4 ms·

The flip side of that was if you were writing a vanilla computer program that didn't take advantage of the special hardware, your perf was directly tied to what

by 13of40 3y ago

The flip side of that was if you were writing a vanilla computer program that didn't take advantage of the special hardware, your perf was directly tied to what resolution mode the screen was on.

snvzz 3y ago
... as long as there was no "FAST RAM" left. Allocations would get fast ram with priority, unless chip ram was specifically requested. Fast ram is exclusive to the cpu, and unaffected by the chipset accessing chip ram. Amiga had this fast ram concept. Atari ST unfortunately did not.
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  > Atari ST unfortunately did not. Atari TT did. And is possible on Falcon with expansion.
  - snvzz 3y ago
    It was only really possible by not using the OS. The main issue is that the OS did not have a way to request "chip RAM", thus software compatibility hell if added too late (never actually got added AIUI).
    - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
      Not that it mattered by that point but TOS 3 for the TT did? For what, I don't know, really. Maybe people running Calamus or something could use it? I think Atari Corp had a burst of engineering competence at the end after Tramiel Sr handed over the reigns to his sons. But it was too late, the market moved on. The Falcon is a lovely machine. The last TOS releases addressed some longstanding problems. Hiring Eric Smith to work on TOS/MuliTOS was a good, but late effort. Porting SystemV and trying to make a budget Unix workstation was a doomed but clever effort (I still remember the UnixWorld news clip box headline "Up from toyland"). I bought a 486 late 1992, put Linux 0.97 on it, and moved on.
    - cliffan 3y ago
      Nah that’s not true. Mxalloc() takes fast/chip flags just like AllocVec() etc. Fastram support was available since TOS v2, 1988(89?).
      - snvzz 3y ago
        >Fastram support was available since TOS v2, 1988(89?). Realize how late that is, relative to ST's release.
        cmrdporcupine 3y ago
        There were no machines with any kind of fast RAM until then.
        cliffan 3y ago
        There were OS support when fastram arrived (obviously). Since their chipset supported 4 megs of chipram (14 megs on later machines), they didn’t have to worry about slowram etc. So it wasn’t really an issue for them.
        cmrdporcupine 3y ago
        I'd add that honestly people weren't really complaining about the ST's speed at the time it was current. It beat the Mac and PC for horsepower and price. While it was kind of a crappy games machine compared to the Amiga, it certainly was better than a PC or a Mac, and as an all around general home productivity computer was the best value for the $ out there at the time. Which I think was the Tramiel's aim.
- ihatepython 3y ago
  > Amiga had this fast ram concept. Atari ST unfortunately did not. But the Atari ST didn't have custom chips, so there was no need for chip ram/fast ram?
  - snvzz 3y ago
    The Atari ST had different chips, including e.g. a blitter (which they added in a latter machine). The problem persisted through the Falcon, which 68030's was tremendously held back by lack of a fast ram concept.
amiga386 3y ago
Well... only for a 32-colour/EHB/HAM lowres screen, or 8/16-colour hires screen, or if you were blitting. 16-colour lowres and 4-colour hires fit within the odd cycles and don't lock out the 68000 during display fetch. Most people had a 4-colour hires Workbench so wouldn't be affected. People with a faster CPU would also likely buy Fast RAM to go with it. Details: http://www.theflatnet.de/pub/cbm/amiga/amigadev.elowar.com/read/ADCD_2.1/Hardware_Manual_guide/node012B.html http://www.theflatnet.de/pub/cbm/amiga/amigadev.elowar.com/r... Diagram: http://www.theflatnet.de/pub/cbm/amiga/amigadev.elowar.com/read/ADCD_2.1/Hardware_Manual_guide/node02D4.html http://www.theflatnet.de/pub/cbm/amiga/amigadev.elowar.com/r...

by 13of40 3y ago

The flip side of that was if you were writing a vanilla computer program that didn't take advantage of the special hardware, your perf was directly tied to what resolution mode the screen was on.

snvzz 3y ago

... as long as there was no "FAST RAM" left. Allocations would get fast ram with priority, unless chip ram was specifically requested. Fast ram is exclusive to the cpu, and unaffected by the chipset accessing chip ram. Amiga had this fast ram concept. Atari ST unfortunately did not.

cmrdporcupine 3y ago
> Atari ST unfortunately did not. Atari TT did. And is possible on Falcon with expansion.
- snvzz 3y ago
  It was only really possible by not using the OS. The main issue is that the OS did not have a way to request "chip RAM", thus software compatibility hell if added too late (never actually got added AIUI).
  - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    Not that it mattered by that point but TOS 3 for the TT did? For what, I don't know, really. Maybe people running Calamus or something could use it? I think Atari Corp had a burst of engineering competence at the end after Tramiel Sr handed over the reigns to his sons. But it was too late, the market moved on. The Falcon is a lovely machine. The last TOS releases addressed some longstanding problems. Hiring Eric Smith to work on TOS/MuliTOS was a good, but late effort. Porting SystemV and trying to make a budget Unix workstation was a doomed but clever effort (I still remember the UnixWorld news clip box headline "Up from toyland"). I bought a 486 late 1992, put Linux 0.97 on it, and moved on.
  - cliffan 3y ago
    Nah that’s not true. Mxalloc() takes fast/chip flags just like AllocVec() etc. Fastram support was available since TOS v2, 1988(89?).
    - snvzz 3y ago
      >Fastram support was available since TOS v2, 1988(89?). Realize how late that is, relative to ST's release.
      - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
        There were no machines with any kind of fast RAM until then.
        cliffan 3y ago
        There were OS support when fastram arrived (obviously). Since their chipset supported 4 megs of chipram (14 megs on later machines), they didn’t have to worry about slowram etc. So it wasn’t really an issue for them.
        cmrdporcupine 3y ago
        I'd add that honestly people weren't really complaining about the ST's speed at the time it was current. It beat the Mac and PC for horsepower and price. While it was kind of a crappy games machine compared to the Amiga, it certainly was better than a PC or a Mac, and as an all around general home productivity computer was the best value for the $ out there at the time. Which I think was the Tramiel's aim.
ihatepython 3y ago
> Amiga had this fast ram concept. Atari ST unfortunately did not. But the Atari ST didn't have custom chips, so there was no need for chip ram/fast ram?
- snvzz 3y ago
  The Atari ST had different chips, including e.g. a blitter (which they added in a latter machine). The problem persisted through the Falcon, which 68030's was tremendously held back by lack of a fast ram concept.

amiga386 3y ago

Well... only for a 32-colour/EHB/HAM lowres screen, or 8/16-colour hires screen, or if you were blitting. 16-colour lowres and 4-colour hires fit within the odd cycles and don't lock out the 68000 during display fetch. Most people had a 4-colour hires Workbench so wouldn't be affected. People with a faster CPU would also likely buy Fast RAM to go with it. Details: http://www.theflatnet.de/pub/cbm/amiga/amigadev.elowar.com/read/ADCD_2.1/Hardware_Manual_guide/node012B.html http://www.theflatnet.de/pub/cbm/amiga/amigadev.elowar.com/r... Diagram: http://www.theflatnet.de/pub/cbm/amiga/amigadev.elowar.com/read/ADCD_2.1/Hardware_Manual_guide/node02D4.html http://www.theflatnet.de/pub/cbm/amiga/amigadev.elowar.com/r...