Vampire emulation in WinUAE

[AMIGASYSTEM]

That many users who have or who will have a Vampire they have little to do with Amiga OS, this is a big problem for those who would like to help these users, in my opinion emulation would help a lot in this area.

[majikeyric]

As a cross developer using WinUAE for my Amiga developments and a new Vampire owner now, it would be great if I could cross develop too for the Vampire

[Toni Wilen]

Lets see.. (again)

- it is changing all the time. It is becoming less Amiga and more "Amiga compatible".

- it has features and way they are implemented that I don't see the point. I am sure no developers was asked (or was ignored) when those were designed. Whole thing is developer hostile. As I said, it is becoming platform that is also sort of Amiga compatible (at least in some definitions of "compatible"). Perhaps it is the goal. But then there is no point in this thread at all.

- any thread with critical comments gets replied with "you are wrong, we know better", "you are not allowed to comment unless you bought it?" wtf? (or some other reply that makes no sense whatsoever) Guess why I haven't said anything in those threads. I do agree some of those that criticize it!

- why would I help commercial product development by doing something for free? It must work both ways. It also wants to be some sort of competitor for some odd reason. I assume it wants to be competitor with all existing real hardware too when stand alone model is done..

Yes, emulation makes lots of sense when developing (Especially when debugging without MMU is guaranteed to be mega pain in the.. But MMU apparently is useless. Yet another anti-developer feature.) I personally do all the development under emulation, it is so much easier and especially faster, only testing needs real hardware.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

Lets see.. (again)

- it is changing all the time. It is becoming less Amiga and more "Amiga compatible".

- it has features and way they are implemented that I don't see the point. I am sure no developers was asked (or was ignored) when those were designed. Whole thing is developer hostile. As I said, it is becoming platform that is also sort of Amiga compatible (at least in some definitions of "compatible"). Perhaps it is the goal. But then there is no point in this thread at all.

- any thread with critical comments gets replied with "you are wrong, we know better", "you are not allowed to comment unless you bought it?" wtf? (or some other reply that makes no sense whatsoever) Guess why I haven't said anything in those threads. I do agree some of those that criticize it!

- why would I help commercial product development by doing something for free? It must work both ways. It also wants to be some sort of competitor for some odd reason. I assume it wants to be competitor with all existing real hardware too when stand alone model is done..

Yes, emulation makes lots of sense when developing (Especially when debugging without MMU is guaranteed to be mega pain in the.. But MMU apparently is useless. Yet another anti-developer feature.) I personally do all the development under emulation, it is so much easier and especially faster, only testing needs real hardware.

[Romanujan]

Besides, currently almost no software can utilize AMMX. There is AMMX-enabled Riva... and probably nothing more.

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by Romanujan

Besides, currently almost no software can utilize AMMX. There is AMMX-enabled Riva... and probably nothing more.

Just device drivers for now...

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Akira

Totally agree with Toni and your response Akira

In fact, this thread is absolutely f$%king crazy IMHO

WinUAE is the best Amiga emulator out there and 99% compatible with all real Amiga models / cards / setups, blah, blah, blah from back when and consistently getting better / adding more features day-by-day for over a decade now.

It's the only Amiga that I ever need and I'm sure others agree

...Toni has already said it numerous times previously, why should he implement something that isn't really an Amiga and most definitely cannot guarantee compatibility, not to mention changing so often???

Post #8 in this thread details Toni's thoughts and the current "Vampire" situation very well indeed.

If you real hardware freaks out that want to spend $$$$$ on stuff that's maybe at best 70% compatible with all Amiga models / cards / setups; please go and knock you socks off

...but please don't be suggesting that this should be emulated, there's absolutely no point in this what-so-ever!!!

WinUAE already does it a 1000 times better!!!

[AMIGASYSTEM]

Damien i agree with you as I'm with Toni, i will never buy a vampire., Vampire it is not Amiga as they are not AROS 68k, OS4 and all the others hardware and OS that we emulate the WinUAE. I am the first to say that Vampire will never be an Amiga and will never have total compatibility, emulation is just to prove that.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Toni Wilen

- it has features and way they are implemented that I don't see the point. I am sure no developers was asked (or was ignored) when those were designed. Whole thing is developer hostile.

Well the story is :
- Developers (me and Matt) were asked and suggested improvements.
- We were told that what we wanted was useless and/or not doable or there wasn't enough space in the fpga, etc.
- Then Gunnar came out with his own ideas. He was told why it wasn't good from a programmer's point of view.
- Then we had to either accept it or leave...

The 68k was designed to be programmer friendly. And there the blood sucker totally misses the point, sacrificing everything on the altar of speed on the paper.

We could grumble all day but -- why not doing it better ourselves ?
Criticism is easy but actually doing it is something else.
We could form a task force and design what we want.
Then it would be implemented in Winuae and perhaps in other Uae as well.
There are more Uaes out there than there are nightstalkers so it could become a new standard, like 68020+. And a well designed one.
That would put some pressure on that undead designer to follow.
Why not ?

[StingRay]

Originally Posted by meynaf

- Then Gunnar came out with his own ideas. He was told why it wasn't good from a programmer's point of view.

Déjà-vu!

[wawa]

@meynaf

sounds like you want to take an easy route.. simply define whatever instruction extensions you might find fancy under emulation and hope it will be adopted as standard. i have a hard time to believe that it would become any more popular that ammx, especially that none would understand what would be a reason for such extensions in the first place? uae is fast enough without it.

however if you were up to design an alternative 68k fpga core that at least comes close to what apollo is said to deliver (i dont have one) with more reasonable approach from the programmers point of view, be my guest. ill be first to applaud you!

[wawa]

Originally Posted by DamienD

It's the only Amiga that I ever need and I'm sure others agree

while i agree with toni that an emulation of a moving target doesnt make sense and his support for apollo extensions is simply a matter of his own interest and motivation, same as it is the case with support for ppc extensions in uae, i dont agree with the above statement.

i am grateful for winuae and it is an immensly useful tool. i still do like to run stuff on a genuine amiga hardware though and i know im not alone with that.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by wawa

@meynaf

sounds like you want to take an easy route.. simply define whatever instruction extensions you might find fancy under emulation and hope it will be adopted as standard. i have a hard time to believe that it would become any more popular that ammx, especially that none would understand what would be a reason for such extensions in the first place? uae is fast enough without it.

My main design goal isn't being "fast" (as you say, uae is already fast enough) but providing better tools for programmers, that is, to ease programming.
Do we like Amiga for its beauty or for its performance ?

Originally Posted by wawa

however if you were up to design an alternative 68k fpga core that at least comes close to what apollo is said to deliver (i dont have one) with more reasonable approach from the programmers point of view, be my guest. ill be first to applaud you!

For this i need some hdl/fpga expert to join. I'm a software guy, remember.

[Seiya]

however one day, winuae could be include AMMX instructions as these ones are 68k

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Seiya

however one day, winuae could be include AMMX instructions as these ones are 68k

No they are not 68k. Definitely not.

[Seiya]

so what is it?
if the FPGA core on Vampire has 68k instruction set how it works AMMX exactly?

[meynaf]

Adding instructions to some particular 68k implementation, doesn't make them real 68k.
Do you consider coldfire/cpu32/fido1100 specific things as being 68k ?

[B14ck W01f]

Most. Useless Feature. Ever.

You want to use a Vampire? Find yourself an A600.

Originally Posted by B14ck W01f

Most. Useless Feature. Ever.

Along with ppc emulation, genlock emulation, and a ton of other useless stuff added in latest release!

[Toni Wilen]

It is not same thing. All those useless things are old, hardwired designs that don't mysteriously come back in modified form.