@Trev

Quote:

I'm surprised compositing on the R5xx is winning in your pool.

Surprise for me also! Well, Hans can always disregard the results of the poll and do things his way

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SAM440ep-flex @ 667MHz / 1GB RAM / Radeon 9250 / AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition

@Hans

Like you said on your latest posts, take one step at the time. Better to have a fully working product than a half-working product. Use your time at the best and when you have reached a level of perfection, then you should be ready..

Great work after all, and well worth it! Don't give up! You are already halfway to the goal!

This truly deserves a banana party!

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Amiga! Fingers crossed!

@Hans

Quote:

I was surprised with this too. My thoughts were that people would jump at the latest and greatest that they can plug into their machines. I do understand that people would want something to be fully usable sooner rather than later.

I didn't know how to answer in that poll. But I think I voted to finish X1550 drivers first. But if those cards are going to be obsolete and hard to find already maybe you should forget those cards completely and develop HD2400/R6xx only. HD2400 has video accelerator too. I thought first it's better to finish something first but ... like I said. I tried to find PCI versions of those two cards from resellers in my home country but couldn't find any. Only AGP 4x/8x and PCIe. So PCI versions of such cards are not available everywhere. But is it already time to try to find such cards or are those drivers too far away still ? And will everybody who wants have chance to beta test them ?

Keep up the good work !

I second with nanas:

Last edited by Tomppeli on 03-May-2009 at 03:06 PM.

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@HKvalhe

Quote:

Better to have a fully working product than a half-working product.

That sounds logical but means Hans will spend his time adding a not-so-crucial feature to a product that will soon became hard to get. As developer time has become extremely valuable in Amigaland, I'd rather focus on a more modern piece of hardware, to extend the range of supported cards.

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SAM440ep-flex @ 667MHz / 1GB RAM / Radeon 9250 / AmigaOS 4.1 Final Edition

@Hans

Quote:

Hans wrote: @Trev Quote: Trev wrote: @Hans I'm surprised compositing on the R5xx is winning in your pool. I guess Amiga geeks just can't get enough of their obsolete hardware. Personally, I'd take the work you've completed and move forward. Split the compositing bits into a separate project, with a focus on the R6xx hardware. Once both are completed, backport (or whatever) the compositing bits to earlier devices, assuming there's still a demand. I was surprised with this too. My thoughts were that people would jump at the latest and greatest that they can plug into their machines. I do understand that people would want something to be fully usable sooner rather than later. I hope that people realize that hardware compositing != 3D support. Compositing uses the 3D capabilities, but it's no Warp3D/OpenGL driver. 3D drivers are planned, of course, but things need to be taken one step at a time. Hans

One more 'I'm surprised.' Compositing in it's current form simply does little besides eye-candy that I disabled immediately, would much rather other cards and features are developed, such as 3d acceleration, etc.

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Are we not done with the same silly arguments and flames yet??!

@Trixie

I only hope everything will work out, and we need this kind of development. I guess there is a critical time for everybody and we simply have to do the best with what is still available...

_________________
Probably Pegasos 2 G4 1Ghz 1GB DDR-system, ATI Radeon 9250, ESI@Juli PCi-soundcard, all running
AmigaOS 4.1 with latest updates, or a new powerful
Amiga! Fingers crossed!

@Tomppeli

Quote:

Tomppeli wrote: @Hans Quote: I was surprised with this too. My thoughts were that people would jump at the latest and greatest that they can plug into their machines. I do understand that people would want something to be fully usable sooner rather than later. I didn't know how to answer in that poll. But I think I voted to finish X1550 drivers first. But if those cards are going to be obsolete and hard to find already maybe you should forget those cards completely and develop HD2400/R6xx only. HD2400 has video accelerator too. I thought first it's better to finish something first but ... like I said. I tried to find PCI versions of those two cards from resellers in my home country but couldn't find any. Only AGP 4x/8x and PCIe. So PCI versions of such cards are not available everywhere. But is it already time to try to find such cards or are those drivers too far away still ? And will everybody who wants have chance to beta test them ?

I have a few issues that I want to sort out first, but I am planning to ask for beta testers fairly soon. OS4 beta testers already have access, but not enough people have one of these graphics cards.

Hans

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@Trixie

hello
I voted for the same option - to finish the compositing on the R5xx. Maybe the poll is a surprise so here it is why I did so..

@Hans
i do not have an OS 4.1 capable machine yet (i'll get one when I get a sustainable job) so you can remove one vote for r5xx if you wish.
The reason I voted for the R5xx, even if it becomes obsolete is (obviously) to have something running. The second reason is the maintainance(which affects delivery time). If you would develop both at the same time, it would mean to maintain 2 codebases, or a common codebase for 2 cousin projects (fixing bugs in the codes, maintaining 2 live projects, one already published). With the R5xx finished and polished, you could concentrate solely on the R6xx without synchronizing back to R5xx, once it is in a solid shape. I guess the approach can buy some speed in mid-term.
So maybe my reasoning is not too sensible, but I voted for finishing r5xx _because_ it is obsolete.
Sometimes is easier to build a small bridge first, then the big bridge, than building the big one from the scratch. Especially when you have never built _complete_ bridges before. Just an option...

@Wegster

Quote:

One more 'I'm surprised.' Compositing in it's current form simply does little besides eye-candy that I disabled immediately, would much rather other cards and features are developed, such as 3d acceleration, etc.

Personally, I like the compositing, as it means proper transparency, and I like the new look. I'd like to see the SDL port make use of it so that blitting with alpha channels is also hardware accelerated. Having said that, 2D blitter is enough to make the card usable.

Hans

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https://keasigmadelta.com/ - More of my work.

@Treke

Quote:

Treke wrote: @Trixie hello I voted for the same option - to finish the compositing on the R5xx. Maybe the poll is a surprise so here it is why I did so.. @Hans i do not have an OS 4.1 capable machine yet (i'll get one when I get a sustainable job) so you can remove one vote for r5xx if you wish. The reason I voted for the R5xx, even if it becomes obsolete is (obviously) to have something running. The second reason is the maintainance(which affects delivery time). If you would develop both at the same time, it would mean to maintain 2 codebases, or a common codebase for 2 cousin projects (fixing bugs in the codes, maintaining 2 live projects, one already published). With the R5xx finished and polished, you could concentrate solely on the R6xx without synchronizing back to R5xx, once it is in a solid shape. I guess the approach can buy some speed in mid-term. So maybe my reasoning is not too sensible, but I voted for finishing r5xx _because_ it is obsolete. Sometimes is easier to build a small bridge first, then the big bridge, than building the big one from the scratch. Especially when you have never built _complete_ bridges before. Just an option...

I'm not too worried that R5xx cards are going to disappear on us, after all, Radeon 9000 cards are still available. Amiga vendors are likely to stock these cards when they're usable, making it easier for people to get a hold of. Having said that, if I were buying a new card, I'd want the best one that I could get for a reasonable price.

On to your reasoning. There is only one driver, and it will handle R5xx cards, R6xx cards, and higher. The framebuffer code is common to all cards, but the hardware acceleration is not. Apart from the initialization code which picks which set of driver functions are used (i.e., the R5xx functions, or the R6xx ones), there is no interaction between the R5xx acceleration code and the R6xx code.

It's all a matter of timing. The R5xx code is up and running whereas the R6xx is not, so adding compositing should take much less time than getting 2D blitter working on the R6xx.

Hans

Last edited by Hans on 05-May-2009 at 06:08 AM.

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@Hans

Thx for the reply.
Out of curiosity: How big chunk of the driver is the hw acceleration code for R5xx (adding the estimated size of the compositing code) ?
Oh and I forgot: Keep it up! You're doing a good job
:)
Ed

@Hans

Keep up the good work! You have the whole community behind you:)
Hope the donations will flourish:)

Last edited by Restore2003 on 05-May-2009 at 07:19 AM.

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@Treke

Quote:

Treke wrote: @Hans Thx for the reply. Out of curiosity: How big chunk of the driver is the hw acceleration code for R5xx (adding the estimated size of the compositing code) ? Oh and I forgot: Keep it up! You're doing a good job :) Ed

I never really bothered looking at the code size of any part. I think that the framebuffer stuff is much bigger than the blitter stuff (there's a whole AtomBIOS interpreter in there). Regardless, there's still too much in common between the different cards to warrant making a separate driver.

Hans

_________________
http://hdrlab.org.nz/ - Amiga OS 4 projects, programming articles and more. Home of the RadeonHD driver for Amiga OS 4.x project.
https://keasigmadelta.com/ - More of my work.

The poll is closed, R5xx compositing it is.

Thank you to all those who voted. I had hoped that the number of votes would pass the 200 mark, but 151 votes does show a reasonable level of interest.

Hans

_________________
http://hdrlab.org.nz/ - Amiga OS 4 projects, programming articles and more. Home of the RadeonHD driver for Amiga OS 4.x project.
https://keasigmadelta.com/ - More of my work.

I am now looking for beta testers. If you have the right hardware and are interested in testing the driver, then visit this page.

Hans

_________________
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https://keasigmadelta.com/ - More of my work.

@Hans

I would like to be a beta tester but I only have a PegII to use which from what you say on your website it doesn't sound like it would be any good :(

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@Ruud

Quote:

Ruud wrote: @Hans I would like to be a beta tester but I only have a PegII to use which from what you say on your website it doesn't sound like it would be any good :(

It's unconfirmed if the Peg II firmware is the issue. I'd still like to have someone test these cards with the Peg II. However, I don't want to see someone buy a graphics card specifically for a machine that might not be able to use it.

BTW, is there someone who could update the firmware, if it were confirmed that it wasn't checking for devices behind a PCI to PCI bridge?

Hans

_________________
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https://keasigmadelta.com/ - More of my work.

@Hans

The card that was tried in a PegII was a pci? Are agp versions any good with your driver?

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@Ruud

Quote:

Ruud wrote: @Hans The card that was tried in a PegII was a pci? Are agp versions any good with your driver?

repeating what i wrote over on amigans;

essentially its a radeon card of the radeon X1xxx or radeon HD2xxx series with a PCI interface.

to see a rundown of what cards have PCI in these series use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_ATI_Graphics_Processing_Units

basically, its the exact same cards Hans uses to test the driver, namely the Radeon HD 2400 Pro, Radeon X1550 or Radeon X1300.

hope that helps.

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Would be nice to see a short list on only the cards that we can use (pci) to betatest.