Radeon on an Atari Falcon

[arnoldemu]

http://gtello.pagesperso-orange.fr/falcon_e.htm

Now, Radeon on a CPC?

[Bryce]

Wasn't there a CPC-ISA extension being developed at one time? If it works, then you just need to write the Radeon drivers (and better than AMD usually does please)

Bryce.

[steve]

Maybe just the 9958 video display processor (similar to those used in MSX computers) with 192/256KB video ram, might be a good upgrade for a CPC?

[MacDeath]

a 3D accelerator would be neat on any CPC/PLUS... bbut is this even possible ?

Hell even a basic Math/arithmetic co-processor + BLITTER would suffice...
And DMAs, and and and...

Anyway, Atari Falcon clearly look like a good machine from its time... just to bad Atari screewed it up to aim at Jaguar's loosy concept... (and games shitfest)
They supported the Falcon for only 1 year... erf...
To me Atari clearly closed the gape to Amiga with this one... well, perhaps not that much...

Anyway, always sad to see such a promising machine unexploited... (like Amstrad PLUS or Atari STE...)

Good point : you can cannibalize any ST's keyboard to repair your falcon... (or STE... I Did...)

[MaV]

It's been a while and I don't follow current 3D cards, but 3D cards are dependant on the CPU to provide data fast enough to work at their full potential.

The Z80 is too slow for these. That's like driving a Ferrari at the speed of a snail. It might work, it will provide graphics not seen on a Z80 but this is overkill.


I guess a 68060 with 95MHz is good enough for a Radeon 7000. And it looks like a machine I'd really like to have.


@bryce: There are open source radeon drivers. I read that those for the older cards are (quite) complete. Besides these cards all use the PCI bus.

[Bryce]

Yeah I know, being a long time Linux user, I've played around with similar drivers for quite a while. But if you were to get a VGA card working on a CPC it would be better to start with an old ISA card, PCI is just too difficult to control with an 8-Bit processor. The other alternative (and a lot easier) would be to use a USB VGA adapter, but as you say, you'd be trying to drive a Ferrari with a lawnmower motor.

Bryce.

[McKlain]

It's been a while and I don't follow current 3D cards, but 3D cards are dependant on the CPU to provide data fast enough to work at their full potential.

You are totally right. Recently I bought a Geforce GTX560Ti for my custom rig. As I had "designed" it to be merely an storage/downloads machine, I had put an Athlon II X2 235e (low power consumption) on it. It's a perfectly fine processor for daily use, but it wasn't enough to drive the gpu. The processor was at 100% load while gaming most of the time and the gpu just sitted there waiting for it (and so the games ran at lower fps or stutter). I changed it for a phenom II X4 955 BE and now the card flies. Most of the games (recent games) can run on full detail at 60fps and 1920x1200 resolution.

So, I don't see a z80 driving a 3D accelerator

[Gryzor]

68060 at 95MHz... wow. I want one of these, even if it looks like a spaghetti setup!

[Bryce]

But will it run Crysis?

(That's almost a retro joke at this stage)

Bryce.