Vampire or PiStorm?

[Bren McGuire]

PiStorm not only it is a great thing but Vampire seems like it was made by a bunch of reprobates i wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole and PiStorm probably has the future assured while Vampire seems dependent on the whim of a manchild with serious issues

[VladR]

Originally Posted by pixie

Well... you have emu68k for raspberry standalone also... but I don't know what is the actual usage of it for the moment

I just checked the github and it looks like the year old (Mar'2022) Beta version is the last one that has binaries for standalone (Emu68-raspi.zip).

So, this would imply that that particular version was the last one that ran fine on a standalone, correct ? Hopefully it wasn't just a different build target...

I don't care for later fixes that improve the compatibility, I only care for being able to run RTG at 2,500+ MIPS so I can play with my RTG 3D Engine and see on my own what 2,500 MIPS brings to the table (I've only tried Vampire V4 as a fastest RTG config before).


Unfortunately, all the vids I saw only show rPi being plugged into the actual Amiga (which is utterly useless for me).

[Kin Hell]

Originally Posted by Bren McGuire

PiStorm not only it is a great thing but Vampire seems like it was made by a bunch of reprobates i wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole and PiStorm probably has the future assured while Vampire seems dependent on the whim of a manchild with serious issues

That's a tad harsh fella. - It is an FPGA Emulation of a 68080 that never existed for real on the Motorola 680xx family. It covered a niche of users that wanted faster than 060 & they got it.

Emu68 went in a different direction & harnessed RPi power for some incredible performance.

Originally Posted by VladR

Since I don't have actual Amiga, I can only get a stand-alone rPi (my goal is to have an RTG set-up for coding).

Am I interpreting the above correctly, that if I get a standalone rPi4B (4 GB), then I won't be able to run Emu68k ?

Meaning, right now, Emu68k only works through PiStorm using a physical Amiga computer ?

That's how I understand EMU68. - It basically emulates the 680xx processors & utilises real Amiga Hardware..

Example: An A1200 with a PiStorm32 card needs a Rpi3 or 4 plugging into it.
Another options is to use a RPi CM4 module with a suitable carrier board to mount it. - These options require a real Amiga & can run native Amiga OS or OS's like "CaffeineOS", "CoffinOS" or even "AmiKit's" specific version for PiStorm. - I have listed them here from fast to slow in terms of relative performance.

You can however buy stand alone boxes for RPi 3/4 boards & then install PiMiga OS which is pure 100% emulation of the Amiga platform on RPi hardware using Scalos workbench replacement. I understand there are other versions of OS similar to PiMiga of which I have had no experience. - Google is your friend.

****Edit****

Iirc, the PiMiga OS (or at least the one I used) only emulated a 68030 so even if you could do what you want to do, it's not going to be as fast as Emu68 & real Amiga Hardware.

Specific OS's for RPi hardware might also need their own version of Kickstart to function correctly. - Tread carefully.

[VladR]

Originally Posted by Kin Hell

That's a tad harsh fella. - It is an FPGA Emulation of a 68080 that never existed for real on the Motorola 680xx family. It covered a niche of users that wanted faster than 060 & they got it.

Yeah, given how incredibly fragmented Amiga HW space is, it's dumbfounding how territorial all its small tribes are. I say, live and let live - why do other people care so much about what others like ?

I myself have Vampire V4, though it's been disabled since last firmware update few yrs ago, so I need to troubleshoot it further to get back to be able to deploy my RTG builds onto it...

Originally Posted by Kin Hell

You can however buy stand alone boxes for RPi 3/4 boards & then install PiMiga OS which is pure 100% emulation of the Amiga platform on RPi hardware using Scalos workbench replacement. I understand there are other versions of OS similar to PiMiga of which I have had no experience. - Google is your friend.

****Edit****

Iirc, the PiMiga OS (or at least the one I used) only emulated a 68030 so even if you could do what you want to do, it's not going to be as fast as Emu68 & real Amiga Hardware.

Yeah, I need Emu68k for the 2,500+ MIPS in RTG. If I install PiMiga, then I'll just get the fraction of the RTG performance.

My goal is to tweak my engine written in Assembler (Higgs, really - but it's the same) and be able to scale scene complexity/performance within the full range of performance from 1x, al the way to 100x.
Meaning the same code will run on both meager 030 but also on rPi, yet enable different FX or resolution or details/etc (based on MIPS available, which is easily detectable by running a quick automatic benchmark upon startup).

I'm especially curious about the parallel FPU vs INT ExecutionUnit, as I wrote the scanline rasterizer on Vampire to use both EUs - I doubt this is going to be remotely precisely emulated on WinUAE - which is why I need real HW.

But it looks like for now, it won't run on real HW.

In theory, I might get the rPi and try to debug the current boot issue myself, assuming Michael would be willing to spend some time with me till I set the debugging environment up (as that would fix the issue for everyone on stand-alone, plus I might be able to find some time to contribute to the project)...


I guess (in the worst case), I can just adjust CPU % slider in WinUAE - to get a somewhat rough approximation of various configs...

[Dunny]

Emu68 doesn't emulate anything other than a 680x0 CPU. No custom chips, no display, no audio, no storage, nothing else.

[VladR]

Disclaimer: I'm writing the below based on information I can indirectly infer from reading on GitHub. Real-world experience with an actual physical stand-alone rPi might change the below - but this is the best I can "guesstimate" from what I see on GitHub (without spending overtly giant amounts of time on research).
My hope is that there must be at least half of a person here that actually played with Emu68 on their own rPi and can chime in with "this is how this s**t works on the actual HW"

Originally Posted by Dunny

Emu68 doesn't emulate anything other than a 680x0 CPU. No custom chips

Custom chips ? Why on Earth would you want to do anything with custom chips when you have 2,500+ MIPS ? The Blitter is becoming useless around ~1% of that number (according to people who wrote code on both A500 and 68030).

Originally Posted by Dunny

no display

Here's a guide to set up RTG:
https://michalsc.github.io/Emu68/tut...P96_Setup.html
My understanding it is that any 68k app targeting RTG will run under Emu68, right ? I thought I saw YT vids of people playing RTG games under Emu68...

Originally Posted by Dunny

no storage

As for storage, Michael has a pretty detailed tutorial for using your SD card: https://michalsc.github.io/Emu68/tut...eparation.html

Originally Posted by Dunny

no audio

Yeah, eventually - the absence of audio might be a problem, though. I wonder what options are here other than writing a driver for whatever audio chipset is in the rPi? I mean, there must already be a driver written, as audio works on rPi. Perhaps that's something I could even help with coding/linking/configuring...



EDIT: I just realized I have not see one YT vid with Emu68 running on a stand-alone rPi. All YT vids I saw were using PiStorm, which means there probably is some way of accessing audio chip from Amiga (unless the vids were without audio - that's something I can find out, though).

[Bren McGuire]

it is a reality and also i dont understand why anyone here would say that fragmentation is ok the reason Amiga is such a complicated platform is fragmentation we should all be running on the same kind of gear however we are not and it creates many issues Vampire is just another problem as it is even if you ignore the feeble mind of its ruler

Originally Posted by Kin Hell

That's a tad harsh fella. - It is an FPGA Emulation of a 68080 that never existed for real on the Motorola 680xx family. It covered a niche of users that wanted faster than 060 & they got it.

[VladR]

Originally Posted by Bren McGuire

Vampire is just another problem as it is even if you ignore the feeble mind of its ruler

There's no need for personal attacks, especially if the person you're attacking is not even present.
It would be one thing if he was here, in this thread, and you would argue with him.
But he's not here. It's not nice to do this....

Originally Posted by Bren McGuire

it is a reality and also i dont understand why anyone here would say that fragmentation is ok the reason Amiga is such a complicated platform is fragmentation we should all be running on the same kind of gear however we are not and it creates many issues

Over the years I have seen the exact same issue with 68060, then 68040, then 68030.

And there's a sizeable extremist group that only accepts A500 as Amiga, and anything different is treated with an attitude of "BURN THE HERETICS! But First Skin them and then hang them by the balls"

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by VladR

Here's a guide to set up RTG:
https://michalsc.github.io/Emu68/tut...P96_Setup.html
My understanding it is that any 68k app targeting RTG will run under Emu68, right ? I thought I saw YT vids of people playing RTG games under Emu68...

That's not Emu68. Emu68 only emulates a 68k CPU.

As for storage, Michael has a pretty detailed tutorial for using your SD card: https://michalsc.github.io/Emu68/tut...eparation.html

Again, not Emu68. See above.

[/quote]
Yeah, eventually - the absence of audio might be a problem, though. I wonder what options are here other than writing a driver for whatever audio chipset is in the rPi? I mean, there must already be a driver written, as audio works on rPi. Perhaps that's something I could even help with coding/linking/configuring...
[/QUOTE]

If there's an Amiga-side driver for audio on the Pi then it could be used. We just don't have one yet. The Mipidipidoo almost got audio out over the Pi camera port, but there weren't enough pins.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Dunny

That's not Emu68. Emu68 only emulates a 68k CPU.

Yes it is. Emu68 exposes the full RPi hardware architecture to the 32-bit address space of the emulated 68k as Zorro III memory mapped devices. So you can write drivers in 68k for RPi hardware.

Emu68 comes with 68k drivers for uSD, eMMC and RTG.

Originally Posted by Dunny

Again, not Emu68. See above.

Yes it is. The RPi's uSD card hardware has been exposed as a Zorro III Amiga peripheral. A 68k autobooting driver ROM is emulated so you can boot from uSD card.

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by alexh

Yes it is.

I dunno dude, Michal keeps having to tell people that Emu68 doesn't provide RTG or Storage and I kinda believe him when it comes to that

[mschulz]

Originally Posted by Dunny

I dunno dude, Michal keeps having to tell people that Emu68 doesn't provide RTG or Storage and I kinda believe him when it comes to that

Emu68 indeed does CPU only. Regarding Autoconfig, it shadows the registers for a while to expose rom with drivers, only. It does not expose hardware through autoconfig mechanism though, this is always visible. The drivers on that autoconfig rom also does not emulate anything - they are pure m68k code talking directly to the Pi hardware, just as any hard drive drivers do. Same applies to any other driver.

Why autoconfig? The drivers could as well sit in DEVS:, but then it wouldn't be possible to boot AmigaOS from microSD card, for example. The trick with ZorroII registers is worth the boot feature. And autoconfig rom? it does not use any tricks. Actually it could be flashed on a real zorro3 card and it would most likely work as expected.

[alexh]

From the horses mouth.

It's an elegant solution. I like it.

It does push the hard work to AmigaOS driver writers.

Which is why I support Michal every month through Patreon.

[pixie]

Originally Posted by VladR

I just checked the github and it looks like the year old (Mar'2022) Beta version is the last one that has binaries for standalone (Emu68-raspi.zip).

So, this would imply that that particular version was the last one that ran fine on a standalone, correct ? Hopefully it wasn't just a different build target...

I don't care for later fixes that improve the compatibility, I only care for being able to run RTG at 2,500+ MIPS so I can play with my RTG 3D Engine and see on my own what 2,500 MIPS brings to the table (I've only tried Vampire V4 as a fastest RTG config before).


Unfortunately, all the vids I saw only show rPi being plugged into the actual Amiga (which is utterly useless for me).

If there was a 'draconized' AmigaOS version, one might run on it, but as is... I don't know how it would run.

[VladR]

Originally Posted by pixie

If there was a 'draconized' AmigaOS version, one might run on it, but as is... I don't know how it would run.

Yeah. Understandably, the focus right now is on people with an actual Amiga HW (imagine that ! ).

I just got excited about it, but it's not going to be a viable route for some time.

Oh, well - WinUAE FTW !!!

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by VladR

Yeah. Understandably, the focus right now is on people with an actual Amiga HW (imagine that ! ).

I just got excited about it, but it's not going to be a viable route for some time.

Oh, well - WinUAE FTW !!!

I could see it being used in an Amithlon manner - no custom chips so no older games but anything written to be OS-friendly would run very well indeed. In fact, as Amithlon ages due to supported hardware becoming harder and harder to procure, an Emu68-based solution might be viable.

[VladR]

Originally Posted by Dunny

I could see it being used in an Amithlon manner - no custom chips so no older games but anything written to be OS-friendly would run very well indeed. In fact, as Amithlon ages due to supported hardware becoming harder and harder to procure, an Emu68-based solution might be viable.

Could you please elaborate on that a bit ? I'm not familiar with Amithlon...

[Dunny]

Originally Posted by VladR

Could you please elaborate on that a bit ? I'm not familiar with Amithlon...

Amithlon is a very old hybrid emulator that ran a virtual 68k with some glue logic to allow the emulated Amiga to use PC hardware. So your Nvidia card would have Amiga drivers for it, it could use the RAM available (but iirc only up to 1GB) and the sound card, HDD etc.

It was sold by... H&P I think? But as with all things Amiga, corporate greed got in the way and it was sunk, its author walking away and leaving the project. Used to run OS3.9.

Having no custom chipset emulation on board, it relied on an instance of UAE to run actual metal-hitting Amiga software, but could also run OS-friendly software like Octamed SS, Lightwave, Aladdin 4D etc natively with a JIT 68k.

So very much the same as running Emu68 on a Pi, but instead of an actual Amiga you'd need to supply drivers for the pi hardware.
This is why I say that Emu68 doesn't provide RTG, Storage or anything like that - it just emulates the CPU. Amiga-side drivers are necessary to access the Pi hardware that the PiStorm makes available. The Videocore driver is one example of that - Emu68 doesn't know about or do anything with the Pi graphics hardware. Wifi from the Pi is available to the Amiga - we just need a device driver for it (along with all the rest of the gubbins that a network card would require).

So it would be do-able. There's a whole thread dedicated to it on the Green Amiga Alien guides section of EAB, but it won't let me link for some reason.

[VladR]

Originally Posted by Dunny

Amithlon is a very old hybrid emulator that ran a virtual 68k with some glue logic to allow the emulated Amiga to use PC hardware. So your Nvidia card would have Amiga drivers for it, it could use the RAM available (but iirc only up to 1GB) and the sound card, HDD etc.

It was sold by... H&P I think? But as with all things Amiga, corporate greed got in the way and it was sunk, its author walking away and leaving the project. Used to run OS3.9.

Having no custom chipset emulation on board, it relied on an instance of UAE to run actual metal-hitting Amiga software, but could also run OS-friendly software like Octamed SS, Lightwave, Aladdin 4D etc natively with a JIT 68k.

So very much the same as running Emu68 on a Pi, but instead of an actual Amiga you'd need to supply drivers for the pi hardware.
This is why I say that Emu68 doesn't provide RTG, Storage or anything like that - it just emulates the CPU. Amiga-side drivers are necessary to access the Pi hardware that the PiStorm makes available. The Videocore driver is one example of that - Emu68 doesn't know about or do anything with the Pi graphics hardware. Wifi from the Pi is available to the Amiga - we just need a device driver for it (along with all the rest of the gubbins that a network card would require).

So it would be do-able. There's a whole thread dedicated to it on the Green Amiga Alien guides section of EAB, but it won't let me link for some reason.

Thank you. I did read about it some time ago, as I recall bits and pieces now that you described it. But, as it's using UAE, I might as well just use that (like I realized earlier).

I was, however, successful last weekend in configuring my new PC with a full dev env for my RTG flatshader (originally tested on V4).

And early testing under WinUAE (with CPU % slider from 10% to 100%) confirms the ratio betweeen SysInfo MIPS and real-world performance in one of my 3D pipeline benchmarks.



Still, it would have been nice if I could just run it on an actual stand-alone rPi, but I figure folks with an actual working rPi combo will be able to benchmark it for me, so I can calibrate the 3D engine scene complexity (based on remote benchmarking data).

For reference, I will recreate few scenes from the Star Wars on Sega 32X as that feels like it should run just fine on Vampire (based on benchmarks from the V4) and probably very well on Emu68 (but we need the real-world performance coefficient from Pi4 to translate the 2,500+ MIPS into actual meaningful figure via the benchmarks).

I genuinely doubt the 2,500 MIPS figure equates to 2,500 / 150 (V4) = 16.6x speedup, but we'll know for sure soon...

[Dunny]

Yeah with Emu68 it depends heavily on a few factors:

1. What code is running - does it cause cache flushes, does it branch a lot and cause blocks of compiled ARM code to drop out of the internal emulation cache

2. How often it hits the chipset. The PiStorm has halved chipset bandwidth for some accesses, so if you're working in ChipRAM then you're gonne be limited unless you're really careful.

3. Which EmuControl options you have set. Some options can speed stuff up at the expense of compatibility, others can drag you right back down to make sure things happen at the right time.

It's all dependent on what you do and how you do it. Most attention has been on getting as much compatibility as possible with already existing software, though most of that is optional.