PiStorm kills Vampire?

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Steril707

On a vanilla machine you usually need every byte you can get for developing quality games, and the OS takes space.

So?

In many cases that isn't actually true. Games use every last byte because they can, not because they have to. There are many good games that don't kick out the OS and yet still manage to work on a 'vanilla' machine. Then there are others that refuse to work on 'vanilla' machines with a different RAM layout or OS etc., and many of them are not 'quality' games.

[Chucky]

reason why there was so much "compabilityissues" on the amiga isn't due to incompatible hardware. but inmature programmers!

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

If AMMX can make some stuff a bit faster then what's not to like? Plenty of Amiga expansion boards have FPUs that are almost never used, but nobody calls such underuse a failure.

It's not that simple. FPU code can run 50 times faster (maybe more ?) than software float, but AMMX is far away from reaching that level of acceleration.

[YouKnowWho]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

...But if you want to play games like Breathless or Alien Breed 3D, work with modern image formats, compile large programs or get onto this site with IBrowse, you will want a lot more speed.

Well Bruce, if that is the list of "functions" than...well I wonder if the $500-1000 outlay for a Vampire or 1260 is worth this. Seems like games you note were designed to work on standard Amiga, what's wrong with IFF and why not just use PS on a PC at this point?

Look, to each his own, but the cost to run the few use cases has to be factored in.
Let me see...a 1260 or a new MacBook? Hmmmm.... Know what I mean Bruce?

There has to be a limit of rhyme and logic of how much money it makes sense to throw behind this retro hobby.

....which to bring this back to the original point, the PiStorm value offering is hard to resist. For that money to get the capabilities...well...it's quite a nice compromise. Why wouldn't you put that into your old 500?

Wonder if there is a 68000 CPU switcher already so that you can go between 68000 original CPU and PiStorm without switching out CPUs. Kind of best of both worlds, Original or PiStorm at a flick of a switch between power cycles.

[manossg]

Originally Posted by Bruce Abbott

Amiga OS was designed to work that way from the start, and we already have programs being compiled for different CPUs etc. so AMMX is no different. If AMMX can make some stuff a bit faster then what's not to like? Plenty of Amiga expansion boards have FPUs that are almost never used, but nobody calls such underuse a failure.

I think some people are just upset because they don't have a Vampire and are worried that they will be left out. But so long as drivers or libraries are used it's no problem - except for possible slower operation when AMMX isn't available. That's no worse than having to put up with emulating instructions on an 060 that even stock A1200s have.

I have to admit that I am under the same impression. Although @Promilus shared some interesting points, I fear the rest of the discussion has deteriorated to less-than sober "I know how all Vampire guys think" remarks and Vampire-bashing from heated (but loveable) anti-Vampire crusaders.

I want to add something more:

Originally Posted by Chucky

sure some software here and there but no real deal-breaker. and for me : no demos. (and for me Amiga is all about the demos!)

I recall having the exact same discussion (with you and/or DamienD) last year. At that time there wasn't much Vamp-specific software and it was your main anti-Vamp argument. Now that there is some such software, you and others in this conversation try to belittle this fact.

Why can't you be positive for these nice developments, mate, even if you don't like the Vampire? Everybody enjoys our Amiga hobby differently and it's infinitely better having an active community, even in paths that don't interest us, than having a stale community. Personally, there are lots of Amiga projects (both in the hw and sw sphere) that don't interest me at all, but I cannot stop but feeling good for these projects, even trying to support them financially when I can.

[Havie]

To be fair, I bought a V1200 because I can't get an 060 and it is really fast and has 128 mb! RTG was a bonus and looks pretty but not really into the whole 68080 concept. I could be on my own but I'm guessing that most of us weren't that fussed about the AMMIX concept?

Interestingly, there was lots of negativitiy re: not having a real CPU in a Vampire and Amiga is acting as a thin client but this RP3 option seems more like this concept to me! Not a problem and if I still had an A500 then I would definitely have a go with one as they look really interesting.

[YouKnowWho]

Originally Posted by Havie

To be fair, I bought a V1200 because I can't get an 060 and it is really fast and has 128 mb! RTG was a bonus and looks pretty but not really into the whole 68080 concept. I could be on my own but I'm guessing that most of us weren't that fussed about the AMMIX concept?

Interestingly, there was lots of negativitiy re: not having a real CPU in a Vampire and Amiga is acting as a thin client but this RP3 option seems more like this concept to me! Not a problem and if I still had an A500 then I would definitely have a go with one as they look really interesting.

Those new 1260s are a joke. Nothing is worth fighting over that hard....well, Life. But NOT 1260s!

And yes, Vampire and PiStorm overlap in many ways. Neither is a true 68K CPU, both add performance, RTG, etc. In terms of product space they occupy, they both certainly aren't native proper 68K CPU accelerators so they can be clumped into that non-68K accessory category. The rest is small details really. 68080 isn't a real thing, and further and further down the rabbit hole we go. Price MUST factor into it. And this is where I feel Vampire runs into a wall, considering how much a PiStorm can be had for.

[T_hairy_bootson]

I paid £11 + £9.45 shipping to AU for the Pi-storm.
£18 for the pi3A+ locally
I can get a 32gb microSD card for under £4 which is overkill.

So around £40ish is possible.

edit: sorry replied to the wrong page lol.

[grelbfarlk]

Originally Posted by YouKnowWho

Those new 1260s are a joke. Nothing is worth fighting over that hard....well, Life. But NOT 1260s!

Yes people are dying in the streets fighting over 060s, running up to aid trucks holding up their accelerators with empty CPU sockets shrieking at the top of their lungs for some relief. Then the Motorola man takes out one tray of 060s and flings them into the crowd which then turns into a bloodbath and limbs go flying just to touch that ceramic surface or those heavy yellow golden pins for just a moment.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by YouKnowWho

Well Bruce, if that is the list of "functions" than...well I wonder if the $500-1000 outlay for a Vampire or 1260 is worth this. Seems like games you note were designed to work on standard Amiga, what's wrong with IFF and why not just use PS on a PC at this point?

Except they weren't. Just as with PCs of the day, those games were 'designed' to work on high-end Amigas that either didn't exist yet or were far too expensive for most people to afford.

In 1991 I pre-ordered an A3000 and paid NZ$7200 for it on release. Then I added a 120MB SCSI hard drive, and later a 50MHz 060 with RAM and an RTG card, bumping the total up to over NZ$14000. After spending that enormous sum you would think any Amiga game would run like greased lightning, right? So I bought Quake for the Amiga, and it achieved single digit frame rates.

The A3000 was a nice looking machine, but that slimline case was more trouble that it was worth. It was too small to take a CDROM drive and barely had enough card slots for what I wanted. The 060 CPU board only just fit under the floppy drive tray, which I had to cut a hole in to put a fan on the overheating CPU. The power supply fan was extremely noisy, and the computer weighed a ton.

20 years later the situation has changed somewhat, as enough people have 060s to make it worth producing titles optimized for it. So I was looking at getting something similar to what I had but without the downsides. I wouldn't buy an A3000 today because it would be too expensive as well as bring back some not so nice memories of it. But A600s are nifty and cheap, and making it more powerful than my A3000 setup at a tiny fraction of the cost was an opportunity I couldn't pass over.

Previous accelerator cards I had tried in the A600 had issues, but the Vampire has proven to be rock solid with all the promised performance and more. It is truly a worthy successor to my A3000 for less than a stock A3000 would cost me today. The Vampire is faster and runs much cooler than an 060 and has RTG too, so to have one in an A600 is an impossible dream come true (PiStorm will never do it).

As for AMMX etc., I don't care what they call it so long as they can make it do something useful - or even if not who cares? The important thing is that after all this time amazing new hardware is still being produced for our old machines.

Look, to each his own, but the cost to run the few use cases has to be factored in.
Let me see...a 1260 or a new MacBook? Hmmmm.... Know what I mean Bruce?

Not sure what you mean, but I have absolutely no interest in a new MacBook. I might be interested in a 1260 if it was cheap and had the cooler running later revision CPU, but we all know that won't happen. I could go for a Vampire style card with just the FPGA and some RAM and Flash ROM, which I bet could be made for a few hundred dollars.

There has to be a limit of rhyme and logic of how much money it makes sense to throw behind this retro hobby.

....which to bring this back to the original point, the PiStorm value offering is hard to resist. For that money to get the capabilities...well...it's quite a nice compromise. Why wouldn't you put that into your old 500?

Because I already have machines with enough power to do what I would use the PiStorm for. Because I never had an A500, so I want to get the true retro experience of the stock machine. Because I hate the idea of a Pi turning my Amiga into a peripheral addon for its software based emulation. And because I hate the Pi anyway. It's a mini-me PC that stands for everything the Amiga doesn't.

But that's just me. If someone wants to put a PiStorm in their A500 then go for it! Just don't pretend that it's a 'Vampire killer', because it isn't.

Wonder if there is a 68000 CPU switcher already so that you can go between 68000 original CPU and PiStorm without switching out CPUs. Kind of best of both worlds, Original or PiStorm at a flick of a switch between power cycles.

No need. I bet the PiStorm could do practically perfect 68000 emulation if designed right.

[Bruce Abbott]

Originally Posted by Havie

Interestingly, there was lots of negativitiy re: not having a real CPU in a Vampire and Amiga is acting as a thin client but this RP3 option seems more like this concept to me!

Yes, it's amazing how the Vampire gets brickbats for being 'not a real Amiga CPU' when it's as close as any modern hardware can be (all chips are designed in HDL these days, probably even part of the AGA chipset was), yet a software emulator running under Linux is somehow more acceptable.

But we all know the real reason. You see, the Vampire is a commercial product, and some people don't like having to pay commercial prices. All those middle men taking their 'undeserved' cut, the designers keeping their IP secret so nobody can clone it, not cramming in all the features on every detractor's personal wish list at no extra cost - the same reasons people used to hate commercial Amiga products for back in the day.

But I for one am very pleased to see Amiga hardware still being sold in commercial stores. I will happily pay a bit more to keep that scene alive. It's worth it just to be able to browse their websites and ogle all the nifty products on display - like the old days only better!

[malko]

Originally Posted by bruce abbott

[...] the important thing is that after all this time amazing new hardware is still being produced for our old machines. [...]

+1

[Promilus]

@Bruce_Abbot

Because I hate the idea of a Pi turning my Amiga into a peripheral addon for its software based emulation.

And turning Amiga into peripheral addon for turbo card is in any way better?
Cyclone V E A5 FPGA (V1200 and both of the new "non vampire" cards) is basically the same thing which propels Vampire 4 Standalone. The difference is one is fitting classic amiga, the other one works without it even though it initially actually was going to fit into 68000 socket (and those holes for pins are still visible on board).

Vampire initial boom was thanks to small amiga improvements which their users were otherwise incapable of acomplishing due to h/w limitations. For A600 there never were any reasonable choice of expansions in the firsts place and the biggest A500 expansion was Micronic ZII board with A2060 and mythical 060 to ppc adapter. Other than those few options there wasn't many things to choose from.
And then ... et voila ... Accelerator with pretty fast CPU, with IDE, SD, HDMI, FPU*, SAGA*
That's what was and still is (due to - yet again - lack of any other option) tempting for small amiga users.

A1200, A3000 and A4000 users in many cases retained their already heavily enhanced amigas with PCI slots, 3D graphic cards and fairly powerful accelerators. For them Vampire wasn't all that juicy fresh and powerful beast. Some which had obtained stock A1200, didn't want to mod into tower and spend a lot of money for old stuff bought V1200. And good for them.

Choice of incorporating many important things on small factor board was ok but that's basically it. On-board components won't go any faster due to FPGA limitations (both size and speed). And since there's no fast local bus in the designed (e.g. pcie phy which FPGA used DOES SUPPORT! nor full speed PCI which should be fairly trivial by now with prometheus project files being archived on Krashan's site) there's really no option to enhance vampire based rig any further (either due to compatibility issues with mediator and card drivers or due to PCI limitation of mediator which wouldn't let pci card to rrun as fast as it can)
It seems apollo team did think "why you want something more, you should be more than happy with what vampire card offers anyway". And while I understand simple fact - once you support something other teams my use you end up with ppl wanting for you to support 3rd party products - I find it working both ways - as being design so closed there's no way ppl which like to configure their Amiga the way they like with expansions they like would be interested in it. So no money from them.

And while heavily expanded amiga is just the same thing - base hardware being just keyboard and joystick interface for platform built upon it it - for me - makes more sense to actually bring some popular local bus running at full speed than going with things like AMMX.

[nikosidis]

@Bruce Abbott

I guess the A3000 with what you had where a little more interesting and useful back then.

Amiga was very much alive as a real platform until the end of the 90's

Amiga NG platforms today are so close to dead that you can count the users close to 0.

Not saying you can not enjoy it, but just thinking that the CPU is so old that some other CPU arch.. can emulate it a hell of a lot faster than the real thing is funny.

I do not hear many complain about Amiga hardware being produced, sold.

For Vampire there are a lot of stuff to question.

I think they taken to much stuff onboard, hardware, OS, software etc. and kind of promised a lot they could not keep.

At least Gunnar said a lot of stuff that he might not be so smart to say. He kind of made the diversity himself with statements and the way he is. Some times it is better to shut up.

[Chucky]

Originally Posted by manossg

I recall having the exact same discussion (with you and/or DamienD) last year. At that time there wasn't much Vamp-specific software and it was your main anti-Vamp argument. Now that there is some such software, you and others in this conversation try to belittle this fact.

We have?? I know of exactly zero programs utilizing the vampire that I am interested of. actually. what software are there actually? except a videoplayer requiring "nonstandard" videofiles? have I missed something? full me in..

Why can't you be positive for these nice developments, mate, even if you don't like the Vampire? Everybody enjoys our Amiga hobby differently and it's infinitely better having an active community, even in paths that don't interest us, than having a stale community. Personally, there are lots of Amiga projects (both in the hw and sw sphere) that don't interest me at all, but I cannot stop but feeling good for these projects, even trying to support them financially when I can.

Well luring people into their system with broken lies and doing an apple: ok we did not do it in this version but you can buy the next. it will have it ... maybe... also riscing breaking compability for nothing that people actually want.

but pistorm. do I like that? actually "kinda" it needs to mature but I sure like that approach better. BUUT it would be more bare metal. as for me waiting 15-25 seconds from poweron to start is kinda "too much" and is an annoyment for me. difference here is that no weird extra instructions and no chipsetfuckery.. will be extremly interesting to see how the buffee will be aswell.

[Chucky]

Originally Posted by YouKnowWho

Those new 1260s are a joke. Nothing is worth fighting over that hard....well, Life. But NOT 1260s!

A joke that have been delivered to almost close to 400 people at this moment and more going out..

[stevelord]

Originally Posted by YouKnowWho

Those new 1260s are a joke.

What equivalent hardware did you design, build and ship yourself? I'll wait.

Originally Posted by YouKnowWho

Nothing is worth fighting over that hard....well, Life. But NOT 1260s!

You pulled this out of your hole. Nobody's fighting over 1260s. There's no CPU shortage, you can pick up 060s on the Internet.

[nikosidis]

Originally Posted by Chucky

A joke that have been delivered to almost close to 400 people at this moment and more going out..

It is just stupid to call the real thing a joke.
The real thing is what most think is impressive.
To see and enjoy what a retro computer was capable off.
I know, Commodore did never release 060 hardware but it is still accepted by the demo scene, it is from the right period.

Vampire, Pi or whatever will never be accepted by the demos scene.

[dreadnought]

And so it ends up in one big argument...but it was obvious it's going to happen the moment I saw this thread's title (and perhaps that was its aim too).

[manossg]

Originally Posted by Chucky

We have?? I know of exactly zero programs utilizing the vampire that I am interested of. actually. what software are there actually? except a videoplayer requiring "nonstandard" videofiles? have I missed something? full me in..

Sure, here goes an example:

Originally Posted by manossg

Diablo, Sonic 1 and 2, Jake and Peppy, the Neo Geo emulator