4 ms·

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

by Udik 8y ago

Jaruzel 8y ago
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.
posting2fast 8y ago
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
- mondoshawan 8y ago
  Alas, the Apollo boards only support the 500, 600, and 1200, which is impressive, but sadly thoses with 1k, 2k, 3k, 4k, or 4kTs are SOL. ;_;
  - icedchai 8y ago
    I've read that you can hack it into a 1000. And there is an adapter for the 2000.
armitron 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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 8y ago
    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/
jacobush 8y ago
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-gaming-pcs-are-slower-than-an-apple-ii/ https://www.pcgamer.com/the-latency-problem-why-modern-gamin...
- growlist 8y ago
  I remember a kind of stutter on old PCs - screensavers used to have a stacatto effect where they would momentarily pause, and I think you could see the same in 3d games. My Amiga by comparison was always rock steady even when the frame rate dropped. I was convinced at the time that this made PCs significantly crappier - what kind of crumby computer can't maintain a steady user experience?! I still miss the Amiga magic and wish we had something similar now, not just boring x86/64..
  - abainbridge 8y ago
    Even today, windowed applications are stuttery. They drop frames in what should be smooth animations. The Amiga was technically better, in a way that can't easily be emulated. The Amiga video hardware could generate an interrupt at the end of the video frame output. As a result, an application could do all its work for the current frame, then call a "wait for vsync" function. That made it yield to the OS scheduler. When the interrupt fired, the scheduler would handle it and reschedule the app VERY QUICKLY. It was almost like a real-time OS. It knew that video generating was time critical. I don't think you can't do that on Windows or Linux. The video hardware _might_ support interrupt generation but it isn't wired into the OS in the same way. You might get close to being able to use the "wait for vsync" in full screen DirectX apps, but even then it's a nightmare of video driver lies and OS scheduler complexity instead of a nice clean, simple, reliable feature all applications can use. I'd be interested to know if Wayland solves this problem.

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

by Udik 8y ago

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.

posting2fast 8y ago

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

mondoshawan 8y ago
Alas, the Apollo boards only support the 500, 600, and 1200, which is impressive, but sadly thoses with 1k, 2k, 3k, 4k, or 4kTs are SOL. ;_;
- icedchai 8y ago
  I've read that you can hack it into a 1000. And there is an adapter for the 2000.

armitron 8y ago

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 8y ago
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 8y ago
  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/

jacobush 8y ago

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-gaming-pcs-are-slower-than-an-apple-ii/ https://www.pcgamer.com/the-latency-problem-why-modern-gamin...

growlist 8y ago
I remember a kind of stutter on old PCs - screensavers used to have a stacatto effect where they would momentarily pause, and I think you could see the same in 3d games. My Amiga by comparison was always rock steady even when the frame rate dropped. I was convinced at the time that this made PCs significantly crappier - what kind of crumby computer can't maintain a steady user experience?! I still miss the Amiga magic and wish we had something similar now, not just boring x86/64..
- abainbridge 8y ago
  Even today, windowed applications are stuttery. They drop frames in what should be smooth animations. The Amiga was technically better, in a way that can't easily be emulated. The Amiga video hardware could generate an interrupt at the end of the video frame output. As a result, an application could do all its work for the current frame, then call a "wait for vsync" function. That made it yield to the OS scheduler. When the interrupt fired, the scheduler would handle it and reschedule the app VERY QUICKLY. It was almost like a real-time OS. It knew that video generating was time critical. I don't think you can't do that on Windows or Linux. The video hardware _might_ support interrupt generation but it isn't wired into the OS in the same way. You might get close to being able to use the "wait for vsync" in full screen DirectX apps, but even then it's a nightmare of video driver lies and OS scheduler complexity instead of a nice clean, simple, reliable feature all applications can use. I'd be interested to know if Wayland solves this problem.