@NutsAboutAmiga

Great, but is the Sam460 available to anyone beyond the initial pre-order and can it REALLY be considered an 'upgrade' for people that just want to mess around with 'Classic' Amiga apps and games? Pandory V2 on THEA500 Mini has a music AND video player now! We watched cartoons on it this morning while having our breakfast and then rocked out to some mods and mp3s! An Amiga conquering the living room space in 2022 which only costs £120 (which is still overpriced for some RPi4 fans)! How can an AmigaNG machine compete with that?

Last edited by BigD on 04-Sep-2022 at 01:57 PM.

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

@BigD

Image FX, PPaint, TvPaint, Lightwave are all programs that work on that system, but you can also use other newer tools, now that AB3D is compiling, it can be fixed, so it can works on AmigaOS4.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 04-Sep-2022 at 02:29 PM.

_________________
http://lifeofliveforit.blogspot.no/
Facebook::LiveForIt Software for AmigaOS

@NutsAboutAmiga

So you lose Deluxe Paint functionalty and then what new tools/games do you gain? Blender? Spencer? I'm not convinced and neither is the market. Sorry.

Last edited by BigD on 04-Sep-2022 at 04:11 PM.

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

What do one need super fast Amiga for anyways?

_________________
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

Hans Quote:

It's great that people are enjoying their classic 68K Amigas, and even extending it with FPGAs. However, I'm not interested in ditching my 2 GHz machine with PCIe and going back to ~100 MHz 68K. If that makes me "elitist and arrogant," then so be it.

You still don't get it. It only takes a few times the development and production cost to bring a competitive mass produced Raspberry Pi like Amiga board to market with a 68k+chipset ASIC while the 68k+chipset market size is likely at least 10 times that of the PPC Amiga market. At the low price point which it could be produced (~$3-$7 for the SoC ASIC and ~$40 for the board) demand would go up and the market could easily be 100 times or 1000 times the current Amiga market. If I had anything to do with it, this would not be a quick and dirty Apollo core FPGA to ASIC conversion that continues to run at only 100MHz. That would be a waste of an ASIC, give a product based on it a bad reputation as well as not being competitive in performance for no good reason. I am not even sold on the Apollo core. Gunnar blundering may make other 68k cores better options and pipelined 68020 cores are available (Jens and Thomas are professional though). Using a 40nm process like the $1 RP2040 SoC ASIC can allow up to 3GHz practical CPU cores although that was from very professional teams and 1-2GHz is a more realistic target. PCIe is no longer needed with a small RPi like board and the extra expense of allowing a graphics board is a major reason why a product like the Tabor can't compete with the RPi and couldn't even if it was mass produced. An ASIC allows to customize and standardize what is available which is a huge advantage too.

$3-$7 68k Amiga SoC ASIC
2-4 enhanced 68060 like cores fully static for operation up to ~2GHz
AGA+ Amiga chipset with video output(s), RTG/chunky, 16 bit Paula upgrade, etc.
Imagination Technologies hybrid ray tracing GPU
1GiB of super high performance memory could be on chip (SRAM, eDRAM, etc.)

I believe the above is possible. It may be necessary to move to a smaller process to keep the ray tracing GPU fanless though. An Amiga standard based on this would be cheaper than and better than most PPC Amiga hardware. Many Amiga users can't justify spending so much money for niche market PPC Amiga hardware so they buy a RPi instead but the RPi GPU performance targets low power and lacks performance. I would target higher performance at the expense of power while leveraging the small footprint of the 68k Amiga to provide a very capable computer at a very low cost. The RPi Foundation is successful because they understand what is needed.

https://www.arm.com/blogs/blueprint/raspberry-pi-rp2040 Quote:

we knew that we needed to push that price-performance ratio harder than ever before.

Amiga PPC hardware is obsolete and noncompetitive before it goes on sale. You can put on blinders and keep walking out into the desert of failure but don't be surprised when your water runs out and you find yourself all alone.


Hans Quote:

Now if you'll excuse me, I'd like to get back to enjoying AmigaOS 4. It's pretty good for a "PPC Amiga failure."

The PPC Amiga had some initial success in porting the AmigaOS to PPC. It failed to find a useful niche even though there were plans for embedded and desktop use. PPC is fat and unfriendly for embedded and features were not enhanced enough for desktop competitiveness like SMP, process isolation and 64 bit support. For Amiga use, it also has reduced compatibility. The PPC Amiga failed for embedded, desktop and Amiga preferred use. Yes, I would like to turn your PPC Amiga hardware into a door stop but I want to replace it with something better and cheaper. I don't want to do away with AmigaOS 4 so much as transform it for more competitive products and hardware.

Hans Quote:

P.S., Couldn't resist nit-picking a bit: AmigaOS 4 didn't break 68K compatibility.

AmigaOS 4 did break Amiga compatibility which included 68k+chipset. A FPGA could have been used to provide chipset compatibility and wouldn't have cost much more than the Xorro/Xena gimmick. I would explore FPGA/eFPGA use even with a 68k Amiga board. It may be possible to take the MiSTer retro market share with a lower priced system that offers much of the same functionality. Imagine an Amiga Workbench where non-Amiga retro games could be double clicked to run from FPGA.

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kolla Quote:

What do one need super fast Amiga for anyways?

What do you need more memory for too? "640k ought to be enough for anybody."

Well the reason I wanted an X1000/OS4 machine, was so that I could do modern days stuff on my fav platform rather than Windows. Plus help push the platform forward.

When i got the X1000 there was things like Timberwolf had just come out, to run Youtube, Google Docs and other modern sites on my Amiga was great (for the first year till it very quickly got unsupported). Then also Gimp / blender where nice to have. Oh and ScummVM a much more modern version of that I could finally play and complete the Space Quest series on an Amiga was really special to me anyway as I have fond memories of playing 1 to 4 as kid trying to figure out the puzzles.

So I feel that OS4 and its software and what it can do, should not be ignored, it is an amazing achievement when you think how little resource it got.

But that was back in 2012, where now in 2022 and as much as I dont like to admit it emulation has improved and cheap low cost hardware that can run Amiga software can be bought for £7 (Pi zero when its in stock) and thanks to things like Amikit XE you can get a modern day looking feeling classic OS that feels very close to OS4 add Rabbit hole you can access modern day software / task when need to, and although its not native software I look at the lay of the land the level of resources and developers we have in the Amiga community and unfortunately I feel more and more this is the way to go now

_________________
AmigaNG, YouTube, LeaveReality Studio

@amigang

But the X1000 looks cool you have to admit! And it was nice to see multiple parties working together on that project back in 2010. I don't think Gunnar or Hermans work with 'other parties'. Their way or the highway me thinks. Similar to how RGL don't really reach out and work with the Pandory and AMiNIMiga developers/hackers!

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

@matthey

Quote:

matthey wrote: Some Amiga users think it is necessary to throw away the old outdated Amiga but it can still have life with an effort to "push that price-performance ratio harder than ever before" and make Amiga hardware competitive again. An Amiga 68060+chipset SoC ASIC could use fewer transistors than the RP2040 SoC ASIC which sells for $1 although I would aim higher performance with more modern features.

The RP2040 has 264kB on-chip SRAM: do you want to sacrifice it and use its transistors for the 68060? If yes, then which kind of memory do you plan to include in the SoC? Don't you think that removing the SRAM would considerably reduce the 68060 performances?
Quote:

Planning for emulation instead of hardware is accepting obsolescence.

No planning: emulation is already the best solution since years.

@Hans

Quote:

Hans wrote: @matthey Quote: Now if you'll excuse me, I'd like to get back to enjoying AmigaOS 4. It's pretty good for a "PPC Amiga failure." Like Amiga OS4.2 which is still missing SMP, 64-bit support, Gallium? @NutsAboutAmiga Quote: NutsAboutAmiga wrote: @cdimauro [quote]Thanks to Cloanto? For defending ITS business?!? Are you reading what you write? His business was never in threat.

False: Cloanto is operating in the emulation field, which was NOT the one for Hyperion.
Quote:

He screws up everything because of paranoia.

Don't talk about yourself.
Quote:

Quote: You should let Hyperion die and run out of business, instead Hyperion might need to change, going bankrupt might be the only option for company if can’t pay its debts. Business is not a charity.

Hyperion only needs to go bankrupt.

cdimauro Quote:

The RP2040 has 264kB on-chip SRAM: do you want to sacrifice it and use its transistors for the 68060? If yes, then which kind of memory do you plan to include in the SoC? Don't you think that removing the SRAM would considerably reduce the 68060 performances?

I was just making a point that the small ARM "RISC" cores didn't make the SoC cheap because they used fewer transistors and less area. A 68060+AGA+ Amiga SoC ASIC could be made that uses a fraction of the transistors of the $1 RP2040 SoC transistors gives some perspective. Reducing an Amiga SoC ASIC to a minimal configuration isn't going to save much cost as the transistors are cheap, especially using a fab process that optimizes transistors/$. Even for the $1 RP2040 SoC, the majority of transistors went to SRAM main memory which enhances performance more than a 2nd level cache. Embedded systems can often run from SRAM because memory requirements are often known and modest. A general purpose computer often needs more memory even if the Amiga 1000 originally came with 256kiB of main memory. I'm not calling for the AmigaOS to be cut down to run on the Pico when transistors are so cheap. I would rather make a more expensive Amiga SoC ASIC where the Amiga is more comfortable, has more caches and memory and can show off how large the resources seem with a small footprint CPU ISA and OS which is why I talk about a $3-$7 Amiga SoC ASIC. CBM did a poor job of further integrating the Amiga after Jay Miner planning showed how very large scale integration was a game changer to advance technology. The Amiga chipset could have easily been down to a single CMOS chip in the '90s and even CBM was investigated licensing the 68k, likely for a single chip Amiga SoC. Even some of the memory can be on the SoC as was sometimes seen on consoles where SRAM was used and eDRAM in the case of the PS2 slim (4MiB), Playstation Portable (4MiB), XBOX 360 (10MiB) and Wii U (32MiB). Intel SoCs have also used 128MiB of eDRAM.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDRAM

Using too much SRAM increases power requirements and if enough memory is required then it is better to use SRAM for caches but performance suffers and jitter increases. The Amiga is enough of a memory miser that there are some interesting memory options. Reducing the number of multilevel caches may save development time. On chip memory may be more configurable. SRAM can be dual ported like VRAM if that makes accesses between the chipset and CPU core easier or more efficient. Newer external DDR memory increases bandwidth by accessing larger chunks of memory but this may be less efficient for smaller data chunks which are common with a retro CPU and chipset. Gunnar mentioned apprehensions about moving to newer DDR memory for this reason. The MiSTer base board has 1GiB of DDR3 memory yet an addon board with 128MiB of SDR memory is required by many cores.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_dynamic_random-access_memory#SDR

This is just older SDRAM that works better for retro systems. The MiSTer system is really not optimal with 3 boards commonly used where a SoC ASIC for this application could easily use one board and cost less. The FPGA is more expensive than most FPGA retro systems except for newer Apollo Core hardware FPGAs so the board cost can only be reduced so much. That is where it would be interesting to look at eFPGA blocks on an ASIC. There are a lot of interesting customization options with an ASIC although not all are available depending on the fab process and some may be too expensive. So far, most retro hardware uses inferior emulation and I'm not aware of a retro ASIC that really tries to drive down cost despite what I believe to be a very robust retro market.

cdimauro Quote:

No planning: emulation is already the best solution since years.

What major business uses emulation and prefers it? What customer prefers emulation, more latency, more jitter and more resources used driving up the hardware cost? Why do tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of retro users pay hundreds of dollars for FPGA systems when they could use emulation on their PC for free?

Modern Vintage Gamer finally tried a MiSTer and admitted he was wrong to think emulation was adequate.

Finally - I got my hands on a MiSTer FPGA Retro Gaming Setup | MVG
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVPa5EW5mp8

Modern Vintage Gamer Quote:

Ok, so I have a confession to make. I've been asked to cover the MiSTer project for years and generally avoided it simply because I felt like traditional emulation is so good these days that developing FPGA cores for old retro consoles and computers wasn't really that interesting to me. It's also not the cheapest hobby to get into. The total bill of materials if you're looking for a good setup can be quite expensive and when you can easily just download a copy of Mame or Beast NES which costs you a total of zero dollars, you start to get where I'm coming from but before I write something completely off I'll at least give it a try and thanks to a friend of the channel, Bob from retro RGB, he sent me a MiSTer for me to take a look at and play around with. I've spent the last few weeks looking at it and boy was I wrong. The MiSTer project is quite incredible.

Another video follows where the author can feel the lag of emulation vs FPGA recreation. Read the comments to see many people can feel the lag difference between FPGA and emulation. Most prefer the higher quality FPGA experience although RetroPi has some advantages especially the cost.

Compare MiSTer FPGA vs Raspberry Pi - Which one is for you?!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QqwLemidXg

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@Hans

Quote:

Realize that you're telling someone who has worked on the AmigaOS 4 ecosystem for almost two decades that we should basically dump everything we've done ...

Ah, the sunk cost fallacy. While it is a shame that ultimately all the work you and others have done related to AmigaOS 4.x is approaching a dead end and objectively amounts to very little, the number of years worked on it are irrelevant.

Quote:

... and go back to 68K.

And go forward with 68k.


Quote:

Now if you'll excuse me, I'd like to get back to enjoying AmigaOS 4. It's pretty good for a "PPC Amiga failure."

As is the number of those who are "enjoying" AmigaOS 4.x, It is highly likely that there are an equal or greater amount of individuals that are enjoying:
- Playing a movie on either HD-DVD disc, LaserDisc, SuperVHS, BetMax
- Playing music on either SACD, DCC, MiniDisc, 8-track, reel-to-reel
- Playing UMD-based games on a Sony PSP
- Typing a letter/essay/novel/script on an electric or mechanical typewriter
- Shooting a movie or taking photos using film stock
- Riding a horse to work

And like your enjoyment of AmigaOS 4.x, none of the above listed are credible nor practical technologies for growing adoption in a future context. Some of them are failures, as in they never really reached their potential; and others were just left behind by the ebbs and flows of progress. AmigaOS 4.x and anything on PPC are in both categories.

Perhaps your involvement in the AmigaOS 4.x ecosystem is your swansong: If so, that is perfectly fine, for you. That doesn't mean that AmigaOS4.x/PPC should be the last chapter in the Amiga saga. Certainly not because a small group of developers spent close to two decades in the ecosystem, and you and a handful of others can still find some enjoyment in the platform today.

_________________
All the way, with 68k

@kolla

What do you need amiga at all?

People want to have it because it is there and do something they could not do before (like playing certain demanding games or watch video in higher quality) because it is possible,

And it is a dream to change the past, what would have been possible if....

rational it makes no sense of course

But that should be known to you

@NutsAboutAmiga

in my view that is only a little upgrade not really offering real-world specification. It is of course faster than the current 68k hardware but it is not offering the same feeling as the 68k hardware and feeling and emotions are most important today in the community, Because of that AmigaOS propably (I cannot remember official numbers) has more users than MorphOS despite MorphOS (as all admit) is better on PPC. The same is true for most 68k users, they are not interested in PPC. And for people outside a relative expensive PPC system with AmigaOS is uninteresting either because they compare it to a PC with a mainstream OS and there current AmigaOS looks poor too.

I see it from my person. I used amiga until 1994 and since then PC. Then I returned around 2010 because I stumbled upon Natami project. I have certainly interest in the 68k platform because it is the heritage but not the same deep emotions like many here in the community have who are part of it since several decades. PPC creates no really interest to me and "Intel" today (or other hardware like ARM) is not creating any negative emotions like that was the case back in the time. It is just hardware to run your OS and software.

In my view there are 3 different groups with different interests:
1.the current community bubble (mostly 68k orientated and mostly interested in 68k only)
2.Former amiga user today using a current PC or Smartphone/Tablet only
3.People who never used amigas at all

the first group has strong feelings but it is difficult to sell something else because feelings are more important than features. Group 2 has weak ties and emotions and at least memories to amiga but to have a chance in that group you have to offer something competitive and innovative at a reasonable price or 68k hardware. 'And third group would need completely new offerings most difficult to get. I do not see PPC anywhere.

Current NG solutions (AROS, MorphOS and AmigaOS) are not attractive to group 2 and 3 because only "halfway" modern and not competitive and in case of AmigaOS even requiring expensive hardware. Because of that I have high hopes about the transition of AROS to Linux. That will offer new chances to really create something new. And it runs on standard hardware with lots of drivers and will have a modern OS as base then.

Hardware today is a mean for me needed to run OS and software. That is certainly the case for most people in group 2 or 3. In current community there is a extreme concentration on hardware, visible on lengthy and emotional discussions about "what is amiga". To people outside that certainly looks strange in many cases.

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@matthey

Memory is a much more limiting factor to what can be accomplished than speed is, you should know that.

_________________
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

@OlafS25

Quote:

What do you need amiga at all?

For what it is good at.

Quote:

People want to have it because it is there and do something they could not do before (like playing certain demanding games or watch video in higher quality) because it is possible,

What is coolest - watching a video that just barely plays, or use the Amiga as a frontend to Plex or Jellyfin and let a more suited device do the actual video playback?

_________________
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

@kolla

As I wrote I do not have the same deep emotions as others so do not ask me that

I only describe how I see many people in the community. There are some who want to buy a upgrade that more or less reduces amiga to a keyboard and do things that were not possible before. For others only old turbo cards with real 68k processors are amiga. Others are only wanting to play old games and not interested in newer demanding ports and happy with a slightly upgraded original amiga or even unexpanded A500 or A1200. Or even happy using it with UAE.

Last edited by OlafS25 on 05-Sep-2022 at 07:28 AM.

@matthey

Quote:

matthey wrote: cdimauro Quote: The RP2040 has 264kB on-chip SRAM: do you want to sacrifice it and use its transistors for the 68060? If yes, then which kind of memory do you plan to include in the SoC? Don't you think that removing the SRAM would considerably reduce the 68060 performances? I was just making a point that the small ARM "RISC" cores didn't make the SoC cheap because they used fewer transistors and less area. A 68060+AGA+ Amiga SoC ASIC could be made that uses a fraction of the transistors of the $1 RP2040 SoC transistors gives some perspective. Reducing an Amiga SoC ASIC to a minimal configuration isn't going to save much cost as the transistors are cheap, especially using a fab process that optimizes transistors/$.

OK, then I fully agree.
Quote:

Even for the $1 RP2040 SoC, the majority of transistors went to SRAM main memory which enhances performance more than a 2nd level cache.

Actually it's better to spend the transistor budget to more L1 cache. It would be good to have 32kB x 2 for instructions and data caches. And even better would be to have an L0 cache for some uops, to get rid of the mess/effort of decoding 68k instructions all the time.
Quote:

Even some of the memory can be on the SoC as was sometimes seen on consoles where SRAM was used and eDRAM in the case of the PS2 slim (4MiB), Playstation Portable (4MiB), XBOX 360 (10MiB) and Wii U (32MiB). Intel SoCs have also used 128MiB of eDRAM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDRAM

eDRAM is too much expensive for a cheap SoC. Better to get rid of it.
Quote:

Using too much SRAM increases power requirements and if enough memory is required then it is better to use SRAM for caches but performance suffers and jitter increases. The Amiga is enough of a memory miser that there are some interesting memory options. Reducing the number of multilevel caches may save development time.

See above on this: L0+L1 should be enough for this kind of SoC.
Quote:

On chip memory may be more configurable. SRAM can be dual ported like VRAM if that makes accesses between the chipset and CPU core easier or more efficient.

No, please. Who's using dual ported VRAM nowadays? Just use the regular DDR memory, which has already enough bandwidth.
Quote:

Newer external DDR memory increases bandwidth by accessing larger chunks of memory but this may be less efficient for smaller data chunks which are common with a retro CPU and chipset.

Caches and/or large bandwidth is and should be enough to address those small data requests.
Quote:

Gunnar mentioned apprehensions about moving to newer DDR memory for this reason. The MiSTer base board has 1GiB of DDR3 memory yet an addon board with 128MiB of SDR memory is required by many cores. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronous_dynamic_random-access_memory#SDR This is just older SDRAM that works better for retro systems.

Please get rid of this Stone Age technology. Modern memory has already more than needed to address the small requests of legacy/retro system.

Using SDRAM only for this reason will only cripple the whole platform. OR complicate it, if you want to use both SDRAM and DDR at the same time.

So, DDR should be the only memory system. Unless there's a clear proof that DDR causes problems.
Quote:

cdimauro Quote: No planning: emulation is already the best solution since years. What major business uses emulation and prefers it?

Nintendo, Sony, SEGA with their respective "mini" versions of the their old consoles.

It should be enough, but if it's not you can take a look also at the C64 Mini and Amiga Mini.
Quote:

What customer prefers emulation, more latency, more jitter

Latency and jitter could be greatly reduced or eliminated. See below.
Quote:

and more resources used driving up the hardware cost?

Do you understand that the current hardware-based systems use FPGAs (so, not ASICs) and they are utterly expensive?

How much it costs a MISTer or a Vampire V4 (let's talk only about the standalone versions, which are "self-contained" AKA SBC)?

How much it costs a low-end (because nowadays it's enough to address most of the retro systems) MiniPC?

Actually the differences between FPGAs and PCs (or RPis) is about how you use the transistors budget. But both require A LOT of transistors.

At least PCs are much more flexible and development of emulators takes a lot LESS effort compared to HDL. Not even counting the performance that they could get if speed is important (and here using a JIT makes at least an order of magnitude of difference).
Quote:

Why do tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of retro users pay hundreds of dollars for FPGA systems when they could use emulation on their PC for free?

Because of a psychological reason: they need to "touch" the hardware.

Something which is also happening the mentioned "Mini" retro systems, even if all of them use an emulator inside!

People touch the hardware --> Oooh, it's cool: it's like the original platform!

You see? Psychology...
Quote:

Modern Vintage Gamer finally tried a MiSTer and admitted he was wrong to think emulation was adequate. Finally - I got my hands on a MiSTer FPGA Retro Gaming Setup | MVG https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVPa5EW5mp8 Modern Vintage Gamer Quote: Ok, so I have a confession to make. I've been asked to cover the MiSTer project for years and generally avoided it simply because I felt like traditional emulation is so good these days that developing FPGA cores for old retro consoles and computers wasn't really that interesting to me. It's also not the cheapest hobby to get into. The total bill of materials if you're looking for a good setup can be quite expensive and when you can easily just download a copy of Mame or Beast NES which costs you a total of zero dollars, you start to get where I'm coming from but before I write something completely off I'll at least give it a try and thanks to a friend of the channel, Bob from retro RGB, he sent me a MiSTer for me to take a look at and play around with. I've spent the last few weeks looking at it and boy was I wrong. The MiSTer project is quite incredible. Another video follows where the author can feel the lag of emulation vs FPGA recreation. Read the comments to see many people can feel the lag difference between FPGA and emulation. Most prefer the higher quality FPGA experience although RetroPi has some advantages especially the cost. Compare MiSTer FPGA vs Raspberry Pi - Which one is for you?! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QqwLemidXg

On both videos the author says that FPGA systems do cycle-accurate implementations. So, letting people think that this is not possible with emulators.

This is clearly false and totally misleading. As we know, most emulators provide cycle-accurate emulation as well. Since years. And actually better than FPGAs, because emulators are the most accurate.

Aside this, today latency could be greatly reduced with GSync or FreeSync displays. In the last years almost all displays (TVs, monitors) implement FreeSync and some GSync.

If you have no such display or you need something better, then you have Lagless VSync: https://blurbusters.com/blur-busters-lagless-raster-follower-algorithm-for-emulator-developers/
WinUAE already implemented it, but other emulators are adopting it.

That should be enough. But one more thing about 3D systems. Emulation could do much better the original systems even in terms of latency. For example: https://www.neogaf.com/threads/dolphin-emulating-wii-and-gamecube-games.395121/page-310#post-246464070
And, in general, 3D systems are not that easy to be implemented using FPGAs. Plus they require A LOT of resources (e.g. LEs). And they might require higher clocks. For both things FPGAs aren't usable.

@agami

Quote:

agami wrote: @Hans Quote: Now if you'll excuse me, I'd like to get back to enjoying AmigaOS 4. It's pretty good for a "PPC Amiga failure." And like your enjoyment of AmigaOS 4.x, none of the above listed are credible nor practical technologies for growing adoption in a future context. Some of them are failures, as in they never really reached their potential; and others were just left behind by the ebbs and flows of progress. AmigaOS 4.x and anything on PPC are in both categories. Perhaps your involvement in the AmigaOS 4.x ecosystem is your swansong: If so, that is perfectly fine, for you. That doesn't mean that AmigaOS4.x/PPC should be the last chapter in the Amiga saga. Certainly not because a small group of developers spent close to two decades in the ecosystem, and you and a handful of others can still find some enjoyment in the platform today.

One thing to point-out: there were/are no PowerPC Amigas.

AROS, MorphOS, OS4 (in strictly chronological order) are reimplementations or ports of the Amiga o.s.. So, only the o.s. survived, more or less, but Amigas were a hardware AND software platform.

So, there cannot be a PPC Amiga failure simply because there was/is no PowerPC Amiga.

But at least we can say that PowerPC Amiga o.s.-/like systems are a failure.
PowerPC AROS was left in the dust and not on par with the other hardware platforms.
MorphOS is already moving to x64.
OS4 is waiting 4.2 from more than a decade and we know for sure that it'll never see the light.

The curtain falls...


@OlafS25

Quote:

OlafS25 wrote: Current NG solutions (AROS, MorphOS and AmigaOS)

Again? There's NOTHING which "NG" on those systems. NOTHING!

They still bring ALL issues of the original o.s.. Absolutely NOTHING was fixed/solved. And nothing new is added (I mean: which is NOT available on 68K AND that CANNOT be added).

NG is a marketing label which was invented by sellers to cheat their customers. Like the Xena coprocessors on AmigaOne X systems: just pure marketing to illude people that they have something which resembles the Amiga's coprocessors.


@kolla

Quote:

kolla wrote: @matthey Memory is a much more limiting factor to what can be accomplished than speed is, you should know that.

Both are important.

Memory size is needed to better address more modern needs.

Memory speed/bandwidth is needed to get higher/modern resolutions, and this not only for displaying a screen but also to generate content to be displayed.


@OlafS25

Quote:

OlafS25 wrote: @kolla As I wrote I do not have the same deep emotions as others so do not ask me that I only describe how I see many people in the community. There are some who want to buy a upgrade that more or less reduces amiga to a keyboard and do things that were not possible before. For others only old turbo cards with real 68k processors are amiga. Others are only wanting to play old games and not interested in newer demanding ports and happy with a slightly upgraded original amiga or even unexpanded A500 or A1200. Or even happy using it with UAE.

Let's be honest: playing the good old games is the primary thing which Amigans do and need.

This does NOT require incredible performances of the system. Rather the opposite: trying to accurately emulate the original systems as they are.

Which is something which WinUAE could be pretty well even on low-end systems (and much better using the Blitter immediate option, which also resolves many of the issues caused by the stupid idiots that never opened or understood Commodore's guidelines and don't know how to correctly wait the Blitter before starting another operation and/or before accessing the data "touched" by the Blitter).

@matthey

Quote:

Modern Vintage Gamer finally tried a MiSTer and admitted he was wrong to think emulation was adequate.

I have quite a decente machine and yet I cannot for the life of me get to that sweet spot I'd wish to get. Workbench it's all fine and dandy, but games... I've tried linux, fs-uae, winuae, to no avail up till now.

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@cdimauro

Quote:

So, there cannot be a PPC Amiga failure simply because there was/is no PowerPC Amiga.

What are Blizzard PPC/Cyberstorm PPC equipped 'Classic' Amigas then? They ARE Commodore/Escom machines that run PPC programs! Heck PPC even became the official roadmap for upgrading the platform (after some 180 degree turns etc).

So unless you're hung up about the AmigaOne branding I can't really follow what you mean! The fact that 90% of the user base does not want to run PowerPC software is another thing entirely!

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"Art challenges technology. Technology inspires the art."
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