Its 1993, you're in charge of the Jag, what do you do?

[kool kitty89]

Just skimmed through this thread..as someone that was there..lets say most of the people on the ground at Atari had simliar ideas. But the Tramiel's were autocrats and some of the siblings were there because they had to be. Plus they had no real joy for games, they loved computers(and money). But if they had spent money on marketing and got rid of a few bugs in the system, it would have been a cool little machine and even if not not a huge success wit would have had a fondness beyond this forum. I'm grateful for my time their because it got me in the biz...but unless the Tramiels had given up the reigns there is now way the Jag could have been successful.

 

That's the ting though Sam kind of let the computers die with a wimper rather than fighting to keep in there alongside MACs and PCs, someting Jack might have handled differently but that's another discussion... Who knows what such a situation would have meant for Flare though (or games at Atari in general).

 

Still, as things were, the more I find out about the situation, the more it seems like Flare might have been better off partnered with someone else... (especially a current major player in games, like SGI did with Nintendo)

[Gorf]

which probally matched the Jaguar in some ways.

( It had 3D plus a lot of sprite h/w )

 

Not even close. Not even in the same ball park.

[marigul]

Just skimmed through this thread..as someone that was there..lets say most of the people on the ground at Atari had simliar ideas. But the Tramiel's were autocrats and some of the siblings were there because they had to be. Plus they had no real joy for games, they loved computers(and money). But if they had spent money on marketing and got rid of a few bugs in the system, it would have been a cool little machine and even if not not a huge success wit would have had a fondness beyond this forum. I'm grateful for my time their because it got me in the biz...but unless the Tramiels had given up the reigns there is now way the Jag could have been successful.

 

That's the ting though Sam kind of let the computers die with a wimper rather than fighting to keep in there alongside MACs and PCs, someting Jack might have handled differently but that's another discussion... Who knows what such a situation would have meant for Flare though (or games at Atari in general).

 

Still, as things were, the more I find out about the situation, the more it seems like Flare might have been better off partnered with someone else... (especially a current major player in games, like SGI did with Nintendo)

 

My memory is a bit fuzzy on somethings since it was a while ago and I arrived at Atari as they were winding down the computers. The TT was kind of an oddball machine, I and I think the only way they could get rid of them was by forcing them onto people with Jag dev kits. I was never sure what the deal with Flare was, from what I recall Panther was flawed and not sure who was responsible for the buggy Jag hardware. I always heard that that it was a "sacrifice" to rush the console to market. My guess is that Flare's designs, while innovative were too "quirky" to be sold to anyone else.

 

And at the time video games were hot, so I think they thought they could make money by releasing a game machine. For most of my time their I don't think the completly gave up on computers and I think they were hoping the Jag would allow them to return to glory as a computer maker. However, they didn't put proper marketing or production resources into either. And admittedly when the transferred a bit of control (like the chicago office), that didn't turn out well either...

[sd32]

which probally matched the Jaguar in some ways.

( It had 3D plus a lot of sprite h/w )

 

Not even close. Not even in the same ball park.

 

I know that in 3d the Jag eats the NEC PCFX alive , but isnt it a close call when it comes to 2d, Gorf?. I always hear how great the PCFX hardware is at 2d, with its 9 layers of pharallax and cellophane effects or whatever that means , hehe.

Anyway, i am sure that the sprite engine you mentioned some time ago (128 high color sprites scaling and rotating you said? ) would kill the comparisons and crown the Jag as the king of the 2d jungle .

[kool kitty89]

My memory is a bit fuzzy on somethings since it was a while ago and I arrived at Atari as they were winding down the computers. The TT was kind of an oddball machine, I and I think the only way they could get rid of them was by forcing them onto people with Jag dev kits. I was never sure what the deal with Flare was, from what I recall Panther was flawed and not sure who was responsible for the buggy Jag hardware. I always heard that that it was a "sacrifice" to rush the console to market. My guess is that Flare's designs, while innovative were too "quirky" to be sold to anyone else.

 

And at the time video games were hot, so I think they thought they could make money by releasing a game machine. For most of my time their I don't think the completly gave up on computers and I think they were hoping the Jag would allow them to return to glory as a computer maker. However, they didn't put proper marketing or production resources into either. And admittedly when the transferred a bit of control (like the chicago office), that didn't turn out well either...

 

I think Sam had taken over by then (I can't seem to find an exact date, but "late '80s" pops up a lot). So it may have been Sam who made to initial push back toward game systems (the Lynx), other than 2600 Jr and 7800 of course (both of which predated Atari Corp). I'm really not sure how Jack would have handeled things differently with the computers, but it seems like he was a lot better at managing the company than Sam. (I really don't know enugh about this to really claim that definitively)

Who knows if Jack would have even gone with Flare at all, or may have managed development differently. (and possibly co-developed a new computer utilizing portions -or derivatives- of the Jag hardware)

 

This sums things up better than I can:

And then Sam Tramiel had a heart attack - Jack stepped back in and wound down operations. I truly think is Sam didnt have his heart attack that Atari would've continued to fight to the last $$$ - but Jack and Leonard were not interested anymore.

 

Truthfully, Leonard didn't have much to do with the daily operations, he was more involved with the products themselves. And I'm not sure that Sam would have been able to change things if he didn't have the heart attack. Every since he had taken over, the company itself was on a downward spiral. When Jack turned the company over to him, he had mananged to bring the company out of the red and in to the black - shedding all the debt they took on from Warner in the purchase. That was his dream after all, to be able to hand something solid over to his sons and retire. Sam managed to take it from a multi-division multi-product company to a single product company by the time Jack came back in. If they would have fought to the last $$$, there would have been nothing left of a legacy for his kids, hence the reverse merger to get out while they still could. Truthfully, I would rather have had Jack not retire back in the late 80's and have him stick around for the oncoming Wintel onslaught to see how he would have dealt with that. I can't picture just turning tail and closing down the computer division like that.

 

 

 

As for Commodore and Atari computers in general (specifically in terms of maintaining some form of competition against PC's with MACs taking up the rest), I think both lost out with lacking proper, timely successors to the A500 and ST. There were the high end units like A3000 and TT, but not ones aimed at replacing the lower end console versions until it was too late. (1200 and Falcon) There was the MEGA ST and STe lines (including Meag STe), but it didn't popularize well (and thus didn't get the necessary devoper support -especially games), and wasn't a big enough improvement to last as a real successor. (all it really did was more or less fix the definciencies to the Amiga, perhaps if the older STs could have been upgraded to STe standards it would have caught on)

 

Perhaps if there had been something more like the Falcon rather than the MEGA STe (perhaps a bit more stripped down from the full Falcon -perhaps with a 68EC020 CPU and maybe without the DSP sound chip -maybe even use the TT's video with BLiTTER added), in '89/90 perhaps that could have worked.

Likewise with the Amiga 1200 (or rough equivelent) in parallel with the A3000.

Edited September 8, 2009 by kool kitty89

[kool kitty89]

Hey, I've beeing thinking about this again, and something occured to me that hasn't been mentioned before: Previously the option of adding seperate busses into th ejag rather than a single shared block of memory was brougt up, but it was pointed out that that would add significantly to cost and require more significant modifications that some other alternatives. Howerver, the Jag already has the ROM/cartridge bus in addition to the main RAM bus, right?

-I beleive 8 MB of address space is allocated to each, with the upper 2 MB of the ROM address reserved for boot ROM and I/O registers leaving 6 MB for cartridge space, with the cart data bus being 32-bits wide rather than main's 64-bits.

 

Now, would it be possible to add RAM on the cartridge/ROM bus? Even if it meant limiting the cartridge address space more. (granted, few jag games seem to have come close to the 6 MB limit, and for a hypothetical CD based Jag it's rather unimportant) Just a realtively small amount (64 or 128 kB) used as work RAM for the 68000 and possibly Jerry/DSP as well. (in which case a 16-bit datapath should be all that's necessary for those, so a pair of 8-bit or single 16-bit chip) Would DRAM be possible to use in shuch an arrangement, SRAM would be too expensive, but if seting up refresh circuitry for DRAM would have been problematic, perhaps PSRAM would hav been an option.

[kskunk]

Howerver, the Jag already has the ROM/cartridge bus in addition to the main RAM bus, right?

 

Not exactly. The ROM/cartridge bus is attached to the main bus. The only thing that separates them are buffers. So while they are electrically separated, they are logically connected. In plain English, when the ROM bus runs a transaction that same transaction appears on the main bus. So there is no way for the two busses to work independently.

 

Now, would it be possible to add RAM on the cartridge/ROM bus?

 

Yes, but it wouldn't improve performance since the main bus would have to wait while the ROM bus finished. Also, the ROM bus is really slow compared to the main bus, so adding RAM on the main bus is the faster thing.

 

The Jaguar really is a one-bus design! That's part of its low cost design philosophy -- just like the N64 or 2600.

 

The Jaguar designers were aware of this bandwidth issue and that's why they put the scratchpad RAMs on Tom and Jerry. Those really _are_ separate busses (all internal to each chip), and the secret to unlocking the Jaguar's power is getting most memory access to happen to those scratchpads, freeing the main bus. This is no help for Jaguar fans of course, since most developers didn't have the time or talent to do that. But the technically impressive games are doing just that.

 

- KS

[JagChris]

But if they had spent money on marketing and got rid of a few bugs in the system, it would have been a cool little machine

 

What are you talking about? It is a cool little machine despite its flaws. That's why we're here.

[kool kitty89]

Not exactly. The ROM/cartridge bus is attached to the main bus. The only thing that separates them are buffers. So while they are electrically separated, they are logically connected. In plain English, when the ROM bus runs a transaction that same transaction appears on the main bus. So there is no way for the two busses to work independently.

[snip]

it wouldn't improve performance since the main bus would have to wait while the ROM bus finished. Also, the ROM bus is really slow compared to the main bus, so adding RAM on the main bus is the faster thing.

 

Oh, OK, that explains why none of Jaguar tech guys suggested that earlier. As to being slow, that would still have been useful to allow the 68k to work off the main bus (if the ROM bus had actually been separate), maybe not so much for anything else though.

 

The Jaguar really is a one-bus design! That's part of its low cost design philosophy -- just like the N64 or 2600.

 

Yeah, like the 7800 as well. (I think the 5200/8-bit has shared memory too, not sure if ROM and RAM are separate though, and the empehsis on low cost isn't as comparable)

And the N64 had cache to avoid some of the problems, but it had other issues with the bus/RAM system used. I don't have that good of an understanding of it, but it seems like the 9-bit 500 MHz RDRAM was routed to a memory manager and then connected to the various processors at different speeds (both the CPU and RDP connected via 32-bit data buses, but iirc the CPU had a peak of 375 MB/s while the RDP had 250 MB/s due to the lower clock speed). But the major problem with that seems to be with access latency, which I think is related to the lack of dicrect access to memory by the processors, having the manager in between. (or maybe just due to the property of the RAM being used)

 

The Jaguar designers were aware of this bandwidth issue and that's why they put the scratchpad RAMs on Tom and Jerry. Those really _are_ separate busses (all internal to each chip), and the secret to unlocking the Jaguar's power is getting most memory access to happen to those scratchpads, freeing the main bus. This is no help for Jaguar fans of course, since most developers didn't have the time or talent to do that. But the technically impressive games are doing just that.

 

The bugs really bogged things down though, access bugs with Jerry taking extra cycles on the bus and the MMU problems, and asside from bugs the use of the 68k cutting Jery's bus width in 1/2 on top of it's already problematic accessing.

[superjudge3]

For the controller, you could leave buttons one, two, and three where they are, and maybe align the Start and Option bottons vertically and add another below it, giving you six key pad buttons without the huge area it historically had. Does that make sense to you? In the middle of the controller, between the D-pad and fire buttons, would be Start, Option, and another button, then there would be 1, 2, and 3, like there already is and do away with 4 through 9. That's give you six buttons out of the 12, which would be enough. Also, have the rest of the controller like the Pro, six fire buttons and L & R. There would be 14 buttons without the huge key pad.

[superjudge3]

With the five Sega titles available in 1994 I would have picked some decent sports titles. World Series Baseball, NFL Prime Time, NBA Basketball type games were all desperately needed. They could have been upgraded with better sprites with more frames of animation, better colors and re-designed interfaces. Then I would go for Star Wars Arcade from the 32X and maybe another polygon game to enhance the Jaguar line-up. Or maybe all five should have been sports titles. The Jaguar needed real sports titles if it was to ever have a chance.

[carmel_andrews]

Perhaps they should have hired K Skunk to design the system (since he is a local yodel)

 

And probably got him teamed up with Kool Kitty (as he's not too far away)

Edited October 3, 2009 by carmel_andrews

[kool kitty89]

I'm really a complete ameture at this stuff, really just know the basics behind a lot of it really, and a good portion I learned from discussions like this. I did know a bit of computer science and electronics stuff beforehand, but only really got into some of the details in the last year or so. I've alwyas been interested in it to some degree, though along old stuff in general, like an early model portacolor we have or the Atari VCS I discover in a box when I was ~9, plus my dad was/is a software engineer and almost all our computers have been homebrewed systems, a couple of which I assembled myself with some help from him. I did finally decide that I wanted to major in comp sci last semester though, still just starting an into programming course this fall though.

 

I do really like these types of hypothetical discussions though, both interesting to learn more and just discuss with others in general. I was actually doing soming rather similar on a WWII avation forum a couple years ago. (I'm a big history fan in general remember )

 

 

But back on topic, that controller issue superjudge mentioned is really a lesser problem IMO, at least the thing's comfortable and works pretty well, and the number keys can even be an advantage. (the pro controller being better overall definitely, and probably only 4, maybe 5 extra function keys on top of that would be necessary, mainly for some PC games that used a lot of commands, I'm thinking X-Wing here)

[carmel_andrews]

Perhaps if they'd designed the jaguar with expandability (like a 5200 alike design), I think it might have had some legs to try and compete with the psx/saturn etc

 

I say this because, according to what i read in the VG book 'phoenix' the original premise/remit for the jaguar was that you could use a keyboard or floppy drives etc with it (hence the idea of the 5200 alike design)

 

Alternatively, instead of wanking/fannying about and constantly promising a cd device for the jaguar they should have released it right from the beginning as an optional extra

[kool kitty89]

Perhaps if they'd designed the jaguar with expandability (like a 5200 alike design), I think it might have had some legs to try and compete with the psx/saturn etc

 

I say this because, according to what i read in the VG book 'phoenix' the original premise/remit for the jaguar was that you could use a keyboard or floppy drives etc with it (hence the idea of the 5200 alike design)

 

Alternatively, instead of wanking/fannying about and constantly promising a cd device for the jaguar they should have released it right from the beginning as an optional extra

 

Hmm, not sure about that. The Flare I design was like that I think, if not an actual computer in the first place, and the Konix Multisystem was to use 3.5" floppy disks.

 

I don't think making the Jag expandable into a computer would necessarily be a good idea, maybe with some of Atari's earlier systems (like if the 5200, 7800, or if they'd made a striped down ST game system -hypothetical), but the Jaguar doesn't seem like it would fit with this as well. (and remember Sam had already moved away from computers)

 

 

But as for expandability in general, perhaps, though the Jaguar CD was kind of that, and I believe that had been a planned addition. (hence the contour of the case) Though had the Jag been CD based from the start, RAM expansion might have been a bigger issue (with carts there's ROM to work with), though for that the slow cartridge bus might work fine. (using added slow RAM in place of ROM) Provisions to adding RAM to the main bus would be more useful but probably more expensive.

One other thing proposed a while ago in another discussion was to put a J-RISC processor on a cart with a bit of dedicated RAM to work in (like Super FX in the SNES or Virtua Racing), that would be fairly expensive though, but would be a one time buy if it was an add-on. (just the cart for a CD based Jag, otherwise a passthrough cart like a Game Genie or Sonic and Knuckles, in this latter case maybe with a built-in game as well -bypassed when another cart is inserted)

 

Overall though, the Jag probably could have done pretty well with the changes mentioned earlier in discussion, especially with the 68EC020, but various other changes affecting things as well.

Edited October 5, 2009 by kool kitty89

[Crazyace]

I disagree a bit - for a console expandability wasn't actually that important. Putting the CD into the jaguar at the start ( so that there would be no fragmentation of the market ) would have been the best thing in my opinion. ( Having a lot more software would have helped at launch as well )

Maybe later a 'jaguar computer' could have been launched , with a hard drive and floppy as well as the cdrom.

[Gorf]

Jaguar has to ports for expansion as it is.... the Cart port and the DSP pot....trouble was the DSP was a bug fest.

[Gorf]

Plua anyone who knows even a little bit about hardware will tell you the 020 instead of a 68k

would have made a GIANT difference. GIANT.

[kool kitty89]

I disagree a bit - for a console expandability wasn't actually that important. Putting the CD into the jaguar at the start ( so that there would be no fragmentation of the market ) would have been the best thing in my opinion. ( Having a lot more software would have helped at launch as well )

Maybe later a 'jaguar computer' could have been launched , with a hard drive and floppy as well as the cdrom.

 

I do agree on that as well, if any kind of expandability was included at all it should ave been as simple and affordable as possible, not something major like the CD. So perhaps RAM expansion if anything, and other rather standard things like the multitap. (if using CD standard, the slow cartridge bus might be useful for RAM expansion, it's slow, but would basically allow RAM to take the place of cart ROM) Maybe even make some games that could work without the expansion but still be enhanced when it was used. (like quite a few did with the N64)

 

As for a computer, that would have been a possibility except Atari Corp had pretty much dropped the computer line entirely by that point, and what was left was being phased out. If you really wanted to go into hypotheticals about that, you'd probably need to go back further and change other things... (Jack not retiring being a rather big one)

 

However, it is interesting, the Jag chipset modified and incorporated into Atari computer, like a successor to the Falcon, but how useful it would be would still depend on how you did that. (like if the Jag hardware was mainly used as a graphics accelerator on top of more conventional computer hardware) making it compatible with the Falcon would probably have been a mess though, so probably start fresh if anything. (maybe still go with a 680xx CPU or switch to PPC)Maybe they could have gotten back into that market, commodore would be gone and it would just have to fight as a niche competitor alongside Apple. Who knows?

[Curt Vendel]

I personally had wished that Atari had just gone straight to CD and had forgone the cartridge option all together... Genesis had proved that CD's were really the way to go and offered immediate higher end game capabilities.

 

A cartridge port could've been included, but perhaps it would've been used strictly for a high score module, Mpeg expander module and perhaps other options.

 

However, the downside would've meant a system that probably would've had a $499 price tag, coming close to 3DO territory. The price of the 3DO and the various flavors by the several different manufacturers hurt the 3DO on one aspect (several other issues hurt the 3DO, but so did issues like weak developer tools for the Jaguar, hurt the Jag as well.)

 

 

Curt

 

I disagree a bit - for a console expandability wasn't actually that important. Putting the CD into the jaguar at the start ( so that there would be no fragmentation of the market ) would have been the best thing in my opinion. ( Having a lot more software would have helped at launch as well )

Maybe later a 'jaguar computer' could have been launched , with a hard drive and floppy as well as the cdrom.

 

I do agree on that as well, if any kind of expandability was included at all it should ave been as simple and affordable as possible, not something major like the CD. So perhaps RAM expansion if anything, and other rather standard things like the multitap. (if using CD standard, the slow cartridge bus might be useful for RAM expansion, it's slow, but would basically allow RAM to take the place of cart ROM) Maybe even make some games that could work without the expansion but still be enhanced when it was used. (like quite a few did with the N64)

 

As for a computer, that would have been a possibility except Atari Corp had pretty much dropped the computer line entirely by that point, and what was left was being phased out. If you really wanted to go into hypotheticals about that, you'd probably need to go back further and change other things... (Jack not retiring being a rather big one)

 

However, it is interesting, the Jag chipset modified and incorporated into Atari computer, like a successor to the Falcon, but how useful it would be would still depend on how you did that. (like if the Jag hardware was mainly used as a graphics accelerator on top of more conventional computer hardware) making it compatible with the Falcon would probably have been a mess though, so probably start fresh if anything. (maybe still go with a 680xx CPU or switch to PPC)Maybe they could have gotten back into that market, commodore would be gone and it would just have to fight as a niche competitor alongside Apple. Who knows?

[Crazyace]

I personally had wished that Atari had just gone straight to CD and had forgone the cartridge option all together... Genesis had proved that CD's were really the way to go and offered immediate higher end game capabilities.

 

A cartridge port could've been included, but perhaps it would've been used strictly for a high score module, Mpeg expander module and perhaps other options.

 

However, the downside would've meant a system that probably would've had a $499 price tag, coming close to 3DO territory. The price of the 3DO and the various flavors by the several different manufacturers hurt the 3DO on one aspect (several other issues hurt the 3DO, but so did issues like weak developer tools for the Jaguar, hurt the Jag as well.)

 

 

Curt

 

 

 

Do you really think it would have been $499 - I'm not so sure, after all the CD32 was $399 , and the Sega CD had launched at $299 ( as far as I can remember ). I'm sure that Atari would have priced cheaper than just the sum of the jag+jagCD if it had been a dedicated unit at launch.

( I'd have expected a single speed CD as well in 1993 - as that would be way cheaper than a 2x drive )

[Crazyace]

Plua anyone who knows even a little bit about hardware will tell you the 020 instead of a 68k

would have made a GIANT difference. GIANT.

 

I dont think it would have helped the games that much. Fixing the main memory execution and allowing GPU and DSP to both run 32 bit would have been better - as more people would have used C on GPU. ( At that point having a 68000 at all would be unnecessary, as C would be familiar for general game programmers )

 

( I know I'd prefer GPU+DSP , rather than a 68020 )

[kool kitty89]

 

Do you really think it would have been $499 - I'm not so sure, after all the CD32 was $399 , and the Sega CD had launched at $299 ( as far as I can remember ). I'm sure that Atari would have priced cheaper than just the sum of the jag+jagCD if it had been a dedicated unit at launch.

( I'd have expected a single speed CD as well in 1993 - as that would be way cheaper than a 2x drive )

 

I think using a custom, Atari designed CD drive+controller vs off the shelf would also be a determining cost factor, an in-house design should be cheaper to manufacture than buying one "off the shelf" iirc that's what they did with the Jag CD. (that being 2x speed of course) Doing that has other problems though, like design costs/delays and bugs, which were issues with the Jag CD I beleive. So in this timeframe and cost window, a stock/off-the-shelf 1x speed drive would seem the most practical option.

One side effect might be less work for Jerry, as there's often be CD-DA tracks instead of hardware generated music. (just sfx to worry about, plus any other tasks you give to the DSP)

 

There's also the issue of the sale price of th esystem itsself, and if Atari would be willing to sell it at cost or take a bit of a loss and profit from games alone.

 

I dont think it would have helped the games that much. Fixing the main memory execution and allowing GPU and DSP to both run 32 bit would have been better - as more people would have used C on GPU. ( At that point having a 68000 at all would be unnecessary, as C would be familiar for general game programmers )

 

( I know I'd prefer GPU+DSP , rather than a 68020 )

 

Well, obviously, I'm sure Gorf would agree with removing the 68k from the design, having Tom and Jerry alone along with a good C compiler for the GPU.

 

But that's a major design change to remove the CPU, not to mention that working out the bugs and producing the compiler would be esential. (the 68k may be a hog, but at least it gives something to fall back on, and fine for a lot of 2D stuff)

 

That kind of change would be something needed to be done a lot sooner than 1993.

 

I think the only options by 1993 were selecting a different CPU (ie 68EC020, not sure if any others like ARM60 would have been options), adding the CD drive, and fixing hardware bugs and maybe some other modifications. (other than bugs there's double buffering the blitter)

Edited October 7, 2009 by kool kitty89

[kool kitty89]

Here's a previous post elaborating more on Flare's intended fundimental design for the Jaguar:

 

...had they gone with the originally planned layout (no CPU, just Tom and Jerry and a unified cache iirc)...

I don't want to be too nit-picky, but I'm very certain this was not the original plan and I suspect it was never a serious plan at all.

 

I still agree with you, BTW. I think it's a shame Flare didn't see the potential of promoting Tom into a real CPU.

 

But we have the 'source code' to Tom (the netlists), and it is clear that Tom was designed from the beginning to work with a host processor.

 

In fact, the host processor (the 68K in the Jag) is referred to as 'the CPU', and Tom's GPU is referred to as a co-processor.

 

The bus architecture of Tom depends on a host processor. It can be a Motorola chip (68K, 68020), or an Intel chip (286, 386, or i960), or a MIPS R3000. They went to some lengths to support all these options, and it paid off since CoJag later switched to MIPS.

 

Tom is actually incapable of booting without a host processor. That ability was not implemented, which would have been the first thing to do there was any plan to run Tom without a CPU.

 

There is also no indication a cache was ever considered, which is a shame. It's quite a bit of work but it would have paid huge dividends. Unfortunately, the guys at Flare believed the Jaguar would be programmed entirely in assembly. That was a reasonable assumption in 1990 when they got started, but by 1994 the software industry had already moved on to C.

 

- KS

[Gorf]

Plua anyone who knows even a little bit about hardware will tell you the 020 instead of a 68k

would have made a GIANT difference. GIANT.

 

I dont think it would have helped the games that much. Fixing the main memory execution and allowing GPU and DSP to both run 32 bit would have been better - as more people would have used C on GPU. ( At that point having a 68000 at all would be unnecessary, as C would be familiar for general game programmers )

 

( I know I'd prefer GPU+DSP , rather than a 68020 )

 

The DSP is not designed that way. If Tom had been a full fledged CPU then you could use the DSP at 32 bits.

As the design stands its does not work that way. The 020 would have added an extra processing unit that did

not hit the bus and allowed the DSP a true 32 bit to that main bus. the 020 would have hit the bus every 256

bytes worth and that would have made a grave improvement. All three processors would have been able to run in

parallel OFF THE BUS while the Blitter and OPL had the bus to themselves. There is no logical way to justify

it otherwise.

 

As far as the games: What you think does not align with the facts of the matter. If the 020 was there, the game

logic as well as the AI would have been better served by it than trying to split those processes across the GPU

and DSP that qould have better concertrated on GFX and SFX. Now if you want to argue folks just porting crap over

than yes, but with a much better design you would have seen more folks taking advantage of the 020. A local TRUE

cahce, a much better efficiency in external access as well as internally.

 

Thereis just no way to argue that away. Fact is if you are going to remove the host, then you need the TOM at very

least to be a true bootable processor and have both chips on sepreate buses. Otherwise is would have been no better

in the way of bottlenecks, haveing those two fight over bus time with the OPL and the blitter.