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The interesting story for me here (and I've been following it for years) is not that people have built an accelerator for the Amiga. It's that the Apollo folks have built out an advanced modern 680x0-compatible core. Given that NXP/Freescale have stopped producing new Coldfire architecture MCU and MPUs and the 68k series itself is dead years ago, this is really great. It's good work, and benefits not just the Amiga community (and other classic 68k machines like the Atari ST) but anybody who wants to continue to experiment and work with the 68k architecture, or upgrade any kind of legacy system.
I also understood that there was work happening on a from-scratch system that could run as an Amiga and potentially Atari ST compatible as well and would not require legacy hardware at all. I'd pay money for that.
That said, I doubt they could get away with licensing it for $$ in quantities, I suspect that they'd run into legal problems at that point. But who knows?
An emuTOS core exists, and it is included in the most recent build, Gold 2.9.
This is demonstrated in these videos:
Yeah I've seen the first video before, very cool, and a testament to the amazing work that the EmuTOS team has put into that project. But EmuTOS running isn't really "ST compatible", just EmuTOS compatible. It wouldn't for example be able to run most games and the like given the different video hardware, and would not have support for MIDI and other devices, etc.
That said the second video does show a stock TOS running a game, so that's encouraging.
I’ve got one in my Amiga 500 and it’s crazy: bumps the speed up to around 234 MHz, runs in 1390 x 1024 x 32 through RTG SAGA (“Super AGA”) driver and a HDMI output, MicroSDHC reader onboard (plus 44-pin IDE), 64-bit superscalar MC68080 (not a typo), 128 MB memory + realtime clock + 1 MB CHIP. The newest core adds FPU support and they’re considering adding MMU support too. I’m running AmigaOS 3.9... on an Amiga 500.
Flashing of the FPGA circuitry with a new CPU core is done while the system is running, and they keep increasing the execution speed of the CPU with every update. The thing is nuts.
In theory, once MMU support is added, it should be possible to port illumos back to MC68000, since SunOS 4 used to run on that CPU years back. Solaris zones, DTrace and ZFS on Amiga hardware... now that’s what I’d call a hacking project.
Can you still run everything (in original color/resolution modes) on the amiga monitor or does it only then work on the HDMI output?
For now any screens using the Amiga's on board chips will use the original video outputs. Only RTG screens are displayed via HDMI.
This will change in an upcoming release.
If you have a scan doubler from Individual Computers and your monitor supports multiple inputs, the hardware banging resolutions go to that over VGA and Vampire goes over HDMI. If you don’t see it on HDMI you have to switch to VGA.
The scan doubler is shitty though: the quality varies with the monitor and it overheats. Jens knows about this because the manual mentions adding a small fan and since he was obviously aware of it, it should have been designed in.
I'd love to get one of these... The Amiga was my favorite computer growing up in the late 80's, early 90's.
BTW, Solaris 2.x and above (aka SunOS 5.x) never ran on the 68K.
SunOS 4.x (retroactively renamed Solaris 1.x) did, but it was a completely different code base than Solaris 2.x and above. I used to have a Sun 3/60 back in the day! My Amiga 3000 was a better machine.
I know this, which is why I explicitly mentioned SunOS 4.x. However remnants of MC68000 are sprinkled throughout the code. It should prove an interesting challenge to port an ultramodern OS to Amiga hardware. Vampire could make this possible.
Amiga did run a genuine System V Release 4.0 UNIX from AT&T ported over by Commodore. The link to the tape archive is on generationamiga.com in one of the articles.
Sun Microsystems almost bought the Amiga but Commodore screwed up the deal as usual.
I am not an electrical engineer so can someone explain how this thing can just piggyback on the existing chip like that. Is the existing cpu still doing things and this can read additional instructions the other one doesn’t see?
This is called piggy-backing and it has several uses.
Early PCs would stack/piggy-back memory chips to increase capacity. This was possible because of how memory was addressed.
Another use is to find dead chips. If you put a working chip on top of a dead chip it will read the signals and work.
Finally, in the case of the Vampire and other accelerators for PLCC socketed chips, the accelerator hi-jacks the bus telling the original CPU to do nothing while it takes over the bus.
Electrically there is no trickery, think of each pin as plugging two cords into a power strip. Both get power even though there is one source.
This probably would not work with modern chip packaging and modern frequencies, but it was a common technique back in the day.
Unexpanded Amiga 500/600/1200 don't use the 68000's DMA support, so an accelerator board can ground the bus request line and take over the system bus.
Another example of piggybacking is the Commodore 64's (and one model of PETs') 6581 SID sound chip.
Back in the 80's you could bend a couple of the legs out of a second 6581, solder it to the first one, add a couple of wires (and maybe a diode? Can't quite remember), and now you had two sound chips for stereo sound.
These days for some reason people who choose to mod 64's make it unnecessarily complicated with tiny daughterboards and all kinds of needless circuitry. (They also learn how to do it from YouTube videos. We did it from ASCII text files!)
Usually the way these boards work is to simply pull all the CPU pins out to a separate socket. Apple called their equivalent the "Processor Direct Slot" and I'd assume the Amiga works in the same way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Processor_Direct_Slot
You can typically pull some lines down and the CPU will stop clocking, or the accelerator card can follow the CPU clock and bang data directly into it. It provides very low-level and direct control of the CPU.
Some Amiga CPUs were socketed, some were soldered.
Some accelerator boards replaced the slotted CPU, most just deactivated the stock CPU.
AIUI, at least Vampire V500v2, the one I have and for absurd reasons to do with physical distance with my Amigas haven't been able to test despite a year passed, 68k is removed and Vampire put in its place.
All other Amiga "accelerators" from back in the day, tell, (by setting a pin low or high or something) the original CPU to stay quiet and off.
If you're talking about the A600 version that sits on top of the original 68k, it's disabled and never used for anything.
original chip is disabled, its IO buffers put in Hi-Z (high impedance) mode. 386/486 PC motherboards did the same thing when you used coprocessor/upgraded soldered CPU using socket.
I can't wait to get my hands on the stand-alone version that's supposedly on the way. Cheap and available (and compatible) hardware with decent performance is a long-awaited thing for a lot of Amiga enthusiasts.
What will you do with it? I don’t fully understand why people are so excited by these things when the core OS hasn’t been updated in years?
For me, it's pure nostalgia. It's getting to relive the past that I loved with all new hardware, getting to do things that nobody from the time period could have imagined given the limitations and pushing the limits of the software of the system. Sure the OS hasn't been updated in years, but there's a giant library of software and hardware for the system that's still a draw, and using modern technology to make it more palatable and useful is a huge bonus in addition to enabling people to experience it all again.
I mean you can run Linux on it ;)
AmigaOS 4.1 fe came out 4 years ago so it’s not that ancient.
run sysinfo
Any info on the stand alone version available?
Unforunately no real information is available, the most recent update is the May progress report [0]. The 500 version is due for release before the standalone, and for the standalone they need to finish implementing the graphics/audio chipset in FPGA plus probably other design issues. Personally, I hope to see the 500 version available in 2019 and the standalone in 2020.
[0] http://forum.apollo-accelerators.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=190...
No. Beta hardware is being tested, but this whole project is driven in the spare time of the folk building/testing it, so it's slow going.
So, this is essentially a continuation of the Natami project, but you still need original hardware?
This is the Natami, and yes, real hardware is needed.
... for now.
Vampire v4 should have a standalone version.
I believe the image on the amiga screen in the top banner shows the game Cannon Fodder[1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon_Fodder_(video_game) and a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyDGPlIkySA
That room picture looks so homely and 90's!
It's basically how every Amiga lover sees the "old" days.
Agreed! Although would an Amiga owner really have a picture of an Atari ST on the wall?!
the work of Toni Bratincevic :)
Thanks, that led me to http://www.interstation3d.com/portfolio/16-bit_memories.jpg and more of his work at http://www.interstation3d.com/
Silly question, but is he famous in 3D circles?
Also I didn't even realize that scene was computer generated. That's amazing.
Homely means ugly. You mean cozy?
That's an American English / British English distinction. "Homely" only means "ugly" in American English and only when applied to a person. Otherwise, "homely" means something along the lines of "plain but cosy".
Hmm.. but isn't a JITted emulator on a modern PC actually much faster nowadays? Just asking.
Definitely. However retro hobbyists fall into two camps, those that are happy to emulate, and those that aren't.
For those of us who prefer the real-deal this is a way of using original kit, but also making it faster + more ram + storage etc.
The Amiga hardware scene is very much alive and kicking and there's new products coming out all the time.
The best Amiga emulator (WinUAE) only runs on Windows and is still not quite there when it comes to emulating hardware expansions. Its ports to other OSes have been abandoned and the best candidate (fs-uae) is moving at snail pace whilst lacking a lot of the killer features from WinUAE.
Original hardware with modern FPGA-based expansions is a lot better in terms of retaining the feel of the Amiga and not compromising on performance.
I don't know if this is still true, but I imagine it is because of the latency inherent in modern computers - a JIT-ed emulator is kind of "jittery".
Old school computer are pretty slow, but they react faster than our modern computers.
There was this comparison of "time to first character" or something like that - when you press a button, how long is it until you see a character on screen? IIRC old school computers like Apple II and Amigas won over Intel Core i* monsters.
edit: https://www.pcgamer.com/the-latency-problem-why-modern-gamin...
Probably, but you can't put a modern PC into an Amiga. I mean, if you already have one, being able to still upgrade it is just.... so cool <3
No such thing as 68080, its fully compatible with 68040.
A ”natural successor” to the 68040/68060 and suitable for implementation on FPGAs was developed by Apollo and is indeed known as the 68080. http://www.apollo-core.com/
the website says 68060 (which was a real chip used in some amiga 4000T models & accelerator boards), I assume the title is a typo.
It implements new, 64-bit instructions.