What Might Have Been

There's a real lack of software for the DSP chip on the Amiga AA3000 prototype and its modern recreation, the AA3000+. What might have been if that prototype had been put into production? I have a go at my very first demo program to see what could have been possible.

[@piyushkhengar]

I have this machine (totally your fault!), and I love it. But I can’t help but be drawn back to the A500 for its pure nostalgic value. So, imagine this: a AA500+ or a AA1200+. Basically, a AA3000+, but designed to fit in an A500/A1200 case. How awesome would that be?!

[@WSS_the_OG]

That demo was really impressive! Yes, I was fooled during the very initial view of the Boing ball, but seeing how low res it was made me think ... there's something more to this. Haha. Thanks for this video! Very enjoyable. Well done.

[@wrangleramiga896]

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it - it was a lot of fun to create

[@theamigashow9506]

This is cool, had no idea this prototype existed! Presumably an RTG card would lift performance with a native chunky mode. ( I see have responded in a previous comment )

[@wrangleramiga896]

Yes, a native 8 bit mode should be faster although that's only if you can write directly into video ram - the more conversion that is needed, the slower it will be eg being OS compliant.
Having said that, I wanted to write a demo that would run on a stock AA3000 (or, more likely, a stock AA3000+) so AGA graphics and '030 CPU.

[@Andy-xg8wk]

Another great video!

[@plattcriceta1719]

please increase your sound volume a bit! 😀

[@billymania11]

Amazing! Wouldn't it be nice if the whole motherboard and it's discrete components could reengineered to run at more modern speeds. The Amiga would not be as fast as PC's with modern superscaler CPU's but it would allow people to do browsing and word processing and other stuff.

[@NdxtremePro]

That is essentially the Vampire V4.

[@vertigoz]

Would it work better on RTG?

[@wrangleramiga896]

It would, particularly when running on an 030. No C2P to worry about and memory access time would be faster than chipmem. But the aim of the demo was to produce something on a stock AA3000.

[@e8root]

Amiga music sounds much better if you mix sound channels. Raw rendidtion directly from stereo output is hard to listen to, especially in headphones

[@WSS_the_OG]

You're not wrong, but you've completely missed the spirit of this great video.

[@jkdsteve]

I understand why you used the on board 030 but what's the FPS with an 060 doing C2p?

[@wrangleramiga896]

I think you know this already ;-), but about 50 FPS on a 50 MHz 060 in the sections that don't use Z-buffering

[@melovescotch]

Later on audio has 60hz hum.
great otherwise!

[@airborne0x0]

What does @DaveHaynie think?

[@wrangleramiga896]

Don't know. I don't know how to contact him

[@Lucretia9000]

The A3000/Tower/UX were released with DSP's, but they were not AGA machines, this prototype took the original A3000 and put in the AGA chipset. Had medhi ali and irving gould not basically run commodore into the ground, and probably made millions for themselves, we would've got chunky graphics with the Hombre chipset which had 3D instructions built into a custom PA-RISC CPU which would've been ahead of it's time again just as peecees were getting their first 3D cards.

[@wrangleramiga896]

The A3000/Tower/UX weren't released with DSPs