Terrible Fire Accelerators

[amilo3438]

Originally Posted by Locutus

The resulting speed of your config will depend on (many various) host machine properties....

Accelerated speeds are not really replicatable on WinUAE

No, it does not depend on a host machine ! (it works in cycle-exact mode)

You have not been tested it, right ?
So, dl the config from the post #79, test it and than comment! (or do whatever you like)

(and check do you have the needed "Golem 030" rom in your WinUAE "roms folder")

Otherwise, you are speaking by heart / from memory !

Originally Posted by Superman

Very impressive! Frontier looks lovely and smooth, another game I would recommed testing is F18A Interceptor as that responds nicely to accelerator cards also.

Formula One Grand Prix ( http://www.lemonamiga.com/games/details.php?id=389 ) ... instead of a "slideshow" on a plane A500 it gives a nice playable FPS !

In general, all "vector games" that need to calculate lots of math in a real time might benefit from a such accelerator. (IMHO)

EDIT: Regarding demos that might benefit, I know two OCS/AGA 68020+ demos:
braincell/Union - http://ada.untergrund.net/?p=demo&i=117 (needs 2MB Fast mem)
roots 2.0/Sanity - http://ada.untergrund.net/?p=demo&i=219 (needs ECS 1MB Chip mem, otherwise hangs)

[plasmab]

Good news folks. I got allocated an Autoconfig ID

[emufan]

Originally Posted by plasmab

Good news folks. I got allocated an Autoconfig ID

kinda medal of honor in amigaland, congratz

[nogginthenog]

Originally Posted by plasmab

Good news folks. I got allocated an Autoconfig ID

Out of interest was this from Olaf or Thomas?

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by nogginthenog

Out of interest was this from Olaf or Thomas?

Neither.

[Locutus]

Myyyysterious, let me guess you had to sign a NDA and aren't allowed to say who issued it?

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by Locutus

Myyyysterious, let me guess you had to sign a NDA and aren't allowed to say who issued it?

Nothing of the sort. I exchanged a few emails with someone from AmigaOS.net and that was that. Since this person may be an employee/volunteer I dont want to specifically name them but they weren't either of the people you mentioned.

[Locutus]

I'm honestly surprised anything to do with Hyperion didn't require a NDA.

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by Locutus

I'm honestly surprised anything to do with Hyperion didn't require a NDA.

They havent disclosed anything to me though. Wouldnt have signed an NDA.

I've had similar config number assigned to me for RISC OS before. Its pretty straightforward.

EDIT: If they didnt do that then people would just make up their own numbers anyways.

[Pat the Cat]

Not really sure if you specifically NEED 030 emulation on a WINUAE system to get respectable Frontier speeds.

It doesn't really run any different code, or kick in the FPU, AFAIK. I could be wrong on that, but it's more of a "memory / CPU cycle" based engine. Same code runs on a stock A500, just the RAM takes twice as many accesses to run code with, and the clock rate is a fraction of the accelerator is doing, on a standard A500.

The emulation needed to just fill soild polygons with a blitter aren't that stressful, at this resolution.

However, the game does have a frame rate lock on it, IIRC. It's double buffered 50Hz on Pal or 60Hz on NTSC, so that's 25 or 30 frames a second, maximum.

[keith]

Hello plasmab, Awesome work! I know this might sound silly and a bit off topic, but if I could be of any help in any way just let me know, I have no knowledge with FPGA, CPLD etc, but not bad at soldering 0402 caps etc.
PS looking forward to your updates.

[Locutus]

Originally Posted by plasmab

I've had similar config number assigned to me for RISC OS before. Its pretty straightforward.

That doesn't surprise me, RISCOS people seem infinitely more sane.

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by keith

Hello plasmab, Awesome work! I know this might sound silly and a bit off topic, but if I could be of any help in any way just let me know, I have no knowledge with FPGA, CPLD etc, but not bad at soldering 0402 caps etc.
PS looking forward to your updates.

Thanks for the offer keith. I'm very keen just to enjoy the work and publish stuff as I finish it.

[keith]

Cool no worries, sorry if I seem an odd ball here just wondering, as I am going off on a tangent here, with it being DIY and now you have your hardware id would it be possible in the future that the person building it could add larger dram sizes say to 4MB 4x1MB keeping the correct nanoseconds for speed & keeping the same board layout / footprint.

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by keith

Cool no worries, sorry if I seem an odd ball here just wondering, as I am going off on a tangent here, with it being DIY and now you have your hardware id would it be possible in the future that the person building it could add larger dram sizes say to 4MB 4x1MB keeping the correct nanoseconds for speed & keeping the same board layout / footprint.

DRAM latency is 55ns. SDRAM is about 65 but does better burst but is more complex overall. If i can find SRAM chips in a bigger size or eventually make bigger boards I will add more RAM (maybe another 2mb via a carrier board).

For now this is all proof of concept and keeping costs down.

[PeteAU]

Wow, you're moving along really quick. Are you basically done with the CPU & RAM side of things and working on IDE? Will it be A600 style gayle emulation?

Are your CPLDs and SRAMs missing any sort of bypass caps? Maybe they're hidden on the bottom side.

Curious, if you ever measured; how much juice does the board take above the stock A500?

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by PeteAU

Wow, you're moving along really quick. Are you basically done with the CPU & RAM side of things and working on IDE? Will it be A600 style gayle emulation?

Are your CPLDs and SRAMs missing any sort of bypass caps? Maybe they're hidden on the bottom side.

Curious, if you ever measured; how much juice does the board take above the stock A500?

The 030 will be verified in a week unless i hit an issue. I have 5 different A500 boards here and a couple of Atari STs. I dont really need any help testing this. I have some good people helping me with thinking.

It is A600/A1200 Gayle emulation. I've got GaryID working and i have some tests for the IDE ready to go in rom today.

Every decoupling cap is underneath the chip it decouples... as tight to the power pins as is physically possible.

I havent measured power yet but I will get some sweep graphs out with my GPIB kit (siggen + 6632B) once i'm done.

[McTrinsic]

Any chance of adding a 68k-fallback mode??

Would be icing ...

Cheers,
McT

[plasmab]

Originally Posted by McTrinsic

Any chance of adding a 68k-fallback mode??

Would be icing ...

Cheers,
McT

This issue with that is that i would have to have the original 68k in the socket for that. And believe it or not the biggest issue with that is getting long enough turned pin strips *with* turned pin ends. Otherwise it would be reasonably easy.

However I have no intention of productizing these and selling them. Others can take the sources and do that if they have the inclination. I'm moving on to 040/060 once i have the ide working.

[whiteb]

Originally Posted by plasmab

However I have no intention of productizing these and selling them. Others can take the sources and do that if they have the inclination. I'm moving on to 040/060 once i have the ide working.

060 on A500 <insert hysterical laugh> (in a good way).

With Class 10 SD support :P