Warp3D for Radeon - possible? Bounty?

[cloverskull]

Hey friends, I've had a voodoo card commit suicide recently (actually my second - I have the worst luck) and I have several Radeon cards that all work in my A1200. I'd love to have Warp3D support for the Radeon card. Is this possible to do at a community level? What would be required? I'm happy to chip in to a bounty if we believe this is doable

[Fairdinkem]

Sorry to hear about your Voodoo card. I too just purchased a Voodoo 3 card for Warp3D support to replace my Radeon card. The Radeon is clearly a faster card I wish the drivers from OS4 were able to be ported back to OS3.2 at least as the Friedens ported/made WARP3D as far as I am able to understand the history of it.

[Karlos]

I don't think a bounty necessarily fixes anything. Warp3D is proprietary software, protected by NDAs. I signed one years, I guess decades ago, to work on it.

Perhaps an option today is to see what can be done to add specific chipset support to Wazp3D.

I've often thought a less indirect solution might be better for old systems. Not many people have more than one RTG card and certainly not more than one supporting any 3D output. Warp3D was built with good intentions, separating the RTG side and 3D sub driver side. I wonder if today, where there are just two RTG standards, you could just use CGX functions, eliminating the need to have the RTG component libraries. Properly template out the code for drivers and have a single file driver solution where the installer just makes sure you put the right one in. Such a driver could be a little more efficient on older systems by cutting down the indirection needed.

[Hedeon]

Originally Posted by Karlos

I don't think a bounty necessarily fixes anything. Warp3D is proprietary software, protected by NDAs.

This. Otherwise it would just be a matter of a recompile. Also, both the 2D and 3D driver are dependent on the compositing engine (compiled in as a static lib) and the ownership of all that stuff seems to be in different hands.

(DISCLAIMER: last time I looked at it and what I seem to remember)

[Korodny]

Why would it matter that W3D is proprietary? It's available for free from Aminet, that's all that matters.

There's a W3D SDK on Aminet as well - that should enable anyone to write a new W3D driver, no?

Still, that's quite a big ask. I wouldn't hold my breath.

[Rob1]

Compositing is an OS4.1 feature. R100 and R200 drivers pre-date 4.1 by a number of years.

@cloverskull

Warp3D is co-owned by A-EON and the Frieden brothers. When I asked Matthew about a 68k driver some years ago he expressed interest but like many things in the Amiga community it comes down more someone having the time, skills and inclination to do it.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by Korodny

Why would it matter that W3D is proprietary? It's available for free from Aminet, that's all that matters.

There's a W3D SDK on Aminet as well - that should enable anyone to write a new W3D driver, no?

Still, that's quite a big ask. I wouldn't hold my breath.

It's the SDK for applications using Warp3D. There was a separate one, covered by the NDA, for driver development that included all the additional bits needed for that task. Of course, you can use the application SDK if you wanted to develop something that was API compatible as a replacement. I presume this is how Wazp3D was developed.

[jbenam]

I am baffled at how almost 20 years after these things still had any resemblance of a market (and thus some monetary value) the licenses are still being enforced by a few vultures that keep scraping the bones of the Amiga hoping to make a buck out of it while the enthusiasts can’t fully enjoy a platform they love because of these now senseless licenses that keep blocking any kind of new developments. Very sad state of affairs indeed.

[Hedeon]

Originally Posted by Rob1

Compositing is an OS4.1 feature. R100 and R200 drivers pre-date 4.1 by a number of years

Maybe you are right and it's part of the Radeon resource the 2d and 3d divers both use. Something like that.

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by Hedeon

Maybe you are right and it's part of the Radeon resource the 2d and 3d divers both use. Something like that.

I think the resource. I can't remember exactly but maybe it exposes the ring buffer and a few other things that both compositing and 3D depend on to send commands.

[Rob1]

Originally Posted by Karlos

I think the resource. I can't remember exactly but maybe it exposes the ring buffer and a few other things that both compositing and 3D depend on to send commands.

http://hdrlab.org.nz/projects/amiga-...d-rm-resource/

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by Rob1

http://hdrlab.org.nz/projects/amiga-...d-rm-resource/

I think that's a different resource, specifically for the RadeonHD. I have a memory, vaguely, of a similar thing for R100 and R200. I did do some work on those drivers but that was many years, a wedding, three kids and 5 COVID infections ago. So I may be wrong.

[Hedeon]

It's different. the compositing stuff is in libRCD. It is part of the R100/R200 2D driver and it sets up a resource. The 3D driver calls it too. Just checked the sources.

Anyway, please pay the bounty: :-D

[ Show youtube player ]

[cloverskull]

@Hedeon I'll pay $500USD if you're willing to release this

[Hedeon]

N
D
A

See previous posts

[Karlos]

I have to be honest, I think getting specific chip driver module into Wazp3D or just starting again with the specific aim to recreate an open implementation of the v5 API is the only thing that is likely to work here. If you only want legacy applications, just the v4 API.

There would be some advantages to that, clean room and all that.

[cloverskull]

@Hedeon ah, it was just a tease then

So what about the other options? Wazp3D chip driver module or recreate an open implementation of the v5 API? Bounty for those?

[cloverskull]

I guess separately, what would it take to get the NDA lifted/invalidated? Who would need to be contacted to begin the conversation?

[Karlos]

Originally Posted by cloverskull

I guess separately, what would it take to get the NDA lifted/invalidated? Who would need to be contacted to begin the conversation?

It's probably more complicated than that. Different people own different bits and some NDA with actual hardware vendors for their SDK and resources may be covered by the NDA that people working on drivers. I remember explicitly signing one with 3DLabs back in the day before I realised that it was probably unnecessary.

Having said all that, I'm sure nobody on the vendor side cares and AMD actively support open development for many of their GPUs.

[Karlos]

The most important thing for writing a hardware driver for anything like this is knowing where the registers, buffers and memory are mapped. You can get hold of most of the old R100/200 chipset SDK documentation online these days.

One complication might be how the device is attached. We have a number of different PCI interfaces. I don't recall the specifics but I remember the Mediator 1200 being fiddly.