PiStorm kills Vampire?

[grond]

When I wrote "high-tech" I also wrote "actual". Pentium MMX, AltiVec etc. were high-tech innovations in their time and their pros and cons have been studied for a long time and are well understood today. I did not say any Amiga was high-tech by today's standards.

I just love it if I have to argue against totally distorted interpretations of what I actually wrote... Why do you actively seek the most absurd interpretation of what I wrote to then counter that? Do you think it makes you appear more intelligent?

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by YouKnowWho

There is this constant coordinated effort to drag the Amiga kicking and screaming toward doing things it never did or was. And sure, that's admirable and in the end it can do these things somehow, which is impressive.

People were trying to make the Amiga do 'things it never did or was' right from the start. Originally it was just going to be a games console, but those wacky engineers decided to put a preemptive multitasking OS with comprehensive GUI in it. It took several years of 'kicking and screaming' to get that OS working properly...

At the the unveiling of the A1000 one of the most talked about demonstrations was... an IBM emulator. Forget the amazing graphics and sound, here we have it pretending to be a PC and running Lotus 123!

The pressure to match what PCs do has not let up since then. Many innovations were developed on the Amiga first and then imported to the PC, but you never heard about them. What you did hear was constant whining about why doesn't the Amiga have this or that PC feature, which is understandable since PCs were constantly coming out with new things (some of which the Amiga already had... but hey) so of course we desperately wanted them on the Amiga too.

Hard drives, faster CPUs, higher resolution graphics and sound, PCMCIA, USB etc. etc. The Amiga has always been pushed into doing things it never did or was - until eventually it got pushed into not even being an Amiga anymore (NG). Not that was it alone in this. The Macintosh suffered a similar fate, and moderns PCs are nothing like the original PC/AT architecture.

For us hobbyists, making our Amigas do new things was a challenge, not something to avoid for fear of sullying the purity of the platform. But the challenge was to make it do new stuff without losing its identity. So you might add RTG or USB, but not lose the Amiga's graphics and serial port. The additions would always be addons that could be used or not as required, the original machine was still there and could be relied upon to produce a base level of compatibility and performance.

But what it comes down to is this: Amiga is over 36 years old. It's retro computing. It can't and won't be what computers are today and that is perfectly fine. Like it for what it is, not for what it is not.

That's right. Furthermore, some us are 'retro' people. Some us are too old to forget everything we knew and start all over again on a new platform just because it's 'new'. And some of us just don't want to live that way.

Retrocomputing isn't just fun because it's retro - home computers were always fun to work with and develop for. Modern PC's are not the same. Nobody is trying to make their own accelerator card for a modern PC because it's outside our skill level and budget, and there's no point anyway. But the Amiga is still wide open for hobbyist development. That's what I liked about it back then, and like even more today with the better development tools and cheaper more advanced tech we now have.

And so turn it into a FrankenAmiga if you wish. For me, as you say it isn't a high-tech product, but it certainly is beautiful. Amiga chipset and 68K CPU it must be. Just like I wouldn't take a vintage car and start re-engineering it with new bits and pieces to make it something it is not and something I didn't buy it for, same with the Amiga. I just want to enjoy it as it was, what it was. As if it is Christmas, 1993.

Good for you. I too think my Amigas are beautiful, and I don't want to turn them into Frankenstein monsters. That's why I won't be putting my A1200 in a tower case, or hacking holes in the case to add a CDROM drive etc. Lately I have been tidying up the hard drive - cleaning out old stuff and upgrading drivers and libraries etc., and it's running better than ever! It's surprising how much fun you can have without turning your Amiga into a monster.

Now forgive me, I have to go print a HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner on the 24 dot matrix with PrintMaster on my Amiga 1200. Try to do that with today's high-tech fancy hardware.

YOU CAN'T!

Today I was doing some housework (plenty of time to do that in level 4 lockdown!) and found an unopened packet of fanfold paper. Then I remembered that dot matrix printer I got with an Amstrad PC2086 last year. Hmmm... wonder what I could do with that?

[malko]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

[...] That's why I won't be putting my A1200 in a tower case, [...]

I think I never mentioned it before, but I have an A1200 that I put in a case 20-25 years ago. To be honest, using it after that "was not the same"... Funny how the clothes can help making the monk sometimes.

[YouKnowWho]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Good for you. I too think my Amigas are beautiful, and I don't want to turn them into Frankenstein monsters. That's why I won't be putting my A1200 in a tower case, or hacking holes in the case to add a CDROM drive etc. Lately I have been tidying up the hard drive - cleaning out old stuff and upgrading drivers and libraries etc., and it's running better than ever! It's surprising how much fun you can have without turning your Amiga into a monster.

Bruce, I have to say...spot on.

I think all of us remember all the things Amiga could do back in the day. It was a stunning box of capabilities and fun. In the beginning the A1000 wasn't even the same form factor of the most popular 500 and 1200 systems as far as sales go.

To be honest with you, the reality as I see it is this....the more things change, the more they stay the same.

USB is just a serial interface. All the storage stuff is just a SCSI re-hash. If you look at Ultra SCSI LVD that hit 320MB/s back in late 90s, even today Hard Drives don't break 280MB/s unless you go multi actuator MACH2 from Seagate. iSCSI is the backbone of many networks. Technologies we used back in the day exist today, just with a slightly different connector, repackaged.

AGA - it's beautiful. So is OCS and ECS. Things have gotten to ray tracing high frame rate and high res, and we keep pushing the Amiga to try and deliver that combination and performance. I guess nothing wrong with that, but on the other hand, for what? Some overweight overly demanding application that demands the hardware to deliver this heft?

Amiga was clean. Simple. 880Kb floppy loaded a full multitasking OS. Amazing games came on two floppies, even one. It required you to understand technology, learn about it. It wasn't a slab of glass with one button on it for dummies. People needed to learn and Amiga was eager to teach. It didn't spy, it didn't capture your data to share with Silicon Valley creeps. It makes you wonder how we lost our way.

It was a fantastic machine and a fantastic period of computers. I ran MacOS on my 68040 Retina II equipped A2000 along with PhotoShop like anyone who had a 68040. We were going from BBS to the Internet and Amiga was there for the ride. We started to send email to the world. We could scan, capture colour images, edit video, sound, print, play, create images and documents...everything that we still do today, except with applications that are 5GB in size and require the hardware to push all that heft. OSes today come on dual-layer 9GB DVDs, not 880kb floppies.

Now that I'm back into it, I look at the Amiga and wonder how all that is possible with apparently so little. I appreciate the minimalism of it all. I understand the platform can take anything you can throw at it, including emulating other platforms. Vampire, PPC, PiStorm show it. I bet you if someone wanted it they could make an accelerator with latest Intel or AMD CPUs.
But in the end, I appreciate it for its minimalism and cleanliness.

Now that I'm more mature I go to a sushi place and I'm not impressed by rolls with sauces and sprinkles and tons of add-ons and distractions on top so I can't taste the fish. I want sashimi, that is clean, fresh and delivers with just 1 ingredient. I like that minimalism and cleanliness. No place to hide. And the Amiga is that - it is a very enjoyable platform, and the 1200 with just a CF card delivers the best of it in my view.

And yeah...the Wedge it is. I think in terms of wedge systems Amiga 1200 has got to be the best and the last word. It reminds us of all the classics we've known and used, and yet takes all the capabilities to the next level before such format was no longer wanted in the world of computing...for some reason. I guess we don't want to have a keyboard on our consoles anymore.

[BippyM]

Originally Posted by YouKnowWho

Wait a minute!

When watching a horror movie, and a vampire would bite someone they then stopped being themselves. Stopped being human. Stopped being pure. They turned into some unnatural version of themselves. Such doomed hero would always want to reverse this curse of the vampire bite.

And here it is doing it to the Amiga! Vampire doing what vampires do! Biting the 68K, transforming it into a mutant version of itself. At least you can sleep at night knowing it is easily reversible.

What are you smoking??? Don't be so ridiculous. This is bordering on trolling. The vampire is a card that takes over most off the system. It isn't for you, that's fine, others enjoy it.. Give it a rest please

[YouKnowWho]

Originally Posted by BippyM

What are you smoking??? Don't be so ridiculous. This is bordering on trolling. The vampire is a card that takes over most off the system. It isn't for you, that's fine, others enjoy it.. Give it a rest please

Is lack of humour a requirement on this forum?

[freehand]

Originally Posted by YouKnowWho

Now forgive me, I have to go print a HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner on the 24 dot matrix with PrintMaster on my Amiga 1200. Try to do that with today's high-tech fancy hardware.

YOU CAN'T!

Yes you can in fine art goodness also.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by YouKnowWho

When watching a horror movie, and a vampire would bite someone they then stopped being themselves. Stopped being human. Stopped being pure. They turned into some unnatural version of themselves. Such doomed hero would always want to reverse this curse of the vampire bite.

Not always. Sometimes they did it willingly for one reason or another. Perhaps they were dying and becoming a vampire was the only way to save them, or perhaps they needed the power to defeat some enemy. And sometimes the vampires aren't the bad guys!

So in a way it is kind of fitting to name an Amiga accelerator card 'Vampire', when it gives 'supernatural' power to a platform that should be in the grave by now. Losing a little purity is a small price to pay for immortality.

[YouKnowWho]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Losing a little purity is a small price to pay for immortality.

Very valid points.

I guess that was always the question, would you trade immortality by letting yourself be bitten and becoming a vampire?

Then again, in this case, did the Amiga need to be bitten to be immortal?

Or was the Amiga dead already as noted earlier in the post by others?

Originally Posted by Promilus

Well 68k is a dead end since mid 90s. Oh wait... Vampire is 68k compatible and that's it's selling point. Dead end technology

So all Vampire represents is being performance king of 68k dead end and all vampire developers will achieve is to push that wall few bricks further then stop with no way to push forward and no way to turn back and try something else (and that's exactly why it is a trap).

[LongLifeA1200]

Strangely, because of how the title thread is worded, science fiction manages to stays on topic.

However, we all know, that the only thing that can kill a Vampire, is an Atari ST with 1.21 JigaWatts of RAM.

I know the PiStorm is significantly cheaper, but I don't think I would personally "Vampire" any Amiga.

I find the V4 Standalone to be a more interesting creature.

SAGA has three PlayFields, 16 Hardware Sprites (32 pixels wide, any height and each sprite has their own unique 16 color palette) - can be displayed twice on the same scanline and all that is before AMMX is activated. I think AMMX allows for special effects.

I wonder how it would compare to a Sega Saturn?

[YouKnowWho]

Originally Posted by LongLifeA1200

Strangely, because of how the title thread is worded, science fiction manages to stays on topic.

However, we all know, that the only thing that can kill a Vampire, is an Atari ST with 1.21 JigaWatts of RAM.

I know the PiStorm is significantly cheaper, but I don't think I would personally "Vampire" any Amiga.

I find the V4 Standalone to be a more interesting creature.

SAGA has three PlayFields, 16 Hardware Sprites (32 pixels wide, any height and each sprite has their own unique 16 color palette) - can be displayed twice on the same scanline and all that is before AMMX is activated. I think AMMX allows for special effects.

I wonder how it would compare to a Sega Saturn?

On the standalone front, I would take a MISTer over V4 any day. The level of support and cores available for it makes it a vastly more enjoyable device in my view.

I think V4 use case is for those who want the PPC platform, which is a very small audience here. Amiga PPC is a sci-fi alternate timeline that never happened in the hands of Commodore. We know the likely logical path of that story line, but what we have is nothing but figment of someone's imagination. And that's too far to venture to for most, myself included.

[LongLifeA1200]

Originally Posted by YouKnowWho

...I would take a MISTer--.

Wouldn't bother when a Raspberry Pi practically does the same the thing and is much cheaper.

Originally Posted by YouKnowWho

I think V4 use case is for those who want the PPC platform--

It's 68K and builds upon ECS/AGA design, not PPC.
I'm not interested in PPC, I'm interested in 68K and the custom chips of the Amiga, that's why the V4 is interesting to me.

V4 adds new "hardware" architecture that can be programmed "to the metal" whilst staying compatible to "ECS" and "AGA".

[YouKnowWho]

Originally Posted by LongLifeA1200

Wouldn't bother when a Raspberry Pi practically does the same the thing and is much cheaper..

Valid point. I think in this case emulation is quite compelling coastwise overall. It is basically free most of the time. I think most of us are happy with it.

The reason for MISTer would be that it does get you closer to the hardware, and in this case the appeal is that it is a hardware accurate simulation of broad array of hardware that is true to the hardware. MISTer can do so much with the cores that can be loaded. It is truly in my view the most exciting piece of FPGA hardware, because it is a chameleon that can "change so many colours". The value ratio of the hardware it can emulate is so high, it is stunning. All the way to MacOS and 486 PC. UNAMIGA and some other FPGAs that run different cores beside just Amiga have this a value/feature as well.

Originally Posted by LongLifeA1200

It's 68K and builds upon ECS/AGA design, not PPC.
I'm not interested in PPC, I'm interested in 68K and the custom chips of the Amiga, that's why the V4 is interesting to me.

V4 adds new "hardware" architecture that can be programmed "to the metal" whilst staying compatible to "ECS" and "AGA".

Yes, indeed, but they claim performance above PPC. So if the reason for PPC was processing power, the V4 is making a case for your dollar to deliver that performance under OS 3.x. I think it is a compelling proposition and a valid one in this case. It is a feature that it delivers that normally cannot be delivered. Also, PPC is so darn expensive...it really is over the top for the very niche use case. I have no experience with it, but the fact that 68K CPU needed to be kept for compatibility tells me the design of PPC is similar to PiStorm and Vampire - displacing the 68K architecture.

[brufnus]

Originally Posted by stevelord

I don't understand what you mean by "not that high end". The vampire is the fastest thing you can put in an Amiga to run 68k code, at least till Buffee comes out. The only thing it has in common with the PiStorm is that it too is good value for money (for people ok with it's constraints).



If someone's happy dropping 450 Euro on a Vampire, 90% cost savings for lesser performance aren't going to matter. If someone's looking at dropping 50 Euro on a PiStorm then the Vampire will look very expensive in comparison and probably not provide sufficient bang for buck. Like the PiStorm, the Vampire is far more than just an accelerator. Speed is a factor but not the only one.



For some (me included) you'd be nuts to put a PiStorm in an A1000. The A1000 is a very specific system with very specific differences to most Amigas. Putting a PiStorm in turns that machine into a very expensive slightly worse A500 with extra bits.



I don't know (nor care really) what that means but it's your view and your entitled to it. But unless you have anything to back that up it's an opinion, nothing more.



No, not without doubt at all. People buy accelerators for different systems for different reasons. Just because this seems like the best thing since sliced bread for you does not make it so for everyone else. I can put a PiStorm in my CDTV, but I lose bootable CD support and can't close the lid without major structural changes to the CDTV or PiStorm. I wouldn't put a PiStorm in my A4000 (should it become available), nor would I put a PiStorm in something that I planned to put an 060 in.



Having no reservations around putting a pistorm in an A1000 would preclude someone from being a purist. A PiStorm is fine for people who want good bang for buck and don't mind emulation (and other limitations). There are plenty of reasons a PiStorm isn't suitable for some people/systems.

I've just installed a PiStorm in my CDTV (my only Amiga), and yes unfortunately it disables CD-ROM usage as well as the SCSI controller, but as I've understood it, that's just a matter of a firmware update in the CPLD.
My CD-ROM drive doesn't work at the moment, so that part I can live with for the time being.

However, it did work where my TF534 failed to, for some reason. I have a performance around 35-40 times the stock 68k CPU, wi-fi, SD-card reader, USB port, 256 MB RAM and RTG via HDMI.
Considering the price and the potentials with new releases, I find it hard not to be happy with such an upgrade.
Yes, it takes time for the 1st boot, but no longer than it would with the stock 68K and my SCSI drive. However, a AmigaDOS reboot takes around 3-4 seconds, my "HDD" throughput from the SD card is around 22-23 MB/sec, and there's still the potential for a faster Raspberry with newer versions.

I don't mind emulating my CPU with Linux, as long as it's stable, fast and does what the Motorola did. But of course, that's a matter of taste like everything else, and I think it's good that we have so many options these days. I haven't used my CDTV for a loooooong time, but that certainly changed when I finally got my SCSI controller, 8 MB fast RAM, etc. :-D

[tomcat666]

Btw. Vampire is by far NOT the fastest 68k you can put into your amiga. The baremetal version of pistorm emu68 went over 800 mips recently on rPi3a+... Aleeady has HD and RTG implemented... What is that... Twice as fast?

[nikosidis]

And what are you going to use it for?

[brufnus]

Originally Posted by nikosidis

And what are you going to use it for?

Who?

[nikosidis]

Originally Posted by brufnus

Who?

The fastest 68k in the world.

Doom?

[DDNI]

Originally Posted by nikosidis

And what are you going to use it for?

As a first guess, probably use it to save a few hundred ££/$$/€€

[Gorf]

Originally Posted by DDNI

As a first guess, probably use it to save a few hundred ££/$$/€€

You save much more by not buying a Vampire than not buying a PiStorm.
So the Vampire is clearly better for saving money.