AGA emulation, PiStorm & Co.

[Supamax]

Hi mates,
I'm very tempted by the PiStorm...
it's packed with interesting features, RTG graphics included, but again (as for the Vampire), I'm wondering if there's a way to emulate the AGA chipset so that playing AGA games would be possible on the A500/A600/A2000.

Is there a way? Maybe with other interfaces?

Or some software "translation" between Picasso 96 and AGA? (I don't think it would be possible / fast enough).

[Promilus]

As far as I know there's no such work at this time. If you emulate CPU AND chipset isn't it just better to use PiMiga or similar?

[CFou!]

the problem is to find a Raspberry Pi at a normal price...

[Romanujan]

Originally Posted by Supamax

I'm wondering if there's a way to emulate the AGA chipset so that playing AGA games would be possible on the A500/A600/A2000.

You’ll have to wait for this: https://github.com/nonarkitten/amiga...-v0.5-(ReAgnus)

[hammer]

Originally Posted by Romanujan

You’ll have to wait for this: https://github.com/nonarkitten/amiga...-v0.5-(ReAgnus)

It would be interesting to add AGA for Amiga 500/2000 motherboards e.g.
1. Mega Chip style with onboard higher performance Chip RAM and evolved Agnus AGA. Alice's Blitter is still 16-bit.

2. Evolved AGA Denise replacement chip. https://github.com/nonarkitten/amiga.../master/denise

Graffiti can display 256 colors with OCS/ECS 16-bit Chip RAM, and it's too bad Graffiti is not register compatible with AGA Lisa.

Remember, ET4000AX comes has a fast 16-bit VRAM or slower 32-bit DRAM configurations.

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by hammer

It would be interesting to add AGA for Amiga 500/2000 motherboards e.g.
1. Mega Chip style with onboard higher performance Chip RAM and evolved Agnus AGA. Alice's Blitter is still 16-bit.

2. Evolved AGA Denise replacement chip. https://github.com/nonarkitten/amiga.../master/denise

Graffiti can display 256 colors with OCS/ECS 16-bit Chip RAM, and it's too bad Graffiti is not register compatible with AGA Lisa.

Remember, ET4000AX comes has a fast 16-bit VRAM or slower 32-bit DRAM configurations.

And an ET4000W32 has Hardware acceleration via dedicated BitBLT hardware and a hardware cursor sprite. Configured with 32-bit asynchronous EDO/FPM (70 ns) DRAM, the W32 could sustain a transfer speed of ~56 MB/s.

[hammer]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

And an ET4000W32 has Hardware acceleration via dedicated BitBLT hardware and a hardware cursor sprite. Configured with 32-bit asynchronous EDO/FPM (70 ns) DRAM, the W32 could sustain a transfer speed of ~56 MB/s.

ET4000AX's IBM 8514/a clone allows the common 2D-drawing operation offloading e.g. line-draw, color-fill, and block copies via a blitter.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by grelbfarlk

And an ET4000W32 has Hardware acceleration via dedicated BitBLT hardware and a hardware cursor sprite. Configured with 32-bit asynchronous EDO/FPM (70 ns) DRAM, the W32 could sustain a transfer speed of ~56 MB/s.

Wow! All that and it still won't make playing AGA games possible on the A500/A600/A2000.

Perhaps if you used 4 of them...

[Korban]

68k version of EUAE will do it
Not what you was wanting, sure, but it should work for a lot of stuff requiring a stock a1200 type specs.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Korban

68k version of EUAE will do it
Not what you was wanting, sure, but it should work for a lot of stuff requiring a stock a1200 type specs.

AFAIK all 68k ports of *UAE are still emulating the CPU and are therefor wasting a lot of resources - while this is probably needed for cycle-exact emulation a "special JIT" would speed up things quite a lot.
This "special JIT" would only need to replace 68k-instructions with 68k-instructions and change addresses and pointers...

Maybe some UAE experts could weigh in, if such a thing can be done?

[Pyromania]

Didn’t Blazemonger offer this feature in the early 1990’s?

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Pyromania

Didn’t Blazemonger offer this feature in the early 1990’s?

Naaa - such a trivial thing would be beneath the groundbreaking code of Blazemonger!!!!

But jokes aside: I really think a rather fast UAE for 68k should be possible - think of it more like a sandbox ...

[Supamax]

Originally Posted by Romanujan

You’ll have to wait for this: https://github.com/nonarkitten/amiga...-v0.5-(ReAgnus)

A very interesting project!
Will this work in conjunction with the PiStorm?

Originally Posted by Korban

68k version of EUAE will do it

EUAE ?
Do you mean a UAE emulator running on very fast 68k CPUs? (68060 etc)

[Pyromania]

Why not AAA?

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Supamax

EUAE ?
Do you mean a UAE emulator running on very fast 68k CPUs? (68060 etc)

http://aminet.net/package/misc/emu/UAE-827-AOS68k

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by Pyromania

Why not AAA?

Because nobody knows the exact specs and there is zero software…

[Korban]

Originally Posted by Gorf

AFAIK all 68k ports of *UAE are still emulating the CPU and are therefor wasting a lot of resources - while this is probably needed for cycle-exact emulation a "special JIT" would speed up things quite a lot.
This "special JIT" would only need to replace 68k-instructions with 68k-instructions and change addresses and pointers...

Maybe some UAE experts could weigh in, if such a thing can be done?

Yes, 68k versions of UAE do emulate the entire Amiga. This is why I specified about it being an option for software using no more than a stock a1200's specs and mentioned it's not really what the original poster was asking.
Additional RAM could also be used, but the pistorm isnt fast enough to also offer the extra speed adding fast ram to an a1200 offers.
It still works though and there's a few tools out there, along with scripts that make it possible to just double click a piece of software's icon to launch inside UAE.
Ive been an Amithlon user more or less since its release so have a lot of experience with it (running UAE on 68k Amiga's). Amithlon can be muuuuch faster, but it's the same in regards to how it's used on real Amiga's.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Gorf

AFAIK all 68k ports of *UAE are still emulating the CPU and are therefor wasting a lot of resources - while this is probably needed for cycle-exact emulation a "special JIT" would speed up things quite a lot.
This "special JIT" would only need to replace 68k-instructions with 68k-instructions and change addresses and pointers...

68k-to-68k JIT, huh ? This sounds like no-op
Changing addresses and pointers would probably better be done by use of some MMU. Else every memory access has to go through some costly handmade address translation.

Originally Posted by Gorf

But jokes aside: I really think a rather fast UAE for 68k should be possible - think of it more like a sandbox ...

A simple sandbox, we already have : it's called WhdLoad.

[Tigerskunk]

Yeah, let's emulate AGA on the 1200...

[Pyromania]

Originally Posted by Gorf

Because nobody knows the exact specs and there is zero software…

CyberStormPPC shipped with very little software too.
They can just make it up as they go.

Just kidding...