@BigD

Indeed, why upgrade to VT4000 at all?

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@BigD

The VT4000 requires AGA for color realtime transitions and effects. It’s a much better experience than Video Toaster was before AGA. NewTek could not have developed the VT4000 without AGA specs and developer docs. Wipes were not the only feature on the Video Toaster 4000 that took advantage of AGA. Don’t forget the source is available for porting to more modern systems by any talented Amiga developer.

http://www.discreetfx.com/openvideotoaster.html

Last edited by DiscreetFX on 30-Oct-2023 at 03:40 PM.
Last edited by DiscreetFX on 30-Oct-2023 at 03:36 PM.

_________________
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@olegil

Quote:

olegil wrote: @cdimauro You misunderstood. The 68000 CPU doesn't need anything fancy to use both edges of the clock, it does this natively. All you do is request a read from an address, this is translated into 8 phases, 4 whole clock pulses, plus wait states added by external circuitry.

OK, thanks for the clarification.


@kolla

Quote:

kolla wrote: @cdimauro Quote: Then why the AGA chipset was developed? It made non-sense, since professional already used an OCS system and then adding custom cards where they needed (with Video Toaster being THE example, in this case). Interesting choice of example - what are the minimum requirements of VT 2000 again? And why did NewTek develop VT 4000, and how … entangled… was development of AGA with development of VT 4000? I’m asking since you claim to know Amiga history to its fine details…

Hey, I've just replied to your statement.

This clarified, I'm NOT against adding features to the chipset. And I've already precisely defined how.

@cdimauro

But does VT work with OCS?
Fat Agnus and 1MB chipram was a requirement from what I recall, but I’m just a unix geek, you’re the one with indepth historic Amiga knowledge here…

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@kolla

Quote:

kolla wrote: @cdimauro But does VT work with OCS? Fat Agnus and 1MB chipram was a requirement from what I recall, but I’m just a unix geek, you’re the one with indepth historic Amiga knowledge here…

I don't recall it and I've already told you other times that I'm NOT omniscient: are you aging badly?

What I recall is that it was produced for Amiga 2000. And only the last models were equipped with the Fat Agnus.

@cdimauro

Quote:

PiStorm doesn't "emulate" the chipset. But a good part of the system, yes (RTG, AHI, 3D acceleration is possible).

PiStorm hardware itself is just a gateway interface between RPi and Amiga's 68K CPU bus.

Emu68's RTG P96 driver is 68K Amiga code for Broadcom VideoCore IGP.

Musashi runs on a Linux host that offers additional API translation services for RTG, AHI, and network. This is closer to UAE which is hosted on a foreign OS. On weak ARM CPUs, host OS context switching and memory protection considerations degrade emulated 68K CPU performance.

---

DrawBridge allows a modern PC to read/write Amiga floppy disks like Amiga's Paula chip.

FreeSync/GSync allows for 50 hz PAL content to be displayed on a modern display.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@OneTimer1

Quote:

OneTimer1 wrote: Quote: cdimauro wrote: The engineers systematically put all the blame on the (unsuccessful) management, but they are by no Absolute BS Engineers like Jay Miner developed new chipsets before he left the company. The chipset would have used (dual ported) VRam, that costs more than the average A500 buyer would have paid, that's one of the reasons it was never put into production by the management. There where a lot of improvements made by the engineers of C=, that where not brought into production because the management was never interested, they could have had AGA in the A3000+ with a fast SCSI interface, but the management screwed it. The management had stupid ideas how to sell the Amiga, ideas like a trade in of A500 computers for A500+ or CDTV, during a time when most people feared the A500+ would only be an incompatible upgrade for their existing A500. C= / Amiga Engineers where proud for having one of the best 68k Linux systems, one of the first 68030 cards in the world and the A2410 Tiga card that was never really advertised by the C= managers. The Amiga developers at C= where an tiny group of developers, hindered by the obsolete chip production technologies at MOS, technologies that have been good enough for a 2MH 6502 but couldn't even be used for most of the 8/14 MHz chips used in the Amiga. C=/MOS could have continued the production of the 6502 as an embedded chip, if they would have had the opportunity of updating the old production process from NMOS to CMOS but inseatd they didn't even get the money for proper handling of the waste they produced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS_Technology#GMT_Microelectronics Instead of focusing on the Amiga, some where forced to develop the C65 that was produced in a small batch of 200 peaces, but dumped by all C= sales departments.

A good compromise was normal 32 bit DRAM over fast VRAM.

Furthermore, C65 has 256 color display without tricks on Amiga 500's 16-bit Chip RAM-like memory bandwidth.

Amiga 3000's Ramsey 32 bit Fast RAM @ 25 Mhz is more than enough for Doom-like games.

_________________
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Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@Kremlar

Quote:

Kremlar wrote: @OneTimer1 Quote: C= / Amiga Engineers where proud for having one of the best 68k Linux systems, one of the first 68030 cards in the world and the A2410 Tiga card that was never really advertised by the C= managers. Amix was a waste of time and resources, just like the C65, the PC compatibles, etc. The A2410 was great! But why did AmigaOS not run on it???

Against C= A2410, the wannabe TIGA standard also died on the PC.

https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_hqQJaNzN9IcC/page/n603/mode/2up
PC Mag 1992-08, page 604 of 664,
Diamond Speedstar 24 (Tseng Labs ET4000AX ISA) has $169 USD retail.


https://youtu.be/oJgQJaqmPx4?t=795

Doom (low details) on 386DX-40 with 128K cache
Tseng ET4000 ISA = 26.751 fps
Trident 8900CL ISA = 23.0088 fps
WD90C32 = 26.838 fps (Diamond Speedstar 24X)

They perform like A1200 AGA with 68030 @ 40 Mhz to 50Mhz!

Amiga 1200's weak CPU power is a major problem.

In H2 1993, Amiga 1200 with 3rd party 68030 accelerators was priced like a 486SX-25/486SX-33 PC clone and Apple's 68LC040 @ 25Mhz based Quadra 605.

80386DX is a close match against a 32-bit bus equipped 68020/68030 CPUs.

Last edited by Hammer on 01-Nov-2023 at 01:47 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 01-Nov-2023 at 01:46 AM.

_________________
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Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@OneTimer1

Quote:

OneTimer1 wrote: @cdimauro Quote: cdimauro wrote: Beyond Akiko: grafica packed al minor costo usando i bitplane[/url] There was no Akiko in ECS/OCS, AFAIK there was never an Akiko in any of the desktop models. And the existence of Akiko in a late AGA game console doesn't tell anything about the intentions of the developers after ECS/OCS but it might tell us more about the intentions of the management refusing a clean cut for a 256 bit GFX and their desperate search for a cheap fix.

FYI, Dread / Grind uses the Blitter to accelerate C2P conversion.

Both Blitter C2P and Akiko C2P add extra steps to the framebuffer raster process.

AA+ with a chunky pixel upgrade would be useless with weak 68EC020 @ 14 Mhz without Fast RAM. This is like a PC with fast ET4000AX and 386SX-16 with a 16-bit system bus.

Like Amiga's Dread / Grind, the retro PC scene has "Fast Doom" for 386-SX-based PCs. Fast Doom has access to 256-color VGA.

Dread / Grind's artwork is optimized for 4-bit planes like Chaos Engine/GOD's 16-color artwork.

There was a price/performance gap between A1200 and A4000/040 SKUs. A4000/030 wasn't price/performance competitive against 486SX-25 based PC clones and Apple's 68LC040 @ 25Mhz Quadra 605.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@kolla

Quote:

kolla wrote: @cdimauro But does VT work with OCS? Fat Agnus and 1MB chipram was a requirement from what I recall, but I’m just a unix geek, you’re the one with indepth historic Amiga knowledge here…

Newtek's original VT was for the Amiga 2000.

Commodore can't survive with just market-niche VTs. Commodore's core market was the home gaming computers.

In 1993, it was about a "32-bit" 3D gaming experience.

Last edited by Hammer on 01-Nov-2023 at 02:19 AM.

_________________
Ryzen 9 7900X, DDR5-6000 64 GB RAM, GeForce RTX 4080 16 GB
Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

I like ECS. It was pretty good. In 1990 ECS was still better than graphics in average pc.
1992 was differ. It was Win 3.1. Wolf3D. 256 colors games.
Outside amiga asylum,
it is clear for rest of the world than Commodore bankrupt
because AGA has not chunky pixels.
No fast easy to use 256 colors mode in AGA and rest is history.
Amiga retro fans should revert to good old ECS.
Play games on it, use DP PT etc on it.
Use on ECS everything that was made on Amiga up to spring 1993.
For never games and apps use something better for graphics in parallel to ECS.

@ppcamiga1

Quote:

Amiga retro fans should revert to good old ECS.

Why? My nostalgia is for Slam Tilt, Xtreme Racing, Banshee, 256 colour AGA support in DPaint AGA IV/V! Photogenics, PageStream, Scala etc that took advantage of better screen modes! ECS is hardly listed as a requirement on ANY software!

_________________
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John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

@ppcamiga1

Ah, the Repeatobot ECHO-3000 is back.

I’ve listened to scratched records that are more interesting.

_________________
All the way, with 68k

@agami

He's right that AGA was too little too late. I just don't know if chunky pixel mode would've saved it. It didn't save the falcon and it didn't save the Archimedes.

In my view it would've taken a bit more than just a 256 chunky mode. The bus was still slow (contrast the falcon which is a slight bit quicker despite being half as wide, 16MHz 16 bit transfers versus 7MHz 32-bit ones).

_________________
Doing stupid things for fun...

@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote: @cdimauro Quote: PiStorm doesn't "emulate" the chipset. But a good part of the system, yes (RTG, AHI, 3D acceleration is possible). PiStorm hardware itself is just a gateway interface between RPi and Amiga's 68K CPU bus. Emu68's RTG P96 driver is 68K Amiga code for Broadcom VideoCore IGP. Musashi runs on a Linux host that offers additional API translation services for RTG, AHI, and network. This is closer to UAE which is hosted on a foreign OS. On weak ARM CPUs, host OS context switching and memory protection considerations degrade emulated 68K CPU performance. ---

I know how PiStorm works. It was to just (over)simplifying on the discussion.
Quote:

DrawBridge allows a modern PC to read/write Amiga floppy disks like Amiga's Paula chip.

Interesting. I never saw it. I'll check, thanks.
Quote:

FreeSync/GSync allows for 50 hz PAL content to be displayed on a modern display.

That's what I'm missing.
Quote:

Hammer wrote: @OneTimer1 Quote: OneTimer1 wrote: @cdimauro There was no Akiko in ECS/OCS, AFAIK there was never an Akiko in any of the desktop models. And the existence of Akiko in a late AGA game console doesn't tell anything about the intentions of the developers after ECS/OCS but it might tell us more about the intentions of the management refusing a clean cut for a 256 bit GFX and their desperate search for a cheap fix. AA+ with a chunky pixel upgrade would be useless with weak 68EC020 @ 14 Mhz without Fast RAM. This is like a PC with fast ET4000AX and 386SX-16 with a 16-bit system bus.

It's even worse, since a PC has both "(Fast) RAM" and (Chip) VGA RAM".
Quote:

Like Amiga's Dread / Grind, the retro PC scene has "Fast Doom" for 386-SX-based PCs. Fast Doom has access to 256-color VGA. Dread / Grind's artwork is optimized for 4-bit planes like Chaos Engine/GOD's 16-color artwork.

Both games aren't comparable to Doom.

@ppcamiga1

Quote:

ppcamiga1 wrote: I like ECS. It was pretty good. In 1990 ECS was still better than graphics in average pc.

LOL. I love the way that you write utterly BS.
Quote:

1992 was differ. It was Win 3.1. Wolf3D. 256 colors games. Outside amiga asylum, it is clear for rest of the world than Commodore bankrupt because AGA has not chunky pixels. No fast easy to use 256 colors mode in AGA and rest is history. Amiga retro fans should revert to good old ECS. Play games on it, use DP PT etc on it. Use on ECS everything that was made on Amiga up to spring 1993. For never games and apps use something better for graphics in parallel to ECS.

And here started again the PARROT.

BTW, anything to say about your beloved PC-with-CPU-replaced-with-a-PowerPC-one?


@Karlos

Quote:

Karlos wrote: @agami He's right that AGA was too little too late. I just don't know if chunky pixel mode would've saved it. It didn't save the falcon and it didn't save the Archimedes.

Amiga was on much better position. Having updated hardware could have contribute to maintain at least a niche, like Apple did.

However we know that it failed due to its management and the engineers which also lacked a proper vision on how to evolve the platform.
Quote:

In my view it would've taken a bit more than just a 256 chunky mode. The bus was still slow (contrast the falcon which is a slight bit quicker despite being half as wide, 16MHz 16 bit transfers versus 7MHz 32-bit ones).

You could have done a lot on 1990 with a 14Mhz platform even sticking to a 16-bit bus. I've just posted another article about that.

What "killed" Amiga was Internet, really. And I don’t mean web browsers, but tve state of IP stacks on Amiga as well as the obvious flaws in the OS. Keep in mind that this is before rfc1918 (1996) and fancy firewalls, Amiga being connected to Internet meant being fully exposed with a public IPv4 address on the Internet, without _any_ protection from remote exploits. As a community we tried, oh boy did we try. The "native" IP stack, AS225 was crap (and "hardwired" to A2065), it went on to become Inet225, just slightly better with sana2… and Envoy didn’t play well along with it (uid 0 being "nobody"). So AmiTCP, MuFS and tons of hacks, lots of Amiga central devs left for bsd and linux.

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@kolla

Did you ever try to get online with Win95/98 or a pre-OSX Mac?

Hint: they were just as broken/unsafe as anything Amiga.
The real issue with the early net on the Amiga was the lack of performance, lack of screen real estate for those not on RTG and later on websites being coded for IE (with a side dish for Netscape at best).

@cdimauro
"Amiga was on much better position. Having updated hardware could have contribute to maintain at least a niche, like Apple did."


Sure but updated HW did require massive investment, updated (competitive) HW that needed to stay compatible with obsolete HW on a low level required a even bigger investment.
The vast majority of C= income at that time was low margin entry level A500 whose costumers could be chased away by the slightest imcompability (see all the fuzz about the A500+/A600 at that time).

Thats why they couldn't do what Apple could do (barely they did need that M$ bailout a few years later) who constantly updated their OS, targeted higher margins and only did as much HW as was actually needed by the SW.

So if you were to alternate history fix C= management/engineering to make it survive into the 21st century you would need to start much earlier and much more drastic then "AGA only a little bit more and a little bit earlier".
You would end up with C= not even bidding for Amiga but instead pushing a Coherent running C900 going up against early DOS PCs.

_________________
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- blame Canada

@Kronos

Quote:

Kronos wrote: @kolla Did you ever try to get online with Win95/98 or a pre-OSX Mac? .

Just a reminder, when Win95 came around Amiga was already in ESCOM-Zombie state, so the fair comparison would have been Win3.1(1)

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

@Kronos

Quote:

Kronos wrote: @kolla Did you ever try to get online with Win95/98 or a pre-OSX Mac? Hint: they were just as broken/unsafe as anything Amiga. The real issue with the early net on the Amiga was the lack of performance, lack of screen real estate for those not on RTG and later on websites being coded for IE (with a side dish for Netscape at best).

*
Quote:

@cdimauro "Amiga was on much better position. Having updated hardware could have contribute to maintain at least a niche, like Apple did." Sure but updated HW did require massive investment, updated (competitive) HW that needed to stay compatible with obsolete HW on a low level required a even bigger investment.

My two articles prove that no massive investments were required, on both low-end and high-end systems.
Quote:

The vast majority of C= income at that time was low margin entry level A500 whose costumers could be chased away by the slightest imcompability (see all the fuzz about the A500+/A600 at that time).

That was mostly due to the different o.s., not because of the switch from OCS to ECS. The issues due to the latter were rare.
Quote:

Thats why they couldn't do what Apple could do (barely they did need that M$ bailout a few years later) who constantly updated their OS, targeted higher margins and only did as much HW as was actually needed by the SW.

From this PoV the problem was mainly represented by the vast amount of complete idiot developers that have NOT followed Commodore's guidelines.
Quote:

So if you were to alternate history fix C= management/engineering to make it survive into the 21st century you would need to start much earlier and much more drastic then "AGA only a little bit more and a little bit earlier". You would end up with C= not even bidding for Amiga but instead pushing a Coherent running C900 going up against early DOS PCs.

Well, do you know how long it took for Apple to get a MODERN platform? 2001.

I have nothing else to add...
Quote:

Kronos wrote: @Kronos Quote: Kronos wrote: @kolla Did you ever try to get online with Win95/98 or a pre-OSX Mac? . Just a reminder, when Win95 came around Amiga was already in ESCOM-Zombie state, so the fair comparison would have been Win3.1(1)

Again: *