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nzv58l 
Re: Developers!!! ,Developers!!!, Developers!!!, Developers!!!
Posted on 25-Feb-2004 22:29:17
#61 ]
Super Member
Joined: 7-Oct-2003
Posts: 1640
From: Michigan

@salass00

I just finished watching the Newcastle video which had sound on it. What made me wonder if OS 4 was going to be released without sound was that the OctaMed developer reported on his site that OS 4 did not yet have sound... Who knows how long ago this was when he reported it on his site? I guess he can start now... Anyway, back to the subject...

Seems like your having the normal teething pains that all programmers go through, but I'm sure you won't give up. What I would like to have is a program that would act like a mixer. Have multiple tracks that I could record sound into and then mix them, edit them, add effects to real audio in real time. I have a little 6 track Tascam tape recorder that I think should be easy to mimic on a computer. It has some nice features like being able to merge two tracks down to one and editing using a foot switch to record over a previously recorded, unwanted portion of a track...(possibly a USB device may come in handy here) and I'm sure that a few other features are possible with the computer. Anyway, if you can... that's what would make me and most other musicians happy.

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choochy 
Re: Developers!!! ,Developers!!!, Developers!!!, Developers!!!
Posted on 25-Feb-2004 22:55:15
#62 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 11-Mar-2003
Posts: 177
From: Adelaide, Australia

I just ordered my AmigaOne Earlybird System!!!!!!

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Darth_X 
Re: Developers!!! ,Developers!!!, Developers!!!, Developers!!!
Posted on 26-Feb-2004 4:00:41
#63 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 1-Jun-2003
Posts: 2997
From: Vancouver Island, Canada

@MagicSN

Quote:


Well due to my experience *most* people commenting on that issue are not
A1 owners but followers of a certain other platform faking to be concerned about
the "success of the platform", while in truth they are concerned THAT the platform
might be successful which would be disaster for them :)


That's only your point of view. What matters most is how the rest of the world takes on this platform. The biggest concern to most people is the actual cost of the A1 board, not articiaS problems.

According to HMetal's recent comments, I assume that he is refering to several Chinese companies who will be investing in Amiga, or at least fixing things so that the A1 is cheaper?


Quote:

> suffer corruption problems when running under a heavy DMA load. The stock >answer, that it's just a Linux problem and won't affect OS4, would be okay - except >for the fact that every report I've read from people who've seen OS4 working say >it's running in PIO mode.

Implementing software always needs a certain amount of time. Especially Drivers.

And then there is this... originally "those people" claimed we would not get OS 4 running at all (and that our concept of how 68k Emulation is handled would be seriously flawed).

After that was proven wrong they claimed we would not get it running on the A1.

After that was proven wrong they claimed there'd be a serious bug in the Articia
making G4 running slower than G3 (or was this before? Cannot remember right now...).

After this was proven wrong they claim the DMA could not possibly work on the Articia. I wonder what they will claim once this is proven wrong ? But maybe they are running out of arguments then :)

Steffen

FUD FUD FUD....

Who cares what "they say" ?

What is being done to fix this problem?

Will you publish it to all the linux companies to make sure that they understand how to port their variation of linux to run on the A1?

_________________
Men who have girlies in their avatars are Girliemen!

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CodeSmith 
Re: Developers!!! ,Developers!!!, Developers!!!, Developers!!!
Posted on 26-Feb-2004 5:44:42
#64 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 8-Mar-2003
Posts: 3045
From: USA

@Darth_X

Quote:
What is being done to fix this problem?

Will you publish it to all the linux companies to make sure that they understand how to port their variation of linux to run on the A1?


You do realize that it is possible that the solution is complex enough and/or took enough effort (quite a few months, it seems), that Hyperion might want to consider it a trade secret. If I spent about two years and several tens of thousands of euros writing an OS, and a significant part of that was spent reverse-engineering the hardware, I might not be too keen to hand this knowledge out to people writing a competing OS, even if it is open-source.

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mausle 
Re: Developers!!! ,Developers!!!, Developers!!!, Developers!!!
Posted on 26-Feb-2004 6:50:45
#65 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 12-Sep-2003
Posts: 139
From: Unknown

@CodeSmith

Quote:

CodeSmith wrote:
and a significant part of that was spent reverse-engineering the hardware, I might not be too keen to hand this knowledge out to people writing a competing OS, even if it is open-source.


For OS4 its ok, but Linux kernel is GPL, so ...
I know even Linus thinking somewhat different here.
Also there are closed source drivers from ATI and nVidia,
so probably nobody would care.

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CodeSmith 
Re: Developers!!! ,Developers!!!, Developers!!!, Developers!!!
Posted on 26-Feb-2004 7:40:43
#66 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 8-Mar-2003
Posts: 3045
From: USA

@mausle

Right, it should be possible to have support for linux on the A1 using a closed-source kernel module like nvidia provides.

On the other hand, Hyperion have had bad experiences porting games to Linux (bottom line: when they tried to charge for the games, all they got was a lot of nasty emails from OSS trolls), so I doubt they'll lose any sleep over Linux support.

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MagicSN 
Re: Developers!!! ,Developers!!!, Developers!!!, Developers!!!
Posted on 26-Feb-2004 9:06:39
#67 ]
Hyperion
Joined: 10-Mar-2003
Posts: 666
From: Unknown

@Darth_X

>FUD FUD FUD....

No FUD is what I replied to. Remember for which those three letters stand for ?
"Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt". Where did I spread "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt" ?
Quite the opposite I tried my best to clean up with "Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt"
spread by someone else with my post.

>Who cares what "they say" ?

Well, just getting rid of FUD...

>What is being done to fix this problem?

There was a recent post from Ben about this matter. I seem to remember
you were on the thread too (not 100% sure) and chose to ignore it. Not sure
what post it was again...

>Will you publish it to all the linux companies to make sure that they understand how >to port their variation of linux to run on the A1?

Not my position to say. But I'd expect once someone does a Linux-Driver for one Linux-variant the others will follow. Not that most AmigaOne users would care too much about Linux, I'd say...

Steffen

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hnl_dk 
Re: Developers!!! ,Developers!!!, Developers!!!, Developers!!!
Posted on 26-Feb-2004 9:21:59
#68 ]
Super Member
Joined: 25-Mar-2003
Posts: 1786
From: Denmark

@MagicSN

Hi' Steffen

Darth_X did not post anything in the thread, so if he has not seen read it yet, then @ Darth_X here it is

_________________
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hnl_dk - Henning Nielsen Lund [Denmark]

Please send no PM to me, email me if you want to contact me. See you somewhere else.

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MagicSN 
Re: Developers!!! ,Developers!!!, Developers!!!, Developers!!!
Posted on 26-Feb-2004 11:36:13
#69 ]
Hyperion
Joined: 10-Mar-2003
Posts: 666
From: Unknown

@hnl_dk

Ah, I guess I confused him with someone else...

Steffen

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Darth_X 
Re: Developers!!! ,Developers!!!, Developers!!!, Developers!!!
Posted on 26-Feb-2004 15:13:05
#70 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 1-Jun-2003
Posts: 2997
From: Vancouver Island, Canada

@MagicSN

That's OK. Everyone thinks I post like I'm angry all the time. LOL! Not so.


@hnl_dk

Thanks, with my strange work schedule, I tend to miss some of the posts.

_________________
Men who have girlies in their avatars are Girliemen!

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CodeSmith 
Re: Developers!!! ,Developers!!!, Developers!!!, Developers!!!
Posted on 26-Feb-2004 19:25:24
#71 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 8-Mar-2003
Posts: 3045
From: USA

@Darth_X

Quote:
That's OK. Everyone thinks I post like I'm angry all the time.


Well, that might have something to do with your handle... do either of these guys look like happy bunnies?







I find your lack of faith disturbing...

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nzv58l 
Re: Developers!!! ,Developers!!!, Developers!!!, Developers!!!
Posted on 26-Feb-2004 21:44:09
#72 ]
Super Member
Joined: 7-Oct-2003
Posts: 1640
From: Michigan

@MagicSN

In regards to porting and emulation:

Since you seem very knowledgeable about porting and emulation, I always wondered why someone could not take emulation one step further... By that I mean that instead of writing an environment for foreign programs to run in, why not write a code accellerator/converter that would do most of the mondane porting job for you. You would still have to know the program, however it may save time and be a little more accruate by automating most of the process. Actually I should have asked you about when you port some program: Do you find yourself changing certain parts of the same type of code or do you find yourself with unique changes all the time? Emulation is great no doubt and intigrating the classic Amiga into OS 4 is nothing short of a miracle, but I would enjoy the extra performance of a native mode application much more...

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MagicSN 
Re: Developers!!! ,Developers!!!, Developers!!!, Developers!!!
Posted on 26-Feb-2004 23:16:48
#73 ]
Hyperion
Joined: 10-Mar-2003
Posts: 666
From: Unknown

@nzv58l

>Since you seem very knowledgeable about porting and emulation, I always wondered why >someone could not take emulation one step further... By that I mean that instead of writing an >environment for foreign programs to run in, why not write a code accellerator/converter that
> would do most of the mondane porting job for you. You would still have to know the program,

You mean which converts the program to native Code ? Something like that exists actually
for the Atari 2600 (a convertor to 68k code). I'd say it is not a trivial task for more complicated
machines as just emulating a main CPU is the least of the problems. Emulating the whole hardware (video and all...) is quite complicated... usually most emulators have some sort
of "main loop" where they emulate the CPU functions (in SNES9x for example this code
is very easily readable) and if you for example have a function which emulates to

"read the byte from address xxx"

the Emulation code somewhere in calls the memory mapping code, loading the byte from
the emulated address space of the virtual machine.

Doing something like this for a converter sounds complicated to me (note: I do not say
it is undoable). What jumps at once to my mind is MMU-Usage here... actually this
program called "Puh der Baer" (stupid name for a program if you ask me :) ) does use
something like that to emulate audio.device Code to AHI (using the 68k MMU).

>however it may save time and be a little more accruate by automating most of the process. >Actually I should have asked you about when you port some program: Do you find yourself >changing certain parts of the same type of code or do you find yourself with unique changes >all the time? Emulation is great no doubt and intigrating the classic Amiga into OS 4 is

Depends. If we are talking about some nicely coded Emulators there I mostly (as far as licence permits... if I have a non-GPL and a GPL program I cannot just reuse code for example :) ) can reuse code, or at least do it in a similar way.

But that part (dealing with Audio, Video, Input,...) is not the complicated part.

It gets complicated if there are things like

- Endian issues
- Code that breaks if compiled with a different compiler (I already had cases where
the code depended on a bug in a math library or something like that :) )
- Code which only compiles on specific compilers (VC++ ...) and needs to be
changed to compile on gcc
- Problems with Standard Libraries
- Certain APIs which do not exist on the destination platform or for some reason
are no good idea to use
- memory consumption
- "Specific problems" (whatever this is :) )

When you port something (Emulator or game or whatever) sometimes you get clean
nice code, sometimes you get disaster-code. Often the opensource stuff is more
cleanly coded than commercial stuff (though not always... ID Code is always nice :) )
Might have something to do with first the commercial guys being under time pressure
with deadlines and stuff, and for another that if noone ever sees their code many PC
Games coders think they can hack everything in without caring too much... while
an OpenSource Coder knows that many people will examine his source... of course
there are also commercial coders who code nicely ...

>nothing short of a miracle, but I would enjoy the extra performance of a native mode >application much more...

There'd be also the option of a JIT Emulation which then is native code basically ...

Steffen

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salass00 
Re: Developers!!! ,Developers!!!, Developers!!!, Developers!!!
Posted on 4-Mar-2004 18:34:52
#74 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 31-Oct-2003
Posts: 2707
From: Finland

@Salass00

Quote:
IFF-8SVX seems to be the only loader that can also handle stereo (I actually thought this one would be the hardest to do since the channels are stored separately), I think it's due to some bug in the routines but I've yet to find it .

Actually there was nothing wrong with the loaders. There were however two bugs: one in the AHI player (actually two) and one in the waveform rendering routine. The "working" 8svx loader didn't actually work, the stereo sound it worked with was probably broken (haven't checked it yet though).

[edit]
Checked and it was broken (BODY chunksize was twice as large as it should have been).

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Rogue 
Re: Developers!!! ,Developers!!!, Developers!!!, Developers!!!
Posted on 4-Mar-2004 19:10:38
#75 ]
OS4 Core Developer
Joined: 14-Jul-2003
Posts: 3999
From: Unknown

@Darth_X

Quote:
What is being done to fix this problem?


You are asking the wrong people. Last time I checked Hyperion Entertainment was a belgian/german software company, not a hardware company. If there is a problem (fancied or real), the correct people to ask is MAI.

Naturally, everyone is always shouting "Hyperion". Wonder why...

Quote:
Will you publish it to all the linux companies to make sure that they understand how to port their variation of linux to run on the A1?


Linux is of no concern to us other than as a platform for our games content. I'll do nothing on the Linux kernel, nor do I intend to "publish" anything, nor do I plan to take any active role in that. If people ask me something and I know the answer, they'll get it, but that is it. Not that there would be any necessity for it anyway - others are working on the Linux kernel.

Again, the AmigaOne is a hardware product manufactured by Mentor Arc, Inc, and distributed by Eyetech Ltd. under Licence from Amiga, Inc. (Note the absense of the name "Hyperion").

We care for our products, that's our concern and our duty. Our Product is AmigaOS 4.0

_________________
Seriously, if you want to contact me do not bother sending me a PM here. Write me a mail

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DrBombcrater 
Re: Developers!!! ,Developers!!!, Developers!!!, Developers!!!
Posted on 4-Mar-2004 19:54:32
#76 ]
Super Member
Joined: 6-Feb-2004
Posts: 1382
From: UK

@Rogue

Quote:
Naturally, everyone is always shouting "Hyperion". Wonder why...

Because Hyperion is our last hope for an honest answer? MAI are not talking about this at all and Eyetech, even if they wanted to confront this problem - which they plainly don't, could not give a convincing answer as they are just a sales organisation.

If you want to know about problems with a chipset, talking to people who are porting an OS to it seems like a reasonable course of action.

Quote:
We care for our products, that's our concern and our duty. Our Product is AmigaOS 4.0

True, but you've missed one big issue - OS4.0 lives or dies with the A1. Everyone I know who has an A1 or plans to buy one sees it purely as a vehicle for running OS4!. If A1 sales dry up because of a DMA problem (and even the chance that there might be a problem has to be hurting sales) then OS4 will be stillborn. The handful of copies Cyberstom and Blizzard owners will buy are not enough to save it.

There are only three possibilies here. Either the ArticiaS chipset has a DMA bug, the corruption that some A1 owners have been seeing is down to Linux not driving the chipset correctly, or Linux works just fine and anyone who reports corruption is either mistaken or a politically motivated liar.

In the first case, the solution would be for MAI and Eyetech to own up to the problem and detail what they are going to do about it. But in the second and third scenarios I believe only an unqualified statement by Hyperion that OS4.0 is working fully and correctly in DMA mode on the A1 without issues will put the matter to rest. (please, please do this. I want this whole thing to go away so I can buy an A1 with OS4 and start having fun with it )

It's no damn good Hyperion saying "this is not our problem" - when you started porting OS4.0 to the A1 it became your problem.

_________________
Who do you serve, and who do you trust? - Galen

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olegil 
Re: Developers!!! ,Developers!!!, Developers!!!, Developers!!!
Posted on 4-Mar-2004 20:09:34
#77 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 22-Aug-2003
Posts: 5895
From: Work

@Darth_X

Notice that you only need to produce ONE patch and send it to THE kernel maintainer for powerpc. You do NOT need to send patches to ALL the different distros.

There is only ONE Linux kernel (well, mostly one. But different distributors isn't what's keeping them apart, it's CPU architecture, since the official kernel guys care less than nothing for anything non-x86 and will break all other architectures any day to improve something in "their" part of the three. Imho, of course ).

THE person to send powerpc patches to is Benjamin Herrenschmidt (sp?), and if he puts it into his three, then you can pretty much expect it to end up in all serious powerpc Linux distributions. Or even in the official three, albeit a leeeettle later

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

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nzv58l 
Re: Developers!!! ,Developers!!!, Developers!!!, Developers!!!
Posted on 4-Mar-2004 20:28:42
#78 ]
Super Member
Joined: 7-Oct-2003
Posts: 1640
From: Michigan

@DrBombcrater

I have to agree! Although, the root cause to the problem is not Hyperion's it is a problem that needs to be addressed either by a work arround as a temporary fix until the hardware is fixed or by getting the hardware fixed if this would be a quicker route. Someone needs to take ownership of the problem. I often find that when this happens to me it is most often not my job to do this, but I can usually manage to get it done or find someone to resolve it and keep the customer happy. The customer normally does not care who fixes a problem, as long as the problem gets fixed and the faster the better. If everyone says it is not their problem then the problem never really goes away or is delayed by not getting to the right people to work on it.

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BigBentheAussie 
Re: Developers!!! ,Developers!!!, Developers!!!, Developers!!!
Posted on 6-Mar-2004 10:49:30
#79 ]
Super Member
Joined: 28-Oct-2003
Posts: 1690
From: Melbourne, Australia

If I created a visual basic(and C++), event driven, type language with associated Dev tools and objects both visual and functional, similar to MS(but far simpler and saner) would anyone buy it? What would such a package go for? Programming is fun but sometimes you gotta think businesswise.

Does something like this already exist because I need it.
I'm gonna have to build something similar to port some of my Windows apps and I am fairly sure many will want to do the same.

Really, with a Java VM this might all be a moot point as I could code on something like JBuilder on another platform and do the port.

Do you think that Java apps are going to catch on once the Virtual Machine is created. JAmiga is close aren't they?

I took a look at the MOL tutorial and nearly died.
Do you really expect people to program that way?
If so, we're not going to get many apps.
We need to bring the programming model into the 21st century.

Sorry for the chastisement. I'm a little pissed of that I have to do more work to port than I thought. But something good could come out of the extra effort if there is a business case for it.

What's the deal with the Amiga Contributions Drawer that they say is coming with AOS4? Does Amiga pay royalties? Is there a cut off for inclusion?

_________________
Leo Nigro, CTO Commodore USA, LLC
Opinions expressed are my own and not those of C= USA.
Commodore/AMIGA "Beautiful, High-Performance, Home Computers for Creativity and Entertainment."

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alexw 
Re: Developers!!! ,Developers!!!, Developers!!!, Developers!!!
Posted on 6-Mar-2004 14:21:12
#80 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 6-Mar-2004
Posts: 578
From: Saarbrücken, Germany

I still have to buy an A1, but when I have, I will port my little hobby web browser to OS4. I also have developed a small 3d game engine and some nice ideas for games that will only make sense with faster hardware. I will also have to see which of these ideas are not too complex for me to do.

Alex.

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