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MEGA_RJ_MICAL 
Re: Port AmigaOS 4 to x86
Posted on 28-Jul-2022 22:33:22
#341 ]
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Joined: 13-Dec-2019
Posts: 1200
From: AMIGAWORLD.NET WAS ORIGINALLY FOUNDED BY DAVID DOYLE

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bhabbott 
Re: Port AmigaOS 4 to x86
Posted on 29-Jul-2022 13:33:30
#342 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 6-Jun-2018
Posts: 330
From: Aotearoa

@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote:

68020's instruction per clock is similar to 68030, 68020 @ 25Mhz overclocked to 28 Mhz would be sufficient for SNES-SuperFX-2 Doom port with the missing ceiling and floor textures.

The recent Dread game is missing ceiling and floor textures.

Dread is highly optimized to get sufficient speed on a 7MHz 68000. It uses a method of texture mapping that distorts the perspective and has vertical lines when close up (I hope they fix this in the release version). Much effort has been put into making the low resolution textures look good, and using sprites for the weapons etc. to increase resolution where you can without the game slowing to a crawl. This is hardcore Amiga game development at its best, showing what can be done when you match rendering techniques to the machine's hardware features.

Today we have the luxury of being able to do stuff like this, but in 1993 even if you had all the source code to Dread you still wouldn't be able make a respectable Doom port with it. You would have to redo all the textures, rewrite large parts of the original Doom code, and put up with a lot of compromises like they did with the SNES version - which sucked. All that would do (assuming you could pull it off) is prove what everybody was saying - that the Amiga (A500/1200) wasn't powerful enough to do 3D games properly.

Quote:
Gloom didn't capture the "Doom feel" when compared to Dread.

Dread isn't Doom and it has a quite different 'feel'. But you are right about Gloom, which suffered the same faults as most other Amiga 3D games - boring unimaginative level design and repetitive gameplay that doesn't draw you into the game. It is this content that makes the difference between a so-so game and a great one (having a technically competent game engine is just the first step).

Quote:
In 1993, Amiga 4000/040's asking price was about Pentium PC level, hence Amiga 4000 didn't price competitive.

Demonstrably not true. Here are some US prices from 1993:-

AmigaWorld March 1993:-
A1200 $399
A4000/030 $1599
A4000/040 $2299

PC World March 1993, "Marketplace" monthly price survey of 'popular' PCs:-
Compaq Deskpro 386DX-33 4MB RAM $1979
Compaq Deskpro 486SX-25 4MB RAM $2569
Dell System 425SE 486SX-25 4MB RAM $3100
IBM PS/2 Valuepoint 486DX-33 8MB RAM $2199
(these are base models without monitor, sound card etc.)

Guess what's missing from this list? That's right, no Pentium PCs - because there weren't any.

So when the A4000 was released its price was competitive with name-brand PCs with similar specs. But price wasn't the issue. Nobody was comparing a Compaq Deskpro to an Amiga 4000 and thinking "Why go the PC way when I could get an Amiga 4000 instead and save $270!". The A4000 could have been cheaper than even the crappiest clone and few people would have bought one - because it wasn't IBM compatible.

The ironical thing about these prices is that today 486 PCs only command a few hundred dollars at best, while A4000s go for well over US$1000. Seems the Amiga has held its value much better...

Quote:
A4000 has a motherboard + daughter board with slots while the 486 PC competition has a single motherboard with slots.

Not sure what the relevance of this is, but many desktop PCs also had daughter boards (AKA 'riser cards') to reduce the case height. I have a 386SX motherboard with one.

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matthey 
Re: Port AmigaOS 4 to x86
Posted on 29-Jul-2022 22:09:32
#343 ]
Super Member
Joined: 14-Mar-2007
Posts: 1968
From: Kansas

Hammer Quote:
In 1993, Amiga 4000/040's asking price was about Pentium PC level, hence Amiga 4000 didn't price competitive.


bhabbott Quote:

Demonstrably not true. Here are some US prices from 1993:-

AmigaWorld March 1993:-
A1200 $399
A4000/030 $1599
A4000/040 $2299

PC World March 1993, "Marketplace" monthly price survey of 'popular' PCs:-
Compaq Deskpro 386DX-33 4MB RAM $1979
Compaq Deskpro 486SX-25 4MB RAM $2569
Dell System 425SE 486SX-25 4MB RAM $3100
IBM PS/2 Valuepoint 486DX-33 8MB RAM $2199
(these are base models without monitor, sound card etc.)

Guess what's missing from this list? That's right, no Pentium PCs - because there weren't any.


The Pentium was launched in march of 1993 and was practically unavailable for a short time but was advertised and available later in the year like Hammer posted. They were expensive at first with a system likely costing $3000 and up but that was a Pentium@60MHz often with a hard drive and 8MiB of memory which had good value. Lower end systems dropped in price and Intel was forced to remain competitive with pricing because of AMD and Cyrix competition on the way.

bhabbott Quote:

So when the A4000 was released its price was competitive with name-brand PCs with similar specs. But price wasn't the issue. Nobody was comparing a Compaq Deskpro to an Amiga 4000 and thinking "Why go the PC way when I could get an Amiga 4000 instead and save $270!". The A4000 could have been cheaper than even the crappiest clone and few people would have bought one - because it wasn't IBM compatible.


The Amiga was a different market and the PC market in general had a software advantage. I don't think the less popular 68k CPU was the big limitation as the Apple 68040 Macs gained in popularity and had the largest percentage of the desktop market ever before declining with PPC Macs. The 68040 Mac platform in 1993-1995 gained gaming market share and received FPS shooters like Doom (1994), Marathon (1994) and Star Wars: Dark Forces (1995) which ran on the 68040. The Amiga gaming market share was declining during this same period despite previously being superior for games. I don't think the problem was lack of chunky support either. I think it had more to do with CBM offering the cheapest possible hardware with slowest possible clock speeds, cheapest slowest memory, cheapest slowest hard drives, etc. even for the high end. Macs cost more but the average 68040 Mac was soon outperforming the average 68040 Amiga and few Amiga users even upgraded to a 68040 or higher. There weren't enough 68040 Amiga users to port games like Doom to the Amiga and most of the 68040 Amigas were CBM hardware 68040@25MHz with no local fast memory and PIO IDE drives stealing CPU time. The Amiga 4000 was a good example of the value and quality deterioration of the Amiga platform.

Last edited by matthey on 29-Jul-2022 at 10:10 PM.

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BigD 
Re: Port AmigaOS 4 to x86
Posted on 29-Jul-2022 22:57:57
#344 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 11-Aug-2005
Posts: 7307
From: UK

@matthey

Admittedly the C= 68040 boards were baffling with very little thought given to the onboard ram performance boost which was a game changer! Phase5 were running rings round C= designs by the end! The 060 based A4000T used a QuikPak designed EDO Ram equipped board but it is doubtful C= would have done as well if they 'd have survived! Shocking!

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Hammer 
Re: Port AmigaOS 4 to x86
Posted on 31-Jul-2022 1:31:28
#345 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@bhabbott

Quote:

Dread is highly optimized to get sufficient speed on a 7MHz 68000. It uses a method of texture mapping that distorts the perspective and has vertical lines when close up (I hope they fix this in the release version). Much effort has been put into making the low resolution textures look good, and using sprites for the weapons etc. to increase resolution where you can without the game slowing to a crawl. This is hardcore Amiga game development at its best, showing what can be done when you match rendering techniques to the machine's hardware features.

Dread's vertical lines are akin to resource conservation techniques such as pixel reconstruction in modern console games. IF Hollywood accepts pixel reconstruction tricks, then it's good enough for games.

It's mostly PC Master Race demanded "uncompressed pixels".

Quote:

Today we have the luxury of being able to do stuff like this, but in 1993 even if you had all the source code to Dread you still wouldn't be able make a respectable Doom port with it. You would have to redo all the textures, rewrite large parts of the original Doom code, and put up with a lot of compromises like they did with the SNES version - which sucked. All that would do (assuming you could pull it off) is prove what everybody was saying - that the Amiga (A500/1200) wasn't powerful enough to do 3D games properly.


Dread's redo textures are similar to The Bitmap Brothers' Gods or Xenon II Mega-Blast's 16-color artwork since Atari ST has a 16-color limitation.

Somebody with Dread's 3D engine has recycled God's artwork style and it looks pretty good.

Dread's color palette selection theory has existed in the past.


Quote:

Demonstrably not true. Here are some US prices from 1993:-


AmigaWorld March 1993:-
A1200 $399
A4000/030 $1599
A4000/040 $2299

PC World March 1993, "Marketplace" monthly price survey of 'popular' PCs:-
Compaq Deskpro 386DX-33 4MB RAM $1979
Compaq Deskpro 486SX-25 4MB RAM $2569
Dell System 425SE 486SX-25 4MB RAM $3100
IBM PS/2 Valuepoint 486DX-33 8MB RAM $2199
(these are base models without monitor, sound card etc.)

That's demonstrably not true.

Reminder, Doom doesn't use the FPU, hence 486DX's FPU is not used. A fast 68LC040 would be needed.

Doom was released on the 10th of December 1993.

https://vintageapple.org/pcworld/pdf/PC_World_9306_June_1993.pdf
Gateway Party List, Page 72 of 314

4SX-33 with 486-SX 33Mhz, 4MB RAM, 170 MB HDD, Windows Video accelerator 1MB video DRAM, 14-inch monitor for $1494,

4DX-33 with 486-DX 33Mhz, 8MB RAM, 212 MB HDD, Windows Video accelerator 1MB video DRAM, 14-inch monitor for $1895,

Page 128 of 314
Polywell Poly 486-33V with 486SX-33, 4MB of RAM, SVGA 1MB VL-Bus, price: $1250


https://vintageapple.org/pcworld/pdf/PC_World_9308_August_1993.pdf
Gateway Party List, Page 62 of 324

4SX-33 with 486-SX 33Mhz, 4MB RAM, 212MB HDD, Windows Video accelerator 1MB video DRAM, 14-inch monitor for $1495,

4DX-33 with 486-DX 33Mhz, 8MB RAM, 212 MB HDD, Windows Video accelerator 1MB video DRAM, 14-inch monitor for $1795,

Remember Gateway?

Page 45 of 324
From DELL
Dell Dimension 486SX 33Mhz, 4MB RAM, 230 MB HDD, VLB SVGA card with 512 KB, 14-inch monitor for $1749,

Dell Dimension 486SX 25Mhz, 4MB RAM, 170MB HDD, VLB SVGA card with 512 KB, 14-inch monitor for $1749,

MS-DOS 6.0/Windows 3.1/Mouse included.



Page 292 of 324
From Comtrade
VESA Local Bus WinMax with 32-Bit VL-Bus Video Accelerator 1MB, 486DX2 66 Mhz, 210 MB HDD, 4MB RAM, Price: $1795



https://vintageapple.org/pcworld/pdf/PC_World_9310_October_1993.pdf
October 1993, Page 13 of 354,
ALR Inc, Model 1 has Pentium 60-based PC for $2495.



https://archive.org/details/amiga-world-1993-10/page/n7/mode/2up
Amigaworld, October 1993, Page 66 of 104
Amiga 4000/040 @ 25Mhz for $2299

Amiga 4000/030 @ 25Mhz for $1599



Page 82 of 104
M1230X's 68030 @ 50Mhz has $349
1942 Monitor has $389
A1200 with 85MB HDD has $624
A1200 with 130MB HDD has $724
2.5 inch HDD



Page 92 of 104
A1200, $399
A1200 with 40MB HDD, $545
A1200 with 85MB HDD, $649
A1200 with 128MB HDD, $729

GVP 1230 with 68030 40Mhz with 4MB RAM, $579

Conner 40MB HD, $139.95
Conner 64MB HD, $229.95
Seagate 85MB HD, $239.95
Seagate 127MB HD, $315.00
Maxtor 128MB HD, $315.00


Page 70 of 104
A1200 with 120 MB HDD for $329
A1200 with 200 MB HDD for $429
MBX 1230 with 68030 @ 40 Mhz, off-chip FPU @ 33Mhz, with 4MB RAM , $549

The Commodore solution is beaten by the Gateway solution.

The A1200 SKUs have no "out-of-the-box" SKU targeting Doom.


Target sales period: XMas of 1993 Q4.. 1993 XMas sales period was Commodore's last chance.


I halted any further hardware investments on the Amiga platform in 1993 until the COVID-19 year 2020 A1200 Rev 1D1, Amikit 8MB RAM with FPU, and A500's Witcher 508 purchases. TF1260 in the year 2021 and A500's Pi-storm/Pi-3A in the year 2022.


In the end, IBM exited the PC clone business.

My Dad's 386DX+ET4000 PC and my Pentium 150 PC clones are local white box builds.
My Pentium 150 PC clone has a PCchips (Elitegroup Computer Systems Co., Ltd) motherboard.
The pattern continued to my current gaming PCs which have ASUS motherboards, NOT from Dell, HP, Lenovo and 'etc'.


My Dad's PS/2 Model 55SX was from government work and a decommissioned surplus that was replaced in 1992 by 386DX-33 +ET4000 PC. 386DX-33 +ET4000 PC was enough until 1996's Quake.


I have a 1.5-year-old Lenovo laptop with Ryzen 7 Pro 4750U.


You're in dreamland and refuse to see why Commodore's big box Amigas was uncompetitive!





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kolla 
Re: Port AmigaOS 4 to x86
Posted on 31-Jul-2022 2:07:04
#346 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 20-Aug-2003
Posts: 2859
From: Trondheim, Norway

@Hammer

Big box Amiga and PCs in early 90s rarely even were in the same competition. Big box Amigas were used for specific tasks, like video toaster or SCALA infochannel systems, and other TV/multimedia tasks. They didn’t just dominate in that area, for quite some time, they were the only option.

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Hammer 
Re: Port AmigaOS 4 to x86
Posted on 31-Jul-2022 2:21:56
#347 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@kolla

Quote:

kolla wrote:
@Hammer

Big box Amiga and PCs in early 90s rarely even were in the same competition. Big box Amigas were used for specific tasks, like video toaster or SCALA infochannel systems, and other TV/multimedia tasks. They didn’t just dominate in that area, for quite some time, they were the only option.

Reminder, PC's Doom-type games wreaked Amiga's gaming scene.

Business PCs subsidized gaming/home PCs while gaming/home PCs subsidized business/workstation PCs i.e. PC's economy of scale murdered the Amiga.

Commodore couldn't survive on just Amiga 4000 with Video Toaster/SCALA business.

SGI learns a similar lesson when they were smashed by a certain PC gaming GPU company i.e. NVIDIA.

Last edited by Hammer on 03-Jun-2023 at 02:14 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 31-Jul-2022 at 02:35 PM.
Last edited by Hammer on 31-Jul-2022 at 02:43 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)

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cdimauro 
Re: Port AmigaOS 4 to x86
Posted on 7-Aug-2022 8:33:58
#348 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 29-Oct-2012
Posts: 3621
From: Germany

@bhabbott

Quote:

bhabbott wrote:
@Hypex

Quote:

Hypex wrote:
@bhabbott

The Workbench screen was 2 bits depth so window layers had to be bliited twice per place.

Yes, but the amount blitted is about the same whether packed or planar.

Depends on the involved areas for the blit, but packed is the best / more efficient on bit-blitting operations.
Quote:
Small blits are less efficient, but inherently fast so it doesn't matter.

You've to setup the Blitter twice, but only once on a packed system.
Quote:
Quote:
Yes, my first Amiga was an A500 with Enhancer package and FastFonts. I can imagine why it was faster. It was likely almost as many writes setting up the blitter as it was actually writing it to the bitmap. The blitter was useful for large blocks at random locations but strings would be written letter by letter.

To be fair, other machines of the time like the PC also had very slow text rendering when going through the BIOS one character at a time. At least on the Amiga you could render a whole line at once,

This is all about the APIs which the specific platform is giving to developers.

Nobody stops you to implement your own version, that could be faster.
Quote:
and the blitter worked in parallel with the CPU so it could be doing other stuff at the same time.

Not always. With games, for example, the CPU was busy-polling the Blitter status register to see if the blit operation was completed and starting a new one. Plus, usually the Blitter had priority over the CPU, which means that the latter had no cycles available to access memory and so it was left in a frozen status.

BTW, some PCs had also a Blitter or coprocessor (and going truly in parallel with the CPU, since they worked on their own memory).
Quote:
What does this prove? For true 3D games - which the Amiga was supposed to be no good for because it didn't have chunky graphics - you need both a fast CPU and fast graphics bus for best performance. The overhead of converting chunky to planar is only an issue on slower machines, which aren't fast enough for this kind of game anyway.

Which, nevertheless, requires some time on faster machines, anyway.
Quote:
So all the talk of Commodore making the wrong choice in graphics architecture is off the mark.

That's wrong (see the packed vs planar thread) and it's also Red Herring. You're very inclined to logical fallacies and that is strange since you're supposed to be a developer, and developers should be familiar with logic...
Quote:
Using bitplanes made the hardware easier to implement,

Wrong again: see the other thread.
Quote:
minimized precious RAM usage,

Wrong again.
Quote:
and worked well with the relatively slow 68000 in earlier Amigas.

They could have worked better with packed graphics.
Quote:
Many fans also fault AGA for sticking with bitplanes, but it was a logical extension to OCS

And it was its problem: planar graphic issues becomes much worse with increased data bus sizes...
Quote:
which was also easy to implement,

Wrong again: it's easy only for masking operations.
Quote:
maintained good compatibility and didn't require major changes to the OS.

Well, the o.s. required several changes for AGA. Which, BTW, was an horrible patch over ECS.
Quote:
And where it really mattered (texture mapped 3D games) it wasn't the real bottleneck.

It was, as numbers proved: Amiga without graphic cards had the C2P cost to sustain, even on faster CPUs (and memories).

It's clear that you lived on a parallel universe...
Quote:
Quote:
My Pentium 150 with S3 Trio 64-based PC has smooth Quake 1 frame rates.

Using 1989-era ET4000AX improves the situation.

The ET4000AX was an exceptional ISA bus VGA card. Most PC clones of that era came with cheap cards such as the Trident TVGA (bad) or OAK OTIVGA (worse). This rarely if ever gets mentioned by fans comparing the Amiga to contemporary PCs.

At least they had the chance to buy one. On 1989. Which is NOT contemporary, right?

Which chance have you had at the time for Amigas?

BTW, you're the one which continuously mixed technologies and time periods. Only to favor your beloved Amiga, like the blind fanatic that you are.


@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote:

For a dumb frame buffer, AGA is superior when compared to IBM VGA.

Is it fair? IBM VGA was available on 1987. AGA on... 1992!
Quote:
AGA can play full-motion videos @ 320x200 HAM8 (8 bits data) resolution.

If you just do it.
Quote:
As long the CPU is fast enough to generate procedural full-motion videos (aka 3D games), AGA can play these games at a reasonable frame rate.

You need a very fast CPU, which was quite expensive at the time. And... unavailable: on 1992 you only had a 25Mhz 68040 (AFAIR the 33Mhz version came later).

Whereas on PCs of the same time it was much easier: no C2P needed and much faster graphic cards available (at lower price). So, you didn't required a monster CPU only to overcome the planar graphics issues.
Quote:
Amiga 500 already has the hardware for C2P i.e. use the hardware Blitter.

This wasted bandwidth, since you had to read & combine multiple times the framebuffer with the single bitplanes.
Quote:
For Amiga 500, Dread C2P uses the hardware Blitter to lessen the workload for the CPU.

Dread is very nice achievement for the hardware. Nevertheless, it shows that the Amiga hardware was very limited for those kind of games.

In fact, the game completely lucks floor and ceiling. Only the sky is visible sometimes, with blocky graphics. Only the walls are rendered, with blocky and doughy graphics, with limited colors.. Graphics (texture) is almost always the same, with very low resolution. Similar things for characters: a few of them, which look pre-scaled, zoomed at fixed sizes. And the graphic is rendered at around 3-4 FPS (around 8 for the Amiga 1200).

This has nothing to do with Doom.
Quote:
Reminder, PC's Doom-type games wreaked Amiga's gaming scene.

The PC game market was already bigger than the Amiga one before Doom. You can take a look at the list of PC games release before Doom, and you can see yourself.

The game changer for PCs was represented by the introduction of VGA: from there on, PCs got much more attention and support, because users had the chance to see very colorful games available for their "business computers".

The other game changer was Windows 3.0 and its multimedia extensions, which opened the doors to a common platform for hardware-accelerated graphics (which otherwise required specific code on each game to support the given hardware platform).

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NutsAboutAmiga 
Re: Port AmigaOS 4 to x86
Posted on 7-Aug-2022 9:10:38
#349 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Jun-2004
Posts: 12795
From: Norway

@cdimauro

Quote:
Well, the o.s. required several changes for AGA. Which, BTW, was an horrible patch over ECS.


Well one most annoying change is HAM8, where the control bit was planes 5 and 6 in HAM6, in HAM8 that was changed to being in lower planes plan 0 and 1.

In HAM6 things where nice color 0 to 16 was solid colors.
while HAM8, color 0, 4, 8, … was solid colors, DPAINT, and programs rearranged colors, so it was not noticed.

In any case, storing the control bits in the image, was also maybe not the best idea, as stole solid colors from the palette.

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cdimauro 
Re: Port AmigaOS 4 to x86
Posted on 7-Aug-2022 10:01:22
#350 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 29-Oct-2012
Posts: 3621
From: Germany

@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

NutsAboutAmiga wrote:
@cdimauro

Quote:
Well, the o.s. required several changes for AGA. Which, BTW, was an horrible patch over ECS.


Well one most annoying change is HAM8, where the control bit was planes 5 and 6 in HAM6, in HAM8 that was changed to being in lower planes plan 0 and 1.

In HAM6 things where nice color 0 to 16 was solid colors.
while HAM8, color 0, 4, 8, … was solid colors, DPAINT, and programs rearranged colors, so it was not noticed.

Yup. However the changes with HAM8 made sense, since the upper 6 bits are changing the upper 6 bits of the given color components (keeping the current lower 2 bits).
Quote:
In any case, storing the control bits in the image, was also maybe not the best idea, as stole solid colors from the palette.

What do you mean with that? Could you please clarify it?

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NutsAboutAmiga 
Re: Port AmigaOS 4 to x86
Posted on 7-Aug-2022 10:34:55
#351 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Jun-2004
Posts: 12795
From: Norway

@cdimauro

I’m not really think about how to implement it, but looks unpractical, as it was implanted.

what if we stored it separately, in own memory block, insted?

Then you won’t need to sacrify the 2bits, you might have had 64 solid colors insted of 16 colors.

You need 4bits for color channel on OCS
(values from 0-15), 2 control bits, 6bits ok on HAM6.

But on HAM8 you have 0-256 values per channel, you need 8bit + 2bit to set color exactly. But the you only get 6bit + 2bit (YYYYYYCC), and in solid color mode, you only have 6bit (64 solid colors).

in OCS and AGA case you have palette tables, that supports 32 (+32 half bright) colors or 256 colors in AGA, only a subset of the color table is used under HAM6/HAM8.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 07-Aug-2022 at 10:42 AM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 07-Aug-2022 at 10:40 AM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 07-Aug-2022 at 10:38 AM.

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cdimauro 
Re: Port AmigaOS 4 to x86
Posted on 7-Aug-2022 10:54:55
#352 ]
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Joined: 29-Oct-2012
Posts: 3621
From: Germany

@NutsAboutAmiga: OK, got it.

This might be only suitable for HAM8: HAM/HAM6 can already fully change the 4-bit components. Using more than 16 colors for the fixed palette could be very useful, but it'll be a great waste of space (and bandwidth) since you more change color components much more often compared to the fixed colors.

Anyway, HAM8 becomes HAM10 then. With this format you can fully control the 8-bit components, and you also have a base 256 colors palette which helps a lot on reducing the colors transitions.

However the price to pay is 25% space needed and, what's even worse, 10 bitplane points instead of 8, which further complicates the display controller.

It could only make sense with packed graphics, or some hybrid format (e.g.: a packed plane for the 8-bit component and then 2 bitplanes for the control bits or a 2-bit packed plane for them).

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NutsAboutAmiga 
Re: Port AmigaOS 4 to x86
Posted on 7-Aug-2022 11:29:32
#353 ]
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Joined: 9-Jun-2004
Posts: 12795
From: Norway

@cdimauro

Quote:
10 bitplane points


I thinking chunky grouping for control bits.

pixel 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7

bit: 76543210 76543210
pix: 00112233 44556677

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cdimauro 
Re: Port AmigaOS 4 to x86
Posted on 7-Aug-2022 12:52:05
#354 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 29-Oct-2012
Posts: 3621
From: Germany

@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

NutsAboutAmiga wrote:
@cdimauro

Quote:
10 bitplane points


I thinking chunky grouping for control bits.

pixel 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7

bit: 76543210 76543210
pix: 00112233 44556677


That looks like my second proposal:
"or the control bits or a 2-bit packed plane for them"

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Hammer 
Re: Port AmigaOS 4 to x86
Posted on 2-Jun-2023 4:48:02
#355 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@cdimauro

Me: AGA can play full-motion videos @ 320x200 HAM8 (8 bits data) resolution.

Quote:
Quote:
cdimauro: If you just do it.

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_X1sfYC1GQ
A1200 with PiStorm32 Lite-Emu68-RPi4B (ARM Cortex A72 @ 1.8 GHz) can drive AGA's 256 colors (8-bit planes) Quake demo3 benchmark to +42 fps.

Hollywood's full-motion video experience is 24 fps.

IBM VGA is a slide show despite using K7 Athlon XP 2200+ @ 1.8 GHz CPU.

PiStorm32 Lite-Emu68-RPi4B equipped A1200's AGA results is about twice as fast when compared to PiStorm-Emu68-RPI3a+ equipped A500's OCS HAM6 results.

From experience, IBM PS/2 Model 55SX (386SX @ 16 Mhz, IBM VGA) is trash for gaming i.e. I prefer the A500.

ET4000AX MCA is relatively expensive compared to the ET4000AX ISA version.


Last edited by Hammer on 02-Jun-2023 at 05:11 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 02-Jun-2023 at 04:54 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 02-Jun-2023 at 04:50 AM.

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Hammer 
Re: Port AmigaOS 4 to x86
Posted on 2-Jun-2023 5:37:30
#356 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@cdimauro

Quote:

You need a very fast CPU, which was quite expensive at the time. And... unavailable: on 1992 you only had a 25Mhz 68040 (AFAIR the 33Mhz version came later).

Whereas on PCs of the same time it was much easier: no C2P needed and much faster graphic cards available (at lower price). So, you didn't required a monster CPU only to overcome the planar graphics issues.

FYI, Dave Haynie was pushing for AT&T DSP3210 with AGA configuration.

AT&T DSP3210 supports fast 32-bit integer (INT32 16.6 MIPS @ 66Mhz) and 32-bit floating point (FP32 33 MFLOPS) datatypes.

68030 @ 50 Mhz can to 10 MIPS.

Dave Haynie's DSP3210 push is similar to Nintendo's SuperFX math acceleration stop-gap tactics.

Atari Falcon's Motorola 56001 DSP @ 33 Mhz only supports INT24 datatype, hence it's useless for general-purpose INT32 and 3D gaming FP32 datatypes. 56001 DSP @ 33 Mhz can do 16.5 MIPS INT24.


Modern 3D games use FP32 datatype.

Last edited by Hammer on 02-Jun-2023 at 05:46 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 02-Jun-2023 at 05:42 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 02-Jun-2023 at 05:42 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 02-Jun-2023 at 05:40 AM.

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cdimauro 
Re: Port AmigaOS 4 to x86
Posted on 2-Jun-2023 20:34:48
#357 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 29-Oct-2012
Posts: 3621
From: Germany

@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote:
@cdimauro

Me: AGA can play full-motion videos @ 320x200 HAM8 (8 bits data) resolution.

Quote:
Quote:
cdimauro: If you just do it.

From https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_X1sfYC1GQ
A1200 with PiStorm32 Lite-Emu68-RPi4B (ARM Cortex A72 @ 1.8 GHz) can drive AGA's 256 colors (8-bit planes) Quake demo3 benchmark to +42 fps.

Hollywood's full-motion video experience is 24 fps.

IBM VGA is a slide show despite using K7 Athlon XP 2200+ @ 1.8 GHz CPU.

PiStorm32 Lite-Emu68-RPi4B equipped A1200's AGA results is about twice as fast when compared to PiStorm-Emu68-RPI3a+ equipped A500's OCS HAM6 results.

It looks like that you're completely detached from the reality & history.

From my previous comment:

Is it fair? IBM VGA was available on 1987. AGA on... 1992!
[...]
If you just do it.
[...]
You need a very fast CPU, which was quite expensive at the time. And... unavailable: on 1992 you only had a 25Mhz 68040 (AFAIR the 33Mhz version came later).

Whereas on PCs of the same time it was much easier: no C2P needed and much faster graphic cards available (at lower price). So, you didn't required a monster CPU only to overcome the planar graphics issues.

I've highlighted the relevant parts for YOUR convenience to let you understand what was the context.

So, what you reported NOW about a completely non-existing system (based on PiStorm) is totally useless AND irrelevant.
Quote:
From experience, IBM PS/2 Model 55SX (386SX @ 16 Mhz, IBM VGA) is trash for gaming i.e. I prefer the A500.

Who cares about YOUR personal experience with ONE system: not all of them (AVAILABLE AT THE TIME) were performing like that.
Quote:
ET4000AX MCA is relatively expensive compared to the ET4000AX ISA version.

Yes, and? See above: irrelevant.
Quote:

Hammer wrote:
@cdimauro

Quote:

You need a very fast CPU, which was quite expensive at the time. And... unavailable: on 1992 you only had a 25Mhz 68040 (AFAIR the 33Mhz version came later).

Whereas on PCs of the same time it was much easier: no C2P needed and much faster graphic cards available (at lower price). So, you didn't required a monster CPU only to overcome the planar graphics issues.

FYI, Dave Haynie was pushing for AT&T DSP3210 with AGA configuration.

AT&T DSP3210 supports fast 32-bit integer (INT32 16.6 MIPS @ 66Mhz) and 32-bit floating point (FP32 33 MFLOPS) datatypes.

68030 @ 50 Mhz can to 10 MIPS.

Dave Haynie's DSP3210 push is similar to Nintendo's SuperFX math acceleration stop-gap tactics.

Atari Falcon's Motorola 56001 DSP @ 33 Mhz only supports INT24 datatype, hence it's useless for general-purpose INT32 and 3D gaming FP32 datatypes. 56001 DSP @ 33 Mhz can do 16.5 MIPS INT24.

Who cares? We never had a DSP3210 system!
Quote:
Modern 3D games use FP32 datatype.

And here I've highlighted again a word for YOUR convenience.

Who cares about what 3D games are using NOW?

At the AGA time the situation was totally different and WE, programmers, used WHAT WAS AVAILABLE.

3D games were released even for 8 bit home computers which had only 8-bit integer registers. How it was possible, since they lacked "FP32 datatype"?!? That's a mystery for you, eh?

YOUR problem is that, as I've said before, you're living completely detached from the reality & history, so you're mixing things of completely different periods of time drawing totally wrong conclusions.

You really need a good one...

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Hammer 
Re: Port AmigaOS 4 to x86
Posted on 3-Jun-2023 0:41:34
#358 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@cdimauro

Quote:

It looks like that you're completely detached from the reality & history.

From my previous comment:

Is it fair? IBM VGA was available on 1987. AGA on... 1992!
[...]
If you just do it.
[...]
You need a very fast CPU, which was quite expensive at the time. And... unavailable: on 1992 you only had a 25Mhz 68040 (AFAIR the 33Mhz version came later).

Whereas on PCs of the same time it was much easier: no C2P needed and much faster graphic cards available (at lower price). So, you didn't required a monster CPU only to overcome the planar graphics issues.
I've highlighted the relevant parts for YOUR convenience to let you understand what was the context.

So, what you reported NOW about a completely non-existing system (based on PiStorm) is totally useless AND irrelevant.

1987 IBM VGA is a slow frame buffer regardless of packed pixel chunky advantage or fast CPU or lacking C2P.

https://archive.org/details/amiga-world?and[]=year%3A%221993%22
Amiga World Magazine (November 1993), page 58 of 100,
A1200 price $379
A3000 5MB, 105HD, price $899
A3000T/030, 5MB, 200MB HDD, price $1199
A3000T/040, 5MB, 200MB HDD, price $1599
Cost for 040 card = $400

Commodore's A3640 card cost is about $400.

Commodore could have pre-configured "out-of-the-box" A1200 with 68LC040 at 25Mhz SKU for slightly above $779 (i.e. add 4MB fast ram, HDD) which could compete against $1000 486 33Mhz based PC and Apple's Macintosh Quadra 605.

Commodore's buying power is superior when compared to 3rd party Amiga CPU accelerators. With economies of scale, Commodore UK is willing to bulk purchase 3rd party CPU-accelerators for A1200 bundles.

Commodore International rejected Commodore UK's CPU-accelerated A1200 bundles.

In a meeting, Commodore International directly told major 3rd party developers who are pushing for CPU-accelerated A1200 bundles to fuckoff.

A1200 with 68LC040 or high clock speed 68EC030 CPU accelerator bundle would have wreaked the sales for A3000T/030, A3000T/040, A4000/030, and A4000/040.

As long CPU with Fast RAM can generate planar formatted frame buffers on Fast RAM in a timely manner, AGA can display the frame buffers after they are transferred from Fast RAM.

Dread's Blitter-assisted C2P works for 4-bit and 7-bit planes. Blitter-assisted C2P is a bottleneck for 68020 above 28 Mhz i.e. let 68030 @ 40 to 50 Mhz or 68LC040 @ 25 Mhz CPUs handle C2P.

For Doom and games like it, A1200 AGA with 68030 @ 50 Mhz accelerator rivals AMD 386DX-40 with ET4000AX.

What's needed is to follow through with Commodore UK's A1200 CPU accelerated bundle deals.

Commodore's A3000 and A4000's BOM cost structure is expensive relative to Gateway's PC 386DX-33 and 486SX/DX builds.


A4000 wasn't built like a lower-cost optimized A1200.

A4000 has a motherboard + daughter board with slots while the 486 PC competition has a single motherboard with slots.
When using SVGA chipsets for Amiga's RTG vs PC,
A4000 has a motherboard + daughter board with slots + SVGA RTG card.

VS

486 PC has a single motherboard with slots + SVGA card.
A4000 is already at a disadvantage in BOM cost when compared to a mini-tower PC clone.

Without Commodore's manufacturing intervention, Amiga graphics cards don't have economies of scale.

Pentium 90 to 100 Mhz class CPU or math co-processor are needed against the late 1994 era PlayStation (33 MIPS CPU + 66 MIPS graphics co-processor).

Last edited by Hammer on 03-Jun-2023 at 02:11 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 03-Jun-2023 at 01:17 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 03-Jun-2023 at 01:15 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 03-Jun-2023 at 01:14 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 03-Jun-2023 at 01:08 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 03-Jun-2023 at 01:05 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 03-Jun-2023 at 12:47 AM.

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Hammer 
Re: Port AmigaOS 4 to x86
Posted on 3-Jun-2023 2:29:09
#359 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 9-Mar-2003
Posts: 5246
From: Australia

@cdimauro

Quote:
Yes, and? See above: irrelevant.

Cost plays a major part in the platform's success.

Quote:

Who cares? We never had a DSP3210 system!

Commodore's internal corporate politics is a problem.

Quote:

And here I've highlighted again a word for YOUR convenience.

Who cares about what 3D games are using NOW?

At the AGA time the situation was totally different and WE, programmers, used WHAT WAS AVAILABLE.

ID Software's argument is about Amiga's majority install base composition and they are aware of a small minority of Amigas have 68040 and graphics card configuration.


Quote:

3D games were released even for 8 bit home computers which had only 8-bit integer registers. How it was possible, since they lacked "FP32 datatype"?!? That's a mystery for you, eh?

Irrelevant.

Quote:

YOUR problem is that, as I've said before, you're living completely detached from the reality & history, so you're mixing things of completely different periods of time drawing totally wrong conclusions.

You can't handle the truth on IBM VGA is fucking slow. The real answer is, it depends on the frame buffer's implementation.

Throwing Athlon XP 2200+ (1800 Mhz) wouldn't solve IBM VGA's slow frame buffer behavior!

Last edited by Hammer on 03-Jun-2023 at 02:31 AM.

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cdimauro 
Re: Port AmigaOS 4 to x86
Posted on 3-Jun-2023 5:45:43
#360 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 29-Oct-2012
Posts: 3621
From: Germany

@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote:
@cdimauro

Quote:

It looks like that you're completely detached from the reality & history.

From my previous comment:

Is it fair? IBM VGA was available on 1987. AGA on... 1992!
[...]
If you just do it.
[...]
You need a very fast CPU, which was quite expensive at the time. And... unavailable: on 1992 you only had a 25Mhz 68040 (AFAIR the 33Mhz version came later).

Whereas on PCs of the same time it was much easier: no C2P needed and much faster graphic cards available (at lower price). So, you didn't required a monster CPU only to overcome the planar graphics issues.
I've highlighted the relevant parts for YOUR convenience to let you understand what was the context.

So, what you reported NOW about a completely non-existing system (based on PiStorm) is totally useless AND irrelevant.

1987 IBM VGA is a slow frame buffer regardless of packed pixel chunky advantage or fast CPU or lacking C2P.

So? It was NOT the ONLY VGA card which was available at the time.

AND, which is even worse, you're comparing it (and only this card) with the AGA chipset which arrived FIVE YEARS LATE (when SVGAs were very common).

As I've said before, you mix-up two completely different contexts: a total non-sense!
Quote:
https://archive.org/details/amiga-world?and[]=year%3A%221993%22
Amiga World Magazine (November 1993), page 58 of 100,
A1200 price $379
A3000 5MB, 105HD, price $899
A3000T/030, 5MB, 200MB HDD, price $1199
A3000T/040, 5MB, 200MB HDD, price $1599
Cost for 040 card = $400

Commodore's A3640 card cost is about $400.

Commodore could have pre-configured "out-of-the-box" A1200 with 68LC040 at 25Mhz SKU for slightly above $779 (i.e. add 4MB fast ram, HDD) which could compete against $1000 486 33Mhz based PC and Apple's Macintosh Quadra 605.

Commodore's buying power is superior when compared to 3rd party Amiga CPU accelerators. With economies of scale, Commodore UK is willing to bulk purchase 3rd party CPU-accelerators for A1200 bundles.

Commodore International rejected Commodore UK's CPU-accelerated A1200 bundles.

In a meeting, Commodore International directly told major 3rd party developers who are pushing for CPU-accelerated A1200 bundles to fuckoff.

A1200 with 68LC040 or high clock speed 68EC030 CPU accelerator bundle would have wreaked the sales for A3000T/030, A3000T/040, A4000/030, and A4000/040.

"Could have" ... "Would have"... that is NOT the reality of the time neither part of history.

That's only YOUR WISHFUL THINKING!
Quote:
As long CPU with Fast RAM can generate planar formatted frame buffers on Fast RAM in a timely manner, AGA can display the frame buffers after they are transferred from Fast RAM.

I reveal you some secrets:
- the Amiga 1200 was NOT bundled with any Fast RAM;
- the Amiga 1200 was the AGA machine which was sold most by Commodore. Hence this is THE platform which was considered by developers / software houses;
- the Amiga 1200's CPU was WEAK, so unable to give a substantial contribute for the framebuffer generation.

Again, those are FACTs and this is the REALITY at the time. Hence, this is HISTORY.
Quote:
Dread's Blitter-assisted C2P works for 4-bit and 7-bit planes. Blitter-assisted C2P is a bottleneck for 68020 above 28 Mhz i.e. let 68030 @ 40 to 50 Mhz or 68LC040 @ 25 Mhz CPUs handle C2P.

I've already given you my opinion about Dread: it has nothing to do with Doom.

Plus, 4-bit C2P is simply ridiculous. And 7-bitplanes = 128 colors = less colors compared to VGA.
Quote:
For Doom and games like it, A1200 AGA with 68030 @ 50 Mhz accelerator rivals AMD 386DX-40 with ET4000AX.

Benchmark?
Quote:
What's needed is to follow through with Commodore UK's A1200 CPU accelerated bundle deals.

Commodore's A3000 and A4000's BOM cost structure is expensive relative to Gateway's PC 386DX-33 and 486SX/DX builds.


A4000 wasn't built like a lower-cost optimized A1200.

A4000 has a motherboard + daughter board with slots while the 486 PC competition has a single motherboard with slots.
When using SVGA chipsets for Amiga's RTG vs PC,
A4000 has a motherboard + daughter board with slots + SVGA RTG card.

VS

486 PC has a single motherboard with slots + SVGA card.
A4000 is already at a disadvantage in BOM cost when compared to a mini-tower PC clone.

Without Commodore's manufacturing intervention, Amiga graphics cards don't have economies of scale.

Same as above: WISHFUL THINKING.
Quote:
Pentium 90 to 100 Mhz class CPU or math co-processor are needed against the late 1994 era PlayStation (33 MIPS CPU + 66 MIPS graphics co-processor).

Totally irrelevant.
Quote:

Hammer wrote:
@cdimauro

Quote:
Yes, and? See above: irrelevant.

Cost plays a major part in the platform's success.

That's why Amiga developers targeted the PLAIN Amiga 1200.
Quote:
Quote:

Who cares? We never had a DSP3210 system!

Commodore's internal corporate politics is a problem.

In Italy we're used to say that you discovered the hot water.

BTW, Commodore's management had its big faults, but engineers were nonetheless: the above DSP was totally alien to the Amiga ecosystem.
Quote:
Quote:

And here I've highlighted again a word for YOUR convenience.

Who cares about what 3D games are using NOW?

At the AGA time the situation was totally different and WE, programmers, used WHAT WAS AVAILABLE.

ID Software's argument is about Amiga's majority install base composition and they are aware of a small minority of Amigas have 68040 and graphics card configuration.

Yes. And you know what? Software houses have to MAKE MONEY. So they targeted the most common configurations for a platform.
Quote:

Quote:

3D games were released even for 8 bit home computers which had only 8-bit integer registers. How it was possible, since they lacked "FP32 datatype"?!? That's a mystery for you, eh?

Irrelevant.

Ah, no answer: that's a "news" with you. When you cannot give an answer, then the question becomes irrelevant.

It's crystal clear that 8-bit system rendering 3D graphics were using magic wands for calculating the scene's geometry using the (unavailable at the time) FP32 datatype...
Quote:
Quote:

YOUR problem is that, as I've said before, you're living completely detached from the reality & history, so you're mixing things of completely different periods of time drawing totally wrong conclusions.

You can't handle the truth on IBM VGA is fucking slow.

See above: IBM was NOT the only one selling VGA cards AND this card was released on 1987 (FIVE years BEFORE the AGA).
Quote:
The real answer is, it depends on the frame buffer's implementation.

So, you complained about YOUR statement (which I've answered to) and NOW you give the SAME ANSWER to YOURSELF.

As I've said before, you need a really go one to take a look at you!
Quote:
Throwing Athlon XP 2200+ (1800 Mhz) wouldn't solve IBM VGA's slow frame buffer behavior!

First, see above.

Second, my crystal ball says that IBM released its VGA on 1987. Whereas AMD released the Athlon XP 2200+ 2002 (15 years late). Plus, it also says that IBM's VGA used MicroChannel: how you cold connect it to an Athlon XP 2200+ motherboard is another mystery...

Is it the same absurd and non-sense of comparing an Amiga 1200 + PiStorm32 to what was available on... rolling drum... 1992?

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