@Kronos

Quote:

Kronos wrote: @cdimauro Quote: cdimauro wrote: One day maybe you'll write down how it was possible that the Amiga received so much support for professional software, despite the lack of high-resolution + stable graphics. Amiga did receive "support for professional software" in areas where video compatibility and high colors were essential,

Not only for that. 3D doesn't require TV-signal compatibility, for example, but exploded thanks to the Amiga.
Quote:

everything else was spotty compared to PC, Mac or even the ST. The A2024 or SuperHighRes Denise would only have helped if they had been available at launch (having that launch a bit earlier would have helped a lot) at reasonable prices. For SuperHighRes it would also have needed to have some sense pin on the video forcing WB into that mode at startup avoiding the need for multisync monitor if one wished to use it in just that mode. As it was it was a computer for video and GFX steering into game console with the A500 release.

Yes, it would have been good to have some high-res & stable video output for better supporting the professionals. There's no doubt about that, and that's the reason we got a variety of graphic cards (and also sound card).

Nevertheless, this didn't stop software houses to support the Amiga with professional software (beyond TV-signal applications), even for market segments where a stable high-res was required (CAD, DTP, ...).

@coder76

Quote:

coder76 wrote: About the Amiga custom chipset, I still think it's the right way to have this $dff000 address space for everything, including a 3D unit. Not a separate graphics card, like Nvidia in desktop computers, these 3D chips for mobile phones are also a lot smaller and don't require cooling. Here's e.g. this Maggie 3D unit for the Apollo SAGA: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5rxggxxPzYg I'm sure, performance-wise, it's at least a thousand times slower than modern 3D cards, but it is also more compact and minimalistic that suits the Amiga system better. And you don't need 3D driver software to use the 3D unit, just plug in some values in $dff000, and it will work.

The problem lays on your last statement: that was the very bad way to follow.

It was good at the beginning, when resources were scarse and we need to squeeze the most from the hardware (I was a game developer and I know very well that).

But already on 1987 the competition has shown that the "chipset" (video and audio components) market was evolving quite fast and in different ways, that it wasn't possible anymore to thing about directly hit the hardware, because this would have put SEVERE constraints to the hardware development & evolution (read: carry all the legacy each time).

By end of 80s it was evident that the best way would have been to let a software layer do the job of interfacing with hardware.

That's the reason why Commodore never published the AGA specs, and AAA would have been only ECS-compatible.

@IntuitionAmiga

Quote:

IntuitionAmiga wrote: https://youtu.be/njGWWg69B4A Nice MVG video about the 68000.

GREAT video, thanks!

@Lou

Quote:

Lou wrote: Quote: IntuitionAmiga wrote: https://youtu.be/njGWWg69B4A Nice MVG video about the 68000. Did you notice how he mentioned Motorola's 680X line being just 1 customer: GM?

And what's the problem? At the very beginning the 68xx line was VERY EXPENSIVE, and it was reason why a small team coming from Motorola decided to develop the 6502.

But after that Motorola reduced as well the price, and developed also many other processors from the 68xx line (even binary-incompatible) that better covered the market and sold a lot.

You're not even able to contextualize and you've zero History knowledge, being completely blind by your hatred against Motorola and all its products. Fanatical!
Quote:

I've said this before. But now that someone else has said it, perhaps now some numb-skulls on this forum will listen to someone who's actually worked for Motorola...specifically their ISG division.

Irrelevant / out-of-context / pure fanatical hatred.
Quote:

Did you notice how powerful he said the 68000 is that arcade boards had to use 2 and/or 3 of them? /facepalm (while being clocked higher than computers as well...)

We have another King of Ignorance here, since you miss no opportunity to show how you completely luck any information about the things that you pretend to talk about.

Several arcade boards sported more 68000 processors because they were dedicated to DIFFERENT purposes (business logic, scene calculation, audio).

In general, having arcade boards with more processors was quite normal. And more widespread are systems with mixed processors. For example, a 68000 as the main processor and a cheaper 6502 or Z80 for handling the sound.

As usual, you talk of things where you've NO CLUE, AT ALL. IGNORANT!
Quote:

As we know, clock for clock - a 68000 can't even add 1+1 as fast as a 6502...meanwhile it also stores it to ram...so this test gimps the 6502 and it still wins...if the 68000 was forced to store the value back to RAM it wouldn't even be close...not that it was actually close... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k_jP73Ly7A

And here again, you share the same video with the crappiest "benchmark" ever made, which was created by someone which has no clue on what he talks about. Like you. And that's why you continuously report it, like a DUMMY PARROT.
Quote:

The comments are gold.

Sure, let's the take the first one:

As an emulator author, I have to say this test is suboptimal. You need real-world work to benchmark, which is why things like dhrystone exist. In point of fact, every time the m68000 accessed memory, it’s 4 clock cycles wait per 16 bits, whereas the 65816 and 6502 are 1 clock cycle per byte. So for instance doing 8-bit operations (very common then), 65816 would have an advantage over the m68000 and be roughly equal for 16-bit operations, just by memory wait time.



You're a poor, desperate, IGNORANT!
Quote:

Atari Lynx designers, David Needle and R.J. Mical (maybe y'all have heard of them) chose the 6502 instead of 68000 for a couple of reasons. https://forums.atariage.com/topic/249018-im-fine-with-the-lynxs-cpu-but-why-did-they-pick-a-6502-and-not-a-z80b/#findComment-3438437

The primary reason was simple the cost: the 6502 is WAY CHEAPER. Cheaper than ANYTHING ELSE.

The second reason was the power consumption, and since this is a MOBILE device, guess what: it's very important to keep the battery usage.

Other technical things reported in the interview are purely wrong or, very probably, written due to pure marketing reasons.
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Amiga used the 68000 from 1985 -> 1992 (A600). What a load of bull!

Amiga used also OTHER processors, IGNORANT!
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Thanks to Motorola, we didn't get A500/2000's with '020 base cpu in 1987.

ROFL. What has Motorola to do with that?!? It was COMMODORE's decision! The 68020 was already available from Motorola, already since SOME YEARS!
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Thanks to Motorola, we didn't get a CDTV with an '030 and who could afford an $3,379 A3000(030) in 1990? $3,699 for an A4000(040) in 1992? LOL!

Same as above: you have no clue, at all, of what you're talking about!
Quote:

Bill Mensch figured out Motorola sucked in the 70's. Hence the 6502.

And here again your complete ignorance: it was NOT Mensch that created the 6502!

You lack even the BASICS when you talk about your beloved CRAPProcessor!
Quote:

Finally - during 'hombre' development they realized Motorola sucked... Cheaper and better options were available.

Guess what: the 68k WAS ALREADY EOL BY MOTOROLA!

It was OBVIOUS that Commodore (and other computer vendors) where moving to OTHER platforms!

You don't know even the History because you're a complete ignorant, and continue to talk of things that you've no clue, at all!

@matthey

Quote:

matthey wrote: agami Quote: MVG just posted a nice retrospective on the 68000 68000 - The CPU ahead of its time (YouTube) IntuitionAmiga posted a link to the same video above in post #135. It is hot. 54k views in 8 hours 98k views in 14 hours Over 400 comments of mostly positive praise for the 68k too. Lou thinks the 68k is crap though. Motorola threw their beautiful 68k baby away for PPC and Trevor also traded the 68k for PPC with predictable failure. The 68k is the best CPU for education as the assembly code is like a high level language.

Kudos to the greatest processor ever!
Quote:

So much love for the 68k from the programmers! Then there is Lou, the Motorola CEO that threw the 68k away for PPC and Trevor who thought he could throw the 68k away for PPC too. PPC AmigaNOne and Amigaworld.net are dead but the 68k lives on elsewhere. I wish we could take advantage of this 68k love and momentum and bring back the 68k for real instead of ignoring the 68k market.

There's Lou because he's a blind fanatical of the 65xx, and since he tries to defend his beloved, but very crappy, processor, he feels the needs to hit Motorola and its products, with 68k as the primary target, to satisfy his violated ago (because Motorola's processors simply devasted the 6502 and all its successors).

It is a psychological defence of a blind religious fanatic, which is full of hatred against his "enemy".

@cdimauro

Quote:

You're not even able to contextualize and you've zero History knowledge, being completely blind by your hatred against Motorola and all its products. Fanatical!

Consider yourself unofficially warned, cdimauro - once I claim the moderator throne, all foul language, no matter how rightful deployed it may be, will be swiftly grounded, in the holy pursuit of a safe space, amen!

_________________
Indigo 3D Lounge, my second home.
The Illusion of Choice | Am*ga

@pixie

Quote:

pixie wrote: @cdimauro Quote: You're not even able to contextualize and you've zero History knowledge, being completely blind by your hatred against Motorola and all its products. Fanatical! Consider yourself unofficially warned, cdimauro - once I claim the moderator throne, all foul language, no matter how rightful deployed it may be, will be swiftly grounded, in the holy pursuit of a safe space, amen!

Ahem, from Lou:

Quote:

some numb-skulls on this forum

which is purely a personal offence.

Whereas I've just reported facts: he's incompetent and ignorant.

@cdimauro

Quote:

cdimauro wrote: @coder76 Quote: coder76 wrote: About the Amiga custom chipset, I still think it's the right way to have this $dff000 address space for everything, including a 3D unit. Not a separate graphics card, like Nvidia in desktop computers, these 3D chips for mobile phones are also a lot smaller and don't require cooling. Here's e.g. this Maggie 3D unit for the Apollo SAGA: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5rxggxxPzYg I'm sure, performance-wise, it's at least a thousand times slower than modern 3D cards, but it is also more compact and minimalistic that suits the Amiga system better. And you don't need 3D driver software to use the 3D unit, just plug in some values in $dff000, and it will work. The problem lays on your last statement: that was the very bad way to follow. It was good at the beginning, when resources were scarse and we need to squeeze the most from the hardware (I was a game developer and I know very well that). But already on 1987 the competition has shown that the "chipset" (video and audio components) market was evolving quite fast and in different ways, that it wasn't possible anymore to thing about directly hit the hardware, because this would have put SEVERE constraints to the hardware development & evolution (read: carry all the legacy each time). By end of 80s it was evident that the best way would have been to let a software layer do the job of interfacing with hardware. That's the reason why Commodore never published the AGA specs, and AAA would have been only ECS-compatible.

Well, I think a well planned hardware interface is good to have, there's also nothing that prevents abstracting the $dff000 custom chips address space with software. And this has been done in AmigaOS, of course. But I think the hardware interface should also be allowed to be used directly, that way it has to be designed well and also take into account future expansions. Software abstraction is also used to hide badly designed hardware, which may be a problem in today's designs.

On the Amiga side, we have the OCS,ECS,AGA, and SAGA (unofficial) chipsets, there is nothing that prevents innovating more in a similar fashion, the performance is not so important with the Amiga platform, as it is not going to be a mainstream solution ever. PPC Amigas tried to go this modern way with their PPC CPUs and graphics cards, but it failed.

And these days, there are projects that attempt to recreate the old Amiga custom chips in FPGA, and along with the CIA's, you can soon build new Amigas with a motherboard, which are fully compatible with old hardware, and with a lot of improvements, like USB, Wifi, SDcards, ethernet, etc.

@coder76

quite oposite
ppc amiga was success
on ppc you have at least graphics as fast as on cheap pc from win95 era
gvb start this whole natami/apollo/vampire thing in 2008 passed 17 years and natami/apollo/vampire still not reach ps1 speed and features
it is clear that gvb and his team is unable to deliver somethign that is just usable
amiga users should revert to good old ECS and use some better graphics in parallel

@coder76

Quote:

coder76 wrote: @cdimauro Quote: cdimauro wrote: @coder76 The problem lays on your last statement: that was the very bad way to follow. It was good at the beginning, when resources were scarse and we need to squeeze the most from the hardware (I was a game developer and I know very well that). But already on 1987 the competition has shown that the "chipset" (video and audio components) market was evolving quite fast and in different ways, that it wasn't possible anymore to thing about directly hit the hardware, because this would have put SEVERE constraints to the hardware development & evolution (read: carry all the legacy each time). By end of 80s it was evident that the best way would have been to let a software layer do the job of interfacing with hardware. That's the reason why Commodore never published the AGA specs, and AAA would have been only ECS-compatible. Well, I think a well planned hardware interface is good to have, there's also nothing that prevents abstracting the $dff000 custom chips address space with software. And this has been done in AmigaOS, of course. But I think the hardware interface should also be allowed to be used directly, that way it has to be designed well and also take into account future expansions.

You can't have both: a good hardware registers interface which is future-proof.

The reason is already on the video that you've shared: nowadays the 3D is done in a completely different way compared to the PS1-like way that you've shown.
Quote:

Software abstraction is also used to hide badly designed hardware, which may be a problem in today's designs.

This furtherly proves that it's better to avoid directly hitting the hardware, and relay on an software interface.
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On the Amiga side, we have the OCS,ECS,AGA, and SAGA (unofficial) chipsets, there is nothing that prevents innovating more in a similar fashion,

As I've already stated, AGA specs weren't published by Commodore, for good reasons.

And, BTW, AGA is another example of very Bad-By-Design hardware: a horrible patch over ECS.
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the performance is not so important with the Amiga platform, as it is not going to be a mainstream solution ever.

Right, but you have not so many resources on a post-Amiga platform.

However, this doesn't justify directly hitting the hardware. Other solutions (better processor, better chipset) should be found.
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PPC Amigas tried to go this modern way with their PPC CPUs and graphics cards, but it failed.

They were/aren't Amigas, rather AmigaOnes.

And they failed because they were/are just ports / reimplementation of the Amiga OS, carrying all its limits (bringing nothing modern), with the added "bonus" of having select a CPU family which was already not competitive anymore.
Quote:

And these days, there are projects that attempt to recreate the old Amiga custom chips in FPGA, and along with the CIA's, you can soon build new Amigas with a motherboard, which are fully compatible with old hardware, and with a lot of improvements, like USB, Wifi, SDcards, ethernet, etc.

That's very good!

And to be more clear, I've absolutely nothing against having more features on the Amiga platform. My concerns are about HOW those things are designed AND, more important, how they are exposed & used.

@ppcamiga1

Quote:

ppcamiga1 wrote: @coder76 quite oposite ppc amiga was success

PPC Amiga not even exists!

In fact, it's a pure invention.
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on ppc you have at least graphics as fast as on cheap pc from win95 era

So, old crap!
Quote:

gvb start this whole natami/apollo/vampire thing in 2008 passed 17 years and natami/apollo/vampire still not reach ps1 speed and features it is clear that gvb and his team is unable to deliver somethign that is just usable

They have delivered MUCH MORE compared to all PowerPC "Amiga-like" platforms.
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amiga users should revert to good old ECS

Good? ECS?
Quote:

and use some better graphics in parallel

Which they are doing. It's only you that don't know it, because you're living on your parallel universe of UnderPoweredPCs...

cdimauro Quote:

agami Quote: MVG just posted a nice retrospective on the 68000 68000 - The CPU ahead of its time (YouTube) Kudos to the greatest processor ever!

Now 182k views and 999 comments in 2 days for the 68000 video. Does Amigaworld.net even have as many posts in 6 months as the video has comments in 2 days? Is PPC AmigaNOne that much of a turn off to 68k Amiga fans considering the Amiga is the most mentioned 68k system in the comments?

I found the following recent videos with many Amiga engineers.

Inside Commodore Amiga's History Part 1: Stories, Secrets & Original Lorraine Prototype at VCF East
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_AYDkuMg-U

Inside Commodore Amiga's History Part 2: Engineers Tell Stories, Reveal Secrets & Launch of Amiga
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvTOFYykBTQ

I can not give equal blame for the demise of Commodore to the engineers when Commodore upper management was so incompetent and corrupt. If Jeff Porter had been in charge instead of Medhi Ali and his Bill Sydnes hire, the Amiga would have had half a chance. Bill Sydnes was hired because he said the Amiga 500 could be cost reduced more. The Bill Sydnes Amiga 300 turned into the Amiga 600 though. Everyone else in engineering had faith in Jeff Porter's leadership except upper management. Engineers need leadership too but upper management can sabotage even the best engineers.

cdimauro Quote:

There's Lou because he's a blind fanatical of the 65xx, and since he tries to defend his beloved, but very crappy, processor, he feels the needs to hit Motorola and its products, with 68k as the primary target, to satisfy his violated ago (because Motorola's processors simply devasted the 6502 and all its successors). It is a psychological defence of a blind religious fanatic, which is full of hatred against his "enemy".

Lou claims to have been an embedded programmer even though he has never demonstrated any knowledge of 6502 assembly programming or computer architecture. The blind PPC zealots like Trevor and ppcamiga1 surely have never programmed or debugged code at a low level on the PPC or they would not love it. Amazing is how many 68k assembly programmers commented in the "68000 - The CPU ahead of its time" video including many comments of how great the 68k was to program after upgrading from the 6502. There are likely more 68k assembly programmers commenting in that video than PPC AmigaNOne programmers remaining and the number of PPC assembly programmers would be a tiny fraction of this. I do not think any architecture has been as loved as the 68k but then it remains one of the easiest to program and understand at a low level ever. It should be brought back for educational purposes if for no other reason but I believe it is still viable for some markets judging by the performance metrics.

Last edited by matthey on 23-Apr-2025 at 08:53 PM.

@thread

First and foremost, I'd like to re-iterate that cdimauro is retarded.

Moving along...

PC Engine w/CDROM and ARCADE card (2MB expansion) handles NEO GEO Arcade: Art of Fighting port in 1992 amazingly.

NEC developed a successor to the PC Engine (after the SuperGrafx) called the PC-FX in 1992. Released in 1994 due to software delays. It had 2MB of RAM. It bet the farm on pre-rendered backgrounds with sprite overlays rather than 3D hardware. Never left Japan unfortunately but was a 2D visual masterpiece.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5zGQJG3-tU

It has their own custom RISC processor and took their 2D gpu to the next level with full 16bit color effects and built-in jpeg decoding...

If you watch some videos on it, the graphical effects were amazing.

1992.

In 1992 Commodore was still stuck on a 14mhz 020. What a joke!

Are we seeing a common theme here for the 80's+90's?

ACORN: 6502 -> ARM RISC
NEC: 65C02 so fast that it lasted to 1995 -> V-810 RISC
Nintendo: 6502 -> 65816 -> MIPS
SEGA: Z80-> crap -> SuperH RISC
Atari: 6502 -> crap -> same crap+RISC -> dead
Amiga: crap to bigger crap -> dead.

@Kronos

Quote:

Kronos wrote: @Lou Just the usual nonsense... Noone in their right mind used DIV/MUL and saying that some better 8bit CPU would have been available in 87 really doesn't help with a design that was started 5 years prior and ended up late to the party. Sure you can construct cases were that beefed up 8bit beats an 68k. If you ignore the extra man hours needed to unlock that power in contrast to the ease of coding on the 68k. You can also rant endlessly bout hypothetical even better 8bit that could've, would've and surely should NOT have been. When the Amiga was started 68000 was the best choice. During it's development both before and at C= there were no resources and surly no time to be wasted on a major HW overhaul. Once it was released no other CPU option available at that time would have justified an architecture change. When updates were needed no viable alternative to 020/030/040(/060) was available. When the 68k line was declared EOL PPC was a viable solution that just made perfect sense with the information available at that time.

I agree with your description of MUL/DIV but that retard, cdimauro, said it was one the the things that makes this crap cpu superior. I even told the fool that math was generally done with LUTs (look up tables) for speed but once a retard, always a retard...

68000 may have been the best choice in 1982 or 83, but they never retracted that boat anchor...because that's what it was in the end. Dead weight.

@Lou

Quote:

68000 may have been the best choice in 1982 or 83, but they never retracted that boat anchor...

Even Commodore were planning on abandoning the 68K in favour of the PA-RISC in Hombre.

Quote:

Amiga: crap to bigger crap -> dead.

In the Amiga's market the 68K did make sense and to be fair, the 060 was competitive with the Pentium, at least when it first shipped.

That said even Motorola had seen the writing on the wall in the 80s and produced the 88,000 series. The 060 did around 60 MIPS, the 88110 had similar performance 2 years previously, on a slower silicon process.

_________________
Whyzzat?

@matthey

Quote:

matthey wrote: cdimauro Quote: agami [quote] MVG just posted a nice retrospective on the 68000 68000 - The CPU ahead of its time (YouTube) Kudos to the greatest processor ever!

Now 182k views and 999 comments in 2 days for the 68000 video. Does Amigaworld.net even have as many posts in 6 months as the video has comments in 2 days? Is PPC AmigaNOne that much of a turn off to 68k Amiga fans considering the Amiga is the most mentioned 68k system in the comments?[/quote]
That wasn't an Amiga, and it's the reason why the Amiga market is still much more florid and people recall the Amiga not such FrankenPC-x86+PowerPC.

Amiga made the history and that's the reason why it's still greatly recalled. What came after are just jokes.
Quote:

I found the following recent videos with many Amiga engineers. Inside Commodore Amiga's History Part 1: Stories, Secrets & Original Lorraine Prototype at VCF East https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_AYDkuMg-U Inside Commodore Amiga's History Part 2: Engineers Tell Stories, Reveal Secrets & Launch of Amiga https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvTOFYykBTQ

Thanks. I'll take my time to enjoy them.
Quote:

I can not give equal blame for the demise of Commodore to the engineers when Commodore upper management was so incompetent and corrupt. If Jeff Porter had been in charge instead of Medhi Ali and his Bill Sydnes hire, the Amiga would have had half a chance. Bill Sydnes was hired because he said the Amiga 500 could be cost reduced more. The Bill Sydnes Amiga 300 turned into the Amiga 600 though. Everyone else in engineering had faith in Jeff Porter's leadership except upper management. Engineers need leadership too but upper management can sabotage even the best engineers.

Managers were incompetent, and that's fully granted.

However, take a look at the Amiga evolution and you can see what the engineers were "capable" of making to "evolve" the platform and how long it took to have something. They 've show incompetence as well (well, Atari wasn't in that much better position, but we cared about our beloved Amiga).
Quote:

cdimauro Quote: There's Lou because he's a blind fanatical of the 65xx, and since he tries to defend his beloved, but very crappy, processor, he feels the needs to hit Motorola and its products, with 68k as the primary target, to satisfy his violated ago (because Motorola's processors simply devasted the 6502 and all its successors). It is a psychological defence of a blind religious fanatic, which is full of hatred against his "enemy". Lou claims to have been an embedded programmer even though he has never demonstrated any knowledge of 6502 assembly programming or computer architecture.

Indeed.
Quote:

The blind PPC zealots like Trevor and ppcamiga1 surely have never programmed or debugged code at a low level on the PPC or they would not love it.

Managers are exempted by having such level of technical knowledge. However, they should have competent people to grossly explain them the pros and cons of technical stuff.

Anyway, I've yet to find someone who liked PowerPC assembly programming...
Quote:

Amazing is how many 68k assembly programmers commented in the "68000 - The CPU ahead of its time" video including many comments of how great the 68k was to program after upgrading from the 6502. There are likely more 68k assembly programmers commenting in that video than PPC AmigaNOne programmers remaining and the number of PPC assembly programmers would be a tiny fraction of this. I do not think any architecture has been as loved as the 68k but then it remains one of the easiest to program and understand at a low level ever. It should be brought back for educational purposes if for no other reason but I believe it is still viable for some markets judging by the performance metrics.

Absolutely! 68k was, and still is, a joy to program!

@Lou

Quote:

Lou wrote: @thread First and foremost, I'd like to re-iterate that cdimauro is retarded.

Guess what: only personal offences instead of replying to the technical things which I've written.

Poor baby: do you think that this would satisfy your violated ago? Go cry to the mon.
Quote:

Moving along... PC Engine w/CDROM and ARCADE card (2MB expansion) handles NEO GEO Arcade: Art of Fighting port in 1992 amazingly.

Irrelevant?
Quote:

NEC developed a successor to the PC Engine (after the SuperGrafx) called the PC-FX in 1992. Released in 1994 due to software delays. It had 2MB of RAM. It bet the farm on pre-rendered backgrounds with sprite overlays rather than 3D hardware. Never left Japan unfortunately but was a 2D visual masterpiece. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5zGQJG3-tU It has their own custom RISC processor and took their 2D gpu to the next level with full 16bit color effects and built-in jpeg decoding...

Oh, so the customized 6502 that they used with the PC Engine was so powerful and future-proof, that the they decided to move to a RISC for its successor. : : :
Quote:

If you watch some videos on it, the graphical effects were amazing. 1992. In 1992 Commodore was still stuck on a 14mhz 020. What a joke!

No, it's you that ignore the History of Commodore, since machines were already developed well before the 1992 with much better processors.

And on 1992 we had the Amiga 4000 with a 68040.

IGNORANT!
Quote:

Are we seeing a common theme here for the 80's+90's? ACORN: 6502 -> ARM RISC NEC: 65C02 so fast that it lasted to 1995 -> V-810 RISC Nintendo: 6502 -> 65816 -> MIPS SEGA: Z80-> crap -> SuperH RISC Atari: 6502 -> crap -> same crap+RISC -> dead

Yes, I see the pattern: crappy 8-bit processors were so much future-proof that they got replaced with much better processors...
Quote:

Amiga: crap to bigger crap -> dead.

And here comes again the hatred. Crap for what, invidious?

Go to your mom and cry, baby!
Quote:

Lou wrote: @Kronos Quote: Kronos wrote: @Lou Just the usual nonsense... Noone in their right mind used DIV/MUL and saying that some better 8bit CPU would have been available in 87 really doesn't help with a design that was started 5 years prior and ended up late to the party. Sure you can construct cases were that beefed up 8bit beats an 68k. If you ignore the extra man hours needed to unlock that power in contrast to the ease of coding on the 68k. You can also rant endlessly bout hypothetical even better 8bit that could've, would've and surely should NOT have been. When the Amiga was started 68000 was the best choice. During it's development both before and at C= there were no resources and surly no time to be wasted on a major HW overhaul. Once it was released no other CPU option available at that time would have justified an architecture change. When updates were needed no viable alternative to 020/030/040(/060) was available. When the 68k line was declared EOL PPC was a viable solution that just made perfect sense with the information available at that time. I agree with your description of MUL/DIV but that retard, cdimauro, said it was one the the things that makes this crap cpu superior.

And here we see that you're not even to understand elementary things which people write. And, because of that, start derailing inventing things. And, of course, pure personal offences coming from the blind fanatical with his violated ago.

Who is the retarded here?

Anyway, care to PROVE what you've written? I'm preparing the next wagon of popcorns.
Quote:

I even told the fool that math was generally done with LUTs (look up tables) for speed but once a retard, always a retard...

Sure, and what's YOUR 6502 code that emulates the above MULs and DIVs? Show me how to use such LUTs! And let's take a look at how many cycles the routines took to accomplish to the task.

But guess what: you've never shown 6502 coming from you, because you can only bark and insult people. INCOMPETENT and IGNORANT!
Quote:

68000 may have been the best choice in 1982 or 83,

Remove the may: it WAS!
Quote:

but they never retracted that boat anchor...

Why they should have? Motorola processors were competitive in performance with the equivalent x86 ones.

Which kind of other processors should have been used? Your super crappy 65xx?
Quote:

because that's what it was in the end. Dead weight.

On... 1994. History counts. Something that you don't know of course, blind fanatical ignorant!

Lou Quote:

In 1992 Commodore was still stuck on a 14mhz 020. What a joke!

The problem was Commodore still using a 5000nm NMOS custom chip fab process from the mid-1970s. AA+ was planned to be all CMOS, integration to 2 chips and should have allowed 56MHz CPU and chipset operation according to Commodore documentation. Even 28MHz would have kept the Amiga more competitive. This was a Commodore problem and not a Motorola problem.

ARM was stuck with ARM2@8MHz for several years and it was late 1991 with the Acorn Archimedes A5000 before an ARM3@25MHz was released. Commodore had a 68040@25MHz option too even though the accelerator card was handicapped without local fast memory. The solution for performance was to buy a 68020 or 68030 Amiga and an aftermarket accelerator card which many Amiga users did.

Lou Quote:

Are we seeing a common theme here for the 80's+90's? ACORN: 6502 -> ARM RISC

Acorn: NS SC/MP -> 6502 -> NS32k -> Olivetti gained control -> ARM -> dead

The Acorn NS32k usage including the failed Acorn Cambridge Workstation can be found at the following link.

http://www.cpu-ns32k.net/Acorn.html

There is not much info on Wiki under Acorn about it.

Lou Quote:

NEC: 65C02 so fast that it lasted to 1995 -> V-810 RISC

NEC: 65C02 so cheap that it lasted to 1995 -> V-810 RISC -> dead

Lou Quote:

Nintendo: 6502 -> 65816 -> MIPS

Nintendo: 6502 -> 65816 -> MIPS -> PPC -> ARM

Lou Quote:

SEGA: Z80-> crap -> SuperH RISC

SEGA: Z80 -> 68000+Z80 most successful console -> SuperH+68000 -> SuperH+ARM -> dead

Lou Quote:

Atari: 6502 -> crap -> same crap+RISC -> dead

Atari: 6502 -> 68k -> 68k+56k DSP -> 68000+RISC -> dead

Lou Quote:

Amiga: crap to bigger crap -> dead

Commodore: 6502 -> 68k -> dead

Apple: 6502 -> 68k -> PPC -> Microsoft bailout -> x86(-64) -> ARM

Sony: MIPS -> PPC -> x86-64

Lou Quote:

I agree with your description of MUL/DIV but that retard, cdimauro, said it was one the the things that makes this crap cpu superior. I even told the fool that math was generally done with LUTs (look up tables) for speed but once a retard, always a retard...

The 68000 did not include an 8-bit MUL/DIV perhaps because a LUT was faster? Are you aware that larger datatypes exist which are more useful that 8-bit and require much larger LUTs?

minator Quote:

Even Commodore were planning on abandoning the 68K in favour of the PA-RISC in Hombre.

PA-RISC Hombre was a versatile option but not the only option for the future. It could have been used for a GPU including for the Amiga or a whole system replacing the Amiga. It likely would have been short lived because it used fixed point 3D which was quickly replaced by better floating point 3D (PA-RISC SIMD uses integer registers making it impractical to add FP SIMD support or widen the registers beyond 64-bit much like the Vamp/AC ISA) and PA-RISC died faster than the 68k which was still popular in the embedded market for another decade. Commodore was planning to license the 68k and make a 68k Amiga SoC too.

minator Quote:

In the Amiga's market the 68K did make sense and to be fair, the 060 was competitive with the Pentium, at least when it first shipped. That said even Motorola had seen the writing on the wall in the 80s and produced the 88,000 series. The 060 did around 60 MIPS, the 88110 had similar performance 2 years previously, on a slower silicon process.

The 68060@50MHz was at least 78 DMIPS and may have been as high as 90 DMIPS. See Table 1 of the following Microprocessor report.

Motorola Introduces Heir to 68000 Line
https://websrv.cecs.uci.edu/~papers/mpr/MPR/ARTICLES/080502.pdf

Another article claims 103 DMIPS at 66MHz by Motorola architects. Other sources including the MC68060 User Manual claim 100 DMIPS or above at 66MHz. The integer performance of the in-order 68060 competed with some OoO CPUs in performance/MHz which explains why the often deeper 8-stage 68060 could not be clocked up despite all the testing of a 68060@66MHz. The real problem was shallow pipeline PPC CPUs and a Pentium killer was also a PPC killer.

Last edited by matthey on 24-Apr-2025 at 01:02 PM.

@cdimauro

Quote:

The reason is already on the video that you've shared: nowadays the 3D is done in a completely different way compared to the PS1-like way that you've shown.

Yes, though the quality of texturemapping is better with SAGA, PS1 uses affine texturemapping, and fixed point arithmetic for vertex calculations, the texture mapping quality is indeed poor. Gunnar said he aims for something like PS2 quality, but I'm not sure how performance of SAGA compares to PS2. For me, PS2 quality/performance 3D in a 68k Amiga would be more than enough.

Quote:

As I've already stated, AGA specs weren't published by Commodore, for good reasons. And, BTW, AGA is another example of very Bad-By-Design hardware: a horrible patch over ECS.

I have programmed the AGA chipset, and wouldn't say it's a horrible patch, most annoying is that when e.g. resolutions of sprite coordinates and screen sizes have been improved, the bits have been scattered over several registers, so you got. e.g. bits 0-7 in one register, and bits 8-10 in another. The extension of bitplanes from 6->8 was well done, as they left space for 2 additional planes. Color bank switching in AGA was also a nice idea, with copper being able to change a whole bank of colors with a single command. The extension of color resolution from 12 bits to 24 bits resulted in that more than one copper command is needed to load a 24 bit color register instead of one, perhaps a bad thing, but you can still use 12 bit colors in AGA too. Fetchmode 2x and 4x was also added in AGA for greater bitplane bandwidth, these caused a problem with a lot of sprites being disabled with scrolling, as minimum area was now 32 and 64 pixels on both sides of screen, a problem many coders have been complaining about. VGA and DBLPAL screenmodes also disabled a lot of sprites, even if not using any scrolling, so not ideal either.

Regarding the SAGA, you can look at SAGA docs how Gunnar added his new hardware registers into $dff000, one can choose to extend old registers, or just make entirely new registers, like he did for e.g. 16x16 bit audio channels.

@Lou

I have written several 6502 emulators, 8080/8085/z80, 68k, even created a CPU of my own design which 32bit 6502 style ISA you might like to try it.

I’m planning on writing a 6809 emulator next and then a 486, just because I can.

They are all fun to code for and quirky in their own ways but the 68000 ISA is the peak of engineering perfection for anyone who actually knows how to code in various assembly dialects or write emulators.

I mention all this because it demonstrates I know these architectures intimately unlike you.

You still using Visual Basic?

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