@wawa

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to my knowledge so called amiga technologies never actually did anything beyond marketting and eventually assembling remaining stock.

Walker prototype is from that era.

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. that so called "power amiga" was vapour ware as we use to call it. no any ppc amiga here.

I didn´t write about about any released products, I wrote about formal decision for 68k to PowerPC transition.

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this transition is noithing but a publicity stunt,

I can feel you anger. You must realy hate this part of Amiga history!

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exactly. heres what it was: a third party contribution. like cgx or warp3d for that matter. still there is no ppc amiga to be found here.

First "official" actually released PowerPC Amiga was AmigaOne SE in 2002. Sure, you don´t consider it Amiga at all.

Last edited by pavlor on 11-Aug-2015 at 08:05 PM.

@Thorham

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Have you ever thought of the fact that some developers may have low end targets in mind for their software?

What target does the people who try it out have?

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Something like an A1200 with some trapdoor fastmem and a hard disk? To get certain software running on such a target requires NOT using 3rd pary drivers such as AHI (AHI is too slow on such targets for Paula).

But what about everyone else? A good programmer should be able to write programs so, that there is fallback, or let the the user decide what audio output, to use.

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Have you also considered that people do this for a hobby? If someone's hobby is writing in 68k assembly language

Nothing wrong with writing assembler, that’s not the problem, infect AmigaOS is designed in way that make that easy, just follow the guidelines.

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for OCS/ECS/AGA, then that's what they're going to do.

That's what bad programmer do, they make it impossible to run things unless you have an AGA, or ECS or OCS, a good program should be able to take advantage of any of the CHIPS, not just one, and in addition be able to run on RTG, the hardware was designed with compatibility in mind. In addition, the OS provides API to setup screen modes. It should not be a problem to allow the user to pick the screen mode.

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Is that wrong?

The question should be who did he make a demos for? did he make the demo for a select few, if so way did he release the demo? if its just him and two other are able to run it? that seems silly to me.

Even worse is when you need to down grand your computer to less RAM, or to disable CPU cache, and do things like that, because the developer did not even care to allocate the memory, flush caches or do what is needed. Or even having to unplug things to get things working.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 12-Aug-2015 at 01:03 AM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 11-Aug-2015 at 08:27 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 11-Aug-2015 at 08:25 PM.

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@pavlor

Quote:

Walker prototype is from that era.

yes, exactly. luckily it only was vapour ware of the same quality than the other mentioned "projects".

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I didn´t write about about any released products, I wrote about formal decision for 68k to PowerPC transition.

i dont know what kimmock had exactly in mind, when he meant that "amiga went ppc", but according to your above statement you simply wrote about their intentions. that doesnt count in my book any more than "vapour". given that there were prototypes of hombre and aaa chipset and also intentions to move to risc (not ppc), in this respect you could argue, that amiga had aaa chipset and was a pa-risc equipped system with d-ram, texture mapping engine, as well as 64-bit bus and registers. of courde its redicolous and plain wrong. so much as that "amiga went ppc".

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I can feel you anger. You must realy hate this part of Amiga history.

i remember ecsom shops with half working amiga outtakes placed on display. really shameful.

i dont like grave robbery, right. some respect is due. i can understand that someone can want to make quick dime on what he can grasp. thats what short sighted companies usually do. but making a quick dime while posing as visionaries just to rip off some poor addicts, well, i can really not identify with it.


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First "official" actually released PowerPC Amiga was AmigaOne SE in 2002. Sure, you don´t consider it Amiga at all.

no. i dont. but even if i did, its not what we speak about here.

Last edited by wawa on 11-Aug-2015 at 09:08 PM.

@wawa

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luckily it only was vapour ware of the same quality than the other mentioned "projects".

Walker hardware is reality, albait in prototype state.


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so much as that "amiga went ppc".

PowerUP cards didn´t exist, WarpOS support in AmigaOS didn´t exist, AmigaOne didn´t exist, AmigaOS 4 didn´t exist. Yes, you are right, Amiga never went PPC.

@pavlor

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Walker hardware is reality, albait in prototype state.

prototype state.. its just an ugly mock up. has anybody even seen this booting? is it ppc anyway? if not, where is that transition?

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PowerUP cards didn´t exist, WarpOS support in AmigaOS didn´t exist, AmigaOne didn´t exist, AmigaOS 4 didn´t exist. Yes, you are right, Amiga never went PPC.

powerup in warpos were third party set of coprocessor drivers, hardware acceleration for certain tasks as you may have had with a grahic card or other dedicated hardware. the system itself remained 68k.

amigaone and os4 are followup projects as much as morphos and aros. you could as well argue, amiga went x86 because of amithlon, while im not questioning it existence.

Last edited by wawa on 11-Aug-2015 at 10:01 PM.
Last edited by wawa on 11-Aug-2015 at 09:44 PM.

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NutsAboutAmiga wrote: But what about everyone else? A good programmer should be able to write programs so, that there is fallback, or let the the user decide what audio output, to use.

I suppose support for AHI and GFX cards can be added. AHI and using the OS for blitting are of course no substitute for well written chipset routines.

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NutsAboutAmiga wrote: That's what bad programmer do, they make it impossible to run things unless you have an AGA, or ECS or OCS

That's not what I meant, I just meant the original Amiga chipsets. But yes, that's bad. Except for AGA. If something requires AGA features then it's going to be a little hard for OCS and ECS (AGA dual playfield and HAM8, for example).

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NutsAboutAmiga wrote: It should not be a problem to allow the user to pick the screen mode.

Indeed, especially so seeing how easy the OS makes this.

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NutsAboutAmiga wrote: The question should be who did he make a demos for? did he make the demo for a select few, if so way did he release the demo? if its just him and two other are able to run it? that seems silly to me.

In the case of a demo it's easy: What if the demo depends on the chipset so that it simply can't run on a GFX card? Last time I checked GFX cards didn't have a copper.

@Hypex

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Hypex wrote: @kolla Quote: What? What I mean is, the kernel ænd associated libraries in the Amiga ROM, are written to work on a "!16-bit" 68000 CPU.

Unfortunately it was also badly designed in such way: o.s. structures have several misalignments, which worked well on processors with a 16-bit data bus, but crippled the access (to "longs"/pointers) for the ones with a 32-bit data bus.
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Upon initialising the kernel checks to see if a fully 32-bit CPU is present. So 68020 and up with proper address bus.

There were 68020s with a 24-bit address bus, like the one on the Amiga 1200.
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If so, it then uses optimised routimes, that use the 68020+ 32-bit instructions. That's what I mean.

Only a few of them, for 32x32 multiplications and things like that (mathieee* ?).

@pavlor

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pavlor wrote: @wawa Quote: there has never been something like amiga ppc, especially not in the nineties. Amiga Technologies called its PPC Amiga project "Power Amiga".

Then they changed plans several times, as you should know.

So, what was really, and officially, produced should only count. It means: OS 3.5, Amiga Anywhere, OS 3.9, and OS4.

@pavlor

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pavlor wrote: @wawa Quote: because i know that you will try to come up with amigaone product line that has not even been there before another 10 years after the genuine amiga line has expired. Last Amiga released: A4000T/060 in 1996 First AmigaOne introduced: A1-SE in 2002 Quote: there has never been something like amiga ppc, especially not in the nineties. Amiga Technologies called its PPC Amiga project "Power Amiga". Although Escom/Amiga Technologies went bankrupt (1996), its decision for Amiga 68k to PowerPC transition was adopted by most important CPU card manufacturer - Phase5 (CyberstormPPC released in 1997).

From my own reading, my understanding is that Phase 5 introduced PowerPC cards and support independently of any work done by Commodore/AT, mainly due to the lack of any progress/roadmap beyond announcements.

Whilst I appreciate the logic of your position generally, in this case I fail to see how you make the leap from saying that the AmigaOnes are branded by Amiga (your previous position), to saying (as you now seem to be doing) that they _are_ Amigas.

Last edited by Boot_WB on 12-Aug-2015 at 08:34 AM.

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@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

NutsAboutAmiga wrote: @Thorham Quote: Something like an A1200 with some trapdoor fastmem and a hard disk? To get certain software running on such a target requires NOT using 3rd pary drivers such as AHI (AHI is too slow on such targets for Paula). But what about everyone else? A good programmer should be able to write programs so, that there is fallback, or let the the user decide what audio output, to use.

It depends on what's the software target. If you write something for an OCS Amiga as a base, you can use only Paula.
Quote:

Quote: for OCS/ECS/AGA, then that's what they're going to do. That's what bad programmer do, they make it impossible to run things unless you have an AGA, or ECS or OCS, a good program should be able to take advantage of any of the CHIPS, not just one, and in addition be able to run on RTG, the hardware was designed with compatibility in mind. In addition, the OS provides API to setup screen modes. It should not be a problem to allow the user to pick the screen mode.

Compatibility means following the rules, so an application which requires some OCS/ECS/AGA feature, but don't support RTG, is perfectly legal, even when directly accessing the hardware.

Thorham correctly reported an example: using the Copper. Even the o.s. has standard and perfectly legal APIs to setup and handle copperlists, which of course directly access the chipset registers. What happens with RTG cards here? I don't think that you have an emulator which can minic the Copper.

@LimoU.Sin and all

What a silly "war".

"Why Amiga OS on none Amiga Hardware?"
- What does that mean, really?

To me there seems to be three categories of Amiga people:

* The originals: Those who only care about what Amiga was and they are not interested in anything else than what is now known as Classic Amiga.

* The front-liners: Those who always want and need the latest, most upgrades, newest software etc. This is the AmigaOne/Sam/OS4/MOS/AROS users. They left the Classic early because it was not powerful enough and did not run the latest version of AmigaOS (OS4, or MOS, ...).

* Then there is the third strange group: The front-line should be classic group: This group ONLY think Classic Amiga is real Amiga, but they still want faster hardware and run the latest software. This is contradictive and paradoxal.

This thread (and a few others) are about the third group, or "wish" if you like.

What is Amiga?
- To group 1 it is the Classic Amiga range by C= with 68k CPU and OS up to 3.1 (maybe 3.9).

- To group 2 it is all Amigas (I'm in this group) which range from the original C= Amiga to the X1000, some also include MorphOS and AROS in this group. Myself I would call myself an Amiga user if I was using for example Pegasos/MOS, but I would personally probably not call the machine itself an Amiga.

- To group 3 it is Classic Amiga by C=, but they would like to have the latest version of the OS and a new faster machine, but since what we have now is not "Amiga" to them, they refuse for various reasons.

Group 3 is strange. They find Classic to slow and useless for modern computing (of course), but they refuse to upgrade to what is currently available. They end up with no Amiga (old or new) and just complain instead.

Group 3 complains that custom chips are not made in-house but instead bought from specialized third-party companies (AMD/Creative/VIA/whoever makes USB/whoever makes all other chips on the motherboards). "It should all have been made by Commodore and soldered onto the motherboard." Problems is: Today this is impossible because custom chips today are a million times more complex than 30 years ago. (Moores law: Double power every 18 month for 30 years = 1 million.) Only specialized companies are able to make them.

So if Commodore would still be alive today, we would have used off-the-shelf parts anyway. Commodore would have made us the X1000, but probably a bit more custom with a bit more coherent product line from 1995 until now

Already back in the '80s, '90s Commodore and the "valid" expansion companies used off-the-shelf parts and standards: SCSI, IDE, ATAPI, SD-RAM, 3.5" floppy (although the controller had a track buffer instead of sector buffer), USB, PCMCIA. So I just cannot see the problem with new Amigas (AmigaOne/Sam/etc.) cannot be called Amigas as well, just a new generation using more 3rd-party standards like PCI/PCIe opening up for more options of graphics, sound, etc. Of course, the 68k CPU line was dead so a switch was absolutely necessary and PPC was chosen since it was already present in some accelerators (and we hate Intel/x86 of course ).

So of course the X1000 was made for AmigaOS. It leaves room for AmigaOS to expand (become multi-core, 64-bit, use more memory etc). Besides, there are no high-end 32-bit single-core CPUs on the market today, because that is not high-end. We get 64-bit and multi-core in the package whether we like it or not.

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@Deniil715

and how do I fit in your definition? I want newest features but on 68k running on modern cheap hardware :)

and "classic"? What is that? The last Amiga I bought back in the days was called A4000 and not AC4000 (Amiga classic 4000)

Last edited by OlafS25 on 12-Aug-2015 at 01:45 PM.

about Power Amiga, someone wrote in wiki:
"In 1995 Amiga Technologies GmbH announced they were going to port AmigaOS to PowerPC. As part of their Power Amiga plan, Amiga Technologies was going to launch new Power Amiga models using the PowerPC 604e RISC CPU and in co-operation with Amiga Technologies Phase5 would release AmigaOS 4-compatible PowerPC accelerator boards for old Amiga 1200, Amiga 3000 and Amiga 4000 models. However, in 1996 Amiga Technologies' parent company ESCOM entered into deep financial problems and could not support Amiga development. Due to a lack of resources, the PowerPC project at Amiga Technologies stalled and Phase5 had to launch accelerators without a PowerPC-native AmigaOS."

I remember reading about the same on internet & magazines around that time.

+ http://www.cucug.org/amiga/aminews/1995/at951111.html
" Bensheim 07/11/95 During his key note address held in Los Angeles at the Video Toaster Expo, Petro Tyschtschenko, CEO and President of Amiga Technologies officially announced the Power PC to be the processor used in the future generation of Amiga computers. "

+ http://www.cucug.org/amiga/aminews/1995/at951116.txt
"We are hiring former Commodore engineers as well as new talented people to be able to respect the announced schedules for the Power Amiga."

ESCOM death halted the Power Amiga project, even when Amiga Technologies was profitable branch.
IIRC, Amiga Technologies remained profitable in Gateway times, but Gateway started to design totally new system around MysteryMonsterChip, untill Microsoft told them not to.
Amino bought Amiga from Gateway and designed yet another new (SW only) system, but eventually finding out that AOS can not be replaced with the components they had in mind, native PPC AOS restarted.

Last edited by KimmoK on 12-Aug-2015 at 03:08 PM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 12-Aug-2015 at 03:00 PM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 12-Aug-2015 at 02:59 PM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 12-Aug-2015 at 02:54 PM.

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@KimmoK

The historical course of events is easy to check reading the Amiga Report magazine, which followed Commodore/ESCOM/Phase5/etc. quite closely back then.

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@cdimauro

"Thorham correctly reported an example: using the Copper. Even the o.s. has standard and perfectly legal APIs to setup and handle copperlists, which of course directly access the chipset registers. What happens with RTG cards here?"

The simplest thing to do, is detect what the screen mode supports and disable the code that is not supported by video mode.

"I don't think that you have an emulator which can minic the Copper."

Instead of mimic the copper it be better to take advantage of best features, Warp3D or something like that.

If you have 32bit video mode, you can use color key to make the color transparent, this allows you to render on top of rainbow bitmap. On modern graphics card you keep the rainbow bitmap in video memory, so this pretty quick, operation on the GPU.

If you have 8bit chunky format just pick solid color instead.

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@cdimauro

>Anyway, she bought PASemi AND Intrinsity for her upcoming mobile chip,

Wasn't Intrinsity the company that going to develop new PPC chips with AMCC?

>so there was no reason to continue to develop projects based on that ISA.

For apple right, but by killing PA Semi AND AMCC new chip they greatly slowed down PPC.

>And on 2006 the PA6T was NOT superior to other PowerPC chips.

Don'ty be silly, it was. It was years ahead in multicore and had built in (DUAL!)memory and PCIe controllers etc... for less W than G4 CPU.
Simply superior.

Freescale AMP design from y2012 was the first that was on the level pf y2006/2007 PA6T in design.

Last edited by KimmoK on 12-Aug-2015 at 03:22 PM.

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@me SPAMMINK to you

This must be 100% out of topic, but I love to re-read what R&D department had in mind already in 1991...1992:
http://www.thule.no/haynie/research/acutiatr/docs/acu1.pdf
68k based but a lot of other superb stuff, like:
"The Acutiator system supports various alternate processors. The example shown locates
two alternate processors on the host module, but it's possible to have such devices on the AMI bus just as easily. In some cases the host module can make such devices easier to add, while the AMI bus makes the modularization of such devices easier."

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// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
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To NutsAboutAmiga:

You have to keep in mind that there has to be a point in getting a particular piece of software to run on chipset and graphics/sound cards.

Some examples:

- A demo that pushes an A500 to the limit. Getting this to run on graphics cards and use sound cards and what not, probably requires one to write two versions of the demo. Also, there's no point. It's a demonstration of what an A500 can do. Uninteresting to watch on machines that go beyond a 7.14mhz clocked 68000 with OCS/ECS.

- A game that's optimized for a 7.14mhz clocked 68000 with OCS/ECS, such as perhaps an Advance Wars conversion. Why bother with getting this to run with more powerful hardware if you can write a proper version for more powerful platforms? Doing otherwise is a waste of time.

- A hypothetical Paula sound demo where the copper is used as audio DMA to feed Paula directly. There's absolutely no point in making this work with a sound card at all.

It's not a good idea to blindly try and get everything to work on everything.

Last but not least there's the fact that not everyone gives a damn about graphics and sound cards. I would certainly look into it, can't hurt to add extra support on top of what's there already, but I have to admit that using an Amiga as nothing but glue logic is not very interesting.

@cdimauro

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Then they changed plans several times, as you should know.

Amiga Technologies went bankrupt. This changed their plans.

Last edited by pavlor on 12-Aug-2015 at 05:10 PM.

@Boot_WB

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From my own reading, my understanding is that Phase 5 introduced PowerPC cards and support independently of any work done by Commodore/AT, mainly due to the lack of any progress/roadmap beyond announcements.

There was nearly one year limbo between AT bancruptcy and new Gateway 2000 policy. Phase5 started its PowerUP project in AT times - AT even announced Phase5 will provide PowerPC upgrade for older Amiga models.

Quote:

Whilst I appreciate the logic of your position generally, in this case I fail to see how you make the leap from saying that the AmigaOnes are branded by Amiga (your previous position), to saying (as you now seem to be doing) that they _are_ Amigas.

It is with great pleasure that we are able to announce the first new Amiga hardware in over 6 years. The AmigaOne, our first consumer product, will be targeted at the desktop and workstation market.

October 21, 2000, Melbourne, Australia, Amiga announces the AmigaOne

AmigaOne history is interesting. At this time it was "Amiga" product (and marketed so on Amiga.com). However, as Amiga.Inc itself didn´t produce any hardware, AmigaOne became Amiga brand licensed to other companies - originaly as platform for AmigaDE, later for AmigaOS 4. After 2009 Settlement Agreement connection to Amiga.Inc became even more blurred: Amiga.Inc is still legal source of "AmigaOne" brand, but lost all control over it.

Today, "AmigaOne" is Amiga brand, or better narrowly defined subset of Amiga brand.