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Documentation about the Vampire hardware

PPC Support

M F

Posts 2
10 Jun 2019 07:06


Hi,

any chance for V4 PPC support? How difficult would that be to make it? Just curious about this since winuae for example can do that. An BlizzardPPC replacement and/or OS4 would be very nice, what do you think?


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
10 Jun 2019 07:11


M F wrote:

Hi,
any chance for V4 PPC support?

No, PPC support is not planned.
 
 
M F wrote:

How difficult would that be to make it?

Our goal is to revive 68K.
We also believe that 68K is a great architecture.

We have no interest in developing a PPC product.
Also there is very little point in doing an FPGA PPC.
Making a good CPU takes several years work time.
A PPC core in FPGA will most likely not be faster than 68080 but probably be slower.
 
OS4 on Vamp might make sense.
The most simplest to get this would be to recompile OS4 for 68080.
Compiling OS 4 to 68K would be less work than developing PPC cards.
 


Michael Borrmann

Posts 140
10 Jun 2019 07:58


M F wrote:

Hi,
 
  any chance for V4 PPC support? How difficult would that be to make it? Just curious about this since winuae for example can do that. An BlizzardPPC replacement and/or OS4 would be very nice, what do you think?

Why would you want that?
There are plenty of cards already existing doing exactly what you need.


Andy Hearn

Posts 374
10 Jun 2019 10:09


i think a 68k rebuild of OS4 would be a good way forward. but i feel that the OS3x / OS4 streams are irrevocably "forked" ;) and a recombination of these two branches into one standard code base given legal ranglings - not to mention the effort required, is not going to be resolvable in my life time...



M F

Posts 2
10 Jun 2019 10:59


Hmmm....I quite like the idea of recompiling OS4 for 68k. The "forked" situation doesn´t matter, OS3 is 68k anyway, both would be possible to have on one HD with dual boot option. The question is only hypothetical - how fast would be the OS4 68k version compared to existing PPC machines. One big advantage of Vampire is its all-in-one PCB solution. However it would also depend on Hyperion and their licensing to recompile OS4?

Andy Hearn wrote:

i think a 68k rebuild of OS4 would be a good way forward. but i feel that the OS3x / OS4 streams are irrevocably "forked" ;) and a recombination of these two branches into one standard code base given legal ranglings - not to mention the effort required, is not going to be resolvable in my life time...
 




Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
10 Jun 2019 19:02


M F wrote:

  how fast would be the OS4 68k version compared to existing PPC machines. One big advantage of Vampire is its all-in-one PCB solution. However it would also depend on Hyperion and their licensing to recompile OS4?

Highly theoretical, OS 4.1 works good on slowest SAM440 alone. Until Libre Office final or Timberwolf, there is no OS4 app that needs 2Ghz+

I do hope Well optimized OS4 with drivers could work nicely on 100Mhz+ v4S. There are few components that have really improved over OS 3.x, but not much gain either.

Maybe a secondary market that would drive OS4 delopment?

Hyperion tries exactly that with OS 3.1.4, but too little, too late.


Michal Pietal

Posts 236
10 Jun 2019 19:02


Also there is very little point in doing an FPGA PPC.

 
  Agreed.
 
  Then, how  about a PPC-daughter-board-ready design in V4?


Vojin Vidanovic
(Needs Verification)
Posts 1916/ 1
10 Jun 2019 19:04


Long ago, Gunnar said 100Mhz Vamp could emulate 50Mhz 604e with proper JIT.
 
  So once we reach 200Mhz Vamps (not v4!) we could possibly have WOS wrapper that would enable some OS 3.x PPC S/w and maybe sandboxed OS4 Classic, but that would be it.
 
  And that is end of line priority, many many better stuff to do until.

Michal Pietal wrote:

Agreed.
 
  Then, how  about a PPC-daughter-board-ready design in V4?

There is only one expansion slot on V4s and is not a PCI type but GPIO or such, ment for Wi Fi and such expansions.

I would prefer PCI or PCI-E slot or mem expansion DIMMs over such PPC card slot anyday - if some V4+ or V5 arise.


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
10 Jun 2019 20:40


Michal Pietal wrote:

Then, how  about a PPC-daughter-board-ready design in V4?

Sorry but PPC is not our focus.

Our goal to revive the 68K Family.




M Rickan

Posts 177
11 Jun 2019 01:11


M F wrote:

Hmmm....I quite like the idea of recompiling OS4 for 68k...However it would also depend on Hyperion and their licensing to recompile OS4?

And that legal quagmire is far more of a challenge.

Also, how much of OS4 is CPU-specific?


Steve Ferrell

Posts 424
11 Jun 2019 02:29


What exactly would a backport of OS4 to the Vampire bring to the table?  OS4 simply has nothing to offer the Vampire and its users that we do not already possess.  It certainly wouldn't open up a new world of software because all the PPC OS4 apps would also need to be recompiled for the 68080, and that just isn't going to happen. 
 
 
In my opinion it would be a waste of time and effort to backport OS4 to the 68080.  The resources would be better spent recompiling 68K AROS for the Vampire and optimizing it to take advantage of AMMX and other 68080 enhancements. 


Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6207
11 Jun 2019 07:03


Steve Ferrell wrote:

  In my opinion it would be a waste of time and effort to backport OS4 to the 68080.  The resources would be better spent recompiling 68K AROS for the Vampire.
 

 
I think that from a resource point of view Hyperion-OS4 and the AROS team, as well as the ATARI EMUTOS team are fully independent groups.
All of them can compile their stuff for 68k without problems.
 


Steve Ferrell

Posts 424
11 Jun 2019 07:23


Gunnar von Boehn wrote:

   
Steve Ferrell wrote:

      In my opinion it would be a waste of time and effort to backport OS4 to the 68080.  The resources would be better spent recompiling 68K AROS for the Vampire.
     

     
      I think that from a resource point of view Hyperion-OS4 and the AROS team, as well as the ATARI EMUTOS team are fully independent groups.
      All of them can compile their stuff for 68k without problems.
     
   

   
   
Well, the chances that Hyperion will port OS4 to 68K are less than zero.  They can't even pay their bills or the programmers responsible for bringing us OS 3.1.4.  And OS4 was still-born  when it was released.  I don't expect to ever see OS4 running on any new hardware either. We're over 3 years now waiting for the Tabor's release and no end in sight.  A-Eon would be better off bundling AROS for PPC with the Tabor and severing all ties with Hyperion.  Everything Hyperion touches dies or gets so tied up in litigation that it may as well be dead.
   
I would guess that the AROS team is already making plans to compile a 68080 version of AROS and the ATARI folks are probably already testing a 68080 version of EMUTOS.  Good times!
 
Maybe Ben Hermans can pay Thomas $10 or $15 to backport OS4?  He was paid even less than this for his work on OS 3.1.4

posts 13