
Apollo Accelerators – Amiga Classic accelerator boards - peter_d_sherman
http://www.apollo-accelerators.com/
======
cmrdporcupine
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?

~~~
snvzz
An emuTOS core exists, and it is included in the most recent build, Gold 2.9.

This is demonstrated in these videos:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94EdhS_JTAg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94EdhS_JTAg)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JErzSUv06Fo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JErzSUv06Fo)

~~~
cmrdporcupine
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.

~~~
snvzz
>That said the second video does show a stock TOS running a game, so that's
encouraging.

They probably threw in some replicated atari hardware into the core.

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Annatar
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.

~~~
ido
Can you still run everything (in original color/resolution modes) on the amiga
monitor or does it only then work on the HDMI output?

~~~
bwldrbst
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.

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aidos
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?

~~~
paulmd
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](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.

~~~
jacobush
Some Amiga CPUs were socketed, some were soldered. Some accelerator boards
replaced the slotted CPU, most just deactivated the stock CPU.

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ahje
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.

~~~
azinman2
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?

~~~
rasjani
AmigaOS 4.1 fe came out 4 years ago so it’s not that ancient.

~~~
opencl
AmigaOS 4 is PowerPC only, it does not run on this hardware at all.

~~~
rpiguy
The last version of AmigaOS 3.1 for classic hardware came out in 2016.

~~~
opencl
I mean technically it was a "new" release but they fixed 4 minor bugs in a
codebase that was otherwise not touched in 20+ years.

If you want the most modern AmigaOS to run on classic hardware that's
obviously 3.9 which was released in 2000.

~~~
jacobush
Or AROS's 68000 build.

[https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Aros/Platforms/68k_support](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Aros/Platforms/68k_support)

(AROS is an AmigaOS open source clone. Source compatible for all other
platforms, such as Intel, binary compatible for 68000.)

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synchronise
So, this is essentially a continuation of the Natami project, but you still
need original hardware?

~~~
Annatar
This is the Natami, and yes, real hardware is needed.

~~~
snvzz
... for now.

Vampire v4 should have a standalone version.

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melicerte
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)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannon_Fodder_\(video_game\))
and a video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyDGPlIkySA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyDGPlIkySA)

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quickthrower2
That room picture looks so homely and 90's!

~~~
santoshalper
Homely means ugly. You mean cozy?

~~~
BjoernKW
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".

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Udik
Hmm.. but isn't a JITted emulator on a modern PC actually much faster
nowadays? Just asking.

~~~
armitron
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.

~~~
grafelic
It is not my experience that FS-UAE is moving at a snails pace. I'm using the
dev releases and these seem to be on par with the current WinUAE features.
Which killer WinUAE features are you missing?

That said I am looking forward to the V4 standalone and A1200 V4 cards, both
being instabuys for me.

~~~
armitron
The last time fs-uae updated its core to match WinUAE was in 2016-12-11, from
the dev notes:

"Updated emulation core from WinUAE 3300b2."

Since then, WinUAE has had _6_ major releases, the changelog is visible on the
front page and you can simply go there and read it, the list of features I
consider killer is too big:

[http://www.winuae.net/](http://www.winuae.net/)

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rasz
No such thing as 68080, its fully compatible with 68040.

~~~
ido
the website says 68060 (which was a real chip used in some amiga 4000T models
& accelerator boards), I assume the title is a typo.

~~~
bwldrbst
It's not a typo. More info on the 68080 core can be found at
[http://www.apollo-core.com/](http://www.apollo-core.com/).

I've got one in an Amiga 1000 and it's a lot of fun :)

~~~
Jaruzel
My Amiga 1000 is stock. I've only really though about adding A500 external
HDD, and maybe a kickstart ROM mod. I'm not too sure about accelerating it,
you still only have an OCS Amiga at the heart, so a lot of the demanding
software still wouldn't run. So what is the benefit of a faster CPU in it?

~~~
Annatar
SAGA and built-in hard disk support.

Your A1000 will be able to do up to 1390 x 1024 x 32 via RTG. Any software
which already targets RTG should be able to make use of that immediately.

You’ll also have 128 MB of FAST RAM.

I’m given to understand that eventually it might be possible to do 1920 x 1280
x 32. We’ll have to wait and see, but every core update makes it better and
better.

~~~
mondoshawan
That poor Topaz bitmap font will be nearly unreadable at those resolutions.
Sounds like we need a hidpi mode! _ducks_

