This project is dedicated to the memory of William Morris (aka Frags), who was the main contributor to the bounty but was unable to see the final result.

Monday, July 28, 2014

PPCJITBETA04b (Hundreds and XThousands)

There is something new each day, I haven't done this before: a Fast Follow to the previous beta release.

Let me sprinkle the life of the suffering Amiga X1000 owners, here is a


After I had done some investigation, it turned out that MickJT was right for a long time. We don't need unique changes for Amiga X1000 (for the P.A. Semi PA6T processor), because it is similar to the already supported G5 (PowerPC 970) processor.

So, I have decided that we must not delay the beta for Amiga X1000 any longer. This new build is exactly the same Beta #4 release feature-wise; which was done for the other platforms already. Except that it is compiled for AmigaOS4 with the same minor changes which increase the performance on G5 significantly.

Since the code base is the same I kept the same beta version tag with a postfix. For the first and the last time... Úttörő becsület szavamra! :)

Caveat emptor

This build is not fully optimized for PA6T processor, since there is no support for that processor target in the AmigaOS4 SDK yet. It is still running much better than the previous generic builds.
Hopefully the PA6T support will be resolved sooner or later in the SDK and then I will add any necessary changes to the E-UAE build too.

In the meanwhile the binary for this build target will be added to the upcoming releases.

Credz

Actually, the credit goes to the following good people:
  • Tobias Netzel - who implemented the G5 support and helped MickJT with advices;
  • MickJT - who was experimenting with the build for a long time already and pushed me to do this release;
  • Sven Ottemann & Sebastian Bauer - who helped me with the documentation for PA6T;
  • Tommysammy - who was kindly doing the testing.
Thanks guys!

Feedback

This was a blindfolded build again: I have no access to an Amiga X1000, so I couldn't test the build by myself.

I would like to invite all Amiga X1000 owner to give me some feedback regarding the performance or any issues what turns up with this special build.

You can find my email address at the end of the README file.

Sunday, July 20, 2014

PPCJITBETA04 (FourFOurfOurfoUR!)


Four is a nice, round number. Power of 2, not too many, not too less. You know, four is referring to many good things, like: the Fantastic Four, 4th of July, AmigaOS4, The Magnificent Four... Err.. Maybe not that, scratch that last one.

Therefore, without further ado, here is Beta #4:


I had an irresistible urge to RickRoll you guys with the link, but that video has been blocked recently on YouTube in many countries, so maybe next time.

Tickets please

I had my sweet time with a very weird bug related to Quake, which is not resolved yet and probably related to the failure to implement the soft cache flushing. These two tickets are pushed back to Beta #5 for now. Previously I had no intention to do one more beta release before the first Release Candidate, but as it seems I need one more round of testing period.

I had to shuffle around some tickets while I was rethinking the upcoming Release Candidate. You know, changing priorities, agile development, whatnot. What is listed in the milestones now is the plan, although it is not set in (mile)stone... Heheh... (Huh, that was a really lame pun. You should do better than that!)

The idea is: I am going to fix every issue which is known and give you guys some time to test before the final release (candidate).

SAM440

After a few rounds of pushing and pulling some SAM440/Flex related codes hopefully we have sorted out all the various problems related to those machines. If you were still experiencing issues then please let me know.

G5 again

Thanks to Tobias Netzel, the flag extraction on G5 is fixed, this will resolve a number of problems with various programs.

The compiling for G5 is still not resolved for MorphOS, no G5-optimized binary again, sorry guys. If you could tell me how can I (easily) compile the files for G5 on my iBook then I give it a go, I promise.

What's next

As you can see: Beta #5 is coming, there are already a handful things lined up for it.

Please do test Beta #4 and please do report bugs you have found. It is important to sort out as many problems as I could. It is equally important to help me reproducing the bug. So, please read the instructions. Thanks a bunch!

Best Boys

I would like to give a big thanks to Luigi Burdo. He helped me with a great deal of things, reported lots of bugs and he is so enthusiastic that he inspired me to keep walking on the road. Thanks a lot, Luigi! Keep up the good spirit!

And, of course, my dearest sidekicks, who just couldn't stay away from the project:
MickJT and Tobias Netzel. Cheers!

Also would like to thank the helps, bug reports and overall support to:
Samir Hawamdeh, Kicko, Chris Handley, Allan Ullmann.