New Universal Agnus 8372, 75 etc

[Pyromania]

Originally Posted by AJCopland

Can we drop the off-topic, profit, trolling, and anti-open source stuff?

Please, for once.

This has so far been a fascinating thread about really cool work done by by nonarkitten and kipper2k and it'd be really nice to keep it that way

Good point, makes sense.

[nonarkitten]

Originally Posted by AJCopland

Can we drop the off-topic, profit, trolling, and anti-open source stuff?

Please, for once.

This has so far been a fascinating thread about really cool work done by by nonarkitten and kipper2k and it'd be really nice to keep it that way

I don't think these are comparable.

Topic-shifting and trolling is really annoying. It's a common problem by the same kind of people -- narcissists who have to make everything about them and what they want to talk about.

Profit and open-source are perfectly fine points and do play into how I've structured the Buffee Project and a fair question to ask. Being "anti-open-source" is a completely fine position to take.

Kipper's right, there are too many leeches out there ready to clone your product and make money on your back. These vermin clone without innovating and do it across enough platforms and products that they can do quite well for themselves. I want to do nothing that makes their lives easier.

Open-source software sort-of makes sense, but it's dubious. It's not perfect and companies have had a difficult time growing the market because of it. For the hundreds-of-thousands of users, Linux only has a handful of active developers and for all the whining about making PJIT open source again I've still had ZERO input.

Open-source hardware is nonsense. Sorry but it is. First, the number of people who can assemble a PCB is a really, really small percentage, even just within what's left of the Amiga community (and that's getting harder with the proliferation of BGA these days). Second, while people can copy software with or without it being open source, if they don't have hardware to run it on, it's a lot harder to clone things. And CM's aren't in the business of sharing design files, as much as people love to dump on China's lax IP standards.

I have yet to hear any convincing argument in favour of open-source save one: it allows the project to continue on if the original creator dies. Though that doesn't really need open-source, it just needs a team of more than one person.

Being open-source hasn't helped Niklas on his A314 project. It hasn't made ReAmiga's the new standard. It hasn't given everyone 14MHz CPUs and Kickstart Switchers. What it does give is designers an excuse for having to back their product and actually make anything. It's lazy. It's a cop out.

The number of people who whine about open-source are a very few but vocal minority. It's about ideology to them and nothing more. They loathe the idea that they might not be privy to something and the idea of keeping it from them makes them hate it. So be it. I don't care about your frail ego. You can talk about good-intentions and post-scarcity, but my bank doesn't accept mortgage payments of good-intentions.

With rare exception we won't make gerbers public anymore. Unless it's an old version we've abandoned or know doesn't work or some dumb board like the byte-swapper or Denise-180.

We will generally not even release schematics. Again with the above exceptions.

Firmware will only be made available once we made a few and released them into the public. After all, unless we're encrypting them, anyone can copy this.

Software is the one and only thing we'll keep open. But it's protected by the non-compete clause and we will ruthlessly go after anyone who tries to clone us or violate the terms and conditions of the license.

[Mathesar]

Originally Posted by nonarkitten

What it does give is designers an excuse for having to back their product and actually make anything. It's lazy. It's a cop out.

What exactly do you mean by this?

[kipper2k]

received Paula (Harmonie). Looks like Faith so i wont bother putting up pictures and layout may change anyway

[Mathesar]

Originally Posted by kipper2k

received Paula (Harmonie). Looks like Faith so i wont bother putting up pictures and layout may change anyway

So now we can't see whether there is a TDA1541 on there..

[nonarkitten]

Originally Posted by Mathesar

So now we can't see whether there is a TDA1541 on there..

Are you one of those people who thinks that Paula has any analog capability? Paula is 100% digital.

[Mathesar]

Originally Posted by nonarkitten

Are you one of those people who thinks that Paula has any analog capability? Paula is 100% digital.

I know that the volume control is PWM'ed. But what about the 8bit dac's then? Aren't those some r2r or current switching affair?

[Amiga1992]

Is this available/will be available any time soon? I have an A500 with a dead Agnus, this would be perfect.

[nonarkitten]

Originally Posted by Mathesar

I know that the volume control is PWM'ed. But what about the 8bit dac's then? Aren't those some r2r or current switching affair?

No. The volume is PWM-ed and the audio data is PDM-ed. No, that's not a typo of PCM, I do mean pulse-density-modulation. PDM is much simpler to implement than PCM and in the day it would have been enough to have an 8-bit adder produce the 3.58MHz PDM stream from the carry-out and a 2-bit adder to mix two channels into one.

Fun fact, back in the day, "AND" was called multiplication and "OR" was called addition. This is why you'd see old PAL equations like D = /A + /B * /C. I think this has led to a lot of the confusion.

[kipper2k]

Originally Posted by Akira

Is this available/will be available any time soon? I have an A500 with a dead Agnus, this would be perfect.

Hi Akira,

We want it to be available as soon as poss, I wish i could give a good estimate as i am also wanting it ASAP. It will need some stress testing to make sure no issues

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by kipper2k

I like to sell some so i can raise funds for the next project and also pay for bits and pieces. I stopped selling overseas when claims were made that items never worked/never received etc.Paypal ruled against me a couple of times so i just gave up selling. Canada/US is ok as mailing costs are not too bad, but very few europeans are willing to pay the cost of the shipping.

I understand your frustration. But when you sell products commercially there are obligations you have to meet. Parcels do get lost in the post, and products do fail to work in customers' machines for one reason or another. If your business model can't handle that then it's best not to do it, if for no other reason than to reduce personal stress.

I do not like the idea of unofficial cloners who would love to take advantage of this project and i will not offer any info/help to those people at all, Sometimes i don't like to say how builds etc are done as i am just feeding them and lets be honest, because of their geographic location they could probably sell cheaper.

Instead of getting upset about 'unofficial cloners', take advantage of them. They are taking on the risks you are not willing to, and providing products to foreigners cheaper than you can. This makes your projects more popular and improves your reputation, increasing your own sales in markets you can handle (if that's what you really want).

Instead of trying to cut out cloners I suggest making it easier for them to provide support for the products they manufacture, by making your designs fully open source and sharing them without restrictions.

What is the solution, rely on people buying to pay a % of their purchase price to the Devs. (Yah, i know, good luck with that.)

People want open source but in reality Devs get really peed off when others cash in on your work

The solution is to change your attitude. Instead of being 'peed off' about them 'cashing in' on markets you don't want to be in anyway, consider what you are getting in return. Let them take on the stress and risk of manufacturing and selling product, while you are free to concentrate on what you enjoy most - designing awesome hardware and receiving the justified admiration of users.

Over the years I have dabbled in small time manufacture of various electronic gadgets, but I can't be bothered anymore. Too much work, stress and risk, when I could spend less time and effort working at a real job for a lot more money. Electronics is purely a hobby for me now. If others want to make money out of my designs then more power to them! I recently shut down my website because it was a pain to maintain and costing more than I could possibly recover. Instead I will put my projects up on GitHub for everybody to enjoy (even cloners) and open threads on various forums to discuss them.

I'm not saying you should do the same, but don't be a slave to your creations, and don't make them closed source out of spite for not getting your 'cut'. Which would you rather be - a money-grubbing capitalist, or a creative genius who enjoys giving to the community and appreciates its response?

[QuikSanz]

I disagree, copyright the code, make them do the legwork!!

Chris

[kipper2k]

not gonna respond, i would rather talk about the technical side

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by nonarkitten

No. The volume is PWM-ed and the audio data is PDM-ed. No, that's not a typo of PCM, I do mean pulse-density-modulation.

Are you sure about that? My tests indicate that the volume is PWM but the DAC is analog. This also explains why 14 bit mode has to be calibrated - if it was fully digital then this shouldn't be necessary.

[pandy71]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Are you sure about that? My tests indicate that the volume is PWM but the DAC is analog. This also explains why 14 bit mode has to be calibrated - if it was fully digital then this shouldn't be necessary.

My understanding is that nonarkitten design is fully digital where Paula is 4 independent DAC's.

Originally Posted by nonarkitten

I’m not American.

Apologies but i was referring only to TCD - perhaps i have less faith in people than he.

[Niklas]

Originally Posted by nonarkitten

Being open-source hasn't helped Niklas on his A314 project.

I don't know what you mean by this exactly. What I can say is that A314 was started by Eriond when he designed and built the A500 trapdoor version of A314 hardware. Since he chose to make his work open source I then joined him in developing firmware and software for it. Later the a314fs file system was ported to Mister/Minimig. A314 software is also running on PiStorm. So in my view A314 is a nice example of good things that can come out of Amiga open source projects.

[nonarkitten]

Originally Posted by QuikSanz

I disagree, copyright the code, make them do the legwork!!

Chris

Code is Copyrighted. License is open for non-commercial use. Sadly, doesn't stop people from doing it anyway.

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by nonarkitten

Open-source software sort-of makes sense, but it's dubious. It's not perfect and companies have had a difficult time growing the market because of it. For the hundreds-of-thousands of users, Linux only has a handful of active developers and for all the whining about making PJIT open source again I've still had ZERO input.

Well - I for instance did not know, you where looking for input. Or what kind of input ...
The PJIT is probably way over my head and I wouldn't even know where to start and I can imagine other being equally "intimidated"...
Is there any testbed to run it without the actual hardware?

I have yet to hear any convincing argument in favour of open-source save one: it allows the project to continue on if the original creator dies. Though that doesn't really need open-source, it just needs a team of more than one person.

Aminet is full of abandoned tools and software ... sometimes quite elaborate products, but no chance to find the author(s) - if they are still alive!

E.g. the author of my favorite file manager on Amiga SID2 has long passed away ... and while I somehow managed to hack it to work on larger screens and a few other things: source code would help tremendously.

Or this thread, that popped up in the news section just yesterday:
http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=86633
Playsid.library (freeware) is abandoned since 1996 and someone even has the source, but dares not to publish it...

So especially in our retro-community I think it is quite obvious.
Sure it is the creators choice, but if one is doing a freeware program anyway, why not include the source?

It has gotten much better over the years, but the Amiga community was somehow poised with secrecy and insider knowledge ... sometimes still present in the demo-scene.

[Mathesar]

Originally Posted by nonarkitten

No. The volume is PWM-ed and the audio data is PDM-ed. No, that's not a typo of PCM, I do mean pulse-density-modulation. PDM is much simpler to implement than PCM and in the day it would have been enough to have an 8-bit adder produce the 3.58MHz PDM stream from the carry-out and a 2-bit adder to mix two channels into one.

Fun fact, back in the day, "AND" was called multiplication and "OR" was called addition. This is why you'd see old PAL equations like D = /A + /B * /C. I think this has led to a lot of the confusion.

I know what PDM is, one could also call it "1st order delta sigma". In fact, it is what the Minimig uses and in the early versions it was not without problems. It is sensitive to idle tones which was eventually solved by more elaborate modulation schemes. Original Paula doesn't suffer from that which makes me believe it could be a "real" DAC inside there.

[nonarkitten]

Originally Posted by Mathesar

I know what PDM is, one could also call it "1st order delta sigma". In fact, it is what the Minimig uses and in the early versions it was not without problems. It is sensitive to idle tones which was eventually solved by more elaborate modulation schemes. Original Paula doesn't suffer from that which makes me believe it could be a "real" DAC inside there.

Idle tones? My implementation follows the PDM + PWM and does not sound off at all.