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Ville H.
Finland
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Posts 144
12 Mar 2012 09:07
| @all
Now get those lottery tickets in! =)
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Carsten Roth
Germany
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Posts 39
12 Mar 2012 13:34
| @Matt
Yeah, a nice story indeed :)
Too bad that the manufacturer is not interested in further development of the 68k line, the good is that the team has at least tried to get support in this way.
But I belive the further significance of FPGA technology will grow in the future, so that the 68k will remain in this form longer even when Freescale stop the 68k chip production
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Lord Aga
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Posts 129
12 Mar 2012 21:03
| Carsten Roth wrote:
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I wonder what would freescale say about this work, if they observe the project ?
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Should Freescale guys object somehow I will personally hunt down each and every one of them.
I am so sick and tired of people who don't want to do something, but wont let someone else do it either.
Our progress is inevitable !
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Claudio Wieland
Germany
| | (Natami Team)
Posts 703
12 Mar 2012 22:42
| Carsten Roth wrote:
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@Matt
Yeah, a nice story indeed :)
Too bad that the manufacturer is not interested in further development of the 68k line, the good is that the team has at least tried to get support in this way.
But I belive the further significance of FPGA technology will grow in the future, so that the 68k will remain in this form longer even when Freescale stop the 68k chip production
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.. which is the whole point in making an own improved CPU version ;-) .
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Louis Dias
USA
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Posts 217
12 Mar 2012 23:03
| I'm sure if enough units were sold to the point that they somehow show up on the radar, then a suitable licensing agreement would be reached. No one says no to money. At that point, then the sources could be opened up to the team. Regardless, I doubt the N050/N070 will ever be sold separately so the point is sort of moot.
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Thierry Atheist
Canada
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Posts 1828
12 Mar 2012 23:55
| Louis Dias wrote:
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I'm sure if enough units were sold to the point that they somehow show up on the radar, then a suitable licensing agreement would be reached. No one says no to money. At that point, then the sources could be opened up to the team.Regardless, I doubt the N050/N070 will ever be sold separately so the point is sort of moot.
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I don't think anything like this has EVER been done before, actually.I don't think that anyone else would want a 68070 CPU. Although, it would be very cool to see how fast some of those 68K based laser printers would be with one in there. :-D NatAmi is the best computer to achieve ALL of the following: 1. It is an Amiga with near unimaginable capabilities compared to a person using an Amiga 4000 in 1993.
2. An Atari clone
3. A macintosh clone (many models)
4. A very easy to set up Commodore C=64, 128, and Vic 20.
5. Also Apple ][ and Atari 2600 too.
6. The NeXT clone!!!!!!!
6. Several other video game systems and computers. Even without all of the additional capabilities NatAmi has, I think it'll sell HUGE, but there's SO MUCH added value, it CAN'T be "a flop". It won't be "just on the radar"... It's headline news.
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Matt Hey
USA
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Posts 726
13 Mar 2012 04:08
| Everything could change in regards to Freescale as they are supposedly a buyout target:
EXTERNAL LINK
Freescale doesn't look very appealing to me as an investor. It's straddled with debt and not very profitable. Of course, I don't need the tax loss although they probably do have some interesting assets ;).
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Rune Stensland
Norway
| | (MX-Board Owner)
Posts 871
13 Mar 2012 14:35
| Question to the forum. Should we add support for CD32?
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Nixus Minimax
Germany
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Posts 272
13 Mar 2012 14:56
| Rune Stensland wrote:
| | Question to the forum. Should we add support for CD32? |
The difference between the CD32 and a stock A1200 is basically the Akiko chip that had some rudimentary c2p, right? Pro: support for some more legacy software, implementation on FPGA should have a very low register count Con: people might write new code for the kludge that Akiko really was (shudder) In my humble opinion the pro outweighs the cons. If somebody really writes such bad code, nobody would miss it even if it had been done any better.
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Evil Igel
Germany
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Posts 154
13 Mar 2012 15:07
| And beside that not even a few games really have make use of the Akkiko, right? It should work to fake its existence for thoise who might looking (but not using) for it.
Btw: Imagine what the CD³² could have been worth for the kindly wrecked Commodore back in 1993 when Akkiko where released as a REAL chance to provide a proper chunky-mode, easy to program and ready to kicks AGAs ass!
But as it was, the last tiny chance for C= to stay in competition with Doom was left aside... Thanks to the Natami for doing this postmortem ... and better! :D
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Jakob Eriksson
Sweden
| | (Moderator)
Posts 1097
13 Mar 2012 15:13
| I think it's not important. CD32 games can be patched by something like WHDLoad instead.
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Rune Stensland
Norway
| | (MX-Board Owner)
Posts 871
13 Mar 2012 15:23
| Nixus Minimax wrote:
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people might write new code for the kludge that Akiko really was |
The problem with the Akikoc2p in the cd32 was the chipmem2chipmem (5mb/s) copyspeed. With fastmem and a 030 clocked at 50 mhz it was faster to use the CPU. A modern Akiko would use SRAM speed for the registers. A typical c2p convertion can be done FastRAM->SRAM->ChipMEM. This is slower than SRAM->Chipram, but for a SRAM->Chipram convertion all the registers are needed. An akiko with FastRAM->SRAM->ChipMEM could use the free registers to render something interesting...
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Marcel Verdaasdonk
Netherlands
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Posts 3974
13 Mar 2012 15:33
| *sighs* As most have been told most amiga games aren't renouned for their OS friendlyness.
I don't this the CD32 was any different in this manner.
I do thus support a hardware version in the FPGA however this should not take priority over the rest of the system since the games that require the feature is slim at best.
Could this not be a subset for the Blitter?
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Louis Dias
USA
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Posts 217
13 Mar 2012 16:28
| I am for it! This may be the door to mixed chunky/planar games.
Obviously it will work much faster and better than the original.What about non-volatile ram? I remember having a file in my boot drive that replaced my non-volatile ram thanks to the SX-1...
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Nixus Minimax
Germany
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Posts 272
13 Mar 2012 16:28
| I guess everybody agrees that writing new code for Natami that does any sort of c2p is mostly pointless given the fact that Natami will have chunky modes. I wonder whether some of the A(R)OS gurus can find a reason why having hardware support for c2p would be helpful. Something in graphics.library perhaps? Is there a list of programs that require Akiko? The same question must have come up with UAE.
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Nixus Minimax
Germany
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Posts 272
13 Mar 2012 16:31
| Louis Dias wrote:
| | This may be the door to mixed chunky/planar games. |
Why would anyone want to have mixed chunky/planar games and how would that work in detail? You can also have smooth multi-layered scrolling using chunky pixels. The only advantage of planar modes is the lower RAM footprint when you absolutely don't need the extra colours.
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Louis Dias
USA
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Posts 217
13 Mar 2012 16:34
| Nixus Minimax wrote:
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Louis Dias wrote:
| | This may be the door to mixed chunky/planar games. |
Why would anyone want to have mixed chunky/planar games and how would that work in detail? You can also have smooth multi-layered scrolling using chunky pixels.
The only advantage of planar modes is the lower RAM footprint when you absolutely don't need the extra colours.
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For porting games from other platforms while adding some planar effects not in the originals...just as an example...
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Carsten Roth
Germany
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Posts 39
13 Mar 2012 17:01
| These games should have Akiko support: 1. Microcosm 2. ADoom 3. Wing Commander "CD32" ... who has more !
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Samuel D Crow
USA
| | (Natami Team)
Posts 1295
13 Mar 2012 17:03
| You can probably scratch ADoom, it'll probably run natively on the 3D core by porting DoomGL or something like that.
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Rune Stensland
Norway
| | (MX-Board Owner)
Posts 871
13 Mar 2012 17:08
| Gloom deluxe. Btw; the cd32 had an expantion slot and a card that could decode mpeg-1(vcd) something we should support?
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