@Gunnar

Quote:

a) Some would say that Commodore working on the C64+ upgrade was a terrible idea of Commodore.

C65 should have been the C128 upgrade.

C128 was like an ECS job i.e. take an aging gaming system and add high resolution/low color "business" modes.

The same mentality for both C128 and ECS.

Quote:

The C64 came out in 1983 - the SNES came out in Europe in 1992

SNES has been building its install base since 1990. When SNES was released in Europe Q4 1992, SNES had a larger worldwide install base when compared to the ground zero Amiga AGA platform target.

A large install base is very important for mainstream 3rd party developers.

Commodore's transition from OCS/ECS to AGA was inferior when compared to Nintendo's NES to SNES transition management. The Amiga platform behaves like a game console when it comes to core graphics hardware upgrades.

Quote:

The SNES is technically build a lot like an upgraded C64. SNES has tiled GFX - like the C64. SNES uses Hardware sprites - like the C64 SNES has an own Sound processor - like the C64 SNES uses an upgraded version of the C64 CPU (6502).

SNES Ricoh 5A22 CPU has 1.5 MIPS and has a theoretical peak performance of 1.79 MIPS 16-bit. Basic MIPS rivals stock A1200's gimped CPU which operates like 7 Mhz 32-bit 68EC020.

Ricoh 5A22 CPU supports 24-bit address space like 68000 and 68EC020. Ricoh 5A22 gets its 24-bit addresses by combining extra 8-bit registers (DBR and PBR) with the original 16-bit addressing lines of the 6502.


Quote:

Does the whole discussion you could not sell a system without Chunky support hold water? - SNES sold very nice even without Chunky Pixel support

SNES's custom 2D hardware is powerful and has Mode 7/Mode 7 Direct Color-packed/chunky pixel support.

SNES's tiled graphics are backed by small and fast 64KB VRAM and the CPU is backed by hyper-fast 128KB SRAM. Supports up to 256 colors. SNES's Mortal Kombat port has about 100 displayed colors.

Ricoh 5A22 CPU has a custom extension with multiplication and division registers.

For Doom, SNES needs a custom 16-bit RISC SuperFX2 CPU @ 20 Mhz with 20 MIPS INT16.

_________________
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)

@cdimauro

Quote:

cdimauro wrote: This doesn't work, really! You've to understand that software houses and their developers could only produce software for the most common platforms. So, Amiga 500/2000 for OCS (512kB of Chip + 512kB Slow) and Amiga 1200 for AGA (2MB Chip). If a machine was more powerful then the extra resources could be used (more RAM -> disk caching), but it was NOT guaranteed, since games were developed for the base machines. For example, I've developed the parallax of the floor (bottom 64 lines of the screen) for Fightin' Spirit, but only for machines having at least 1MB of Chip Mem (that wasn't implemented on the final version because backgrounds were already almost done and the graphic artist didn't want to change them again). That was an EXTRA thing, but the core of the game was exactly the same. So, having SOME machines with 1MB of Chip even with those tricks was good, but definitely NOT the target for the developers.

A500 Rev 6A's alternative 1 MB Chip RAM access was important enough to be included in WinUAE.

My A500 Rev 6A starter kit (includes Crazy Cars and Super Ski) was released in 1989.

Earlier A500 models Rev 3 to Rev 5 existed from 1987 to 1988.

My school friend's abandoned A500 was Rev 5 and it was abandoned in 1992 when His family purchased a 486DX-33 PC. My school friend's family is wealthy enough to purchase A1000 (in 1986) and an A500 Rev 5 (in 1988, including a Commodore 512KB RAM card).

https://theamigamuseum.com/amiga-models/amiga-500/
"Rev6A represents the vast majority of Amigas sold and is the 'de facto' A500 motherboard"

My A500 Rev6 (with 3rd party 512 KB RAM card) was traded for A3000 in early 1992.

During the COVID-19 lockdown, I purchased another A500 Rev 6A motherboard and ECS Agnus from the UK and gutted the mentioned A500 Rev 5 to repopulate the A500 Rev 6A motherboard.

Last edited by Hammer on 04-Apr-2024 at 03:56 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)

@Karlos

Quote:

Karlos wrote: @Hammer So what? What does any of this have to do with whether or not parallel bitplane writes may have been good for the Amiga? Every single thread you enter, you pollute with endless pages of frankly irrelevant intel/AMD guff. Literally nobody cares. You have a PC. Amazing. Almost everyone else does too including almost everyone here (at a guess). There are lots of other forums / social media groups that specialise in that. Look, there are times when architectural comparisons between AMD64 / PPC / 68K are relevant, but it's a small minority of cases. You have a number of Amiga systems yet you barely talk about them in comparison. Maybe you post endlessly about those on a PC master race forum we don't know about. Try swapping the two.

Reminder, A500 has a single Zorro 1 expansion slot just like modern-day low-end AM4 A520/B550 and AM5 A620/B650's single PCIe 16X slot SKU concept, but there is NO low-mid-price Amiga model offered a single slot Zorro II to improve Amiga's 3rd party graphics addon cards' economies of scale.

Technology has changed but the basic product segmentation remains similar.

A500 had single Zorro 1 expansion edge connector design, but Commodore wasn't able to deliver an "out of the box" single Zorro II slot equipped Amiga model that is placed between A500 and A1500/A2000.

Amiga's 3rd party graphics addon cards market is largely limited by big-boxed Amigas with a very low install base.


PS5 or Xbox Series X ~= CD32.

AM5 A620/B650's single PEG slot = A1200's single 32-bit Zorro-like edge connector. Missing single Zorro III slot mini-box modular gaming Amiga model hence A1200 is half-baked. AM5 A620/B650 segment is the main bulk of Zen 4's install base. A1200 has the potential capability for a single Zorro III slot. Single AGP slot product segmentation concept.


AM5 X670E's dual PEG slots (wired for dual 8X lanes) = missing Amiga model. Perhaps, A1000+ with two Zorro III slots. http://ftp.bambi-amiga.co.uk/amigahistory/prototypes/1000plus.html
The A1000+ was a super-low-cost 2-slot AGA-based Amiga


TRX50 (Threadripper Zen 4 )'s several PEG slots = A4000/A4000T's several Zorro III slots.


Again, technology has changed but the basic product segmentation remains similar.

Your argument is wrong. Commodore is aware of modern product segmentation but unable to execute it.

Last edited by Hammer on 05-Apr-2024 at 06:58 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 05-Apr-2024 at 06:56 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 04-Apr-2024 at 04:12 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 04-Apr-2024 at 04:11 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)

@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote: Commodore's transition from OCS/ECS to AGA was inferior when compared to Nintendo's NES to SNES transition management. The Amiga platform behaves like a game console when it comes to core graphics hardware upgrades.

Silly Commodore. Instead of putting all their resources into making a console that would only run 'approved' games, they decided to give the Amiga a keyboard, mouse, disk drive and operating system. What were they thinking?

Quote:

For Doom, SNES needs a custom 16-bit RISC SuperFX2 CPU @ 20 Mhz with 20 MIPS INT16.

Even with the superfx chip, the SNES version of Doom had to be cut down. No floor and ceiling textures, enemies always face forwards and are 'deaf', small play window, no game save. Very disappointing.

It wasn't until I started playing DoomAttack that I realized what was missing on the PCs I had played it on - a mouse. With mouse look activated it's a much nicer experience. Apart from that it's identical to the original, unlike that poor SNES port. Still, at least they got something in late 1995. Amiga fans had to wait another 2 years.

Many Atari developers have also expressed that without access to MMU, they are not interested.

Some years ago I did a sort of wandering survey asking around in various 68k communities about what they would want from a FPGA based 68k, and just about all of them answered that ideally, they'd want a full featured 040 in an FPGA on a board that could work as a drop-in replacement for a real 040 chip. So, if anyone's up for it, there's quite a wide (but slow) market available.

Meanwhile, while UAE used to be the go-to source for 68k emulation, we now have a much improved qemu-system-m68k, we have musashi, Emu68 and boards like pistorm, z3660 and equivalent that brings software emulation into the old hardware, so perhaps that's the way to go.

The only interesting thing about Apollo Core for me today, is SAGA. I find it way more interesting to explore the possibilities of Amiga chipset concepts than wasting time with chasing CPU core performance. Luckily, SAGA is promised to become open source, so in the future it could become the standard "baseline" for Amiga that AC68080 can never even hope to become. Imagine an FPGA board with Minimig-SAGA board with CM4 slot and Emu68 - there's no technical reason for this not to be possible.

_________________
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@bhabbott

Quote:

Silly Commodore. Instead of putting all their resources into making a console that would only run 'approved' games, they decided to give the Amiga a keyboard, mouse, disk drive and operating system. What were they thinking?

Games without the correct hardware are nothing.

Fun Fact: UK 1994 SNES's 1 million install base is larger than Amiga AGA install base
SNES reached 1,050,000 units in 1994 https://www.scribd.com/doc/208776076...zfrtsy8kxequmg

SNES's end of 1993 worldwide install base is larger.

Quote:

Even with the superfx chip, the SNES version of Doom had to be cut down. No floor and ceiling textures, enemies always face forwards and are 'deaf', small play window, no game save. Very disappointing.

SNES's Doom port was released in 1995 while Sony's Playstation western market release was also in 1995.

SNES's Doom port 1995 release was mindshare marketing to stem SNES gamers switching to Sony's platform. N64 was released in 1996.

Quote:

It wasn't until I started playing DoomAttack that I realized what was missing on the PCs I had played it on - a mouse. With mouse look activated it's a much nicer experience. Apart from that it's identical to the original, unlike that poor SNES port. Still, at least they got something in late 1995. Amiga fans had to wait another 2 years.

Commodore's marketing sucks.

Last edited by Hammer on 05-Apr-2024 at 06:04 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 05-Apr-2024 at 03:55 AM.

_________________
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Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote: UK 1994 SNES's 1 million install base is larger than Amiga AGA install base SNES reached 1,050,000 units in 1994 https://www.scribd.com/doc/208776076...zfrtsy8kxequmg SNES's end of 1993 worldwide install base is larger.

And yet strangely I never found the SNES at all interesting. I wonder why? Perhaps argumentum ad populum is actually a logical fallacy!

Quote:

Quote: It wasn't until I started playing DoomAttack that I realized what was missing on the PCs I had played it on - a mouse. With mouse look activated it's a much nicer experience. Apart from that it's identical to the original, unlike that poor SNES port. Still, at least they got something in late 1995. Amiga fans had to wait another 2 years. Commodore's marketing sucks.

Commodore didn't exist anymore by the time Doom could have been ported to the Amiga.

@bhabbott

Quote:

And yet strangely I never found the SNES at all interesting. I wonder why? Perhaps argumentum ad populum is actually a logical fallacy!

The world doesn't revolve around you.

Quote:

Commodore didn't exist anymore by the time Doom could have been ported to the Amiga.

Commodore announced voluntary bankruptcy and liquidation on May 6, 1994.

Commodore UK was still operational in 1994 until Escom's buyout.

Commodore BV (Netherlands) was dissolved in early 1995.

Commodore tried to obtain Wolfenstein 3D's license and settled for Wing Commander.

Last edited by Hammer on 05-Apr-2024 at 06:28 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 05-Apr-2024 at 06:13 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 05-Apr-2024 at 06:10 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 05-Apr-2024 at 06:07 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)

@kolla

Quote:

kolla wrote: The only interesting thing about Apollo Core for me today, is SAGA. I find it way more interesting to explore the possibilities of Amiga chipset concepts than wasting time with chasing CPU core performance. Luckily, SAGA is promised to become open source, so in the future it could become the standard "baseline" for Amiga that AC68080 can never even hope to become. Imagine an FPGA board with Minimig-SAGA board with CM4 slot and Emu68 - there's no technical reason for this not to be possible.

Minimig_CA already confirmed the AGA with PiStorm32 progress.

Last edited by Hammer on 05-Apr-2024 at 06:25 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)

@kamelito

Quote:

kamelito wrote: Donkey Kong country games are not that impressive, lowres,

How many Amiga games are high-res?
Quote:

20 to 30s to play a sub level due to memory constraints I guess.

It's by design. The SNES has A LOT of memory, thanks also to x and y tiles/sprites flipping.
Quote:

5 mediums sprites at max in a screen without counting the small bananas.

There's much more. Maybe you've to take a deeper look to some longplay in YT.
Quote:

I think that it’s doable on un Amiga 1200 using dual playfield.

Absolutely not. But if someone wants to try, I go prepare the popcorns...
Quote:

I played the game and it is not that great.

I've played as well on my NTSC SNES, and it was a great: I had a lot of fun.
Quote:

I played super Turrican too and the Amiga version is better.

I don't know Super Turrican, but there might have been some problem with the conversion / port.

In fact, a SNES has absolutely no problem on running games like Turrican, and even better.

@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote: @cdimauro Quote: cdimauro wrote: This doesn't work, really! You've to understand that software houses and their developers could only produce software for the most common platforms. So, Amiga 500/2000 for OCS (512kB of Chip + 512kB Slow) and Amiga 1200 for AGA (2MB Chip). If a machine was more powerful then the extra resources could be used (more RAM -> disk caching), but it was NOT guaranteed, since games were developed for the base machines. For example, I've developed the parallax of the floor (bottom 64 lines of the screen) for Fightin' Spirit, but only for machines having at least 1MB of Chip Mem (that wasn't implemented on the final version because backgrounds were already almost done and the graphic artist didn't want to change them again). That was an EXTRA thing, but the core of the game was exactly the same. So, having SOME machines with 1MB of Chip even with those tricks was good, but definitely NOT the target for the developers. A500 Rev 6A's alternative 1 MB Chip RAM access was important enough to be included in WinUAE. My A500 Rev 6A starter kit (includes Crazy Cars and Super Ski) was released in 1989. Earlier A500 models Rev 3 to Rev 5 existed from 1987 to 1988. My school friend's abandoned A500 was Rev 5 and it was abandoned in 1992 when His family purchased a 486DX-33 PC. My school friend's family is wealthy enough to purchase A1000 (in 1986) and an A500 Rev 5 (in 1988, including a Commodore 512KB RAM card). https://theamigamuseum.com/amiga-models/amiga-500/ "Rev6A represents the vast majority of Amigas sold and is the 'de facto' A500 motherboard" My A500 Rev6 (with 3rd party 512 KB RAM card) was traded for A3000 in early 1992. During the COVID-19 lockdown, I purchased another A500 Rev 6A motherboard and ECS Agnus from the UK and gutted the mentioned A500 Rev 5 to repopulate the A500 Rev 6A motherboard.

This doesn't change what I've said.

Software houses focused on the most common platform, and the standard on Amiga was represented by OCS with 512kB Chip + 512kB Other (usually Slow) Mem.

Only on 1992, a plain Amiga 1200 was added.

Other configurations might be supported or not, but only for some small enhancement (e.g.: a game specifically targeting an Amiga with 1MB Chip Mem is DIFFERENT, and this not only from a coding PoV).

@bhabbott

Quote:

bhabbott wrote: @Hammer Quote: Hammer wrote: UK 1994 SNES's 1 million install base is larger than Amiga AGA install base SNES reached 1,050,000 units in 1994 https://www.scribd.com/doc/208776076...zfrtsy8kxequmg SNES's end of 1993 worldwide install base is larger. And yet strangely I never found the SNES at all interesting. I wonder why? Perhaps argumentum ad populum is actually a logical fallacy!

As well as the Faulty generalization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy#Faulty_generalization

Which is basically every time that you say "I" and pretend to generalize it. Like in this case.

Or when you say "WE" when, instead, ONLY YOU had a particular opinion.

@bhabbott

From EAB: https://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=1678353&postcount=3479

Quote:

bhabbott wrote: Let's say you didn't want to plot pixels one at a time, what then?

"Just" read my articles and you'll have ALL answers. But maybe it's too much difficult to understand for you.
Quote:

Great! Now show us the circuit made out of standard logic gate ICs. Then show us the extra circuitry you need for 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 bitplanes too,

See above: READ THE ARTICLE!
Quote:

and how you switch between them.

You don't need to do any switch: you just select the bit depth AS USUAL. IF you've read the articles, of course.
Quote:

Jay Miner chose bitplanes for one simple reason - he could make a circuit that did 1 bitplane and apply it to as many as he wanted without a lot of tricky logic. And he didn't have any fancy HDL tools to create and debug it. To test the design he had to build the circuit on a wire-wrap board. These photos of the Lorraine prototype give you an idea of what a massive undertaking that was. If you've ever built logic circuits this way you will appreciate the effort that went into it. I've done a few, but I would never attempt something this large and complex.

Then you should be able to understand my proposal. IN THEORY.
Quote:

The Blitter had to work in bitplane mode for doing 1 bitplane anyway, but guess how much extra circuitry you need to do multiple bitplanes? That's right, nothing. So you design your single bitplane blitter and that's it! Then to get more colors you just stack up multiple identical 1 bitplane display boards, and feed their output into the LUT. Perhaps even separate them into 2 groups, each generating its own display (dual playfield). And the blitter doesn't have to know anything about this.

Right, but a packed version doesn't require so many transistors. Again, it's reported in the articles.
Quote:

But hey, perhaps you are right and it wouldn't be any more complex. Unfortunately - unlike today's armchair engineers - Jay Miner didn't think to do all it in packed pixel mode. Strangely nobody else did either.

Which means nothing. By elementary logic.
Quote:

I guess they just weren't as smart as Amiga fans of today - probably due to all that tetraethyl lead they were breathing in back then.

No, it was "just" lack of creativity.

@Hammer

Quote:

Minimig_CA already confirmed the AGA with PiStorm32 progress.

There was drama, you know

https://www.atari-forum.com/viewtopic.php?p=458663

Sadly this isn't the first time there are "issues" with Minimig.ca - I don't grasp what's so damn hard about doing the right things.

Or in other words... I'm not holding my breath on _that_ one.

_________________
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@kolla

"AmiCube F5000" is another project that supports PiStorm and AGA.

The real C= A1200 has PiStorm32 support.

Last edited by Hammer on 15-Apr-2024 at 04:35 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 15-Apr-2024 at 04:32 PM.

_________________
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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)

@cdimauro

Quote:

cdimauro wrote: @Hammer This doesn't change what I've said. Software houses focused on the most common platform, and the standard on Amiga was represented by OCS with 512kB Chip + 512kB Other (usually Slow) Mem. Only on 1992, a plain Amiga 1200 was added. Other configurations might be supported or not, but only for some small enhancement (e.g.: a game specifically targeting an Amiga with 1MB Chip Mem is DIFFERENT, and this not only from a coding PoV).

Games like Mortal Kombat 2 port runs on my A3000.

_________________
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)

@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote: @cdimauro Quote: cdimauro wrote: @Hammer This doesn't change what I've said. Software houses focused on the most common platform, and the standard on Amiga was represented by OCS with 512kB Chip + 512kB Other (usually Slow) Mem. Only on 1992, a plain Amiga 1200 was added. Other configurations might be supported or not, but only for some small enhancement (e.g.: a game specifically targeting an Amiga with 1MB Chip Mem is DIFFERENT, and this not only from a coding PoV). Games like Mortal Kombat 2 port runs on my A3000.

Obviously: https://www.lemonamiga.com/games/details.php?id=762

Hardware: OCS, ECS

But that was NOT the point!

How many games required 1MB+ Chip mem BY DESIGN?