Apollo core and AROS 68k bounty

[TuKo]

Dear EAB readers,

As you might know, since beginning of the Apollo/Vampire story, Apollo team made several attempts to run AROS 68k as we are looking for a free opensource alternative to the dead closed-source AmigaOS3.

At that time, there was still some work needed to get it working at acceptable speed.

Today, we want to accelerate this move and hopefully get AROS 68k running in the future as main OS for next Apollo/Vampire projects.

Our first bounty will be writing a native SAGA driver for AROS. To enable this, we will provide a Vampire for the developpers A500/2000 or A600. If the drivers works, the developper can keep the card.

If anyone is interested, just get in touch with me or any of the other Apollo team members.

[Mr.Flibble]

Main OS for the next Apollo/Vampire developments?

As in the main development platform, or just as an officially supported platform?

[wawa]

i think it needs to become supported platform to become eventually main platform if it deserves it.

aros68k runs normal amiga applications compiled for the full range of available kickstarts, maybe not each and every single one, but as many as possible and improving. so whoever doesnt want to take advantage of aros extensions is safe coding for their usual amiga target.

[Samurai_Crow]

The graphics driver software for AmigaOS 4 and MorphOS is closed and unlikely to be backported or updated on AmigaOS 3. Fortunately AROS has its own driver architecture and runs CyberGraphX 3 compatible code.

Based upon the idea that poor quality driver support is what makes AROS slower than usual, the team is offering a free board to whomever can make it work well under AROS.

I will try to fix AHI but we still need someone to do the graphics card driver support. Jason McMullan wrote an open source P96 driver that doesn't work under AROS though it offers support to the shareware release of P96 under AmigaOS 3. Now we need something future proof.

[wawa]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

Jason McMullan wrote an open source P96 driver that doesn't work under AROS

why not? p96 driver should work under aros 68k via p96 wrapper. it needs to be loaded in the bootstrap at the beginning of the s-s. in order to do that aros needs to be softkicked i fear, but this can be improved, and the way it is now, should be enough to get it basically working and test.

[Retrofan]

Great thing. I will wait to have a Vampire 1200 to support it though.

[Samurai_Crow]

Originally Posted by wawa

why not? p96 driver should work under aros 68k via p96 wrapper. it needs to be loaded in the bootstrap at the beginning of the s-s. in order to do that aros needs to be softkicked i fear, but this can be improved, and the way it is now, should be enough to get it basically working and test.

Sorry, I meant it relies heavily on the fall-back graphics plotting routines in the OS. It needs support for the up-and-coming vector unit to speed up the blitting.

Are there any youtube clips showing how well AROS work with the Vampire?

[wawa]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

Sorry, I meant it relies heavily on the fall-back graphics plotting routines in the OS. It needs support for the up-and-coming vector unit to speed up the blitting.

that does not qualify as non working in my book. i dont know how much you had to do with aros on real hardware but im testing it since ever. have not tested aros on a vampire but among others on a4k with cv64 or p4 and rtg output isnt unusably slow in most cases, even if not speedy.

as you know, down the page here in post #9 georg, who lately fixed lots of it, explains the situation:
http://aros-exec.org/modules/newbb/v...orumpost100108

[wawa]

aros a4k 060-50 rtg cv64 1024x768x16 wanderer

[Samurai_Crow]

@wawa

If Georg wants the Vampire development system offered in post 15, he should accept the bounty.

[wawa]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

@wawa

If Georg wants the Vampire development system offered in post 15, he should accept the bounty.

it doesnt look like he wants that currently, does it?

[Samurai_Crow]

The bounty has been taken by someone else.

[wawa]

good to hear. hope its not a secret who that is?

edit: uhh, i see: deadwood. now, thats really good news..

[Samurai_Crow]

Actually it is Sidewinder, the same guy that did the LLVM bounty for the cross compiler.

[wawa]

Originally Posted by Samurai_Crow

Actually it is Sidewinder, the same guy that did the LLVM bounty for the cross compiler.

Ok. Should have known better. Deadwood asking how to setup fs-use and releasing build environment for 68k mislead me. Hope sidewinder is a skilled guy. Never heard his nick tbh.

[Samurai_Crow]

He is a professional compiler designer for Cray and was the head developer of the Mattathias project (which is not needed anymore but will be merged with the Amos Compiler).

[wawa]

Do you know what he intends to do or what has been appointed? The whole list of issues georg mentioned on aros side would be certainly beneficial for all. Also since he is compiler designer better integration of Amiga-m68k backend could perhaps be thought about. As you sure know aros build system is supposed to be ready for multiple alternate compilers and 68k compiles already with gcc6.1.0. Work is being done to move towards it as default.

[Samurai_Crow]

First thing is to do a graphics HIDD, other thing is to optimize an animation viewer application written in Assembly. That satisfies the requirements of the bounty.

[matthey]

Originally Posted by wawa

As you sure know aros build system is supposed to be ready for multiple alternate compilers and 68k compiles already with gcc6.1.0.

Hmm. AROS is supposed to be ready for other compilers. Which other compilers does it work with?