Can it be done? Even if it was the original more limited Video Toaster 2000 card at first? Sounds like a hot new project for Dennis or someone else. We have a free Video Toaster 4000 card up for grabs for a hardware hacker that wants to take a stab at it.

Last edited by DiscreetFX on 23-Oct-2007 at 02:05 AM.

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MiniMIG...

Also, does the OVT project cover the Lightwave Dongle...err...Wedding Video Card...dang it! VIDEO TOASTER...does the Open Video Toaster cover the VT's ROMs?

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@TheDungeonDelver

Open Video Toaster does not have any LW 3D sources.

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@DiscreetFX

Wouldn't Tim or Chuck be the ones to ask? or Tigger?

Since the original was made up of 4 FPGAs, some PALs/GALs, and some memory, I don't see why not. The kicker would still be the video I/O, but with everyone going to digital video, maybe that wouldn't matter as much going forward.

Part of the Video Toaster software is program chunks (binary blobs) for the FPGAs. I haven't had mine apart in a while, and the images on the Big Book have the FPGA types removed, so it would be difficult to determine whether those binary blobs could be recreated for a different FPGA.

Of course, the Flyer could be recreated in software (like the PCI VTs do).

Edit - spelling

Last edited by syrtran on 23-Oct-2007 at 02:44 AM.

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@syrtran

NewTek's way to busy to worry about Amiga stuff. I am too actually, but I still love Amiga stuff anyway.

Last edited by DiscreetFX on 23-Oct-2007 at 02:52 AM.

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@TheDungeonDelver

I don't believe there are any actual ROMs on the VT. It seems to not be initialized at boot, it just passes Input 1 to Main. The code seems to initialize the card when it is run.

The Flyer OTOH appears to Autoconfig, so it probably has ROMs on it.

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People who generalize are always wrong.


1989 - 500 / 1991 - 3000 / 1997 - Genesis Flyer 1200T / 2003 - A1XE

@DiscreetFX

Quote:

DiscreetFX wrote: @syrtran NewTek's way to busy to worry about Amiga stuff. I am too actually, but I still love Amiga stuff anyway.

Yeah, I hear that. If I had more time away from my other projects, I'd probably be helping with OVT. You must have less free time than me. If production on Oil Change is going like most indie projects, you probably measure free time in negative numbers.

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Tony T.

People who generalize are always wrong.


1989 - 500 / 1991 - 3000 / 1997 - Genesis Flyer 1200T / 2003 - A1XE

@syrtran

Quote:

syrtran wrote: @DiscreetFX Wouldn't Tim or Chuck be the ones to ask? or Tigger?

Actually I've been thinking about the idea for a toaster on a minimig since Dennis's first post, though I obviously think we would be better off with an AGA style system. I actually believe most of the Toaster FPGA info is part of the Open Source effort, and I have some more info thats going to be sent to Bill once, I get that cleared with Tim & Paul (they are about to ship VT5, so at the moment I am leaving them alone).

Quote:

Since the original was made up of 4 FPGAs, some PALs/GALs, and some memory, I don't see why not. The kicker would still be the video I/O, but with everyone going to digital video, maybe that wouldn't matter as much going forward.

Thats the problem, composite video in and out is pretty easy to do, start adding Y/C or digital and this becomes a much harder issue.

Quote:

Of course, the Flyer could be recreated in software (like the PCI VTs do).

Yeah but even in the Barney/10X/Frame Factory days, we had alot more power and bandwidth then we have with the current PPC solutions, and much more then minimig. Using Moore's law is great, but that means you need to use modern processors.
-Tig

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@Tigger

Quote:

I actually believe most of the Toaster FPGA info is part of the Open Source effort,

Not a chance, unless things have changed.

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@DiscreetFX

How about making a MiniMig whit PPC that’s compatible to the CyberStormPPC or BlizzardPPC, I don’t have the details on how they are integrated, but I think it’s mostly about getting the memory address space correct.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 23-Oct-2007 at 06:53 PM.

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@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

How about making a MiniMig whit PPC that's compatible to the CyberStormPPC or BlizzardPPC

Compatible for what purpose?

#6

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@number6

for WarpUp and OS4 what else?

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@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

for WarpUp and OS4 what else?

And the contract says what? about the specific "risk free" targets?

#6

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@number6

It won’t be Hyperion’s fault, If some one else made some hardware, that was Cyberstorm PPC / Blizzard PPC compatible.

At least in EU your pretty free to do what you like whit your own software, I don’t know about the USA.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 23-Oct-2007 at 06:51 PM.

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@DiscreetFX

This sounds like quite an effort. Cool idea, perhaps if someone does FPGA-ize the toaster then real PAL support could be added. Or maybe eventually HD. heck, I'd just like to see video software for AmigaOne and any other OS4 hardware that might exist someday. (I can't quite call SAM440 as OS4 hardware just yet, but I'd like to when it actually is)

One advantage to minimig is that there's a lot of register info for the Amiga chipset out there, in books, and the relatively mature UAE sources that's known to work pretty well. For the toaster, someone needs to really scour the open toaster sourcecode looking or register accesses and begin to document them, as I didn't see anything with hardware register details as a handy document on their download page. Maybe such an effort has been underway for a while and I jsut haven't seen any mention of it as I haven't looked at their forums or anything yet.

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@Interesting

Quote:

Interesting wrote: @Tigger Quote: I actually believe most of the Toaster FPGA info is part of the Open Source effort, Not a chance, unless things have changed.

Shaking Magic 8 Ball.

Message Appears

Tigger knows more about the project then Interesting.

-Tig

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Um, about a decade ago, I was having a go at knocking up a real time video digitizer in night class, and so looking at the structure of waveforms in NTSC, PAL and such.

If you instead of just looking at the visual information, digitise the entire video stream, so that the blanking pulses, colour burst et all are all part of the video stream, I seem to remember the difference between NTSC and PAL, was 0.4%.. The problem I had was, I didnt know what the maximum variation in frequeincies the usual video in could synchronise to.. otherwise a nice mid placed frequency, would only need a 0.2% shift either way?

Also, meant youd have to do the equivalent of antialiasing, not only over whole frames, but 5/6 frame blocks for synchronisation?.. or is that actually what Time Base Correcters do, and so their expense?

Just trying to sort out what the Basic methods used were, so the overall design can be followed.

RodTerl

Hold halt down, force digital data into external DRAM, on blank, hold Halt high, let CPU refresh memory..

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