Apollo Accelerators

Has anyone considered adding to the Vampire PCI or PCIe(maybe rather not cause of lack for drivers ?)?
Is this possible ? It would be nice to add soundblaster or other PCI card(SCSI, SATA controller?) I know it means it would make only to tower the Amiga(or A500 maybe not for one card ?). I know we got SAGA as RTG but how about other expansions ?

The current Cyclone III used on the 500/600 series does not have PCIe support.

The upcoming V1200 and stand-alone models appear to be incorporating the Cyclone V which does have PCIe support.

Having said that, there is a lot of water to flow under the bridge before an expansion bus is supported. I believe the goals for the stand-alone board (last I heard) were fairly modest. There is a lot of work just to get that going without the Amiga chipset. I believe Gunnar previously wasn't too interested in talk of an expansion bus. I would expect the stand-alone board to go through generations of upgrades.

In short, don't expect PCIe buses any time soon, but I believe in the long run it makes sense for support for things like SATA, USB, etc... It will likely boil down to perceived/real demand in the long run. I would love nothing more than to see some PCIe slots on a dedicated 68080 motherboard. That would be very cool indeed.

Hi, First post here but did post back on the NatAmi forum a while back.

I think everybody will be missing a wonderful shortcut by not looking at PCIE

Someone else has done alot of the work already without even thinking of us!
I found this by accident on youtube today (10Mar17) its from 10Aug 2014!!

The Beast External Graphics card adaptor
It turns the mini PCIE slot inside a laptop usually used for a WiFi card into an external X16 PCIE Slot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in2RYwjWFyA
Version 8.4d 31)ct 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-Ziq5t-2Rs

Actual Source
http://www.banggood.com/Mini-PCI-E-Vers ... 11222.html

Adding just the one mini PCIE port opens Apollo to a wealth of Cheap throw away graphics cards nobody wants in thier PC anymore!!!
All those powefull video codecs are ready to use, along with all that graphics power
The Apollo core would not need to break a sweat and its own compute performance be more focused
You would also have the memory already on the cards and not have to use the precious onboard RAM for display purposes

I have a fairly powerful PC (5820k with 290X) in 3Dmark Firestrike benchmark the GRAPHICS score did not go up much at all from a Xeon 5470 clocked at 4.2Ghz with the same 290X
4 cpu cores verses 6 cores with hyperthreading
The graphics card still has the same compute power no matter what CPU is running it.
Just the data flow between the CPU and GPU make the difference.

Even with this being a external unit it opens the development posibilities for the time being to grow and flourish in the future

Thanks for looking, Justin
Opinions Please!!!

Juz400 wrote: *

Fri 10 Mar 2017 14:12

Adding just the one mini PCIE port opens Apollo to a wealth of Cheap throw away graphics cards nobody wants in thier PC anymore!!!
All those powefull video codecs are ready to use, along with all that graphics power

I just looked at the Nvidia Driver Download site. But i can't find AmigaOS Drivers.....

To be honest, a PCIe Interface for the FPGA(Vampire) is not Witchcraft.
But the Drivers for the OS are, for closed source products like a NVidia GPU

I agree with Claude. There are no Amiga drivers for PCIe cards and external graphics cards have been a can of worms for both MorphOS and AmigaOS 4 teams. Developing our own is better for the long term.

zomos wrote: *

Tue 28 Feb 2017 22:14

Is this possible ? It would be nice to add soundblaster or other PCI card(SCSI, SATA controller?) I know it means it would make only to tower the Amiga(or A500 maybe not for one card ?). I know we got SAGA as RTG but how about other expansions ?

First of all, there is no real need (yet). On A500/A600 V cards implement almost everything needed (sound, video, IDE, soon Wi-Fi) except Warp3D.

FPGA Standalone might also be - FPGA board, like Myst and FPGA Arcade are. That means basically as advanced core at that date, possible Cyclone V instead of III FPGA - more Mhz, DDR3 RAM, hopefully 9-pin connectors for joy/mouse, USB and Ethernet/Wi-Fi, maybe more RAM to some point of 32-bit adress table )even 080 is 64-bit design but that would require AROS m86080 64-bit which doesnt exist nor is currently planned.

I do understand PCI-E is tempting. I would satisfy with PCI bus, single slot at least.
I have Sound Blaster 5.1, Emu101k a max card supported under AmigaOS and sadly
Emu101k is not used under AHI drivers, so I could say I expect same sound quality
from promised SAGA Pamela. I would just like to have it as slot for old Radeons, Voodos
or Virge3D if one needs a Warp3D. Or Catweasel mk3.

There are no SATA drivers for OS3 to my knowledge. MorphOS or OS4 drivers may or may not be backported. Same goes for even 2D drivers for PCI-E graphic cards. And it looses meaning - I have Warp3D, Warp3D Nova and 2D on x1000 on savage Radeon 7000HD 1Ghz GPU 2GB DDR5 1Ghz
and card is purely used and performing because of several hardware and software bottlenecks, compared to when plugged to x64.

If you ask for a PCI graphic card on the Vampire, then you didn't get the purpose of the project. The goal of the team is not to bring on the market another RTG / RTA system, that in fact already exist (you already can plug a PCI card into a PCI equiped Amiga4000 or 1200 towerised). RTG and RTA was done because the chipset was not evolving and was outperformed by PC video cards /sound cards at this time. The goal of the team is to evolve the chipset to make it better and as good capabable as a PCI card, but in an Amiga way. SAGA is planar oriented, and Pamela extend the possibilites of Paula letting the way to adress her unchanged.

A low cost low power PCI card slot would be quite desirable on the stand alone vampire board.

Bit weird saying that and there's almost no specs to moan/shout about yet!

I'm just gonna pretty much just repeat what Guibrush said really...

surely the idea of an FPGA is you can build in whatever you need, right into the chip?
RTG and enhanced graphics? check.
Ethernet? check.
storage? check.
AHI or enhanced audio? potential check?

that's the main four (current that I can think of) reasons for expansion boards (zorro/pci/pcie) ticked off right away barring USB. Plus with networking, USB becomes a nice to have rather than a must have.

I know everyone has separate use case scenarios, but I see the above as the foundation stones as to what got amiga rolling in the first place. everything all in one box.

also look at the Frankenstein creations people had to come up with to fit PCI slots, and associated PSUs/Cables/Cases. Mediators to A1200s, and Prometheus boards to A3/4Ks, or the G-Rex for the A4000T.
I think only the mediator for the desktop A3/4k machines and G-Rex for the desktop A4k were workable hardware PCI solutions. and that's because the case could go back together afterwards, plus you didn't need to butcher or replace the PSU.

just my personal exp. I had an A4000T fully loaded etc etc. I had to replace the PSU usually once a year because the 5volt line's connectors to the mainboard would burn out due to the load. I could hardly use it. it became an exercise in frustration and patch management. I had it down to a fine art. what version OS/Boingbag/setpatch arguments/cybergraphics/warpOS/warp3D/OpenPCI would work together without (too much) weird stuff happening.
the noise of the drives, the howling fans being held on with rubber bands and cable ties, the fact the house lights dimmed when my CRT monitor degaussed at switch on.
I could never put the case together as I'd always have to wiggle something, or push on a connector.
It all got a bit tiring.

the fact that now everything is all in one tiny box ... i'm actually considering re-purposing my home desktop PC, and trialling running my vampire loaded A600 as my primary machine.

but hey, that's just me.

@darksun9210

I agree with the whole "main machine" aspect, but obviously we all know at current its a hobbymachine due to lack of updated programs. And Im not in a position to ask for updated pdf reader, Office programs etc, since I dont contribute with development myself.

With regards to PCIe slots, Im sure the Apollo Team would consider options IF they had several people joining the team that showed prolonged dedication in development of 3d graphics card drivers.
But for now I havent seen anyone raising their hands to do such a job.

We just have to see the massive job Hans is doing for RadeonHD, and Daytona is doing for Nova/Open GLES. Last posts on forum Hans indicated that he is more or less working fulltime for Aeon in Radeon driver development, and he has been at it for years (unknown by me when he became a full time developer tho).
So unless someone (or several) raises their hand to do this labourintensive job, I think mainstream 3d cards is a pipedream.

Correct me if im wrong, since my comments is based on the impression I get from reading different forums.