MNT VA2000, an Amiga 2000 Graphics Card (Zorro II)

[mark_k]

[Not sure if this is the most suitable sub-forum...]

I saw mention of this, anyone else heard of it yet?

https://github.com/mntmn/amiga2000-gfxcard/

A guy designed and built his own RTG-compatible Zorro II graphics card from scratch, DVI/HDMI output, working Picasso96 driver. Pretty impressive work!

[hooverphonique]

yes, someone posted about this in a danish amiga group on facebook - impressive stuff!

[gulliver]

Absolutely great!

[Locutus]

The writeup is a nice read and ofcourse the repo is fun to look through. How one could wish more Amiga projects where like this ;-)

Also: i'll be amused once the first person complains about unlicensed P96 crap if he sells a run :-D

[gulliver]

Originally Posted by Locutus

Also: i'll be amused once the first person complains about unlicensed P96 crap if he sells a run :-D

It is perfectly legal what he did.
He reversed engineered the P96 driver using UAE sources which are GNU/GPL.

He is not the first one that has done it lately: The FPGAReplay guys and the Apollo Team (VampireII) did pretty much the same.

[strim]

Apollo Team (VampireII) did pretty much the same

I don't know the details about what they did, but it was them that tried to resurrect the failed commercial model of Picasso96 (and impose fees on hardware developers using P96). More about it can be read in later posts of this amiga.org thread.

[Locutus]

Originally Posted by gulliver

It is perfectly legal what he did.
He reversed engineered the P96 driver using UAE sources which are GNU/GPL.

He is not the first one that has done it lately: The FPGAReplay guys and the Apollo Team (VampireII) did pretty much the same.

I understand its perfectly legal, and in my opinion justified. But thats not how it was seen by some people.

[jack-3d]

My user review of VA2000 in A4000 with the latest firmware and drivers v1.4.

http://jack.untergrund.net/2017/03/1...-card-fw-v1-4/

I must say progress is obvious and VA2000 is currently more then promissing project.

[kolla]

Awesome that it is also Zorro3 and 32MB

[idrougge]

It is awesome that it manages to get Zorro II speed out of Zorro III.

[mrmightyfine]

I have one on order with the MNTVA2000CX add-on card. Not sure whether to run it in my A2000 or A4000 (have a Retina BLT Zorro 3 Card in that already).

[Irl]

I am awaiting an order as well with the VA2000CX. I only have an A2000, but I would suggest trying both. One benefit to the 4000 is that the VA2000 can supply a lot more RAM when not held back by Zorro II

[SnkBitten]

Originally Posted by mrmightyfine

I have one on order with the MNTVA2000CX add-on card. Not sure whether to run it in my A2000 or A4000 (have a Retina BLT Zorro 3 Card in that already).

I'd suggest running it in your A2000 since the add-on card doesn't support AGA screens.

[LuigiThirty]

I wish I could hook it up to the 32-bit graphics card port on my GVP accelerator instead of the Z2 port in the A2000.

[Locutus]

I think its quite obvious the total market for that is far to small for that.....

[Zetr0]

Interesting concept about using an FPGA for a dedicated RTG card -

I wonder if after the general 2D stuff is implemented that 3D stuff like Transforming and Lighting could be implemented - I suppose this comes down to the size and speed of the FPGA - still one would be lacking the software to really use it sadly =(

[klx300r]

Soooooo been trying to get hold of MNT (Lukas) for quite some time now to see if we can get screen dragging with new P96 and OS3.1.4/3.2 and finally got a response from their official MNT forum https://community.mnt.re/ and the response is:

"Hi, unfortunately we don’t have any resources to work on VA2000 firmware at the moment. But the firmware and drivers are completely open source, so anyone competent in Verilog and C could add such functionality."

..so any fellow VA2000 users here that are competent in Verilog and C

[klx300r]

hmm so firmware update for ZZ9000 today for screen dragging on Twitter but no love for VA2000 owners

[stevelord]

That's kind of how these things go though. At least the design and code is open source. There's a site explaining how to build the code. Maybe start with that then look at which bits of the ZZ9000 code look similar and might be possible to integrate.

[klx300r]

Originally Posted by stevelord

That's kind of how these things go though. At least the design and code is open source. There's a site explaining how to build the code. Maybe start with that then look at which bits of the ZZ9000 code look similar and might be possible to integrate.

Unfortunately I'm not competent in Verilog and C and don't even know how to look for the code that MNT did for the ZZ9000 card which was just released and btw I believe the ZZ9000 is also open source right

So why not make 'ALL' their customers 'who are competent in Verilog and C' create their own firmware? I bought my VA2000 and VA2000cx only a few years ago not 20 plus years ago