@Hammer

Quote:

Hammer wrote: @cdimauro Quote: That's a completely different thing. Corporate memory is based on people working in the company. A brain drain is not good for any cutting-edge tech company.

Only part of the engineers were moved to C65 project. At least according to what you've reported here.
Quote:

Quote: The "solutions" (!) that Commodore engineers have found to evolve the platform were simply ridiculous and prove their lack of understand of the platform. CSG's LSI group has biases i.e. C64 was from the LSI group and C65 was from the LSI group. CBM's executive team was absent on clear direction. Commodore-Amiga Inc is Amiga Inc i.e. the Amiga group. Amiga group created its VLSI group.

OK, and? Who took the decisions for the technical changes to the chipset?
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From the book, I have shown the name who created AGA's technical specification document.

Who was? It's lost on your walls-of-text.
Quote:

Quote: And look at what they (the engineers) have produced: an HORRIBLE patch over ECS. As Eggbrecht stated, they were HACKERS and UNPROFESSIONAL. Which is exactly how they worked and we can see on their "brilliant" (!) solutions. Again, that's an incomplete narrative. Commodore - The Final Years book has attached names to each mess. With the backing of Bill Sydnes, Jeff Frank's (from June 1991 and beyond) administration was worse than the former administration. The debacle of 1 million A600 orders was caused by Jeff Frank, Mehdi Ali, and Bill Sydnes, which led to Commodore's bankruptcy. Mehdi Ali attempted to correct the mistakes made by Jeff Frank and Bill Sydnes with a must-produce A1200 directive in Feb 1992. AGA wasn't beta tested as of Feb 1992 due to frozen status by Bill Sydnes' and Jeff Frank's administration. "More than six months" was wasted by Bill Sydnes/Jeff Frank's administration. After June 1991, Jeff Frank is the project manager for A600, and AA600/A1200 and administrator of the Amiga group. Jeff Porter is the project manager for CD32 and administrator of the multimedia group. Commodore management overrides Jeff Porter's 8MB RAM CD32 spec. Irving Gould is biased toward FMV, hence selecting a 40 Mhz MIPS-X-based SoC with a VCD use case target.

Again, this has nothing to do with what I've stated before.
Quote:

It's in the fucking "Commodore - The Final Years" book. I removed eBook's DRM for ignorants like you.

No, here the problem is that you do NOT understand the context and what people write. And start replying like a dummy BOT.

Take a look at my reply to Olaf: this gives a clear example of the context and of what I was talking about.

Albeit I completely lost hope that you'll be able to improve, since you just write because you've a keyboard at your hands.
Quote:

Facts: PS1's CPU/GTE and GPU are designed externally by LSI and Toshiba. From the SuperFX project, Argonaut Technologies Limited (ATL) and Argonaut Software Limited (ASL) had a contract with LSI for a potential PS2 design. LSI Logic became a minor investor in Argonaut.

In fact, that's another HAMMER's PADDING / NON-SENSE / COMPLETELY DIFFERENT TOPIC.

What's the difference between you and a bot? Nothing: both don't understand the context and just reply with something which might look similar to the discussion, but which in reality has nothing to do with it.
Quote:

Look in the mirror, hypocrite.

At least I'm able to understand when I'm looking at the mirror, bot!
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-------------- I told them that this is as good as it's going to get unless they let us design some hardware to make the SNES better at 3D. Amazingly, even though I had never done any hardware before, they said YES, and gave me a million bucks to make it happen. —Argonaut founder and Super FX codesigner, Jez San. Three British major game developers (i.e. Psygnosis, Edios/Core Design, Argonaut) backed Sony Playstation and SNES platforms ahead of the Amiga. Commodore management is out of touch with the 3D gaming scene.

Do you know what? I partially agree with you at least on that.

According to your favourite genius, they (AKA Commodore engineers) were very well aware of how much important was the 3D ONE or TWO years BEFORE the CD32 was created.

Guess what: they provided the hardware C2P logic on CD32's Akiko as a LAST MINUTE ADDITION after a lunch break and one day of work.

And we know very well how it was good and useful, right?

Only Commodore engineers made it possible!

P.S. Do you understand that you need to understand (!) the CONTEXT/TOPIC of the discussion BEFORE replying? Just to remind it to you again.

Quote:

cdimauro ranted: It was told by whom?

By the developers themselves, that where the people who knew the facts

Quote:

cdimauro ranted: And, whoever it was, who cares?

Reasonable people value facts, you don't

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 07-Dec-2024 at 10:51 AM.

@OneTimer1

Quote:

OneTimer1 wrote: Quote: cdimauro ranted: It was told by whom? By the developers themselves, that where the people who knew the facts

And which have reported only the things that make them in good light and put all responsibility on the management.

Do you understand that they were/are not objective? For obvious reasons: they have all interests on building their mythologic figures (Commodore's gods).
Quote:

Quote: cdimauro ranted: And, whoever it was, who cares? Reasonable people value facts, you don't

Childish tentative to change the cards on the table. In fact, you've carefully cut what I've written before, because and evidently you want to see only what you like to see.

Let me quote me again:

What's important is about FACTs, right? That's what I've talked about. See also above my reply to Olaf, for a clear FACT which proves my statements.
[...]
I've already reported plenty of material on my last series of articles which is proving my statements. Material which is coming from Commodore's TECHNICAL documentation, as well as interviews from TECHNICAL people of the company and some TECHNICAL MANAGERS.

Feel free to rebut them. IF you can, since my source is... rolling drum... directly coming from Commodore.

You talk about facts, but you're an hypocritical, because you completely remove and try to hide the FACTs which I've reported.

The forth problem with Commodore were, and still are, its blind fanatics...

Quote:

cdimauro wrote: [i]What's important is about FACTs, right?.

If you don't know, no one can help you.

@OneTimer1

Quote:

OneTimer1 wrote: Quote: cdimauro wrote: [i]What's important is about FACTs, right?. If you don't know, no one can help you.

@cdimauro

Quote:

Guess what: they provided the hardware C2P logic on CD32's Akiko as a LAST MINUTE ADDITION after a lunch break and one day of work. And we know very well how it was good and useful, right? Only Commodore engineers made it possible!

It would have helped speed up Wing Commander CD32, but Nick Pelling made a mistake in the game code, so yes it was overall pointless! A huge bribe to ID Software and 8 MB fast ram with the base CD32 may have got Doom converted and saved the Amiga if the XOR patent case hadn't been a thing! But again the actual coders who take advantage of the Akiko C2P were few and far between at the time!

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@BigD

I have mixed feelings about the Akiko. It's capable of doing C2P very quickly, but the way you have to use it, renders it almost useless except on the base spec (maybe with fast as well). I just don't get why it was implemented so badly. Akiko could do DMA, which is needed for the CD drive and yet they never thought to make the C2P unit write out the planar data to chip ram directly. That really would have made it useful, especially on systems with faster CPUs.

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@OneTimer1. Those:

Quote:

Karlos wrote: @BigD I have mixed feelings about the Akiko. It's capable of doing C2P very quickly, but the way you have to use it, renders it almost useless except on the base spec (maybe with fast as well). I just don't get why it was implemented so badly. Akiko could do DMA, which is needed for the CD drive and yet they never thought to make the C2P unit write out the planar data to chip ram directly. That really would have made it useful, especially on systems with faster CPUs.

are FACTs.

@BigD

Quote:

BigD wrote: It would have helped speed up Wing Commander CD32, but Nick Pelling made a mistake in the game code, so yes it was overall pointless!

Has this bug been patched? Can we see the difference Akiko would have made without the mistake?

@Karlos

Quote:

Karlos wrote: Akiko could do DMA, which is needed for the CD drive and yet they never thought to make the C2P unit write out the planar data to chip ram directly. That really would have made it useful, especially on systems with faster CPUs.

But the CD32 didn't have a faster CPU.

What I find curious is that Accelerator card manufacturers didn't put a c2p converter onboard. I guess they figured it wasn't worth the effort, especially since once you had a CPU fast enough to run Doom it could do software c2p at copy speed.

@bhabbott

Quote:

But the CD32 didn't have a faster CPU.

True, but it still sucked enormously on the 020 it did have compared to how it could have been if it had just handled the planar write out itself by DMA.

There are no "copy speed" 256 colour C2P routines for anything less than 040 and the fastest accelerator in the day was an 030 (SX-32 IIRC). Tests I wrote not long ago show that an 030 can write to akiko as fast as the bus permits, but all the performance is lost in having to read back the data and then dump it back to chip ram via the CPU.

Consider that. Fast -> CPU -> Akiko -> CPU -> Chip. It could have been Fast -> CPU -> Akiko -> Chip.

On the stock machine, it's even worse because you are reading from Chip RAM in the first step.

In short, it was a good conversion engine, let down by an abysmal PIO interface, ironically bolted onto a chip already capable of performing DMA.

While it was faster than doing C2P on the stock 020, that same configuration wasn't exactly fast enough for the sort of software that was emerging that relied on chunky graphics in the first place.

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@cdimauro

Quote:

Only part of the engineers were moved to C65 project. At least according to what you've reported here.

C65 switched from tile-based graphics to 8 bitplanes graphics system.

Quote:

OK, and? Who took the decisions for the technical changes to the chipset?

1. Before September 1987,

Porter specifically wanted 1000 by 800 resolution with 8 bit planes and 16 million colors—something to exceed the current competition.
- Commodore - The Final Years


2.
From Commodore - The Final Years

On September 13, 1989, George Robbins wrote a memo proposing a new chipset somewhere between ECS and AAA.

(skip)

The Amiga engineers were clearly taken aback by the impressive specs of Bill Gardei’s C65 chipset. One of Pandora’s stated goals was to maintain a clear distinction between the C64/C65 family and Amiga. “I remember getting some flack for the fact that it had more
colors on-screen than the A3000 did,� recalls Haynie. In other words, it was imperative that the high-end Amiga stay ahead of Commodore’s ultra-low-end line of computers.

A minor revision of Agnus would appear in the Pandora chipset to extend the amount of memory it could address.

The engineers pulled in Bob Raible, an engineer form the LSI group, to define a chipset spec for an improved version of the display chip that would be a little sister to AAA’s Linda, called Lisa.



Bob Raible from the LSI group has defined the chipset specs for AA. Blame Bob Raible for the AA chipset's specs.


The major factor for AA rush job was internal corporate politics within Commodore.

C65's real 256-color display has threatened Amiga product line.

AAA was delayed by C65's chipset engineer for about a year. There are conflicting road maps between C65 (from LSI group) vs AAA (from Amiga group).

C65 was given the go-ahead by LSI group's management.

Last edited by Hammer on 08-Dec-2024 at 09:29 AM.

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@OneTimer1

Buying the "Commodore - The Final Years" book is too hard for Cdimauro.

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@Karlos

Quote:

Karlos wrote: @BigD I have mixed feelings about the Akiko. It's capable of doing C2P very quickly, but the way you have to use it, renders it almost useless except on the base spec (maybe with fast as well). I just don't get why it was implemented so badly. Akiko could do DMA, which is needed for the CD drive and yet they never thought to make the C2P unit write out the planar data to chip ram directly. That really would have made it useful, especially on systems with faster CPUs.

Akiko's rush C2P job was created via the demoted Jeff Porter's multimedia group, hence there are no design changes for Jeff Frank's graphics AA chipset jurisdiction.

After June 1991,
Jeff Frank has the Amiga group. Jeff Frank spec'ed AA600 (A1200) from AA varaint A1000Plus and A600.
Jeff Porter has the multimedia group. Porter argued for 8 MB CD32 spec and lost.

https://bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=1604
Quote:

The “chunky to planar� logic was thought out in a lunchtime conversation between Beth Richard (system chip design), Chris Coley (board design), and Ken Dyke (software) over Subway sandwiches on a picnic table in a nearby park one day, because Ken was telling us how much of a pain it was to shuffle bits in software to port games from other platforms to the Amiga planar system. We took the idea to Hedley Davis, who was the system chip team manager and lead engineer on Akiko and he said we could go ahead with it. I showed him the “napkin sketch� of how I thought the logic would work and was planning on getting to it the next day as it was already late afternoon by that point. I came in the next morning and Hedley had completed it already, just from the sketch!

With the CD1200 bundle, Jeff Porter's team also designed the faster 68030 with a Fast RAM SIMM slot accelerator card for A1200. This would be C= A1200's CPU accelerator card. Jeff Porter is aware of fast 386DX-33 PC VGA game ports.

Jeff Porter doesn't have the authority to continue the project.

Commodore UK wanted accelerator-enhanced A1200 bundles. David Pleasance doesn't have the authority to continue the project.

Only the fool doesn't recognize fast 386DX-33/Am386-40/486SX-25 gaming PCs.

Last edited by Hammer on 08-Dec-2024 at 09:52 AM.

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@cdimauro

Quote:

@cdimauro Who was? It's lost on your walls-of-text.

You can't read simple copy and paste. It's not a problem for my ACER X32 FP Predator 4K 160 hz monitor and my eyes.


Quote:

@cdimauro Again, this has nothing to do with what I've stated before.

Again, Lew's statement is hiding additional information.

Lew's statement didn't attach names with specific fuckups.

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@cdimauro At least I'm able to understand when I'm looking at the mirror, bot!

You're shit at reading. You don't understand follow-on information with greater detail.


Quote:

Do you know what? I partially agree with you at least on that. According to your favourite genius, they (AKA Commodore engineers) were very well aware of how much important was the 3D ONE or TWO years BEFORE the CD32 was created. Guess what: they provided the hardware C2P logic on CD32's Akiko as a LAST MINUTE ADDITION after a lunch break and one day of work.

There's a difference between Jeff Frank's Amiga group and Jeff Porter's Multimedia group.

Graphics AA chipset design is under Jeff Frank's Amiga group.

Jeff Porter's group can only tinker around the edges away from the core AA chipset.
Jeff Porter's CD32 specs reviewed by management e.g. 8 MB CD32 rejected.

Making graphics conversion efficient extra hardware for CDTV-CR was almost a fireable offense. My point is that engineers must follow management directives.

You need to understand corporate division and structure before making up shit.

Last edited by Hammer on 09-Dec-2024 at 12:14 AM.
Last edited by Hammer on 08-Dec-2024 at 10:12 AM.

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@Hypex

it will be easy to made
just instead of splliting bytes send them directly to display
few days of work

@bhabbott

Quote:

What I find curious is that Accelerator card manufacturers didn't put a c2p converter onboard. I guess they figured it wasn't worth the effort,

there was no reasons to use aga
they add pci and/or pc graphics chip
smart people switch from AGA to graphics cards
dumb people use c2p and 060 and/or pistorm

@ppcamiga1

Quote:

smart people switch from AGA to graphics cards dumb people use c2p and 060 and/or pistorm

ROFLMAO, you're the moron. PiStorm provides fast chunky pixels and full RTG that's vastly better performing than any old PCI expansion board with a Voodoo or Radeon for regular 2D work. The framethrower will compete the 2D side of things, allowing direct capture and redisplay of native modes without any significant CPU overheads.

Sure, there's no 3D yet, but someone will make it happen if they want it bad enough. Do you know why? Because it's generally available and affordable for anyone that cares to look into it.

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Well this thread was getting a little slow, but we can always count with ppcamiga1 for his analog engagement!

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@pixie

The stupidity of his remarks are amazing, aren't they? He bemoans the lack of chunky and says smart people moved to graphics cards from AGA. Then says stupid people use PiStorm, which is hands down the fastest and most affordable expansion for any Amiga and includes a chunky/ RTG implementation faster than any of the cards classic 68K users would have selected back when we were all doing such things.

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