The Amiga / FPGA Amiga discussion thread

redrumloa

redrumloa

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I don't think many of you are very active with Amiga these days, but I'll post some stuff in case you are or have any interest.

I have an FPGA solution for using a Minimig/Amiga core with my Turbo Chameleon. I've used this Minimig core since I bought the hardware primarily just with disk images to play games. I finally decided to configure it and set it up to run Amiga OS 3.1. I'm going to configure it and load it up the best I can for a strong OS3.1 computer.

xkrj38.jpg


I'm not active on the corporate sites these days, so if you are here and active, TALK! :D
 
I primarily use my original Amigas for retro gaming, emulation isn't cutting the cake, try for instance playing Uridium 2 on an original Amiga side by side emulated on your PC and you'll immediately see the difference; this game is unplayable on PC.
This has more to do with having a generic LCD screen than emulation itself. LCD screens are generally lousy for playing games.
You can get quite far with quality (VA, IPS, OLED) 100+Hz LCD monitors, and some emulator tweaks (black frame insertion, CRT filter).
 
Halloween special double treat for the Classic AmigaOS
Brussels, October 13, 2016
Hyperion Entertainment is pleased to announce the first official Workbench 3.1 and Kickstart 3.1 updates in over twenty years for Classic Amiga systems. The new versions, which have have been re-built from the original source code, include a number of enhancements and bug fixes and are fully compatible with both real Amiga hardware and Classic Amiga emulation software.
 
I'll probably mostly lurk this thread, as really, with family and priority changes, the most active I've been with Amigas in the past 5 years has been occasionally reading about them. But the FPGA systems are really cool. I absolutely love the concept, and would have one to tinker with, if not for the time constraints.

And, I think it is great that there is an update for os3.1. Is that calling both 3.5 and 3.9 dead ends, now, though? I really haven't kept up enough to know where 68000 Amigas stand.
 
I've stumbled on the first major limitation of the Minimig core on a Turbo Chameleon as compared to some other solutions such as the Mist board. The Chameleon implementation has no sort of flicker fixer or scan doubler, so interlace modes flicker just like you struggled with in the mid-late 80's :-( The Mist board at least (AFAIK) implements the Amber chip from the A3000 as a solution to this, but the Chameleon apparently can't for limitations of the FPGA bandwidth or something.

Oh well, I mainly use the TC for the C64 features in cart mode (plugged in a real C64). The extra cores are just a bonus. The Minimig core is certainly competent enough for ECS gaming and basic Workbench usage.
 
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ilwrath said:
And, I think it is great that there is an update for os3.1. Is that calling both 3.5 and 3.9 dead ends, now, though? I really haven't kept up enough to know where 68000 Amigas stand.
Click to expand...

3.5 and 3.9 have been dead ends since forever :-/ The whole OS3.1 update situation right now is clear as mud. The best conversation on the matter is actually on Morphzone but it is a long read. Here are a couple of cliff notes.

There are 2 companies with rights to 3.1, Cloanto who apparently owns them and Hyperion who have have an old perpetual license to use them.
Both companies have produced updated versions of 3.1, separately.
The updates to each version do not match the other version.
The version numbers of each version remain as 3.1, but not Amiga OS 3.1, but rather Kickstart 3.1 & Workbench 3.1.
To confuse things even further, there is an overlapping of branding.

picture.php


Confused yet? ;-)
 
redrumloa said:
I've stumbled on the first major limitation of the Minimig core on a Turbo Chameleon as compared to some other solutions such as the Mist board. The Chameleon implementation has no sort of flicker fixer or scan doubler, so interlace modes flicker just like you struggled with in the mid-late 80's :-( The Mist board at least (AFAIK) implements the Amber chip from the A3000 as a solution to this, but the Chameleon apparently can't for limitations of the FPGA bandwidth or something.
Click to expand...

Wait... what? These things have an actual RGB pinout? I always assumed there was just a virtual display that read the memory and generated a modern frame. Of course, thinking about it for a minute... that would play havoc with the copper and maybe even HAM displays.... yeah, you would really have to build a scan doubler, wouldn't you. Bah.
 
ilwrath said:
Wait... what? These things have an actual RGB pinout? I always assumed there was just a virtual display that read the memory and generated a modern frame. Of course, thinking about it for a minute... that would play havoc with the copper and maybe even HAM displays.... yeah, you would really have to build a scan doubler, wouldn't you. Bah.
Click to expand...

No, it does have a SVGA output which handled non-interlace modes just fine. At least on the Chameleon they reached a limitation of the FPGA where they cannot handle interlace as such. Considering it is a SVGA output and not RGB output, I am unaware of any external flicker fixer solution.
 
redrumloa said:
No, it does have a SVGA output which handled non-interlace modes just fine. At least on the Chameleon they reached a limitation of the FPGA where they cannot handle interlace as such. Considering it is a SVGA output and not RGB output, I am unaware of any external flicker fixer solution.
Click to expand...

Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't SVGA basically just an RGB output with a different clock and a different shaped port? (The silver RGB -> VGA port adaptor that came with some A1200's.)

I was originally thinking of an HDMI or DVI output, with the frame built from the contents of chip ram at the current display offset. Of course, as I said, it just dawned on me that the contents of chip ram aren't necessarily what is displayed, because it hasn't passed through the Copper, yet... :/ On Amiga, things can be changed in hardware between what's in ram and what makes it to screen.

Too much using new computers clouding my thinking.
 
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