it with updated code, then I'd say that's a pretty good second best solution.

[matthey]

Originally Posted by eXeler0

You are right in principle and I completely agree with this idea, but just HOW THE HELL would that happen in reality?

Well, I guess AmigaOS 4 is getting real RTG finally but that is for a niche of a niche and not relevant outside of a few hundred users. I guess I was hoping the big 3 would start using their brains to cooperatively bring affordable products to market for the masses which could revitalize the Amiga. RTG built into the AmigaOS is still not realistic but I put it out there because that is what *should* happen. Only Amiga makes it impossible.

Originally Posted by eXeler0

If Jens pick it up in a way that ends the tiresome legal hustling, opens it up for a small fee and revives it with updated code, then I'd say that's a pretty good second best solution.

Yea, probably just smart PR and not cooperation for a Clone-A 4th gen FPGA motherboard. Mass production is just too risky. It is better to let the Amiga dwindle away and preserve her with embalming fluid .

[wawa]

again, if you want rtg built into os in a cgx compatible way, use aros. otherwise use the genuine os and accept that p96 and cgx are third party. there is a reaonable choice for everyone. you just cant eat a cake and keep it, so nothing a grown person should complain about actually.

[grelbfarlk]

Ok but what do we mean by "built into the OS"? Included in the default install? Integrated into the kickstart? Rewrite graphics.library, intuition.library, etc while retaining backwards compatibility? Is it even possible to do something like make hardware banging games display on a P96 board like the Cirrus Logic or Voodoo cards? I doubt it.

[wawa]

i think it depends on details of hardware banging. a nodos game wont probably take notice of graphics.lib and there applied changes anyway.

im not that familiar about aros implementation of graphics, but when it comes to planar screens also vesa provides sich afair, and all these displays inclusive amiga modes are handled in an unified way. for instance early boot appears on the available display. if you have an rtg card sticking in your amiga it should appear there. of course this all is a field for further adjustments and probably furter experimentation, should anybody want to research, how far hardware abstraction could be implemented into an amiga os, in order for existing apps to take advantage of it.

[grelbfarlk]

What I would like to see is Picasso96 rewritten for WarpOS where it makes sense. So Jens if you do that I'll buy your new version, thanks in advance.

[matthey]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Ok but what do we mean by "built into the OS"? Included in the default install?

Yes, RTG support should be installed by default and preferably as many drivers as possible.

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Integrated into the kickstart?

Partially. Support yes but probably not all components.

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Rewrite graphics.library, intuition.library, etc while retaining backwards compatibility?

Update a good portion of graphics.library. C= started the process with several of the functions being RTG aware. P96 patches the rest of the functions which are necessary for RTG. It is these patches which need to go inside of a new graphics.library (cleaner and faster). Some new functions and support libraries would be necessary. The intuition.library is mostly RTG compatible already. ThoR's layers.library is RTG compatible. I could make a P96 and RTG compatible graphics.library without sources although it is more error prone. Cosmos practically did the same and it has some bugs. There is plenty of room to boost performance with the graphics.library, layers.library (yes, even ThoR's version) and the intuition.library. It is amazing the performance is as good as it is on low powered 68k CPUs considering how poorly optimized the code is.

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Is it even possible to do something like make hardware banging games display on a P96 board like the Cirrus Logic or Voodoo cards? I doubt it.

Yes, it is possible but not practical in software. It would require emulation or simulation (FPGA) of the Amiga custom chips. SAGA and the FPGA Arcade (with RTG) are doing this. They basically have integrated graphics which support the Amiga custom chip's planar graphics and chunky graphics. SAGA supports Atari's graphic formats now also. Most graphics cards don't even have partial hardware support for the Amiga's planar graphics (except CV64) meaning the support would have to be all done slowly in software. A SAGA graphics card could be made with PCIe to solve the problem. Modern graphic card features could be added including shader units which are more efficient in an FPGA than a CPU. Why go through the slow PCIe bus when all can be accomplished with faster integrated graphics though. FPGAs open up a whole world of possibilities to the Amiga and there are some very talented FPGA programmers in the Amiga community. The revolution, no evolution, is coming from the smaller players in the Amiga market while the big guys ignore the 500 pound technology gorilla in the room.

[idrougge]

Matthey, you're derailing the thread as always.