A.D.A. Amiga Demoscene Archive

Hello Everyone. As you may know, Apollo Core / 68080 is shaping very nicely and two variants of Vampire cards that utilize this highly advanced 68K core are already out in the wild and several hundred people are using them as we speak.

I was asked by BigGun a.k.a. Gunnar to invite all Amiga demo coders to join a discussion about maximizing the compatibility with all older software (demos and games in particular) to make 080 the most compatible of all Amiga accelerator boards ever.

At the moment the ongoing issue is solving on the hardware level the problem with WAITBLIT functions - ie. to ensure that the new blit is never started before the old one finishes. Right now there is a hardware fix is for software which forgot WAITBLIT. We would like to discuss this Blitter enhancement with coders.

You are all invited to participate in the discussion by connecting to irc.freenode.net and joining #apollo-asm channel.

Being a regular there, I can assure you, that all your insights will be very valuable and every input on this (and all other) coding issues are very welcome and will be much appreciated by the Team.

This is the problem right here. They should rather make sure the blitter works 100% like on old hardware, without any kind of enhancements or additions.

And here my interest dropped to zero, I wonder why.

Plus, what Britelite said.

Right... So when Commodore made AGA that was an enhancement/addition to the ECS they should've done that either? When Motorola made 68020, 68040 and 68060 they should rather stick to 68000 and just make the clock faster? I don't really get this argument.



Because..?

And to clarify, the reason for this discussion is to make sure that 68080 is MORE compatible than any other accelerator so far - not the other way around. And because this is important it would be best solution to join the Team's IRC channel and share your thoughts. That's why I asked you to join :)

The Amiga was actually relevant back then and hadn't been a static platform for 20+ years ;)


They already know perfectly well how to make things compatible, but they seem to insist on going another route. Their choice, and I won't be supporting that choice in any way.

EDIT: To be clear, an addition like this to the blitter would mean that I as a coder could by accident produce code that wouldn't work correctly on a real Amiga, but only on the Vampire, which isn't a good thing

And to be honest, if the Vampire/Apollo/whatever was marketed and hyped as its own platform that just happens to have some Amiga-compatibility, I'd probably have a more positive attitude towards it.

Are you going to let hairsplitting with regards to "marketing" of a product be a deciding factor wether or not you are positive towards it?

By all means, if you dont find coding for any given platform/accelerator intresting, thats fine. Thats your prerogative.

Just found your last post a bit curious.

Let's put it this way, when I have little interest in a product I'm usually pretty indifferent, but shitty marketing and hype overload might actually turn that indifference into negativity. And considering the way they're trying to hype the Vampire as being pretty much the saviour of the Amiga platform in general, it's really hard for me to have a positive attitude towards the product (which I btw was kind of interested in when it was announced, but quckly lost interest when I saw who was involved and the path they were taking).

EDIT: Oh, and let me be clear, the Vampire itself is probably a great product, it's rather the Apollo-core that's the problem in my opinion

:)

Well, to be honest, I would more say its the userbase that is the ones creating the hype, more than the developers/producers.

I got a Vampire600, and are superhappy about it, same with most (all?) its users, and we tend to not be shy about mentioning that fact when its being discussed on forums.

So, if the overhyping should be blamed on people like me, not the Apollo Team.

And Im a bit sorry to hear that several of the democoders are not really intrested in the Vampire. I do understand that different things/limitations for different people, but it would be wonderful to see what wizardry people like yourself could conjure up on the Vampire!

Well, the thing is that as I said before, the main attraction with the Amiga (at least in a demoscene sense) is that it's been a stable platform for so long, even the 060/AGA has been the main accelerated Amiga for almost 20 years. If I wanted more features and more speed, why on earth would I settle with the Vampire/Apollo and limit my audience even further when I could as well just move on to the PC and actually have an audience.

That's the problem with the additional features in the Apollo core, it's easy to sell the card to users who believe the hype and expect to get new software. But why would a developer use these features when they would break compatibility with real Amigas, as not even WinUAE will support these features

Exactly what Britelite just said, with the added detail that I actually do code demos for high-end PCs. Heck, even the 060 is starting to sometimes feel a bit too "middle ground" for me. :)

The Vampire as a potential demo platform has also been discussed on Pouet...

I wouldnt say I bought into the "hype" with regards to new software and such. I just enjoy the increase in performance and general usability for a socalled "enduser".
Obviously I have a generic dual monitor wintel PC next to my Amiga LCD monitor (hooked up to A1200 and 600) like many (most?) of us.
I have pondered getting a 060 for the Amiga, but the cost vs availability (and age) leaned me to the Vampire.

But I can see why a democoder that wants to push the limits of a given hardware platform feels a bit ...meh.. about it. I still find myself being shocked what you guys manage to do with the C64 for example.

Well, I'm completely with Britelite's latest comment on this one. I personally couldn't care less about the Vampire, but I do realize that getting a 060 card nowadays is pretty impossible. If people are having fun with the Vampire, then fine by me. I'm having fun with my 060 and feel comfortable producing stuff for that platform, and it still inspires me. The Vampire does not inspire me, and if I were to do productions on other accellerated platforms it would of course be a PC. It was quite the same as when the PPC came out. It just didn't feel like an Amiga to me, and I didn't care about that one either.

That being said, a compatible 68060/AGA core that matches the timing of existing real hardware would be something interesting.

That would indeed rule, wouldn't even need to match the timing 1:1, but something close enough