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Re: Q68 Advance Notice

Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2017 9:41 pm
by afx
tofro wrote:Nice.But definitly not black enough.

Tobias

How about this model? ... :D
ZxUnoBlackBox.jpg

Re: Q68 Advance Notice

Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2017 10:15 pm
by Derek_Stewart
Peter wrote:If I understood Derek correctly, he'll supply splitter cables with Q68 specific labels.
I have some Belkin PS/2 splitters which work well. I will colour code the keyboard/mouse connections.

These PS/2 splitters will be an optional extra.

As stated, if a mouse is not requried no splitter is required.

Re: Q68 Advance Notice

Posted: Tue Sep 05, 2017 10:20 pm
by Derek_Stewart
robheaton wrote:Do you have any rough ideas on price?
Are we talking upper or lower hundreds of pounds?
I will post the proposed prices in due course.

But I plan to make the cost of Q68 below the price of a Mist.

There is an optional case available similiar to the prototype shown in a previous message by Peter.

Re: Q68 Advance Notice

Posted: Wed Sep 06, 2017 5:19 am
by Zarchos
Great work !
I am a noob at everything QL, and I have 2 questions :
- Are the hi res screen and hi colour screen modes planar or chunky ?
- how many kbytes per second are you able to transfer to the screen buffer.
Yes my question is demo and game oriented.
Also, any chance in the future additionnal features are added ? (see the Spectrum Next vs the original Speccy). Any room left in the FPGA mimicing the 68000 for such enhancements ?

Envoyé de mon XT1650 en utilisant Tapatalk

Re: Q68 Advance Notice

Posted: Wed Sep 06, 2017 4:15 pm
by Peter
Zarchos wrote:- Are the hi res screen and hi colour screen modes planar or chunky ?
They are linear, probably the same what you mean by "chunky".
Zarchos wrote:- how many kbytes per second are you able to transfer to the screen buffer.
The theoretical video memory bandwith is 160 MB/s, but that's meaningless, as the CPU side will be the bottleneck.
No practical tests yet.
Zarchos wrote:Yes my question is demo and game oriented.
The QL never really was a game oriented machine.
Zarchos wrote:Also, any chance in the future additionnal features are added ?
There are always chances, depending on life circumstances, but not soon.
This is strictly a hobby project for me.
Zarchos wrote: (see the Spectrum Next vs the original Speccy). Any room left in the FPGA mimicing the 68000 for such enhancements ?
The Q68 already has massive enhancements compared to a QL. What else are you looking for?

Re: RE: Re: Q68 Advance Notice

Posted: Wed Sep 06, 2017 4:21 pm
by Zarchos
Peter wrote:
Zarchos wrote:- Are the hi res screen and hi colour screen modes planar or chunky ?
They are linear, probably the same what you mean by "chunky".
Zarchos wrote:- how many kbytes per second are you able to transfer to the screen buffer.
The theoretical video memory bandwith is 160 MB/s, but that's meaningless, as the CPU side will be the bottleneck.
No practical tests yet.
Zarchos wrote:Yes my question is demo and game oriented.
The QL never really was a game oriented machine.
Zarchos wrote:Also, any chance in the future additionnal features are added ?
There are always chances, depending on life circumstances, but not soon.
This is strictly a hobby project for me.
Zarchos wrote: (see the Spectrum Next vs the original Speccy). Any room left in the FPGA mimicing the 68000 for such enhancements ?
The Q68 already has massive enhancements compared to a QL. What else are you looking for?
Thanks for your answers.
This is a great project, no doubt on that.
I was simply curious to know if things like hardware sprites, for example, would be or not possible to add.
I have some plans for a small studio developping games on retro systems, but also systems like yours, (enhanced retro) this is why I was asking, very simply.

Envoyé de mon XT1650 en utilisant Tapatalk

Re: RE: Re: Q68 Advance Notice

Posted: Wed Sep 06, 2017 7:50 pm
by Derek_Stewart
Hi,
Zarchos wrote:
I was simply curious to know if things like hardware sprites, for example, would be or not possible to add.
I have some plans for a small studio developping games on retro systems, but also systems like yours, (enhanced retro) this is why I was asking, very simply.
At present ther are no hardware sprites. Any sprites will have to software programmed in the operating system.

The suplied operating system is SMSQ/E, which can have sprites programmed in the Extended Envoirnment built into SMSQ/E.

I think this could be done, but to date there not many games that take advantage of the system.

Maybe something for the future.

What sort of games are you creating?

Re: Q68 Advance Notice

Posted: Wed Sep 06, 2017 8:15 pm
by Outsoft
Zarchos wrote:Great work !
I am a noob at everything QL, and I have 2 questions :
- Are the hi res screen and hi colour screen modes planar or chunky ?
- how many kbytes per second are you able to transfer to the screen buffer.
Yes my question is demo and game oriented.
Also, any chance in the future additionnal features are added ? (see the Spectrum Next vs the original Speccy). Any room left in the FPGA mimicing the 68000 for such enhancements ?

Envoyé de mon XT1650 en utilisant Tapatalk
We need new games for the QL!!! ;)

Re: Q68 Advance Notice

Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2017 11:14 am
by Peter
Outsoft wrote:We need new games for the QL!!! ;)
I fully agree! But when you say QL, the big questions are: Which sound and graphics shall the game be designed for?

If you design the game for "modern" SMSQ/E features like sampled sound and highcolour, it will have no sound and at best look crippled on QL, GoldCard and SuperGoldCard systems.

Which brings back the old question whether there should be a Q68-based upgrade for the original machine.

Re: RE: Re: Q68 Advance Notice

Posted: Thu Sep 07, 2017 2:58 pm
by Zarchos
Derek_Stewart wrote:Hi,
Zarchos wrote:
I was simply curious to know if things like hardware sprites, for example, would be or not possible to add.
I have some plans for a small studio developping games on retro systems, but also systems like yours, (enhanced retro) this is why I was asking, very simply.
At present ther are no hardware sprites. Any sprites will have to software programmed in the operating system.

The suplied operating system is SMSQ/E, which can have sprites programmed in the Extended Envoirnment built into SMSQ/E.

I think this could be done, but to date there not many games that take advantage of the system.

Maybe something for the future.

What sort of games are you creating?
So far : none.
The studio, I intend to set up along my museum of retro computers and games consoles, at the end of 2018, should try to create some 2D platform games for 68000 based machines (ST and Amiga), the Archies, and I believe without much work some versions for a fast QL like your board.
Also, 3D games, because they don't need much 'human' resources like a graphics artist.

About what it would be nice to have in your new QL, is a hardware memory filing facility (for the horizontal segments composing a triangle).
I do not know if it is possible with your board (if the FPGA is 'only' for the CPU, I doubt it. What would be needed is that the FPGA also includes the graphics and memory controller of the QL. This way, I believe, additional features could be added).
Maybe, but you should ask the creator of the 68000 core for the FPGA, there is a way to implement an additional, specific instruction, which would help fast memory transfer.
Also, in the case of a linear (ie chunky) screen mode, an additional instruction to load from memory, perform a bit clear operation with the mask equivalent of the value you want to store on screen (ie the data composing the sprite), the ORRing of this 'mask cleared' background with the contents of the sprite you want to display, and finally the storing of the result to memory, could make the whole process faster than th sequence of 68000 instructions to perform all the necessary steps.
It would help to fast plot sprites on screen (for the edges, where the contents of the memory composing the background on screen has to be preserved) and also to fast plot horizontal segments on screen (again for the edges, where the contents of the memory composing the background on screen has to be preserved).

As far as the 'normal' QL is concerned, I already came here to post that, to me, you should pay attention to TerribleFire's (ie Stephen Leary) open source FPGA accelerator board for the Amiga and ST : to me, this project is a perfect condidate to boosting the original QLs.
It is in a way 'free', being open source : anybody can build the board, without feeding a merchant.
I doubt there is much additional work to have his accelerator work with the QL.


Xavier.