Opinion: PPC, 68080 and other

[Promilus]

Originally Posted by Pyromania

In my opinion and keep in mind I have a Pi400 already but have not found a reason to buy a PiStorm yet because I have so many other ways to run AmigaOS. I might try it one day but it seems to be missing some features I would like to have. So don't shoot me but I believe If you love the essence and design philosophy of what an Amiga or even an Amiga upgrade is then the Vampire V4 family of products shares in that design philosophy. I’ve owned and played with pretty much every incarnation of Amigas including Classic/PPC and the Vampire V4 has the most feeling of what an Amiga reboot would be to me personally. The only ones I haven’t touched is the A1222 and the A600GS. I’ll be getting a A600GS soon but won’t be getting a A1222. I already have a X5000 so no point in another PPC machine in 2024. After 20 some years of PPC machines I kind of hope it would be further along then it is. I’m always waiting to be surprised and excited about something new for PPC Amigas but it’s been a long time waiting. Even Dave Haynie former Commodore Amiga designer loves the Vampire V4. What better endorsement is there since Jay Miner is long gone and can’t comment?

Sure, but that doesn't solve actual problems. Since 90s Amiga users were trying to keep up with pace of the PC. Hence things like PPC accelerators, PCI bridgeboards and Warp3D driver. V4 is everything you could've hoped for ... in late 90s. And basically nothing else. It will not solve all the problems which came after that, nor will it dramatically increase quantity and quality of new Amiga software. Neither will PiStorm, maybe add few more ports nothing else could run (maybe except "sharkppc" so anything related to sonnetpci projects - if there will be ppc version of the software of course). So in the long run all those "in line with amiga philosophy" features are inconsequential. They only do matter for a small group of ppl actively doing stuff on it. Which as I said before is limited to vampire fans, vampire developers or developers paid to do that stuff by vampire community.

[Pyromania]

It's now impossible to keep up with the PC or Mac for that matter. The only hope is to somehow fully take advantage of GPU cards from AMD or Nvidia some time in the future. This would have to fully support the GPU in the Amiga Operating System to make sense. Also, the Amigas future will probably be a hobbist system from now on so at least the pressure of keeping up with PC or Mac is over.

[dreadnought]

Well, it makes some people happy, so I guess it is what it is.

There won't ever be any messianic, unifying event in the Amiga community. Even if somebody released an open source, reasonably priced miracle hardware tomorrow, people would still carry on using their Vampires, Pistorms, TFs, and what have you.

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Pyromania

It's now impossible to keep up with the PC or Mac for that matter. The only hope is to somehow fully take advantage of GPU cards from AMD or Nvidia some time in the future. This would have to fully support the GPU in the Amiga Operating System to make sense. Also, the Amigas future will probably be a hobbist system from now on so at least the pressure of keeping up with PC or Mac is over.

If we are being honest, the Amiga was a hobbist system for a good while now. What would be nice is if there could be a standard that all the branches share which would eliminate the need to create separate versions for each 'flavour'.

[Pyromania]

Maybe a great multi-platform IDE for all Amiga flavors would help solve this problem. Hollywood was trying to do this but I've never coded in it.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by TCD

If we are being honest, the Amiga was a hobbist system for a good while now.

For me it always was.

What would be nice is if there could be a standard that all the branches share which would eliminate the need to create separate versions for each 'flavour'.

IMO the 'standard' should be the machines that Commodore produced. Popular addons of the day and their equivalents may be included but not required. A person should be able to acquire a stock A500 or A1200 etc. and not be left out if they don't add a Vampire, PiStorm, 060, OS3.9/3.2 etc.

PPC and 0S 4, Morphos, and AROS are separate 'branches' with their own 'standards' that they can define as they see fit. This should have no impact on the real Amiga standard.

Originally Posted by Pyromania

Maybe a great multi-platform IDE for all Amiga flavors would help solve this problem. Hollywood was trying to do this

Hollywood is a disaster, proprietary bloatware that is practically useless on real Amigas. As a 'multi-platform' IDE
it sucks.

[Pyromania]

I haven’t learned Hollywood personally so I don’t know it yet. I purchased it years ago and did many upgrades but never go around to learning it. AmigaKit seems to get good results out of it somehow.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

IMO the 'standard' should be the machines that Commodore produced. Popular addons of the day and their equivalents may be included but not required. A person should be able to acquire a stock A500 or A1200 etc. and not be left out if they don't add a Vampire, PiStorm, 060, OS3.9/3.2 etc.

But that's pretty much already how it is, no? I don't feel left out at all because I dont have modern turbo thingies. Most development of note happens for the legacy models, and people with Pistorms et al can use them to power assorted ports and productivity software. And SysInfo, of course

[mschulz]

Originally Posted by Pyromania

but have not found a reason to buy a PiStorm yet because I have so many other ways to run AmigaOS. I might try it one day but it seems to be missing some features I would like to have.

What features are missing at the moment in your opinion?

[clebin]

Originally Posted by pix

Yes, in a sense it is, but I don't like having to choose between PPC and boosted Motorola. I don't like that this means also choosing between OS3 and OS4. If the 2 projects combined so that the PPC boards carried the 68080 with SAGA and a proper Amiga sound implementation, hence no emulation, that would be ideal. I get my little bit of grunt and I get my hardware Amiga in one. Its a real Amiga ... Yay!

Just spotted your reply to me. Things got fractured a long time ago, but 68k is where most active development is these days. OS4 + PPC is basically dead development-wise, so you can give up on that dream. That chapter is over.

Vampire would be a nice choice for you. I would also seriously consider an A600 with a Pistorm. It depends whether you can live with an emulated CPU vs a FPGA hardware-emulated/simulated/recreated/implemented/whatever-the-whole-argument-bores-the-hell-out-of-me CPU.

Crucially, you'll still be using the Amiga's original custom chips, which seems most important to you (particularly audio) so at heart you're using classic hardware, but with a boosted CPU, RTG if you want it, wifi, fast SD card, etc.

And Pistorm is in very active development, thanks in no small part to the amazing work of the guy posting above me!

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by mschulz

What features are missing at the moment in your opinion?

I can't speak for that guy but speaking personally, one thing I would love to be able to do - and this is niche - is create my own virtual hardware (arm native software running on the metal) that's exposed as some set of memory mapped registers to the 68K side. As for what that virtual hardware is, well, that's the point - it's up to me. But it would be so cool if there was something like a mechanism for loading that in, so that it could be set or reconfigured at runtime.


This is in no way a demand, just a wish and nothing that would prevent me buying one.

[paraj]

Originally Posted by Karlos

I can't speak for that guy but speaking personally, one thing I would love to be able to do - and this is niche - is create my own virtual hardware (arm native software running on the metal) that's exposed as some set of memory mapped registers to the 68K side. As for what that virtual hardware is, well, that's the point - it's up to me. But it would be so cool if there was something like a mechanism for loading that in, so that it could be set or reconfigured at runtime.


This is in no way a demand, just a wish and nothing that would prevent me buying one.

You could do this today by building on the existing work since it's open source. I played around (successfully) with adding action replay support w/ a virtual NMI button using JOY0+1 button presses for example. Emu68 still lacks proper trace bit support, so not as useful as I had hoped, but that might becoming up (or I could add it myself in theory if I wanted to put in the work).
Pistorm(32) really is software defined, and you're aren't "limited" to Emu68, though of course in practice you'd probably not do everything from scratch.

[Pyromania]

Originally Posted by mschulz

What features are missing at the moment in your opinion?

Does it have similar or comparable features to what's linked below?

http://www.apollo-computer.com/v4standalone.php

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by Pyromania

Does it have similar or comparable features to what's linked below?

http://www.apollo-computer.com/v4standalone.php

No, but you are comparing a standalone complete system to an accelerator card. The PiStorm is an expansion for an Amiga, the V4 standalone is a replacement for an Amiga. So not really a valid comparison.

[Pyromania]

Originally Posted by Karlos

No, but you are comparing a standalone complete system to an accelerator card. The PiStorm is an expansion for an Amiga, the V4 standalone is a replacement for an Amiga. So not really a valid comparison.

Same exact features are present in their Amiga accelerator cards.

http://www.apollo-core.com/index.htm?page=products