23 October 2018, 01:56 | #1 |
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Join Date: Oct 2018
Location: Fort Mill, SC, US
Posts: 83
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To AGA or to OCS/ECS...
I'm a long-time 6502 coder, and finally decided to move up to a 68k world. I got a nice Amiga 1200, and set out to find all the documentation I can on the computer... only to realize that there really isn't that much on the AGA chipset.
This makes me ask the question - for somebody just diving into Amiga assembly/hardware coding, would I be better off with an Amiga 500/600 instead? There is so much more documentation available, and it's still a huge step up from a Commodore 64. I would like to get some opinions for long-time users and hopefully from people that did similar plunge like me? Don't want to invest a lot of time into the AGA and hit a wall because I don't have the experience behind me... Thanks for any input! |
23 October 2018, 02:12 | #2 |
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Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: Austin, TX
Age: 41
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This is the best programmer's overview of the changes in AGA I've found.
It assumes prior knowledge of the OCS chipset so I would start there first. The official Hardware Reference Manual covers OCS in detail. It's available online in various forms and as a book if you're willing to spend a bit. |
23 October 2018, 08:58 | #3 | |
son of 68k
Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Lyon / France
Age: 51
Posts: 5,351
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Quote:
Then AGA isn't a huge step, differences are minor - basically you just have more available colors. |
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23 October 2018, 10:23 | #4 |
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Join Date: Mar 2016
Location: Australia
Posts: 881
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WinUAE source code is a good reference for chipset behavior.
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23 October 2018, 10:26 | #5 |
move.l #$c0ff33,throat
Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Berlin/Joymoney
Posts: 6,863
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Start with the basic OCS stuff as already said. Your 1200 is fine for that, just make sure certain AGA specific registers (FMODE, BPLCON4 etc.) are set to OCS values to aoid display problems, information about that can be easily found online. Once you understand OCS you can move to AGA if you want.
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23 October 2018, 14:47 | #6 |
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Location: Fort Mill, SC, US
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Thanks for the feedback! The more I read up on AGA, the more I realize that as you guys mentioned the difference really isn't that huge, outside of more colors and higher bandwidth.
Off to OCS world I go. Going from 3 8-bit to 15 32-bit registers is quite a trip all by itself... |
02 December 2018, 07:06 | #7 |
Inviyya Dude!
Join Date: Sep 2016
Location: Amiga Island
Posts: 2,793
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Just dropping by to say: have fun with OCS...
And let us know what you are cooking up... |
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