4 ms·

its easier to see this in hindsight. the amiga was basically just using the model that every previous home computer had used, expecting game devs to use the ha

its easier to see this in hindsight. the amiga was basically just using the model that every previous home computer had used, expecting game devs to use the hardware directly like they had been doing since the first home PCs. wasting resources on an API or any kind of abstraction was for user level BASICs and similar, not for professional games

cmrdporcupine 1y ago
I was not a big Amiga user, but on the Atari ST we had a graphics abstraction API (VDI) from day one. Had the notion of a virtual device and drawing surface. All done through a proper syscall TRAP system, too. I am given to understand that the AmigaOS syscall API was in the form of JMPs. So when the Falcon and TT Etc came along with full 16-bit 256 colour SVGA-like graphics, anything properly written GUI "just worked" Games and the like, yes, had to fall back to a video compat mode.
- zozbot234 1y ago
  > So when the Falcon and TT Etc came along with full 16-bit 256 colour SVGA-like graphics, anything properly written GUI "just worked" > Games and the like, yes, had to fall back to a video compat mode. The Amiga had retargetable graphics too. No real difference there.
- actionfromafar 1y ago
  It used JMP, but you looked up the API base addresses from a fixed address, ($4 IIRC) so it worked basically the same. But only like some turned based games, and like some chess games etc used that API. The rest maybe used the APIs to allocate a screen but they were banging hardware after that. Most didn't even use the OS even to read the keyboard, which became an annoyance on the A600 which lacked some of the keys.
  - cmrdporcupine 1y ago
    I mean the advantage of the TRAP approach is more amenable to supervisor/user mode switch and memory protection and the like? Separate topic from graphics and device independence though
    - actionfromafar 1y ago
      Memory protection was basically impossible or at least "Research Level Hard" on the Amiga, because of how the OS was designed with linked lists and message passing of pointers. This was what made it so fast, but at a cost. (They would have needed something like Rust to balance that.) Everything could have been fixed with the March of Moore. The OS could have gotten a hypervisor and been running each program in its own "VM" thinking it was the only program on the machine.
      - cmrdporcupine 1y ago
        Later iterations of OS extensions on the ST got memory protection support, albeit a bit inconistently and with likely backwards compat problems. FreeMiNT I think supports MMU + protection on 030 machines. Achilles heel for classic MacOS, too. Sins of our fathers.
        TheAmazingRace 1y ago
        Pretty sure MultiTOS (which was derived from MiNT IIRC) fully supported preemptive multitasking back in 1992 or so when it came out. This, plus the fancier graphics support, a proper 68030 instead of the rather cut down 68EC020, and addition of a Motorola 56K DSP, meant the Atari Falcon was superior to the Amiga A1200, at least on paper. I certainly adored mine when I owned it not that long ago as a part of my small collection.
        cmrdporcupine 1y ago
        Yeah I have two Falcons here. Not that I ever use them, but they're amazing machines for the time.
      - 1y ago
actionfromafar 1y ago
Yeah. It was very much the same with DOS games, too.

cmrdporcupine 1y ago

I was not a big Amiga user, but on the Atari ST we had a graphics abstraction API (VDI) from day one. Had the notion of a virtual device and drawing surface. All done through a proper syscall TRAP system, too. I am given to understand that the AmigaOS syscall API was in the form of JMPs. So when the Falcon and TT Etc came along with full 16-bit 256 colour SVGA-like graphics, anything properly written GUI "just worked" Games and the like, yes, had to fall back to a video compat mode.

zozbot234 1y ago
> So when the Falcon and TT Etc came along with full 16-bit 256 colour SVGA-like graphics, anything properly written GUI "just worked" > Games and the like, yes, had to fall back to a video compat mode. The Amiga had retargetable graphics too. No real difference there.
actionfromafar 1y ago
It used JMP, but you looked up the API base addresses from a fixed address, ($4 IIRC) so it worked basically the same. But only like some turned based games, and like some chess games etc used that API. The rest maybe used the APIs to allocate a screen but they were banging hardware after that. Most didn't even use the OS even to read the keyboard, which became an annoyance on the A600 which lacked some of the keys.
- cmrdporcupine 1y ago
  I mean the advantage of the TRAP approach is more amenable to supervisor/user mode switch and memory protection and the like? Separate topic from graphics and device independence though
  - actionfromafar 1y ago
    Memory protection was basically impossible or at least "Research Level Hard" on the Amiga, because of how the OS was designed with linked lists and message passing of pointers. This was what made it so fast, but at a cost. (They would have needed something like Rust to balance that.) Everything could have been fixed with the March of Moore. The OS could have gotten a hypervisor and been running each program in its own "VM" thinking it was the only program on the machine.
    - cmrdporcupine 1y ago
      Later iterations of OS extensions on the ST got memory protection support, albeit a bit inconistently and with likely backwards compat problems. FreeMiNT I think supports MMU + protection on 030 machines. Achilles heel for classic MacOS, too. Sins of our fathers.
      - TheAmazingRace 1y ago
        Pretty sure MultiTOS (which was derived from MiNT IIRC) fully supported preemptive multitasking back in 1992 or so when it came out. This, plus the fancier graphics support, a proper 68030 instead of the rather cut down 68EC020, and addition of a Motorola 56K DSP, meant the Atari Falcon was superior to the Amiga A1200, at least on paper. I certainly adored mine when I owned it not that long ago as a part of my small collection.
        cmrdporcupine 1y ago
        Yeah I have two Falcons here. Not that I ever use them, but they're amazing machines for the time.
    - 1y ago

actionfromafar 1y ago

Yeah. It was very much the same with DOS games, too.