I think pistorm has been brilliant innovation for the Amiga scene,
The only problem with it I feel is it took a little bit of wind out of Vampire / Apollo system and accelerators, I know a fpga chipset will still likly always do emulation better than arm to 68k but at three times the cost, I can see why more people give pistorm a go.

Plus I know vampire team aim was kinda a what if Amiga and 68k kept being developed. Which make me wonder will we ever see pistorm or emulator do the 68080 and sAGA system.

Soon we might see the best of both world, a lower cost fpga that does Amiga chipsets and Pi to do 68k cpu, I’m interested in how these turn out, I think this area of the Amiga world feels the most innovative at the moment.

Last edited by amigang on 26-Jan-2024 at 08:51 AM.

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@ppcamiga1

Quote:

ppcamiga1 wrote: So what is wrong with pistorm what real swith to arm should look who shoud made it 1. pistorm change amiga into expensive mouse and keyboard interface for rpi it is stupid waste of time and money

Pistorm is no different from an accelerator card with onboard RAM (and optional RTG), which was a standard upgrade for Amigas back in the day. It's purpose is do the same thing but faster and cheaper. So not stupid and not a waste of time of money.

Quote:

amiga mouse and keyboard were copied from pc 40 years ago

Amiga mouse is similar to the 'Bus' mouse introduced to the PC by Microsoft in April 1983. But this was not the first of its kind. The first patent for a ball mouse using the same arrangement as the Amiga mouse was granted in 1976. Unlike bus mice for the PC (which needed a dedicated ISA bus interface card) the Amiga mouse connects through the standard Atari pinout digital joystick port - first used on the Atari 2600 in 1979.

But most PC mice used the serial port because a bus card was an expensive addon while they already had a serial port. The performance and accuracy of serial port mice was much worse than the Amiga mouse, which uses counters inside Paula that store movements independently of the CPU. This is very important for applications such as paint programs that need accurate mouse movement for best performance.

The Amiga keyboard is clearly not copied from the PC. It has different keys and a different layout. The Model F AT keyboard has function keys down the left-hand side, and the delete and cursor keys are alternate functions of the numeric keypad. Although the 2 wire interface is electrically similar, the Amiga keyboard has a different protocol designed to work with the 8520 CIA chip. It can also do a hardware reset, eliminating the need for a separate reset button.

The mouse and keyboard are not the only parts of the Amiga that are used when a PiStorm is installed. Joysticks, printers and serial devices, any addon plugged into the A500 expansion slot or A1200 PCMCIA slot, the floppy drive, hard drive (if present), sound via Paula and of course native Amiga graphics are also utilized just like they would be with any other accelerator card.

Quote:

just use rpi and linux

No thanks. When I want Linux I use a PC.

Quote:

2. em68 is emulator. emulator will be always few times slower than native code. no reason to use it just use native code.

It's faster than any 68k CPU, and the stuff I run on the Amiga needs a 68k (original Motorola CPU, FPGA, or emulated on ARM makes no difference). I also enjoy coding in 68k asm. Have you tried coding in ARM asm? It's horrible. Looks ugly and you have to write twice as much code to get anything done.

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aga may be changed to anything it is just dumb framebuffer.

No it isn't 'just a dumb frame buffer'. You obviously know nothing about AGA.

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decent open source amiga solution, amiga gui and graphics on top of unix

That's no Amiga solution, it's just a GUI that mimics the Amiga on Linux. I would rather mimic Windows XP GUI on Linux (which is what I am doing right now). IMO the Amiga GUI is best suited to lower resolutions (eg. 640x256).

There are some things wrong with the PiStorm though.

1. Slow ChipRAM access. Not sure if this can be fixed with the current hardware.

2. Highly variable CPU speed. I understand you can tweak it, but it would be better if you could chose an accurate emulation of different CPUs.

3. It can be tricky to get set up right. If I ever buy one it will be from a vendor who supplies a complete 'plug and play' package.

4. If I do decide to buy one I bet it will be out of stock, discontinued etc.

Last edited by bhabbott on 26-Jan-2024 at 11:18 AM.

Just for sake of irony… Linux' (dumb) framebuffer support (fbdev) originated from Linux/68k for Amiga and Atari.

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@bhabbott

"It can be tricky to get set up right. If I ever buy one it will be from a vendor who supplies a complete 'plug and play' package."

It's not more complicated to setup than an 040/060 accelerator.

"If I do decide to buy one I bet it will be out of stock, discontinued etc."

Pistorm / Emu68 is an Open Source project, hard- and software. Even if development stalls today, you will alway be able to get the current state. And there will always any hobbyist who could solder you one.

Last edited by _analogkid_ on 27-Jan-2024 at 09:52 AM.

@amigang

Quote:

amigang wrote: I think pistorm has been brilliant innovation for the Amiga scene, The only problem with it I feel is it took a little bit of wind out of Vampire / Apollo system and accelerators, I know a fpga chipset will still likly always do emulation better than arm to 68k but at three times the cost, I can see why more people give pistorm a go. Plus I know vampire team aim was kinda a what if Amiga and 68k kept being developed. Which make me wonder will we ever see pistorm or emulator do the 68080 and sAGA system. Soon we might see the best of both world, a lower cost fpga that does Amiga chipsets and Pi to do 68k cpu, I�m interested in how these turn out, I think this area of the Amiga world feels the most innovative at the moment.

Apollo-Core could slot themselves into PiStorm32's orbit if they provided FPGA SAGA with an A1200 expansion slot solution.

Ice Drake V4 has an A1200 slot, hence Apollo-Core is aware of A1200 expansion bus behavior.

ACA500Plus also has an A1200 expansion slot.

The A1200 expansion slot enables the AGA clone Southbridge side to hitch itself with any future PiStorm32 evolution. The basic idea is a division between Northbridge (PiStorm32) and Southbridge (AGA/SAGA/CIA) modules. Northbridge side can evolve with ARM evolution rate.

A1200 AGA installs base needs to increase.

Ideally, PiStorm32 (ARMv8 Emu68) Northbridge + FPGA AGA clone Southbridge and PCIe (for modern GPU) combination.

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Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@Hammer

Quote:

Ideally, PiStorm32 (ARMv8 Emu68) Northbridge + FPGA AGA clone Southbridge and PCIe (for modern GPU) combination.

Why on Earth would anyone think an even remotely modern gpu is a good idea for 68k AmigaOS and/or derivatives?
Exercise in absolute pointlessness given 68k Amiga OS only has 31bit address space. Then there's the fact there's no api's that support anything even 15 years old let alone something more recent.
On top of that there's not even enough address space for a full single VRAM module for a modern card. And that's disregarding the systems dont have enough power to run software utilizing even 1GB of VRAM. Plus driver overheads for more modern cards alone would chew into any cpu performance available.


How exactly is it you think a completely pointless/useless idea is ideal?

Surely something usable, useful and practical is a better idea?

Last edited by fishy_fis on 30-Jan-2024 at 04:47 AM.

@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

NutsAboutAmiga wrote: @Hammer I think to run PowerPC code hosted on AmigaOS4.1, we might need to use JIT, just to move the read and writes into a safe space, any illegal instructions or register conflicts can also be handled at the same time. the first PowerMac used really old 601, 603/ 604 and 74xx CPU�s some of the same CPU�s are also used in the AmigaONE models, also consider this WarpOS programs works on AmigaOS4.1, and this programs where also not written for AmigaOS4.1, G5 is a similar CPU to the Pa-Semi CPU in the X1000.

The problem is PPC e5500's successor, PPC e6500 has a standard PPC FPU and Altivec.

PowerPC e6500 Microprocessor IC QorIQ T2 4 Core, 64-Bit 1.8GHz 780-FBGA (23x23) has $376 asking price when purchased in a batch of 10. https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/nxp-usa-inc/T2081NXN8T1B/7648273

It would have problems competing against ARM Cortex A72.

e6500 is useless without a motherboard platform.

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Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@fishy_fis

Quote:

fishy_fis wrote: @Hammer Why on Earth would anyone think an even remotely modern gpu is a good idea for 68k AmigaOS and/or derivatives?

1. Under Linux ARM, RPi CM4 with a PCIe adapter can run a Radeon card. PCIe support is inherent with RPi CM4.

The full PiStorm32 with RPi CM4 has PCIe NVMe support.

2. RPi 4B's ARM Cortex A72 with Emu68 is fast enough for PCIe Radeon.

Quote:

Exercise in absolute pointlessness given 68k Amiga OS only has 31bit address space.

Before ReBAR, the PC has a 256 MB BAR access window.


Quote:

Then there's the fact there's no api's that support anything even 15 years old let alone something more recent.

OpenGL potential is supported on Broadcom IGP and Radeon dGPU hardware.


Quote:

On top of that there's not even enough address space for a full single VRAM module for a modern card. And that's disregarding the systems dont have enough power to run software utilizing even 1GB of VRAM. Plus driver overheads for more modern cards alone would chew into any cpu performance available.

Before ReBAR, the PC GPUs has a 256 MB BAR access window.

Last edited by Hammer on 30-Jan-2024 at 05:09 AM.

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Amiga 1200 (Rev 1D1, KS 3.2, PiStorm32lite/RPi 4B 4GB/Emu68)
Amiga 500 (Rev 6A, KS 3.2, PiStorm/RPi 3a/Emu68)

@kolla

Quote:

kolla wrote: Just for sake of irony� Linux' (dumb) framebuffer support (fbdev) originated from Linux/68k for Amiga and Atari.

Cue trombone slide sound effect.

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Doing stupid things for fun...

"what is wrong wiht pistorm"?

What is wrong with PiStorm?
It failed to acknowledge and materialize the 'two more weeks' mantra of talking but never releasing anything, and when this happen people simply didn't knew how to react. Some actually enjoyed trying out the product and actually see it work.

In a nutshell, that's 'What's wrong with PiStorm'...

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The Illusion of Choice | Am*ga

@pixie

Quote:

pixie wrote: It failed to acknowledge and materialize the 'two more weeks' mantra of talking but never releasing anything, and when this happen people simply didn't knew how to react.

I like this answer.

Quote:

Some actually enjoyed trying out the product and actually see it work.

Not me, as it happens.

In life's determination to meet its irony intake, my proverbial dance card is so full for the next several months, that I will be dining on the "two more weeks" Amiga diet despite having all the ingredients to bake a delicious emu68-filled Amiga Pi.

Last edited by agami on 31-Jan-2024 at 05:13 AM.

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All the way, with 68k

@agami

Ah, so you’re busy with that 68k stawberry pi system you and Matthey are working on? Awesome!

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