| Any V4 Dongle for PPC Amiga Systems?? | |
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Michal Pietal
Posts 236
27 Nov 2021 19:17
| Hello, Today, it hit me that the biggest shortage of PPC systems (AmigaOne X1000, Sam460cr) is no possibility of booting a the _native_ 68k (3.1) system. Apollo Team has perfection now in delivering FPGA 68k to both classics (its late products) or itself (V4SA). So it hit me that what we (only) need now is some sort of a card (PCI or something) for PPC systems, based on V4 framework that allows for booting natively a 3.1/3.2/1.3 system. This might be the revolution similar to that of BlizzardPPC or CyberStormPPC but instead of having a PPC dongle to a 68k Amiga, delivering a 68k dongle to a PPC Amiga. What you guys think? Gunnar, what do You think?
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Richard Statham
Posts 50
27 Nov 2021 20:06
| PPC System are way to expensive without adding the cost of a PCI Vampire in to the cost. Nice idea but un-likely to happen as I cant see sales being that good. Plus the fact that you cant buy a PPC system for love or money now.
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Eric Gus
Posts 479
27 Nov 2021 22:34
| PPC systems are pretty much vintage themselves now .. I personally would rather see the Apollo team focus on making the best possible native 68K experience without any PPC distractions since PPC is more or less a dead-end curiosity now.. Why not just jettison the PPC part and enjoy the best the Amiga has to offer .. There is so few compelling native PPC offerings that to me it just makes no sense.. PPC wont ever be a modern desktop compared to contemporary mobile and desktop offerings.. (which by in large are web centric) and as you point out, PPC itself can't natively do classic 68K amiga binaries without an UAE type wrapper .. again, loose the PPC part and just get to the good stuff, true 68K.
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NoXLar - DemoSceneLover
Posts 63
28 Nov 2021 02:45
| maybe dead, as all amiga systems is (not appolo systems) but that doesn't mean there aren't any amiga ppc systems out there. there literally is thousans of uses think this is a good idea and want it. me as well
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Gunnar von Boehn
(Apollo Team Member)
Posts 6258
28 Nov 2021 08:40
| Michal Pietal wrote:
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Gunnar, what do You think?
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I think that the Amiga is a excellent design.
The Amiga uses the 68K CPU which is great to program.
The 68K CPU has a very strong instruction set.
Its easy to learn and very coder friendly.
The 68k code is very compact and you can do real good programs, that need only little amount of memory.
Even one 1KB memory is enough to write a real nice demo.
Now, the PPC CPU is exactly the opposite.
It is very coder unfriendly, reading the PPC code is real difficult.
The PPC can not operate on memory as the 68K.
You often need 5 or more PPC instruction to do what a single 68k instruction did. PPC code is bloated and needs a lot of memory.
So what was elegant, efficient and coder friendly in the real Amiga is very inelegant, inefficient and unfriendly in PPC.
But Amiga was not only about the CPU.
Amiga was also about the clever chipset. The AMIGA chipset is in my opinion very elegant in design.
In the Amiga you have smart and powerful DMA channels doing the work. You have Sprite DMA channels, Audio DMA, disk DMA, Plane DMA and you have the Copper which works as controlling unit for all the DMA giving a great amount of flexibility to control this elegant design.
The PPC system have nothing of this great Amiga architecture.
They have no Sprites, no Copper.. Nothing what makes the elegant Amiga to me. The PPC lack all the elegant hardware features which to me are the essence of the Amiga design.
Does putting a saddle on an old cow, turn it into noble steed?
To me PPC systems running Amiga OS are still cows.In my opinion the Amiga HW design is great and it worth reviving an supporting - the same way as the 68K CPU architecture is in my opinion a marvel which is worth reviving. Our focus us to work on reviving 68K architecture.
If someone likes to make develop such a card for a PowerPC system to enhance it with Super-AGA and with a good 68K CPU then we can support this with licensing both.
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NoXLar - DemoSceneLover
Posts 63
28 Nov 2021 10:50
| think what he is asking for is pci card of V4 for ppc amigas. so no emulation is needed.
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Michal Pietal
Posts 236
28 Nov 2021 18:42
| Gunnar von Boehn wrote:
| | If someone likes to make develop such a card for a PowerPC system to enhance it with Super-AGA and with a good 68K CPU then we can support this with licensing both.
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Great! So, this message needs to be passed to both A-Eon and ACube Systems!!
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Documentation about the Vampire hardware