@Thread

With 8 billions Pounds I had bought Atari and as CEO I had offered Amiga Inc. more money per share than those morons at Commodore.

Then I had had launched Atari A1000 on the market, complete of Midi Port and SCSI Connector, the two features that those greed people at Commodore never introduced, not to spend US 50 cents per motherboard during manufacturing.




All other innovations, such as 24bit graphics, 16 bit audio and 3D graphic chips, as long as available on the market of electronic components.

Last edited by Raffaele on 29-Aug-2015 at 11:50 AM.
Last edited by Raffaele on 29-Aug-2015 at 11:49 AM.

_________________
"When the Amiga came out, everyone [at Apple] was scared as hell." (J.L. Gassée, former CEO of Apple France and chief of devs of Mac II-fx, interviewed by Amazing Computing, Nov 1996).

@blizz1220

Quote:

blizz1220 wrote: @cdimauro http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/media/manuals/A4000T.pdf I see "Workbench" and "AmigaDOS" mentioned.

I also see Escom, AMIGA Technologies, and the copyright reports 1995 (pag. 3).

@cdimauro

Difference being, this isn't theory. This could be, and was done. Multiple hardware and software options were available.
Heck, even stuff like grafitti allowed use of planar graphics, let alone big box options.

Quote:

With this point-of-view any system can support anything...

p.s. please excuse nonstandard formatting here,.... typing on tablet and it can be a pita to copy and paste at times,.... temperamental bloody thing.

@cdimauro

I will put my neck out and say that first time I heard AmigaOS
being mentioned and sold apart from being included with Amigas
is when Petro introduced OS 3.9 on CD as a way to make cash for
future projects.

Before that it seems Amigas software side was a little to complex
to understand to average user so all I read was Kickstart , AmigaDOS
and Workbench.

All Amigas were called systems (mouse , s/w and all) and sold as
Amiga 500 Computer System , Amiga 2000 Computer System.

Pavlor will jump on my throat now but I'll try to ignore

Last edited by blizz1220 on 29-Aug-2015 at 12:04 PM.

@blizz1220

Quote:

Petro introduced OS 3.9 on CD as a way to make cash for

That was 3.5. 3.1 was also sold not bundled with hardware - starting with disputed "Amiga OS 3.1" release by Village Tronic.

Quote:

Pavlor will jump on my throat now but I'll try to ignore

Jumping not possible, legs still recovering...

@pavlor

I have chosen my words carefully (I said first time (ME)
heard about it)

(gasps for air)

@fishy_fis

Quote:

fishy_fis wrote: @cdimauro Difference being, this isn't theory. This could be, and was done. Multiple hardware and software options were available. Heck, even stuff like grafitti allowed use of planar graphics, let alone big box options.

I understand, but that wasn't a standard way on Amiga. The o.s. supported only planar graphic, because that was the hardware foundation. In fact, the so called RTG support was introduced through patches to o.s. structures and APIs. RTG support was planned only with version 4.0 of the o.s..

Of course an RTG-patched system worked and some software supported it. I've nothing to say from this point of view. But IMO we cannot say that the Amiga supported it since the beginning.

Think about the Super CPU 64 cartridge for the Commodore 64, which allowed to use an high-speed 16-bit CPU with a lot of memory. Yes, it worked. Yes, some applications made use of it. But it's something which is alien to the original system.
Quote:

Quote: With this point-of-view any system can support anything... p.s. please excuse nonstandard formatting here,.... typing on tablet and it can be a pita to copy and paste at times,.... temperamental bloody thing.

No problem. I continuously make mistakes even with the keyboard.

@blizz1220

Quote:

blizz1220 wrote: @cdimauro I will put my neck out and say that first time I heard AmigaOS being mentioned and sold apart from being included with Amigas is when Petro introduced OS 3.9 on CD as a way to make cash for future projects. Before that it seems Amigas software side was a little to complex to understand to average user so all I read was Kickstart , AmigaDOS and Workbench. All Amigas were called systems (mouse , s/w and all) and sold as Amiga 500 Computer System , Amiga 2000 Computer System. Pavlor will jump on my throat now but I'll try to ignore

Yes, and it's better to do not open again this discussion.

@cdimauro

Quote:

Of course an RTG-patched system worked and some software supported it. I've nothing to say from this point of view. But IMO we cannot say that the Amiga supported it since the beginning. Think about the Super CPU 64 cartridge for the Commodore 64, which allowed to use an high-speed 16-bit CPU with a lot of memory. Yes, it worked. Yes, some applications made use of it. But it's something which is alien to the original system.

It's not the same thing. C64 software has to be specifically written to take advantage of the Super CPU, whereas Amiga software just has to support the OS's drawing functions and not tie itself to a specific mode ID in order to work using RTG.

@Rob

Quote:

Rob wrote: @cdimauro Quote: Of course an RTG-patched system worked and some software supported it. I've nothing to say from this point of view. But IMO we cannot say that the Amiga supported it since the beginning. Think about the Super CPU 64 cartridge for the Commodore 64, which allowed to use an high-speed 16-bit CPU with a lot of memory. Yes, it worked. Yes, some applications made use of it. But it's something which is alien to the original system. It's not the same thing. C64 software has to be specifically written to take advantage of the Super CPU, whereas Amiga software just has to support the OS's drawing functions and not tie itself to a specific mode ID in order to work using RTG.

That's substantially true, if you use only the o.s. APIs (but see below).

However the o.s. allows you to directly access some the RastPort and the Bitmap structures.

Let's say this: even accessing the RastPort you can support 8-bit chunky modes (with LUT), but you're lost if you access the BitMap's planes.

For 16-bit and 32-bit packed modes, the only chance is to use the APIs, but even with that there should be some API which uses some special values (like -1) which create troubles with a 32-bit packed mode, since it's a perfectly legal color. BTW, the mask doesn't make sense for a packed mode.

@Rob: thinking about it, another source of incompatibility is the change that happened to the *Pen APIs. With the 68K APIs, a pen value stays on a BYTE register, whereas on the PowerPC versions it was extended to ULONG.

A 68K app can load only the byte part of the register, leaving the rest as is, so it can create problems with 16 or 32-bit screens.

IMO it would have better to introduce a new set of *PenEx APIs which accepted the new ULONG pen, instead of breaking the already existing public interface.

@cdimauro

On PowerPC (MOS,Amiga OS 4) pen values in rastport is still BYTE value.
Public interface was not broken.
MOS and Amiga Os 4 has new API to set ULONG pen.

Last edited by ppcamiga1 on 30-Aug-2015 at 10:25 AM.

@mcbone

The problem is by going back and saving the Amiga you allow it to develop over the next couple decades and it would no longer have it's funky '80s cool. It would be big like Windows and OS X. It would be touch screen. It would be complicated. It would be intel. in a way that would be death too....

@ppcamiga1

Welcome!

@ppcamiga1

Quote:

ppcamiga1 wrote: @cdimauro On PowerPC (MOS,Amiga OS 4) pen values in rastport is still BYTE value. Public interface was not broken. MOS and Amiga Os 4 has new API to set ULONG pen.

Welcome.

I see the same APIs. Taking SetAPen, for example, we see that:

From Includes & Autodocs 3.5:
void SetAPen( struct RastPort *, UBYTE );

From OS4 Wiki:
VOID SetAPen( struct RastPort *rp, ULONG pen );

So, same API, but the second parameter changed its type.

@cdimauro

Quote:

You can do it: use one of segment registers holding only the topmost 4 bits of the address, and then use the offset to provide the bottom 16-bits.

Now I understand it and how it was to extend 16 to 20 bits it makes more sense. Except that 20 bits is rather odd for a computer compared to a more logical 24.

Usually complexity means a superior design. But here is one example where complexity doesn't make it better and a simple linear access is the best way.

Quote:

It's not the same. At the same depth, packed modes are always better than of bitplanes, both for space (reduced alignment required) and bandwidth (again, better alignment and pixels are sequentially accessed).

You prove my point. It should be easier for the hardware to read in all the bytes with a palette index ready to go. Some odd depths or non-2 multiples might not be as efficient. But I don't know how it combined the bitplanes either to get a colour index.

I'll check out that other site, but please, I already make a hobby of reading Amiga coding sites as it is.

Quote:

Yes but, as I said before, you're asking for a new Blitter, which is more complex too

It would be more complex. But that happens when you update hardware. Blitter was updated for AGA but not by much.

Quote:

For the OCS era bitplanes were fine, but at the end of '80s packed modes were a necessity.

By that stage we were going from bitmaps and CLUTs to direct RGB values in a frambuffer so it made sense. Except a hybird mode with red, green and blue bytes in their own planes.

@Rob

Quote:

According to information available on the web, the Kickstart ROM for the 4000T included a SCSI 2 driver with workbench.library be moved onto the Workbench disk.

It's true. A friend has an A4000T and you can't load a CU coverdisk as the boot breaks if it tries to LoadWB. Standard Workbench disks don't work.

@blizz1220

Quote:

Before that it seems Amigas software side was a little to complex to understand to average user so all I read was Kickstart , AmigaDOS and Workbench.

I thought we already solved this in the other thread. What the name of "Amiga OS" was.

@cdimauro

"VOID SetAPen( struct RastPort *rp, ULONG pen );"

Which is neither the API to set a 32bit value as APen (atleast not in MorphOS) nor relevant as the higher 24bits will just get ignored.

_________________
- We don't need good ideas, we haven't run out on bad ones yet
- blame Canada

@mcbone

Quote:

mcbone wrote: - eight billion pounds - buy out commodore 64 and Amiga - apple up for sale ... technology to help Amiga

It's a pitty you asked for the Amiga only.

Commodore C64

If I would had a product like the Home-Computer C64, I would have tried and turned it into a real personal computer:

A HC64 (C64) and a PC64 (a C64 compatible PC)

the PC64 would have started 2 years after the C64 with a slot concept and a faster floppy ( like the Apple][ )
Got a 80 characters per line GFX after 4 years, a better BASIC after 5 years and maybe a Z80 or 8086 card during the next years.

Amiga

The best time for the Amiga was after the massive success of the A500, a successor with better GFX would be needed, in a real PC case of course. The professional line should have got professional Office packages, flicker free HiRes GFX.

Keyboards, Interfaces and other things must have been as compatible with a PC as possible but without the A2000's ridiculous PCs slots that where not connected to the Main CPU.

Help from Apple

If I would have had Apple ... the Apple2e was clearly superior to the C64, the first Macintosh's did not have slots.

Sullivan (Apple's unloved manager) got Microsoft into supporting the Mac with their office package.

Back in 1995, with a lack of CPU performance in 68k, I would have switched to PPC, like Apple did.

But today even Apple stopped making his own hardware platform, Apple could switch to standard mainboards in their computers when ever they want.