@Rogue

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I find this somewhat strange. At least some sort of prototype would be required to actually adapt OS 4 to the Shark (unless you buy into that "magic AmigaOne compatibility" story). Nothing of that sort materialized up to now.

< gets confused look on face.

Maybe its just a communication problem. I know for sure with all the spam around that email is not what it used to be, stuff gets lost.

Maybe it would be a goodthing to contact Elbox, via phone etc.??

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"The system no longer works " -- Young Anakin Skywalker

I am a bit confused - why would SharkPPC not work with OS4 'out of the box'? I mean on classic Amiga side you have always been able to uppgrade your accelerator and OS3.x would work ok. Is it some sort of CPU compability issue? Even if slight modifications are needed it would just take a few weeks to do those, right?

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"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others." (Groucho Marx)

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A nice replacement IMHO for the Mediator. Even if the Coldfire wouldn't be much faster then an 68060 you have a fast accelerator with all the goodies mentioned above for a nice price

A PowerPC 603 costs about $20 or so, and will be faster than a ColdFire.

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If you put the SharkPPC in the Dragon, it is not THAT different from a CyberStormPPC or BlizzardPPC where you also have 2 processor's

That's true, but

1) No 68k CPU is used when OS 4 is running (unless you want to put WarpOS on the Shark -with Sam Jordan no longer aound this is a no-go, and introducing their own kernel would be, well...)

2) On the CyberStormPPC the 68k CPU is already mounted, you don't need to buy the 68k AND the PowerPC. In fact it could have been much cheaper with only a PowerPC on it.

How much will the shark be, when/if it comes out?

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I'm sure you will receive a Shark when the time arrives

When will that be? When OS 4 is released? That doesn't make sense - it will take roughly a month to get it to work on any new hardware (the "classic" underneath doesn't count - the Shark would most likely have a different architecture), so why wait with this thing until it is out?

Looks like stalling tactics to me.

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Maybe its just a communication problem. I know for sure with all the spam around that email is not what it used to be, stuff gets lost. Maybe it would be a goodthing to contact Elbox, via phone etc.??

I think they'd know how to contact Hyperion if there was anything to discuss.

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he point is that it would be a very very fast board that could be used with the OS3.x and RTG without needing the custom chips.

This is, of course, completely wrong. OS 3.x either needs the custom chips, or an emulation of the custom chips. timer.device needs the CIAs to work, and without timer.device, you can't even boot... But even more fundamental, exec's interrupt handling in OS 3.x is based on the interrupt controller in Paula, and that _IS_ a custom chip.
Graphics.library also accesses custom chips in it's initialisation code, and it _WONT_ work withourt custom chips or emulation (believe me, I've been through this).

Bottom line, you are thinking that an RTG board means you don't need custom chips anymore. You couldn't be more off the mark. Either you emulate, or have the real thing.

But emulation is next to impossible due to the interrupt controller used in exec.

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Thomas, the kernel guy

"I don't have a frigging clue. I'm norwegian" -- Ole-Egil

All opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily represent those of Hyperion Entertainment

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Maybe it would be a goodthing to contact Elbox, via phone etc.??

Who announced OS4 support for the Shark ? Hyperion, or Elbox ? So why should Hyperion contact them ?

_________________
Thomas, the kernel guy

"I don't have a frigging clue. I'm norwegian" -- Ole-Egil

All opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily represent those of Hyperion Entertainment

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why would SharkPPC not work with OS4 'out of the box'

So why did we have to adapt the CSPPC version to Blizzard (which is nearly the same hardware) ?

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I mean on classic Amiga side you have always been able to uppgrade your accelerator and OS3.x would work ok

No, you couldn't. The accelerator needed a specific firmware to work. You had this firmware on the accelerator when you plugged it in, of course, but you had to specifically write it. Why should this work out of the box on OS4 ?

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Even if slight modifications are needed it would just take a few weeks to do those, right?

Yes, right. But to actually _do_ those modifications, we need the hardware to do them.

_________________
Thomas, the kernel guy

"I don't have a frigging clue. I'm norwegian" -- Ole-Egil

All opinions expressed are my own and do not necessarily represent those of Hyperion Entertainment

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I am a bit confused - why would SharkPPC not work with OS4 'out of the box'?

Does it work on a Pegasos "out of the box"? I don't think so. OS 4 on the Blizzard/CyberStorm supports only the 603 and 604 because there is nothing else there. It uses interrupt logic that is located on the CyberStorm/Blizzard - the 68k interrupts will hardly serve a PowerPC CPU, the card needs special treatment for interrupts.

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I mean on classic Amiga side you have always been able to uppgrade your accelerator and OS3.x would work ok.

That is completely wrong. Why is there a 68040.library or 68060.library? Do you think that OS 3.x will work at all on a 68060 unless special support code is loaded? It will also not "work" on a Coldfire unless special precautions are taken (loading special support code). Why would it work on an OS that suddenly is PowerPC-native?

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Is it some sort of CPU compability issue?

Among other things, yes. But there's much more to it. For example, interrupts are delivered to the PowerPC CPU on the cyberstorm via a special logic. The 68k supports 7 levels of interrupts, the PowerPC supports one. There is special logic on the card where an interrupt handler can find out what CPU level interrupt has occured. OS 4 uses this information, and expects them to be there when an interrupt occurs. This happens to be identical (mostly) on CSPPC and BPPC. I can hardly see this being the case with the Shark. I am still not sure how Elbox wants to solve the issue of e.g. interrupt delivery from the mainboard sources/CPU to the PowerPC CPU on the PCI card - it could be via a 68k trampoline or something like that.

In any case there is not even the remote chance of making this work out of the box, and even if they would manage to so do it would require a license.

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Even if slight modifications are needed it would just take a few weeks to do those, right?

"Just a few weeks", yes. As I said before, about a months for a basic conversion. It's not a big problem really, but it needs to be done by either Thomas or myself. As such, it would introduce a delay of "a few weeks", which, given the time that OS 4 took and that the Shark has been announced, would be completely unneeded if we had a prototype already and could work with it. As it is now, the CSPPC and BPPCversions are roughly the same state (minus "specific" drivers) as the AmigaOne version.

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@Rogue and EntilZha

Many thanks for the clarifications. It is always nice to learn new things

I was aware of the 68040 (and 68060) libraries but I never thought the actual accelerators had special features for AmigaOS, too

Here's hoping Elbox comes forward and delivers you a SharkPPC developer board. I have nothing against Eyetech (I am a happy A1-XE owner) I think we need more OS4 compatible hardware.

_________________
"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others." (Groucho Marx)

@EntilZha

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Who announced OS4 support for the Shark ? Hyperion, or Elbox ? So why should Hyperion contact them ?

good point !

I've just read about some problems in the past between your two compaines. sigh...

Let me try this...

Is there going to be a generic/OEM OS4 Uboot/OS4 software Pack available for PPC PCI cards in the future?

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"The system no longer works " -- Young Anakin Skywalker

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I was aware of the 68040 (and 68060) libraries but I never thought the actual accelerators had special features for AmigaOS, too

The main issues lie in the special glue logic between the 68k and the PPC, because there is no standard for that.

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Here's hoping Elbox comes forward and delivers you a SharkPPC developer board.

We'll see I guess

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

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I've just read about some problems in the past between your two compaines. sigh...

That mainly revolved around Picasso96 legality and Warp3D. I was at that time especially po'ed because they announced "Voodoo 4/5 support" and I immediately got calls from other Warp3D licensors about that. Also, we had a few run-ins with their PR department because of the licensing of Warp3D. That's past, though, we have spoken about these things on an Amiga show and put them to rest. I still think that if Elbox want OS 4 on the Shark, they should contact us and not the other way around.

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Is there going to be a generic/OEM OS4 Uboot/OS4 software Pack available for PPC PCI cards in the future?

No. The reason for that is that it is mostly not possible. U-Boot isn't generic, it needs to be compiled for a specific hardware (that is what the firmware should do, really), and it is only the firmware to begin with. There are a few cruical parts on a mainboard that need to be directly supported by the OS, most notably the interrupt controller, CPU, and other onboard components. That cannot be done generically, unless you would want to separate the HAL from the kernel (which would be possible but not planned at this point). But even then you would at the very least need the HAL for that specific board, otherwise it simply won't work.

Therefore it doesn't make sense to offer a "generic" OEM-Type solution.

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@PCI-Express SoC lovers:

You're about as likely to see a volume production PCI-Express PowerPC SoC on an Amiga accelerator this year as Microsoft have of going bankrupt tomorrow. None of the reasonable ones even sample for another 6 months.

I wouldn't hedge your bets on seeing anything from your usual Amiga dealers of this ilk. You would be better off looking at something based on the PowerQUICC line, or obviously the G4 with some off-the-shelf Northbridge (Tundra, Marvell..)

Neko

Last edited by Neko on 19-Jan-2005 at 11:33 PM.