@matthey

You have a great ability to answer without really answering but instead opening new threads in discussion. Are you politician? If not then maybe you should since you are definitely well skilled.

1. You stated that because of JIT there might me memory footprint as huge as 400% judging on the AmigaKit products (4GB machine gives 1GB to AmigaOS).
2. I told you that you have picked one example to match your claim and suggested that this might be due to, e.g., underlying host OS
3. You reply that I might remove memory pressure sanctifying performance - your reply is totally unrelated to what was said before
4. I answer that performance is not sacrificed and JIT caches are not even that much filled at the moment.
5. In answer to that you reply with absolutely unrelated things about different model pricing with different memory sizes.

So, I will just answer with WTF and leave that open. I assume if I would reply the other way I would once again become a totally unrelated answer in politician style ;)

Peace :)

@matthey

Quote:

The factors that increase memory requirements add up. JIT, 64-bit ISA, 64-bit OS, Linux, two OSs at once, etc., increase memory by more than a little bit.

What are you talking about here? Not PiStorm with Emu68 from the looks of it...

_________________
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

Quote:

Hammer wrote: For $301.23, a legal entity can buy a licensed 33 MHz 68040 from Rochester Electronics.

Or a PC running AROS with integrated UAE

Or 3 RapsberryPI 5

All this hardware babbling is useless, you can't buy new 68040 for a reasonable price.
And Perifractic or the "Let's Buy Commodore" Project won't change that

@matthey

Quote:

@michalsc The memory footprint of the 68k Amiga is tiny so the system memory could be decreased to reduce the SBC price, but only so far with JIT. You may look at the RPi you use and think it is cheap enough with the memory it has but reducing the memory and knocking $10€ off the price of the SBC will boost sales. A 1GiB A1200 with case and keyboard that sells for under $100€ may sell hundreds of thousands more units than a 2GiB A1200 that costs over $100€. The factors that increase memory requirements add up. JIT, 64-bit ISA, 64-bit OS, Linux, two OSs at once, etc., increase memory by more than a little bit. Many SBCs with 64-bit CPUs that use 64-bit Linux require 4GiB for full performance and some come with 8GiB making it challenging for just the SBC to be priced under $100€. A 1GiB 68k Amiga SBC should be able to be priced in the $30€ to $50€ range with mass production which should leave room for an A1200 to be mass produced for around $100€ (RPi 400 is $70 USD but uses a cheaper keyboard). Do not underestimate the magic price points and Christmas toy pricing.

PiStorm-Emu68 can run on a 512 MB RAM-equipped RPi 3A+.

A1200NG uses a SOC i.e. Orange Pi Zero 3. Orange Pi Zero 3 with 4GB RAM is AU$48.53 or 27.04 Euro from AliExpress. Don't underestimate the European Amiga overheads.

Last edited by Hammer on 15-Aug-2025 at 08:57 AM.

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@OneTimer1

Perifractic's Commodore International Corporation can license the Amiga IP from Cloanto / Amiga Corporation, like THE A500mini. The difference is that "Commodore-Amiga" differs from just the "Amiga".

Last edited by Hammer on 15-Aug-2025 at 10:02 AM.

_________________

Quote:

Hammer wrote: @OneTimer1 Perifractic's Commodore International Corporation can license the Amiga IP from Cloanto / Amiga Corporation, ...

It is mostly Amiberry and a brand name, licensing very unlikely to happen, "Commodore International Corporation" don't license others IP, they are granting licenses to others.

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 15-Aug-2025 at 02:22 PM.

My first amiga was 1200
It was year 1992 and everybody else switch from 16 colors to 256 colors in games
So I also like other people started from 256 colors
and I never use sprites, btiplanes, blitter in my code
maybe it was nice but 16 colors or even if 3x16 colors on amiga
in 1992 was considered outdated so I never use it
I'm not interested in hardware banging on amiga
And I don;t care if amiga has sprites, btiplanes, blitter etc

x86 and arm
I may try any amiga like os x86 or arm if it will be compatible and at least on winxp level
amiga os and clones are still on win98 level so every time I use it on x86 or arm
I feel it is waste of time
it is boring
it is year 2025 and on x86 and arm I prefer to use win/lnx/osx

So my prefered amiga may have not sprites, btiplanes, blitter etc
but still something other than boring x86 and arm

@ppcamiga1

But why must it be amiga? Can’t you be happy with something else?

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B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

@ppcamiga1

Fascinating! Do you know what? You're entitled to what you like but this is an Amiga forum and in our collective opinion your preferences are exactly that, YOURS! No one works for you and hardly anyone would sign up to your development plan! Them's the facts!

Last edited by BigD on 16-Aug-2025 at 05:54 PM.

_________________
"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
John Lasseter, Co-Founder of Pixar Animation Studios

Hammer Quote:

Reminder, the original CIC doesn't own Motorola's IP. CIC is free to purchase 68K CPUs from other vendors. Note that C64 has Microsoft's "Basic" IP as its CLI. The value added was CSG's 65xx CPU, VIC-II, and SID chips, and the large-scale buying strength of CIC, which benefits the customer.

CIC only obtained trademarks as far as I am aware. Cloanto/Amiga Corporation obtained most of the remaining IP, which potentially includes so much more. We do not know which Commodore licenses survive today.

o 65xx family IP
- CSG 65CE02 CMOS CPU core based on WDC 65C02 is the most valuable
- CSG 65CE02 used in CSG 4510 SiP of C65 (like a SoC)
- WDC 65C02 licensed from WDC at half normal 3% royalty after settlement agreement

WDC Carries 6502 Flag into New Arenas (July 11,1994 Microprocessor Report)
https://www.cecs.uci.edu/~papers/mpr/MPR/ARTICLES/080903.pdf Quote:

The Apple II line is no longer in production, but a host of other companies continue to use WDC’s processors, some in very high volume. WDC estimates that well over 100 million ’C02 processors have been shipped, and that shipments currently run at a rate of about 25 million a year; the figures for the ’C816 are about half these amounts. ... In 1977, Bill Mensch left MOS Technology (then a division of Commodore). After a stint at the consulting firm Integrated Circuit Engineering, reverse-engineering commercial microprocessors, he decided to start his own design company—at first, with an exclusive agreement to create chip designs for MOS Technology. After designing a low-power calculator chip for MOS Technology, Mensch decided that he wanted to create a low-power, CMOS 6502 as his next project, but MOS Technology wasn’t interested. He approached Rockwell, GTE, Synertek, and Mitel as well, but they all turned him down. In early 1981, he decided to design it on his own. Working alone and without outside funding, Mensch designed the 65C02, adding a few new instructions while he created the low-power CMOS design. The chip has a different microarchitecture than the original 6502, using PLA-based microcode for instruction sequencing. After completing the design, he went back to the same companies, offering to license it to them. This time, both GTE and Rockwell accepted, and Commodore promptly sued for theft of trade secrets. In another out-of-court settlement, Commodore settled in return for being granted the rights to the 65C02 for internal use at half the standard license fee. Synertek also licensed WDC’s 65C02.

o MOS/CSG commodity chips like CIAs
o C64 and other 8-bit Commodore chipsets and ROMs
o license for Microsoft Basic for Commodore (royalty free from Microsoft?)
o Amiga chipsets including OCS/ECS, AA/AGA, AAA, AA+ (full CMOS chipset developed?)
o Amiga Kickstarts/ROMs and AmigaOS
o licenses for ARexx (rumored cross licensing with IBM), AGFA Intellifonts, CrossDOS, etc.?
o license for HP PA-RISC (not much value today), chip foundry IP?, Intellifont printer tech/software?
o licenses for AT&T DSP 3210 with codecs and Unix (not much value today)
o license for Motorola 68k for 68k Amiga SoC? (talked about in internal docs like it was on the way)

We do not know the extent of the Commodore/Amiga IP Cloanto/Amiga Corporation ownership and licenses but it could be valuable. Some licenses are no doubt expired, others can not be sublicensed and some IP data has likely been lost but there should be some valuable IP remaining, if used. Some EOL Commodore/Amiga fans would say the ROMs and software is all that is valuable for emulation and the rest should be tossed and replaced with commodity hardware. That is what Commodore management tried in stopping Amiga development and pivoting to Commodore PC commodity hardware before it bankrupted them. That is what was tried with PPC AmigaNOne which failed but Trevor still did not get the memo a decade later. That is what emulation of the 68k Amiga does but it is nothing like the success of the RPi based on Amiga like hardware and native software. CIC can license Commodore/Amiga IP but do they want to try to bring back Commodore based on a software foundation or a hardware foundation? Would Commodore have been Commodore without cheap computers for the masses instead of the classes which requires hardware?

Hammer Quote:

PiStorm-Emu68 can run on a 512 MB RAM-equipped RPi 3A+.

The 68k Amiga can run on 512kiB of memory. I am not trying to pick on Emu68 but there is still memory footprint overhead. Losing Linux and chipset emulation overhead reduces the overhead but it also ties the hardware to original Amiga chipsets on 1970s silicon or requires a FPGA chipset. The footprint overhead is likely not as severe as the JIT performance loss where 50% to 80% of performance is likely lost compared to native performance. OoO ARM cores can reduce the overhead with a higher priced SoC that uses more power, runs hotter and has unused large OoO cores that are each many times larger than an in-order 68060 core.

Hammer Quote:

A1200NG uses a SOC i.e. Orange Pi Zero 3. Orange Pi Zero 3 with 4GB RAM is AU$48.53 or 27.04 Euro from AliExpress. Don't underestimate the European Amiga overheads.

Most desktop users look at the price and think how cheap the RPi like SBC hardware is. The 4GiB of memory is likely the majority of the cost. With profit margins, VAT, tariffs, etc. which are based on percentages, it is difficult to keep the price down especially for European markets where the Amiga was the most popular. The RPi was successful because Eben Upton aggressively pushed down prices.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelwolf/2013/02/10/one-million-raspberry-pis-later-the-story-of-how-a-mobile-phone-chip-helped-deliver-a-vision/ Quote:

"It's a very aggressive price point," said Upton. "We did try a bunch of routes to get there. We ended up with prototypes that were for one reason or another that were inadequate."

There was minimal RPi competition with a small memory footprint.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/we-thought-wed-sell-1000-the-inside-story-of-the-raspberry-pi/ Quote:

One factor that helped ensure the Pi's success is the lack of alternative machines offering the same mix of performance and capabilities at such a low price.

The original RPi had 256MiB of memory and was quickly upgraded to 512MiB of memory for a more usable system. The 68k Amiga originally had 256kiB of memory and was quickly upgraded to 512kiB of memory for a more usable system. There is still a lack of small/tiny footprint usable standard hardware/systems below where standard Linux distros scale and the problem is likely to grow worse with the removal from Cortex-A cores of the 32-bit Thumb-2 ISA which has 68k like code density and was a major reason why the RPi was successful on small footprint hardware. Amiga Neverland is the land of missed opportunities that keep being ignored.

@matthey

Quote:

Reminder, the original CIC doesn't own Motorola's IP. CIC is free to purchase 68K CPUs from other vendors. We do not know which Commodore licenses survive today.

i don't think you need a license for a CPU command set, a lot of people would be in serious trouble if it where different.

The C64 ROMs might be different problem they had at least a copyright notice, and C= gave permission only for software emulators:
https://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=73857

So Cloanto may or may not be the real owner of the C64 ROMs

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 16-Aug-2025 at 03:15 PM.
Last edited by OneTimer1 on 16-Aug-2025 at 01:15 PM.
Last edited by OneTimer1 on 16-Aug-2025 at 01:14 PM.

@BigD

stop trolling and start working on zune

@matthey

stop this crap
there will be no new fast 68k
want cheap amiga stop trolling and start working on zune on aros

OneTimer1 Quote:

i don't think you need a license for a CPU command set, a lot of people would be in serious trouble if it where different.

Processor ISAs are a grey area. Patents may apply even with a completely new core design. This was the case with the newly designed WDC 65C02 and Commodore still sued Western Design Center. They settled because WDC cross licensed IP. After the patents are expired after 20 years, it is safer to use an ISA but still not a core design, documentation, firmware or support code because of copyrights.

The Natami team contacted Motorola/Freescale about producing a newly designed 68k core. Their response was that there was no problem although I am not sure how far up management this response came from. There was not much interest when Bill Mensch created a new CMOS 6502 core but after he did, there was 25 million CPUs per year of interest and it attracted Commodore's attention. If Commodore/CSG was better managed, they would have created a CMOS version of the 6502 first although 1983 was early for a CMOS process. The CMOS MC68020 first silicon was in 1984 and the earliest CMOS MC68HC000 was 1986 but the Hitachi HD68HC000 may have been available in 1985. CSG improved the WDC 65C02 design with the CSG 65CE02 design which improves performance by up to 25% but then likely had to pay reduced royalties to WDC. The MEGA65 FPGA CPU core likely includes the CSG 65CE02 ISA changes but may not include the microarchitectural design enhancements which improve performance. The MEGA65 allows a higher clock speed than the CSG 65CE02@3.5MHz more than offsetting the up to 25% performance improvement but the up to 25% performance improvement and higher clock speeds are possible together. Maybe a CSG 65CE02 chip was decapped but microcode is used like most early 68k CPUs where a copyright may apply. It is probably safe enough for small scale retro hardware FPGA use but may not be if serious about C65/MEGA65 cost reductions for a larger market. The C65/MEGA65 performance can not be improved nearly as far while retaining good compatibility as the 68k Amiga which limits mass market appeal. The more advanced 68k chips are challenging to decap and the best retro appeal and most faithful hardware would result from licensing the original designs. The in-order superscalar 68060 is a modular full static CMOS design with a compact ISA that remains good for embedded use today if turned into a SoC using newer silicon. The C65/MEGA65 with 65CE02@40MHz breaks most software where a 68060+@1GHz allows not only most productivity software to work but most games and WHDLoad is a mechanism to patch buggy games that would not work. The C64u and MEGA65 take not only the chipset further but the CPU, albeit with incompatibilities introduced. The result is more like a MCU with much of the software gaining little over a C64. Taking the chipset and 68k CPU of the Amiga further is more like a RPi but with a large retro games library that the RPi lacks. The large 68k software libraries of other 68k computers and consoles can be added with small FPGA capabilities for their chipsets.

OneTimer1 Quote:

The C64 ROMs might be different problem they had at least a copyright notice, and C= gave permission only for software emulators: https://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=73857 So Cloanto may or may not be the real owner of the C64 ROMs

Interesting thread. I believe Cloanto/Amiga Corporation are the owners of the C64 ROMs though. It is more certain after buying Amiga Inc's Commodore/Amiga IP. RGL performed due diligence and they are experienced at retro licensing.

@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote: @cdimauro Quote: Absolutely no, since he advocated for the next big chipset meeting already on September 1987 (if I recall correctly). So, since the very beginning of the discussions. . That's definitely no, since there's no R&D graphics chipset commitment.

Nevertheless, YOU reported that it was Rubin that pushed for a meeting about defining the new chipset.

Here I'm talking about the definition of the specs.
Quote:

From Commodore - The Final Years Engineering had made plans during the summer of 1987, but almost no one was able to begin new projects, even late in the year, because they were still occupied with finishing off old projects. (skip) The A3000 hinged on the engineers creating a new chipset for the machine, but the engineers arguments continued since September with no one able to agree on a spec for the new chipset. At the time, Porter told Bucas and Rubin, “Can you say ‘can of worms’? … Welland and Hedley will still be arguing by February about the next video chips.� The problem was, there were at least three different proposals for a hi-res chipset by three different engineers. Bob Welland wanted to begin fresh with a new architecture. Hedley Davis wanted to revise the existing Agnus/Denise architecture. Similarly, George Robbins wanted to revise the Agnus/Denise architecture based on a 32-bit architecture. No one could agree. With this situation, it looked like the next generation chipset had every possibility of being bogged down for months. Porter had previously hoped to show a prototype of an Amiga 3000 at the Hanover show in March 1988, but now it looked like that timeline was overly optimistic. Meanwhile, it seemed most engineers and all management had given up on 8-bit computers and the Commodore 64 legacy. But in the semiconductor design group, a young engineer named Bill Gardei was figuring out how to advance the 6502 chip at the core of the 8-bit computers, which CSG had not significantly improved since 1976. That's February 1988, heading into March 1988. Leadership's lack of R&D graphics chipset commitment caused the system engineering group's graphics chipset R&D to be leaderless. For next-generation Amiga chipsets during 1987 and 1988: 1. Jeff Porter's 8 bitplane with 16 million colors argument has been ignored, 2. George Robbins' 32-bit bus Amiga graphics chipset evolution argument has been ignored, 3. Dale Luck's 16-bit (65,536 colors) display Amiga graphics evolution argument has been ignored.

You've already reported this, and it again confirms:
- how incapable were the engineers which remained (since they still do NOT understand the chipset, after so long);
- that they have no clue on how to continue (completely different ideas);
- how they were unable to correctly evaluate the situation, status of a project, and realistic deadlines (and here the fault was of your beloved Porter).

Without a technical expertise, there's no way that a manager could take correct decisions.
Quote:

Refer to the "read my lips, no new chips" directive for the 32-bit A3000's graphics chipset.

I've already reported that it's a lie / excuse of the above incompetents: new chips were produced. Continuously.
Quote:

Meanwhile, the CSG's LSI group executes its unofficial C65 CPU improvements with C65's unofficial graphics chipset improvement. It would take CSG LSI's C65 surprise reveal for Herni Rubin to allow AA's 1989 R&D start.

Which, again, proves how incompetent are the engineers which should have handled the Amiga, whereas the LSI team was quickly able to not only understand it, but they were even able to produce the new C65 chipset based on this knowledge.

Rubin action is simply a consequence of the complete ineptitude of his engineers, which have spent more than a year just to define the specs of the new chipset (yet they don't how the original worked!), and failed even on this PAPER work (three different opinions).
Quote:

George Robbins' argument position would be revisited by Herni Rubin's era AA in 1989 and Lew Eggebrecht era AA+' starting in July 1992.

A 32 bit but at that time ('89) was NOT needed and would have just created more problems.

Which is just proved by the AGA chipset: only the display controller was changed to take advantage of the 32-bit bus, but everything else remained the same (especially the Blitter!), AND the chipset was still 16-bit.

The SNES was released on 1990 and it was using an 8-bit data bus, yet sported a superb hardware which obliterated even the AGA chipset which arrived TWO years late.

As I've said several times, the major problem here is that the Amiga engineers where UNABLE to understand how the chipset really worked, and how to properly evolve it. In fact, they just tried obvious solutions: increase numbers. Something which even a kid can do.
Quote:

For AAA, from Commodore - The Final Years detailed AAA architecture design started in the summer of 1988 by Redfield. That's around mid-1988, and it's already late.

Which, again, confirms how incapable are the engineers: they spent too much time on PAPER work.
Quote:

For AAA, from Commodore - The Final Years Back in the middle of 1991, before Mehdi Ali and Bill Sydnes took over engineering, the AmigaOS developers had a schedule to complete AmigaOS 3.0 by Jan 17, 1992, for the A1000 Plus and A3000 Plus. When those projects were put on hold, development for the new OS also ground to a halt. For AAA, from Commodore - The Final Years They also planned to release a series of updated Amiga computers using the new Pandora chipset, now codenamed AA. The plan called for using the chipset in an A3000 variant, which Porter called the AA3000, for a summer 1991 release. He also wanted the AA chipset in an AA500 by the summer of 1992. If AmigaOS 3.0 had not been released with AA3000 and A1000Plus, it would have run the old AmigaOS 2.0x. After A500's last 1991 sales boom, AA500's release was around mid-1992 for Xmas, Q4 1992.

Porter might have wanted what he dreamed of, but we have seen that he was unable to set a realistic deadline for the A3000, as YOU YOURSELF reported.

I would also remind you that this work should have been done by the same incompetent engineers mentioned above...
Quote:

Quote: So, not production-ready. From Commodore - The Final Years, The lowered ambitions of AA had allowed a rapid development cycle. “AA was hybrid 16/32-bit,� says Dave Haynie. As a result of the 16-bit operations, some modes such as Super HAM were still only fast enough to display static images rather than fast animation. The AA chips continued to be revised and tested through early 1991 until they were good enough to use in the A1000 Plus and A3000 Plus prototypes. Dave Haynie managed to boot up his A3000 Plus with AmigaOS and the AA chipset in February 1991. In an interview given to Amiga Computing magazine, Irving Gould revealed, “As a matter of fact, there is a new chip set for the Amiga we’ve been working on now, I guess, for almost two years that should be ready this fall.� The reason Gould was unsure of the release date was because the engineers were considering some improvements for the chipset. By March 27, when the tested AA chips were ready, the list of stable features was impressive. AA could display 256 colors from a palette of 16 million colors. It could theoretically play 24-bit digital video (although presently it could only display 8-bit video) due to a four times increase in bandwidth (and using the digital-to-analog converter chip in the A3000 Plus). It could use 64-bit sprites, which could now be controlled in the border areas. It had the aforementioned new 8-bit HAM mode, called Super HAM. And finally, the scan doubling and deinterlacing hardware, formerly on Amber, was now handled right on the chip. AA chips were ready by March 1991. Hint: Amiga Community's AA3000Plus Remake. A1200's cost-reduction ICs (AA Gayle, Budgie) wouldn't be ready in March 1991.

No, it clearly talked about "STABLE FEATURES". It means that the chipset itself was still under development and clearly NOT production-ready.

Plus, engineers wanted to add some more things. Read again: ENGINEERS. NOT managers. Which is another proof of the fact the Commodore engineers wasted time doing whatever they wanted.
Quote:

Fat Gary could be used in place of AA Gayle (PCMCIA support). Bridgette + Ramsey + Super Buster could be used in place of Budgie (Zorro II address range for trap door edge connector and 16-bit PCMCIA slot). Bridgette replaced multiple 74 logic chips in the A3000.

Sure: with the same bugs that crippled the platform?

Quote:

Hammer wrote: @cdimauro Quote: The Amiga was NOT a console, rather a FAMILY of (personal) computers! Which means, that it deserved an EVOLUTION of the hardware, according to the evolution of technology (and of all competitors). For core Amiga games, the Amiga inherits the tight game console-like multimedia integration i.e. not modular like the PC's. For example, without a 32-bit Agnus upgrade known as Andrea, Mary wouldn't work.

Absolutely no: Mary could have worked with Agnus remaining 16-bit and Mary using a 32-bit bus. Lisa is a clear example of that.

However, Agnus contains both the Copper and Blitter, and it would have been priority #1 to provide enhancement at least to the second. As I've already fully explained on my last articles.
Quote:

When AA Lisa is upgraded, AA Alice is needed due to ECS Agnus 2MB needs to be modified. When you upgrade Amiga's core graphics and audio capabilities, it needs to be treated like a game console's next-generation hardware transition phase. Amiga's next-generation hardware transition phase needs to be managed carefully. A PC with ISA slots can be upgraded with many generations of graphics and sound cards (including DMA-capable). The graphics chipset is partitioned from the audio chipset. The user can upgrade individual components (CPU, mainboard, display, and audio) at will and at different times.

The chipset could have been split in different daughter boards containing the specific parts / chips to mimic the PCs, but this modularity isn't required on Amiga, because it works differently and could have evolved as well regarding the hardware specs, following or even doing better than the PCs.

In fact, the advantage of the Amiga is that the platform was already well defined. Whereas PCs were... systems with an x86 CPU, a BIOS and memory are mapped in a certain way. Everything else was... open. And proper support needed for ALL extra stuff.

Quote:

The Amiga is not a Mac i.e. hit the metal.

It ALSO hit the metal.
Quote:

The Amiga is not a PC (as per IBM AT/Compaq 386AT defined PC standards)

Oh. Since when it was Compaq to define what a PC was?
Quote:

i.e. multimedia capabilities are not partitioned for end-user modularity.

See above on that.
Quote:

32-bit protected mode PC DOS VGA game would be closest to Amiga's 32-bit 68K games in terms of bare metal access when compared to Mac's QuickDraw APIs. You don't need a protected mode for running PC games. The protected mode is slower (due to the extra protections). The "unreal" mode would have been a much better solution. [quote]The Amiga is unique and should be carefully managed.

Exactly, which was NOT the case due to the above incompetent engineers, which had no knowledge of how the original chipset worked and how to properly evolve it without losing too much from all competitors.
Quote:

Hammer wrote: Herni Rubin's 16-bit ECS for "32-bit" A3000 and incompatible with A2000's Video Toaster effectively killed the A3000.

Was it Rubin which wanted / defined that the A3000 should have had a case which was incompatible with the cards developed for the A2000?

Last edited by cdimauro on 17-Aug-2025 at 08:38 PM.

@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote: @ppcamiga1 Quote: ppcamiga1 wrote: @bhabbott nobody else screw so much AGA 256 colors made as bitplanes instead of chunky was biggest mistake in computer industry history High resolution four bitplanes could be converted into VGA-style four byte planes. This requires Lisa to be modified.

This is a non-sense. The Amiga chipset worked differently and it already supported different planes.

The four planes were introduced by the EGA (NOT the VGA) and worked like the Amiga, because they served the purpose of implementing 4 bitplanes = 16 colours graphics. However, they worked very differently because the implementation was fixed and accessing the graphics data wasn't like the Amiga.

The so called byteplanes used by the VGA unchained 256 colours mode are using exactly the same 4 planes, but "simply" (!) reinterpreted the four bytes in a different way (packed/chunky instead of planar).

The Amiga could have made the same thing WITHOUT the super complication of the EGA/VGA video memory mapping. As I've already perfectly defined in one of my last articles.

Trying to implement the same VGA concept on the Amiga to introduce the 256 colours graphics is, as I've already stated, a non-sense.

If you want to improve the chipset, you can do it in a much better way, while keeping the same philosophy. But you should know how the chipset worked (which is NOT the case of the Amiga engineers: see the pure crap of Akiko).

@ppcamiga1

Quote:

ppcamiga1 wrote: @ppcamiga1 and this should be done by szulc, szonwejs, di mauro, kolla hammer etc first zune should be made compatible with mui then ported to unix

We don't take orders from a complete idiot which isn't even able to figure out that a game was made for a Commodore 64 and that it thought, instead, that it was for the Amiga... complaining about it.

That you're a complete dumb it was already clear, but after this you only deserve being kicked around without wasting time explaining to you what should be done. And, of course, kicking your UnderPoweredcrapPPC @ss (which, I've to repeat again for YOUR pleasure, were NOT Amigas and NEVER will be).

@matthey

Quote:

matthey wrote: If the MorphOS devs are smart, MorphOS will gain SMP support as it transitions to a new architecture. However, they will likely lose direct 68k AmigaOS compatibility without sandboxing. AmigaOS 4 chose to port back to the 68k AmigaOS so new more advanced 68k Amiga hardware is needed but the Hyperion A-EonKit lawfare instead of development is counter productive. AROS x86-64 SMP had momentum but then fizzled before the necessary API changes could be added. Part of the problem was that the 68k AmigaOS is made for 68k Amiga hardware. On a 68k Amiga with custom chips, Disable() works by writing an Amiga register to disable interrupts. Without Disable(), Signal(), Wait() and SignalSemaphores do not work. This is core functionality of the AmigaOS that can not be used and needs to be changed for the AmigaOS to support SMP on x86-64, at least without adding custom Amiga chipset hardware. At least x86-64's more sequential memory consistency model is easier than PPC's weak memory consistency model. I expect AmigaOS 4 has added thousands if not tens of thousands of Load-Acquire and Store-Release instructions, eieio and fence instructions to no avail. The ~4 week SillySMP AROS x86-64 experiment by Jason McMullan and Michal Schulz came closer to SMP than PPC AmigaOS 4 in more than a decade of failure. If x86-64 hardware had the Amiga chipset, AROS x86-64 may already support SMP. PPC and no Amiga chipset is about the worst possible handicap for adding SMP support to the Amiga and AmigaNOne has been an abject failure anyway. Returning to the 68k Amiga with chipset would be easier but additional hardware changes could make SMP support easier yet. SMP is still possible on foreign hardware but how much of the AmigaOS and Amiga software compatibility is left after all the changes?

We already discussed it: the problem is not the hardware platform, rather and only the OS. The Amiga OS was badly designed, and that's the only and unique reason why SMP wasn't never added, whatever is the hardware platform.

Going back to a 68k a system, even with an Amiga chipset (evolved in whatever way you want), will never provide the SMP.

UNLESS you can accept to drop the backward-compatibility with the existing software (with most of it that can't be recompiled).

This is the only point here: either you get the SMP or the backward-compatibility. Having both is impossible.

But if someone has a different opinion, I'm interested to see the solution (fully technically detailed).

@matthey

Quote:

CIC only obtained trademarks as far as I am aware. Cloanto/Amiga Corporation obtained most of the remaining IP, which potentially includes so much more. We do not know which Commodore licenses survive today. o 65xx family IP - CSG 65CE02 CMOS CPU core based on WDC 65C02 is the most valuable - CSG 65CE02 used in CSG 4510 SiP of C65 (like a SoC) - WDC 65C02 licensed from WDC at half normal 3% royalty after settlement agreement

In turn, WDC 65C02 is based on MOS/CSG's NMOS 6502.

C64 used MOS 6510.
C128 used MOS 8502 using Intel's HMOS-II process.

C64 Direct-to-TV's 6510 implementation is a compatible clone.

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@cdimauro

VGA is both bit-plane and byte-plane. VGA is backward compatible with EGA.

In VGA's 16-color mode, the system uses a four-bit plane mode to represent colors. 4 bits spread across 4 planes.
https://wiki.osdev.org/VGA_Hardware#Memory_Layout_in_16-color_graphics_modes
The VGA has four planes, and for each pixel, and each plane holds one bit of each pixel drawn

In VGA's 256 color mode, it uses byte plane mode. Mode X/Mode Y uses four byte-planes. VGA clones expanded VGA's 256-color mode to 512 KB of video memory since VGA's 256 color mode already supports 400 line mode i.e. 320x400p 256 colors.

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