AGA integration in Apollo core : work in progress

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by Sinphaltimus

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.

Maybe I misunderstood what you are saying, but from what little I have heard from second-hand unnamed sources, the idea for the standalone is to have USB ports.

Now Poseidon has a camd-usb driver for it at least it has the camdusbmidi.class, so Midi could possibly work, and I think there is also a parallel Poseidon driver too. This is assuming a great many things like a Poseidon driver.

[Sinphaltimus]

Yeah. I don't mind the speed, ram and aga cost stuff at all but I would like to retain side port, and floppy drives for original disks and gotek. I'd love a stand alone unit but not as an original replacement. Perhaps I assumed too much with my initial reply to ya.

[grond]

Originally Posted by Akira

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?

You just can't please the Amiga community. If you show exciting new stuff, people critisize it for being lame in comparison to their Intel PC and lack of "compatibility" (any possible interpretation of the word). If you show old stuff running fine, people critisize you for lack of vision... :

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by grond

You just can't please the Amiga community. If you show exciting new stuff, people critisize it for being lame in comparison to their Intel PC and lack of "compatibility" (any possible interpretation of the word). If you show old stuff running fine, people critisize you for lack of vision... :

I wholeheartedly agree with your first sentence.
But my comment wasn't negative criticism, you just took the bad parts of it and made it negative.

The problem I expressed in another thread is that the Vampire and Apollo core lands on middle ground between the past and the future Amiga stuff. As such, your first phrase will sadly resonate throughout their whole development.

As an add-on for old hardware, I find it hard to justify.
As a roadmap to a stand-alone computer, I think it's brilliant.

I am very excited about what you are working on, but I just can't help but feel that showing Monkey Island 2 running on a Vampire does the Vampire and the Apollo core no benefit. How about a video with the latest version of OpenBOR showing a bad-ass beat'em up? That'd be much better IMO.

Again, was trying to be constructive.

[grond]

Ha, don't worry, I know your comment wasn't meant to be negative and just pointed out that what is to be seen in the video is not what you consider exciting about the Vampire. But it is a necessity to not just cover middle ground, as you phrase it, but to show that the Vampire is a legitimate offspring of the Amiga

[Amiga1992]

Yeah I get that, it has heritage planted on the Amiga of course, but I think I am ready to see it get life of its own before the Amiga drowns it with it .
Just by recent developments, like it overriding the chipset and not using the Amiga's videoport, it's getting more and more "out of the womb", and I can't wait for that to happen. The nature of the project has taken me from really wanting a Vampire inside my A600 to totally uninterested in using a Vampire with Apollo core inside any Amiga I have.

[Sinphaltimus]

I do like seeing how well games run, maybe next video can show applications like octamed, ppaint, dpaint, pick an animation program, fantavision, movie maker, lightwave, etc... The creative stuff that I personally feel are still strong points. Yes, even game development packages like openbor or redpill.

[grond]

Originally Posted by Sinphaltimus

maybe next video can show applications like octamed, ppaint, dpaint, pick an animation program, fantavision, movie maker, lightwave, etc...

What special requirements on the chipset do these programs set?

[thgill]

I would like to hear if the Parasite add-on is still being developed.

[Sinphaltimus]

Originally Posted by grond

What special requirements on the chipset do these programs set?

Speed and compatibility on vampire vs without. Would be exciting to see I think.

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by Sinphaltimus

Speed and compatibility on vampire vs without. Would be exciting to see I think.

The Vampire AGA support certainly opens exciting possibilities for something like DPaint IV, where it barely runs under RTG. A fast 640x480x256 mode for Dpaint is enticing. Of course HAM8 is moreso.

[Signman]

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

That's what Gunnar repeatedly keeps saying he wants to do but people are consistently belly aching about the FPU for old software.

I agree, move forward.

[Yulquen74]

So, does this mean that the latest and future cores will ignore the mainboard video and sound resources completely, and use its own instead?

If so, why can they not make this a software feature, enabling either one or the other?

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by Signman

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

That's what Gunnar repeatedly keeps saying he wants to do but people are consistently belly aching about the FPU for old software.

I agree, move forward.

Way to miss the point. In case you were unaware the lack of FPU support is not just for compatibility it's for lack of speed as well. Let's just leave this here too:
https://blog.alb42.de/?s=fpu

If you mean that belly aching about applications that could use an FPU being 20x-40x slower than an 060 then that is some terrible belly ache!

[Amiga1992]

Oh no not fucking FPU talk again. Let's ignore it. I didn't talk about it at all.

Originally Posted by Sinphaltimus

I do like seeing how well games run, maybe next video can show applications like octamed, ppaint, dpaint, pick an animation program, fantavision, movie maker, lightwave, etc... The creative stuff that I personally feel are still strong points.

Unless these programs are rewritten, the advantage they will get from Vampire is minimal.
Holding the Vampire down because of compatibility with hardware 30+ years old is the same mentality Commodore had when making new Amiga models, which didn't really pay off when the machines were released incredibly underpowered compared to current competition. And they were incompatible too and there was much bitching in Amiga world.

I guess this is just that "Amiga heritage" that people want to keep but I can't wait for it to go away. As long as Vampire and Apollo are attached to a physical Amiga computer, this stigmata will not disappear.

[Djole501]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Way to miss the point. In case you were unaware the lack of FPU support is not just for compatibility it's for lack of speed as well. Let's just leave this here too:
https://blog.alb42.de/?s=fpu

If you mean that belly aching about applications that could use an FPU being 20x-40x slower than an 060 then that is some terrible belly ache!

I think you also missed the point completely. What he is saying that a softfpu on Apollo core could be 20-40x slower compared to 060 FPU, but you dont NEED to use floating point. U can use integer only to solve any problem, floating point is just two integers anyway ? MUIMapparium doesnt need FPU and runs very fast on Vampire. THe point is that softfpu is not a real (fast) solution for current sw needing FPU.

[matthey]

Originally Posted by Akira

The problem I expressed in another thread is that the Vampire and Apollo core lands on middle ground between the past and the future Amiga stuff. As such, your first phrase will sadly resonate throughout their whole development.

The Apollo Core ISA creates a standard which is neither backward compatible without the FPU and which only gets us half way into the future and then becomes an impediment to going further. I'll keep my 68060 for the past while I wait for a replacement of the Apollo Core for the future.

Originally Posted by Yulquen74

So, does this mean that the latest and future cores will ignore the mainboard video and sound resources completely, and use its own instead?

If so, why can they not make this a software feature, enabling either one or the other?

Because you are supposed to accept whatever the Apollo Team (Gunnar) decides is best for you. Yea, it should be possible to reboot into a configuration with or without SAGA as the active chipset (select at a boot screen?).

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

Way to miss the point. In case you were unaware the lack of FPU support is not just for compatibility it's for lack of speed as well. Let's just leave this here too:
https://blog.alb42.de/?s=fpu

If you mean that belly aching about applications that could use an FPU being 20x-40x slower than an 060 then that is some terrible belly ache!

Soft float libraries for compilers are usually poorly optimized and very slow. Most ported software comes from the x86 world where they have had fast hardware floating point support for decades. Bottlenecks are created when switching from something very fast to something very slow. I wonder if lantus360 tried compiling an FPU version of OpenBOR and tested several games on his 68040. It doesn't take very much floating point use to make a difference in performance. If the FPU is a bottleneck then it would be possible to see it with OpenBOR. Highly optimized assembler FPU code is not necessary to see the difference caused by lack of FPU hardware and compiler support which could make a moderate difference in thousands of compiled software rather that a big difference in a hand full of assembler titles optimized for a new vectore FPU.

Originally Posted by Akira

Unless these programs are rewritten, the advantage they will get from Vampire is minimal.
Holding the Vampire down because of compatibility with hardware 30+ years old is the same mentality Commodore had when making new Amiga models, which didn't really pay off when the machines were released incredibly underpowered compared to current competition. And they were incompatible too and there was much bitching in Amiga world.

This "compatibility" is the reason why you and everyone is here though. It is the common ground which keeps the Amiga community together. Lose a portion of the compatibility and you lose a portion of the Amiga community. I welcome Gunnar to go create a completely new and improved 68k like ISA and make something of it without the Amiga or 68k communities and without any existing software. I didn't see any way to make the 68k the highest performance in the world but I think it could be competitive while maintaining very high compatibility. I do believe the 68k could have the best combination of performance and code density (while maintaining high compatibility) of any 32 bit ISA in the world if that was the focus instead.

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by Djole501

I think you also missed the point completely. What he is saying that a softfpu on Apollo core could be 20-40x slower compared to 060 FPU, but you dont NEED to use floating point. U can use integer only to solve any problem, floating point is just two integers anyway ? MUIMapparium doesnt need FPU and runs very fast on Vampire. THe point is that softfpu is not a real (fast) solution for current sw needing FPU.

Way to miss the point about missing the point about missing the point. As you say an application that doesn't even need FPU doesn't benefit from it?

060 with FPU on Lightwave is over 4x faster than non-FPU version on Vampire. Vampire gains some ground Lightwave as the faster memory helps.

*raises hand as apparently the only guy that just wants to run all old amiga software on newer/reliable equipment that doesn't cost as much as a csppc*

*raises hand again as apparently the only guy that doesn't really care about more current software on amiga all that much; a $50 raspberry pi will do fine for that, thanks*

[matthey]

Originally Posted by esc

*raises hand as apparently the only guy that just wants to run all old amiga software on newer/reliable equipment that doesn't cost as much as a csppc*

I'm with you here wanting to run the old software on a faster and more modern Amiga. I'll add with modern I/O especially drives and internet connections.

Originally Posted by esc

*raises hand again as apparently the only guy that doesn't really care about more current software on amiga all that much; a $50 raspberry pi will do fine for that, thanks*

I like the new software too even though some of it is boring or will be too slow. It is the start of bringing back better software to the Amiga which leads to better hardware which leads to better software. Amiga and the 68k need to get back into a development loop but it needs to be done the right way.