@Karlos

Quote:

Karlos wrote: Serious question. Does anyone actually hate PPC?

Hate? Heavens no!

Back in 1993 I started using Macs at work, and in 1994 I bought myself a used Mac LC II to join the club, timely coinciding with Commodore's bankruptcy.
I started reading Mac magazines at the same rate I kept reading Amiga magazines, and I was excitedly reading about all things PowerPC.
Alas, I wasn't earning much in those days; well not enough to keep up both Amiga gear and 68k Mac gear, and purchase expensive PowerMac gear.
I was never an intel hater either, though I did (and do) favour alternatives and underdogs, but in late 1995 also joined the PC club with a Pentium 90 machine.

Despite a growing interest in Mac and software available for System 7.x, which also manifested as running ShapeShifter on my 040 towered A1200 Frankenmiggie, my first entry in the world of RISC and PowerPC (at home) was the BlizzardPPC + Bvision. At this point I was working for an R&D department of a major mining company and had been introduced to Irix on MIPS.

Apple was pulled from the precipice of failure, gigs came and went, I got introduced to Windows NT (64bit) running on a DEC Alpha, Solaris on UltraSPARC, and then also more PowerPC from Steve's Apple Redux.
Where other RISC systems fell by the wayside, Apple's PowerPC systems were going from strength to to strength. There was a lot to like here.
To the point that I was devastated, though not surprised, when Apple announced they were switching away from PowerPC to intel. Bye bye alternative CPU for consumer computing applications.

In the years, I have owned many G3, G4, and G5 Macs, so "hate" would be almost the opposite of what I felt about PowerPC. I say almost opposite because I never "loved" it, as such. It'd be more accurate to say that I was fond of it.

PowerPC had its proverbial moment in the sun. Some might say it was left out in the sun for too long. And when it comes to anything Amiga and PPC, it's sharing the desert with bleached cattle skulls and tumbleweed, and the sound of vultures overhead.

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@Hypex

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With PCI MIDI cards the ST would have been gone after that.

I used a Yamaha OPL3 ISA sound card into the 1996 Pentium150 era. The joystick port has a cable adapter for external MIDI.

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Didn't think of doing that. Good idea. Faster than a real Mac until a MacStorm comes out,

The current PiStorm for Mac is based on a 68000 socket for Macintosh Classic and it's monochrome. It's using the slower Linux-hosted 68K emulator i.e. it's no Emu68.

A super fast 68K CPU with monochrome display capability is nearly useless.

Macintosh II has a 68030 CPU and color display support.

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That brings me back to the 90s. Needing a switch box. It tends to be popular to convert RTG to VGA. Though I wonder if it would lose quality that way. Of course even that way needs a monitor to support 15Khz unless a messy scan doubler is involved.

My Dell flat panel for A1200 supports 15 kHz VGA.

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

@Kronos

Quote:

Kronos wrote: @Hammer Wow you found an example where AGA goes down to not even being a dumb framebuffeer

An uber-powerful 68K CPU makes C= AGA HAM8 (compressed pixel) useful for high-color texture map 3D.

C= AGA chipset is useful for 320x200 and 320x256 resolution action games and it can give ET4000AX ISA a run for its money.

For 640x480p resolution with action graphics use case, RTG with fast I/O is needed.

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

@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote: An uber-powerful 68K CPU makes C= AGA HAM8 (compressed pixel) useful for high-color texture map 3D.

More like you need an über-powerful 68k CPU to get a pixelated pseudo 16bit low FPS full of artifacts mess while even a bottom tier PC of the same vintage could just push the 16bit image into the VGA card (at higher FPS and/or higher res).

Those "games" are nice tech demos, but nothing more. If you wanted to actually play them you'd be much better served with a proper 8bit image.


Edit:
"dumb framebuffer" refers to the CPU doing all the GFX and then pushing it into GFX memory.
In these cases the CPU needs to do the extra step of encoding the image for HAM since AGA can't even show the raw image.

Hence worse than "dumb framebuffer"

Last edited by Kronos on 21-Jan-2024 at 07:59 AM.

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@OneTimer1

Quote:

OneTimer1 wrote: @Karlos You forgot the Coldfire and some (IMHO still existing 68k MCUs), the Coldfire seemed to be done by a team that never read and 68k manual and NXP is going to ARM now. If we would follow, we should switch to i.MX8 instead of RaPi on the PiStorm. https://www.nxp.com/products/processors-and-microcontrollers/arm-processors/i-mx-applications-processors/i-mx-8-applications-processors:IMX8-SERIES

DART-MX8M (quad-core ARM Cortex A53) is similar to RPi 3A and its asking price is $67 which is relatively low risk.

DART's IGP is Vivante GC7000Lite.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Vivante-GC7000UL.146756.0.html
Vivante GC7000UL is similar to Broadcom VideoCore-IV and ARM Mali-T720 in 3DMark Ice Storm Graphics benchmark.

SPEAR-MX8 has dual-core ARM Cortex A72 and 2X Vivante GC7000VX IGP.

For performance beyond AC68080 or 68060 Rev 6 100Mhz, Emu68 support is important for ARM Cortex A53 class CPUs.

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

@Kronos

Quote:

Kronos wrote: More like you need an über-powerful 68k CPU to get a pixelated pseudo 16bit low FPS full of artifacts mess while even a bottom tier PC of the same vintage could just push the 16bit image into the VGA card (at higher FPS and/or higher res). Those "games" are nice tech demos, but nothing more. If you wanted to actually play them you'd be much better served with a proper 8bit image. Edit: "dumb framebuffer" refers to the CPU doing all the GFX and then pushing it into GFX memory. In these cases the CPU needs to do the extra step of encoding the image for HAM since AGA can't even show the raw image. Hence worse than "dumb framebuffer"

Example

https://youtu.be/7NVOjZ7-rhI?t=603
Rzyen 9 3900X (12 cores/24 threads) with low-end A520 chipset motherboard and retro 1994-era Teseng Labs ET4000/W32 2MB PCI on Windows 10. The built-in Windows 10 video driver for Tseng Labs ET4000/W32 PCI only has grey-scale support.

Windows 10's GUI is color on 1996 Matrox Mystique PCI.

Windows 10 GUI effects are active via CPU software render WARP (Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform). WARP employs just-in-time compilation to x86 machine code and support for vector extensions such as 128-bit SSE2 and SSE4.1

In Windows 10, WARP has been updated to support Direct3D 12 at feature level 12_1.
This is similar to Swiftshader Vulkan and Direct9 software renderers.

Modern CPUs have assimilated vector math co-processors.

UEFI Class 2 modern PC still has "retro PC" support via the CSM feature.

I use the VSTi Yamaha S-YXG50, software YXG50 synthesizer instead of the Yamaha XG ymf724 PCI card.

Last edited by Hammer on 21-Jan-2024 at 10:18 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 21-Jan-2024 at 10:16 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 21-Jan-2024 at 10:11 AM.

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

@Hammer

"Example" for what?

That mixing HW decades apart gives weird results 100% unrelated to any real life usage?

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@Kronos

You seem oddly fixated on the idea that Uber 68K is a bad thing. Why did anyone with an 020 buy an 060, with all the complications ans loss of compatibility that comes with, when they could just have had an 030?

Obviously people wanted faster machines. Just because those machines are now retro doesn't mean people don't want to make them faster. There are more 68060 cards available today than ever, provided you can find a 68060.

PiStorm running Emu68 isn't just an Uber 68K, it's also an RTG solution, and from my personal experience anyway, a faster 68K and RTG were the two most significant upgrades.

Another advantage of something like Emu68, is that while emulating a specific CPU (e.g. 68040) for overall compatibility purposes, there's no reason it can't include all the user-mode instructions of earlier models that traditionally have had to go via traps or patcher software to support, so it offers the possibility of bettet compatibility than the original silicon.

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@Karlos

Quote:

Karlos wrote: @Kronos You seem oddly fixated on the idea that Uber 68K is a bad thing.

Nope, I just don't care for it.
Which wasn't the point but that you needed either an unobtainium 060 or a non existing überfast If you wanted to get that eye-cancer 12bit "gaming" experience back in the day.
On the other hand you could just use a slower CPU and send the raw data to a VGA chip. I'd wager that a fast 030 with a PicassoII could do it.

I don't know why and how this specific "AGA is just a dumb framebuffer" discussion started but it's quite clear that the results seen in the videos are worse than what a proper 16bit framebuffer would look like AND require more CPU power.


To summarize:
- I don't care about the CPU used or faked
- I don't care about the chipset, the combo of 68000+OCS+0.5/1MB made sense everything better was just the best they (C=) could/would do with limited resources
- I do care about APIs and existing SW that just don't exist on 68k (and most likely won't in the foreseeable future)
- I do care a lot about A500/600/1200 KBD cases, as in that I never ever want to use that c##p again

So to summarize further:
If someone does a mashup of Amithlon and MorphOS, I am in.
If it runs on the rPi, I am still in.
If it comes with OCS/AGA emu or SuperAGA, I am in as long as I don't have use it.

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@Kronos

I agree - I'm also in favour of a standalone Emu68K box without native chipset support for people that just want to run system friendly, RTG compatible applications.

Personally, though, the PiStorm is ticking an entire set of boxes no other solution does.

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@michalsc

Quote:

Not me :) Otherwise I wouldn't port AROS to SAM440 and to EfikaPPC. I wouldn't read (and have ordered paper version) all the PPC manuals and wouldn't have studied this architecture to write quite a lot of low-level stuff for it.

“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other..."
Matthew 6:24-26


You should had pick either Zune or PPC, we all know that no human can master both! That's why Zune is full of bugs and ppcamiga1's so annoyed by it! xD

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@Kronos

Quote:

Kronos wrote: @Hammer "Example" for what? That mixing HW decades apart gives weird results 100% unrelated to any real life usage?

Why are you posting in the Amiga forum then? 68K Amiga is retro.

The real-life use cases for PC's backward compatibility are mostly embedded and nostalgia.

Last edited by Hammer on 22-Jan-2024 at 03:02 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 22-Jan-2024 at 01:21 AM.

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

@Kronos

Quote:

Nope, I just don't care for it. Which wasn't the point but that you needed either an unobtainium 060 or a non existing überfast If you wanted to get that eye-cancer 12bit "gaming" experience back in the day.

Nostalgia with a what if.

Quote:

On the other hand you could just use a slower CPU and send the raw data to a VGA chip.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=octArwHpaiY
Quake 1 on Athlon XP 2200+ (1.8 Ghz), Soltek SL75-KAV (Via KT133A), 512MB SDR CL3 with IBM's genuine VGA.

IBM's 1987-era VGA is rubbish. PC's VGA cloners have improved IBM's VGA standard.

The results of time demo were:
360x480 - 3.2 FPS
320x240 - 7 FPS
320x200 - 8.6 FPS

With PiStorm-Emu68-RPI 3A (ARM Cortex A53 @ 1.4 Ghz) uber-fast soft68040 CPU, Amiga 500/1000's 1985-era HAM6 mode is faster than IBM's original VGA!

PS; My Dad owned an IBM PS/2 Model 55SX (386SX-16 with IBM VGA on MCA 16 bit) before He replaced with a 386DX-33 PC clone with ET4000AX in 1992. I know IBM VGA is garbage.

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I'd wager that a fast 030 with a Picasso II could do it.

Picasso II and 50 Mhz 030 will not run Quake since 030 is missing FPU.

68882 FPU is slow when compared to 040 or 060's FPU!

Picasso II is based on Cirrus Logic GD5426 or GD5428 with a Zorro II interface. This is a well-known SVGA clone chipset.

The majority of A500/A1200 doesn't come with an out-of-the-box Zorro II slot.

I'm aware of the low-production volume bus boards like DCE GREX, Elbox Mediator, and Prometheus.

Elbox Mediator 1200 TX's six PCI slots and its glue logic are not cheap when a single PCI slot is needed for an RTG card.

https://thandor.net/benchmark/32
Doom benchmarks with Pentium 100Mhz
SpeedStar 24 (ET4000AX) = 32.49 fps
ET4000AX ISA = 32.06 fps
Cirrus Logic CL-GD5422 = 27.92 fps

https://thandor.net/object/514
Doom benchmarks with Pentium 4 2GHz
Intel 845G IGP = 156.25 FPS
Diamond Speed Star 24 = 36.43 FPS

Prove Amiga 2000 has beaten Escom's 400,000 PC sales in 1995.


Commodore Germany didn't cost reduced and mass-produced Zorro II equipped Amigas at the same level as PC clones equipped ISA slots.


What's needed in 1992-1994 is a cost-reduced CD32-like board with a single Zorro III and A1200 CPU slots in mass production like modern-day AMD's A520/A620 chipset mATX motherboards.

A single Zorro III equipped CD32-like PCB Amiga solution enables mass-produced Amigas with a Zorro III slot-capable graphics card.

Commodore's Zorro II and Zorro III install base are stuck in low volume numbers.

Low-cost AM4/AM5 motherboards have a single PCIe 16-lane and one or two PCIe 1-lane slots. This is designed for low-cost expandable gaming PCs.

In terms of core PC gaming performance, a low-cost $135 AUD MSI Pro B650M-P AM5 motherboard is just as capable as a higher $1000 AUD priced ASUS ROG Crossfire X670E Hero AM5 motherboard.

High-end ROG Crossfire X670E AM5 motherboards have ECC UDIMM memory support, can divide PCIe 5.0 16 lanes into two PCIe 5.0 8X lanes, additional USB 3 ports, additional
NVMe PCIe 5.0 slots, USB 4 port, additional SATA ports, better audio codec, lower temps VRMs and 'etc'. These are optional features, not core features.

I have MSI Pro B650M-P (low priced AM5), ASUS TUF X670E Plus WiFi (mid-priced AM5), and ASUS ROG Crossfire X670E Hero (high priced AM5). Optional features scale with price.

Last edited by Hammer on 22-Jan-2024 at 02:28 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 22-Jan-2024 at 02:20 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 22-Jan-2024 at 02:13 AM.

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

@Karlos

Quote:

Karlos wrote: @Kronos I agree - I'm also in favour of a standalone Emu68K box without native chipset support for people that just want to run system friendly, RTG compatible applications. Personally, though, the PiStorm is ticking an entire set of boxes no other solution does.

I'm in favor of a standalone Emu68 box with FPGA AGA Southbridge.

You're asking for another Amithlon with an ARM-based platform. Another DraCo or Amithlon is not acceptable.

I prefer a merged Apollo-Core's FPGA SAGA (acting like a Southbridge) with the A1200 CPU slot.
The accelerator CPU+RTG card can evolve while Southbridge AGA can stay as is.

Last edited by Hammer on 22-Jan-2024 at 02:45 AM.

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

@Hammer

Different things are acceptable to different people. Not everyone wants what you or I want. As long as there is the choice, that's what matters.

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@Hammer

Somewhere there a Pistorm that connect to a FPGA, it should be somewhat akin to what you describe

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@Hammer

It seems you still don't understand what "dumb framebuffer" means and why the examples shown are ones that do use the chipram as one only with added benefits of the CPU having to do some extra heavy lifting to encode the data.

It doesn't matter how many Amigas had RTG (I'd say about as many as those with a 060) it is just a simple fact that that a proper dumb 16bit framebuffer as offered with most RTG cards would produce a better image with lower CPU usage.

Neither of the demos is Quake so we could only guess how these engines do their math and how an 030(+882) or real 060 (since the both use emulation in the videos) would fare.
Both run at extremely low res with questionable FPS, most likely due to the 12bit encoding taking up so much time&bandwidth.

In order for AGA to be more than a dumb framebuffer one would have to use copper&blitter which just doesn't make sense for a 3D game and even does not make sense once you combine it with a 030 or better.

As usual no idea what you want to tell us with all the PC parts spec drivel that followed.

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@Kronos

HAM routine can be really fast, if you’re not looking for best fit color, or never try to optimize static colors.

Pixel 1, Red, Pixel 2, Blue, Pixel 3 Green,

but you will look resolution, and always get the blur transitions, perhaps picture quality improved by figuring out if Red, Green or Blue that needs modifying, and not having fixed order, but that increase CPU load. You need to compute biggest Color channel Delta of previous color.

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@Kronos

Reading between the lines, I think what Hammer is saying is that if you combine AGA era PC display hardware with a more recent CPU and compare that combination to AGA + PiStorm that the latter gives better results for equivalent titles.

I don't know how much I agree, but what I will say is that things like rendering in HAM may still require AGA to act as a dumb framebuffer and take more CPU to do, but so what? That's exactly where we are. Thanks to things like the PiStorm we now have more CPU power than we know what to do with, so why not have some fun see what the original hardware is capable of without the CPU limitations? Isn't that the whole point?

Last edited by Karlos on 22-Jan-2024 at 05:48 PM.

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@NutsAboutAmiga

A 16bit 320x200 screen is 128k, want to refresh at 25fps you need to read 3.2MB/s + plus doing the conversion.

And then you need to push the resulting 2MB/s into the "dumb framebuffer" (aka chipram) which is bandwidth constrained.

And still running the rest of the game/tech demo.

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