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Overflow wrote: @matthey Out of curiosity; Did your involvement cost you money? I realise its not always about money; as time and effort spent is a resource aswell.

No, none of my money or any from my contacts was collected or used. I don't consider my time used as a complete waste because I was learning.

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And "boy who wanted to play with his toys"; that almost sounds like Trevor and PPC too. Which is fine with me. If a road splits into two, and has different destinations, I dont see how its problematic some decide to enjoy one scenery over the other.

Everyone has the freedom to play with their toys. The problem with the Amiga is that the boys don't want to play together.

@OlafS25

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If you read carefully (and what he posted later) he obviously not meant there is no X86 core existing on the world but no X86 core for vampire so in his view it makes no sense to discuss if such a non-existing core is faster than emulator

I actually posed the question.

Gunnar certainly know his stuff but tends to respond to questions selectively and has a small army of defenders.

How does it hurt?

Well, some people won't buy from people who spin bullshit constantly, which Gunnar does.
To be fair a lot is probably enthusiasm based, but the guy sure does run off at the mouth a lot. It is irritating and has stopped a lot of people having interest.

Can't help feel that no-one wanted actual answers though. The question was posed based on a narrow view, with the expectation that everyone else had the same narrow view, based on an interest in 68k.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but Kolla is actually correct here.

@fishy_fis

Yes, kolla is right (or appears to be based on the youtube video), that the performance is on par or even exceeding that of Apollo running 486 in emulation.

What gets me is the kneejerk reaction that Gunnar (or someone else) says something that might/or is inaccurate, and that invalidates the project itself basically.

I have no issues with kolla pointing out "how about this then?" etc. The automatic negative connotations that often are applied in the same posts are what I personally find annoying. Like Gunnar is Dr Evil or somesuch.

What I ask myself; what annoys me with my legacy hardware? I have to jump thru hoops and invest alot in extra hardware to upgrade the old (and timelimited) amigas to give me the resolution, memory and speed I find comfortable.
Some enjoys the restrictive enviroment, and thats fine too. Each to their own.

I enjoy the higher spec version of the legacy enviroment, where Apollo/Vampire accomodates me in a nice little solution.

But in my case, I like it when people like kolla points to alternatives, and EDUCATES me and others about these facets. Its the negatives that are applied in the same breath, that makes some of us react.

But Im just going to default to my Linus comment in the last post, and accept we are all different

Last edited by Overflow on 08-Aug-2018 at 11:43 AM.
Last edited by Overflow on 08-Aug-2018 at 11:42 AM.

@fishy_fis

I agree the man can be curt, but don't we all get annoyed sometimes? It seems to me zeal sometimes does that to people.

That said, I hear you - things could definitely improve.

Cheers.

Last edited by Snorg on 08-Aug-2018 at 05:18 PM.

Skipp is a beta tester of Gold 3, and publishes them onto youtube.

Here is a nice demo and its performance;
Push Entertainment "Mental" Amiga AGA Demo (Vampire 600 V2)

Apollo Core rev. 5282 (beta GOLD3 AGA core) running "Mental" by Push Entertainment (2003). Realtime 50fps capture from HDMI (576p video and Paula 16 bit audio via digital stream) with StarTech PEXHDCAP. 1280x720 crop.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5qBscKdJiA

@Overflow

Whow nice :D

Can not the standalone version be released soon!

Me like to buy :D

@Overflow

I could see Gunner playing the role of Dr. Evil...yeah, that works.

Actually, Gunner and I used to exchange messages and at one time were discussing cross platform development work.

So it not so much that he has become balkanized as you all have stuffed him into that role and he's felt the need to justify his projects.
No one in the Amiga community should ever be placed in that position.

It's not like any of us has more practical ideas, we're all just shooting for something we want.

And the in-fighting really takes the fun right out of this community.

@JimIgou

Well, you just have to focus on the positives, be it people and projects. And ignore the noise.

@Overflow

Agree with what you're saying, you all should actually have it in mind that Amiga community is not big anymore today and the few remaining that try to do cool things whether its hardware or software,they need support everywhere on all things, all negative comments we simply can not afford it any longer guys. If you really need to be negative and argue about it, do it alone with your self.

Anyway Overflow.. i haven't really had that interest of Vampire 600 because i want it for my A1200.. but, after seeing a lot of stuff on youtube, i might try to buy a A600 instead.. what i wondering about, is there any clear benefit getting Vampire on A1200 (if it ever happens) than just get A600?

I do understand if that day comes the fpga would be more powerful, and maybe more features.. what i want is an classical experience with better screen resolution (at least 720p 16bit) and faster cpu, and the stuff that already are in V600 v2

Another concern i have if i'm right. is it still the need to have two monitors, one for 15khz and another one for desktop display (vampire) is there going to be a video signal pass through somehow so you only need one monitor?

Sorry if i got it all wrong.. just trying to learn..thanks

Last edited by noXLar on 07-Sep-2018 at 04:39 PM.
Last edited by noXLar on 07-Sep-2018 at 04:38 PM.

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nox's in the house!

@noXLar

I use normal computer monitors for my Vampire RTG/HDMI signal feed. Ofcourse, that doesnt allow for native Amiga signal, which I have to use thru video port thru scart to my TV.

Gold 3 will supposedly fix this, by providing RTG and native Amiga signals incl AGA thru the HDMI cable.
Which should allow us to use only 1 normal computer monitor for the Vampire.

Gold 3 shouldnt be THAT far off, so you should be able to get feedback from normal users regarding this then.

V1200: Good question. Maybe more ram? Thats just speculation on my part, since I dont assume anything until actual testers/normal users can relay tests and videos using said hardware.

@Overflow

Quote:

Overflow wrote: @fishy_fis Yes, kolla is right (or appears to be based on the youtube video), that the performance is on par or even exceeding that of Apollo running 486 in emulation. What gets me is the kneejerk reaction that Gunnar (or someone else) says something that might/or is inaccurate, and that invalidates the project itself basically.

I can't remember seeing that even from people that have something against Gunnar as a person.
But one have to be able to state facts and opinions about him and/or the Apollo project!

Can't one tell that benchmarks are tweaked to show their core as best?
Can't one tell that even enthusiastic people noticing something being wrong and posted even groveling posts on their forum is called troll?
Is it wrong to tell that technical discussions showing something to be wrong and/or exaggerated have suddenly disappeared without any reason?

I guess I'm a troll too as that is for me unacceptable behavior.
Quote:

I have no issues with kolla pointing out "how about this then?" etc. The automatic negative connotations that often are applied in the same posts are what I personally find annoying. Like Gunnar is Dr Evil or somesuch. What I ask myself; what annoys me with my legacy hardware? I have to jump thru hoops and invest alot in extra hardware to upgrade the old (and timelimited) amigas to give me the resolution, memory and speed I find comfortable. Some enjoys the restrictive enviroment, and thats fine too. Each to their own. I enjoy the higher spec version of the legacy enviroment, where Apollo/Vampire accomodates me in a nice little solution. But in my case, I like it when people like kolla points to alternatives, and EDUCATES me and others about these facets. Its the negatives that are applied in the same breath, that makes some of us react. But Im just going to default to my Linus comment in the last post, and accept we are all different

Being overly negative can cause irritation and feelings of resentment, especially in true believers that are almost religious fanatic about something. Some even take a comment about something, even if true, as a deep personal insult.

@megol

I agree with you 100% regarding feedback, and accepting corrections etc.

With regards to performance benchmark, most socalled fanatics doesnt seem to have any developer background, so I doubt they know the fundemental meaning of those numbers.
Unlike you, who got coder background, and are able to read what those numbers mean in real application.

Personally I enjoy Vampire/Apollo for what it does. Nothing more. I was considering PPC AOS4.x but the pricetag for entry was more than I was willing to pay. Tabor seems to drag on forever, and now Ive decided to just stick to Vampire and AMD/Ryzen for my computing.

But I applaud both MOS, AROS, AEON etc for their efforts, and I have no emotional bones with regards to which branch does what best. Whatever gives x people enjoyment and utility is a cool enough project for me.
My annoyance is as Jim alluded to, negativity turns people off. There is nothing wrong with critical feedback, like Daytona does at times with code evaluation for example.
Flype has said on IRC "its hard to ignore the barrage of negativity", especially when its something people do on their sparetime to a certain extent (altho Im sure some have gotten to the point where they can justify the resources coming in with the time spent).

I dont work in the computer industry, but the same applies in my field as in any;
After a while you pick up on people that often comes with ok feedback, but include sour points with many/most feedback.
Later on, people will listen to their feedback, well intended or not, with a guarded/negative ears by default.

My 2 cents.

http://forum.apollo-accelerators.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1937

September Activity Report

As summer is ending soon, people are coming back from the sea to what really matters: Amiga love. After a general slowdown in team this summer, we are also back again at work and here are the news!

Events

Apollo Team will be attending some events in next months and we are very excited to meet people there and discuss about Vampire:

Classic Computing 2018 on 22+23th of September in Oedheim-Degmarn (Germany)

µAlchimie V on 20+21th of October in Clérieux (France)

We will bring nice surprises at those events but I won’t tell more about it, you just have to be there

GOLD2.11

GOLD2.x development branch is still ongoing and we should soon release a new iteration of that core series with name of GOLD2.11 (our marketing team took weeks to choose that incredible and over original name). GOLD2.11 will introduce some very interesting feature like blitter improvement, which should fix lot of badly written games running on WHDLoad that where messing with IRQ a bit too much.

FPU has also been improved by a large margin: we were able to use bit of remaining FPGA space to extend precision of FPU up to 50Bit. This improvement fixes Elude RTG demos that were affected by the « date bug » reported on A1k. MacOS emulation was also affected by this (you could see it when running Warcraft 2, intro movie was a slideshow). Kiero helped us to address this issue and we thank him for that, thanks man!

We also introduced Out-of-Order execution on FPU instructions, which speeds up operation by another great margin when software takes advantage of it. For example, POVray likes it very much and calculation is now faster on 3D rendering scenes.

Team is also working on ICache Prefetch. This feature will also speed up lot of programs that can take advantage of it. This one is not trivial and need to be implemented conscientiously to not introduce unwanted behaviour. If it gets good enough, it will make its way in GOLD2.11.

All in one, we are super excited about bringing GOLD2.11 to all, it will make Vampire V2 even faster while improving compatibility with old games.

GOLD3

GOLD3 branch development has also continued during this summer. We went through quite a lot of games and fixed lot of them but it still requires some love. We are thinking about releasing GOLD3 as alpha and open a webpage to report bugs to help speeding up development.

Bug reports for GOLD3 would require some rules to be followed to be considered. Reporting « it doesn’t work » won’t be useful and time wasting for team.

In next days that webpage will be set up and more communication will flow accordingly. Stay tuned, AGA for everyone is around the corner.

Vampire V4

Vampire V4 is being actively tested and we are still in process of porting current core code from Cyclone III to Cyclone V. As Cyclone V FPGA cells responds very differently from the good old C3, we need to make sure that core behaves as expected on it on every case we throw at him. This process is long and very exhausting and is even involving people from Altera to make it happen.

Checkmate A1500 Plus

Our friend Stephen Jones just launched a kickstarter campaign for his checkmate A1500 Plus case, which is a perfect fit for a Vampirized Amiga. We fully support him and hope he will achieve full success on his campaign. If you haven’t yet baked it, it’s time to. Go get one here now.

@Overflow

Interesting..thanks alot for your answer.. need to follow Vampire progress little closer i guess. and see where i end up:)

Do you have any interesting Vampire sites ? :)

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nox's in the house!

@noXLar

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Do you have any interesting Vampire sites ? :)

Will this do?

... seriously though this lass is still milking her old vamp routine!

Mistress of Darkness

It's a long time since:

Last edited by BigD on 08-Sep-2018 at 01:49 AM.

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

@Overflow

Quote:

...you just have to focus on the positives...

Hard to do when people keep nitpicking.

And the whole "PPC is dead" thing certainly isn't helping me when I'm working with Roberto Innocenti's group promoting the Acube designed T2080 based laptop, or trying to get the MorphOS development team to consider supporting PCIE G5 PowerMacs or Raptor Engineering Power9 hardware.

I just wanted to point out that at one point Gunner and I were involved in an active discussion of cross platform game development, so the accusations that he's only promoted his own projects and denigrated other Amiga related endeavors is actually false.

A great deal of this friction comes from legacy fanatics that don't realize that Vampire has a niche all to itself.

There is no real NG/Vampire competition because the platforms serve different purposes.

Hey, I will be the first to admit that MorphOS is not a great platform for legacy Amiga games.
Games that can benefit from OpenGL support, high end RTG graphics card and audio card support, with a much stronger cpu...that would be MorphOS' area.

And Vampire slots in nicely between high end Amigas and NG hardware.

I'm completely ready to buy a Vampire stand alone. I'd consider adding it to my A2000, but I don't see the point.
It will be a great addition to my other legacy hardware like my CD32.

To close, I'm tired of having other people act like they have the right to speak for the Apollo team.
I haven't mentioned any of this before because...well it none of the fanatics' business.

At one point I was discussing an Apollo core implementation for the old Peripheral Technologies PT68K.
And, btw, Atari enthusiasts have made inquiries as well.
The core isn't limited to Amigas.

As I have said, I used to sell 68K based hardware.
The reason I don't anymore is it's too dated, if PPC is dead, 68K is living dead.

And btw, MY NG of choice is supposed to be moving to X64 (although I would prefer Power9, and used to advocate ARM).

Last edited by JimIgou on 08-Sep-2018 at 10:14 PM.
Last edited by JimIgou on 08-Sep-2018 at 05:02 AM.
Last edited by JimIgou on 08-Sep-2018 at 05:01 AM.

@JimIgou

I never saw something written about that "And btw, MY NG of choice is supposed to be moving to X64 (although I would prefer Power9, and used to advocate ARM"

Discussion were about X64 or ARM, is there a link from a Morphos Team member stating this?
Public talks about moving to another ISA are from 2011 IIRC by Fabien C. so it is already 7 years almost.
What was more interesting back then was the new API namely the Q-Box not just Quark with the A-Box. I understand that they get stucked on the A-Box because it was what users wanted. Probably the most disappointing thing about Morphos to me.

@kamelit0

One thing to keep in mind about POWER9 and future POWER CPUs is that Global Foundries, which bought IBMs foundry business and is manufacturing POWER9 CPUs for IBM on 14hp nm node has just announced they are killing all 7nm development, so IBM might find themselves in a pickle as to where to bake their chips in the future and on what technology. Only Samsung, TSMC and Intel are going 7nm or similar.

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@WolfToTheMoon

Yeah, Global Foundaries really pooched the shoot on this one.

They've purchased foundaries from IBM and AMD and have failed to deliver.

It cost them AMD's business which is probably much more significant than IBM.

TSMC now produces AMD's new 7nm processors and is likely to sweep up anyone else that wants to move to a finer process.

However, Power9 (and future variants) aren't limited to IBM as it's now open for license.

Perhaps the future isn't dependant on further reduction in process, as much as it is opening the platform.

After all, ARM's success is based more on it's open licensing than it is on using any one production node.

That's one of the reasons I tend to favor ARM and now Power, opening the platforms encourages more involvement.

Last edited by JimIgou on 08-Sep-2018 at 05:33 PM.