Category Archives: AmigaOS - Page 3

Delock PCI Express Sound Card supported

blog_miscAndreas Goiczyk has reported that the Delock PCI Express Sound Card 7.1 works well with the newly updated Envy24HT audio driver.

Thank you Andreas for letting us know!

If you discover a sound card not listed is supported by an AmigaOS audio driver, please use the contact form on the AmigaOS web site to let us know.

More Noise from ACube

blog_softwareThe VIA Envy24HT audio driver has been updated and now supports the VT1618 Codec. That means you can now use inexpensive PCIe audio cards such as the Syba SD-PEX63034 in your AmigaOne 500 and AmigaOne X1000 systems.

Here is a list of audio cards that are known to work with the Envy24HT audio driver:

  • Terratec Aureon 5.1 Sky
  • Terratec Aureon 7.1 Space
  • Terratec Phase22
  • Terratec Phase28
  • M-Audio Revolution 5.1
  • M-Audio Revolution 7.1
  • ESI Juli@
  • ESI Juli@ XTe
  • Speed Dragon EAU01A-1
  • Syba SD-PEX63034

If you happen to have audio card not on this list which also works with this driver please notify us via the AmigaOS contact form.

Special thanks to ACube Systems for helping to improve the Envy24HT driver.

The updated driver is being delivered to registered AmigaOS users using AmiUpdate. If you have any support issues with the driver please use the AmigaOS support forum for assistance.

Confessions of an Audioholic

blog_devThe HDAudio driver has recently been released to AmigaOne X1000 owners. This driver supports the built in “high definition audio” chip used in this computer.

I am the last coder to work on this driver, but like a relay race, much of the hard work was done before it was passed to me. Davy Wentzler, Alex Carmona, and René W. Olsen did a lot of the heavy lifting before I started on the project.

As far as I know, this is the first AmigaOS 4 driver to support the High Definition Audio standard. this is a new specification from Intel, destined to replace the older AC97 standard. This new standard includes lots of improved specifications in audio fidelity.

We can now play sound out the back and the front headphone at the same time. This has led to having “All” as an option when choosing an output.

It is possible to signal the software when a plug is inserted or removed. And it’s even possible to do a quick “impedance check” when a device is plugged in, and then make a good guess about whether it is a microphone (low level), stereo feed (line level) or the output from an MP3 player (higher level).

The HDAudio standard offers us a lot of new features that we will be exploring for a while to come.

The process of “bringing up” this driver included a few good challenges.

AHI reads a “modefile” that describes the basic features of the sound driver. It opens the driver and asks it to go looking for a matching sound card. If one is found, the driver / card is added to the system.. but when sound gets played it gets more interesting..

AHI specifies to the driver how many channels, how many bits per sample, and how rapidly the samples are about to start coming in. The driver needs to set up the sound chip for this, but it really NEVER talks directly to that chip! Instead it sets up the SB600 (Southbridge) with details about buffer sizes and all the other info that AHI just provided. It also builds up a “command buffer” for talking to the sound chip, and a “response buffer” that lets the chip answer. So we now have the southbridge set up to carry sound for us, and to also handle all our control communications with the sound chip as well.. Easy, right?

Imagine how overwhelmed I was on the first day of reading all this code!

704px-amiga_1000dp

Amiga 1000

Fortunately the ground work was well done already. I started by just testing the ability to send commands and get responses. Looking over the documents, I see a command to tell the chip to “beep” all by itself, without any audio data. That was the first success! Not too fancy, but it’s proof that we can talk to the sound chip. Alex Carmona picked up that code, and used it to make a “boot sound” for X1000 owners that sounds a LOT like the original Amiga 1000.

Next up, I separated the AHI part from the SB600/sound chip part. My thinking was that it’s easier to divide and conquer. Then I worked hard on opening the audio path to the sound chip. Before too long, I had noise, but it never sounded quite right. It turned out that the buffers feeding in to the sound chip had to be handled a bit differently. I’ll try to explain:

The normal way to feed a constant stream is called double-buffering. The idea is simple. While the audio chips are playing buffer A, I’ll be filling the next sounds into buffer B. Once the player moves into buffer B, I’ll fill more into A, and keep on going. Simple, right?

Of course it is never as easy as it sounds.. A bit of digging and I learned that instead of two separate buffers, the SB600 really wants one continuous block of memory! Simple enough, I’ll just get one big block, and draw an imaginary line halfway through it.

Now to keep things simple, I start by asking AHI what size it’s buffers will be, then I make the SB600 buffers the same size. Really one big buffer the size of BOTH AHI buffers combined.. but the sound wasn’t right yet. Keep digging.. AHI gets the buffer size it wants, the SB600 gets one big buffer, which looks to AHI like two buffers side-by-side.

Now it turns out that the sound chip has buffer size limits too, and they are a LOT smaller than any of the previous buffer sizes!

The final result is one big memory block for the SB600, split into two buffers, each sized to match what AHI wants, with each of those buffers split into as many smaller “segments” at or below the max size that can be handled by the sound chip. Wow. One block of memory divided up three different ways, depending on which way you look at it.

kiss-band

Not the KISS principle

I’ll mention here that I was looking for ANY way to make it simpler.. and all of this “memory geometry” would change with every change in sound settings! So the K.I.S.S. principle took over. I decided to configure everything AFTER AHI to ALWAYS run in 8 channel 32 bit quality. Running that way, I can easily “upsample” ANY sound format coming out of AHI to one stable format. If AHI sends me mono, I copy it to left and right, and zero the other six. If it sends stereo, the last six stay muted too. If it sends me 16 bit audio, I just shift it to the high word of the 32 bit samples.

Once all that buffer stuff was wrestled into submission, we finally got good sound coming out!! Success!!!

The modefile that came with the driver had only ONE mode. Not really a good way to show off such powerful audio chips. But the previous modefiles were created with tools that we don’t have, and I could find NO documentation.. So I got to spend a day or two studying the modefiles. Once I got a good idea of how they worked, I wrote a program called “makemode” that converts a text file to a working modefile. If you need a tool, write it! This expanded our driver capability to as many modes as I choose to support (currently 3, including 7.1 audio). And as a side benefit, new modefiles can be created as quickly as they can be described. The sample rates have been increased as well. This chipset and driver support up to 192kHz, that’s about four times higher than the old “normal”.

The Beta test team has been a HUGE help in finding the little bugs that I missed. These last few versions have been pretty well behaved. If you are reading this then a public release must be “real soon”. We still have more to do, S/PDIF optical output and sound recording are still on the “to do” list. But the sound is playing, and that’s not a bad place to be today.

It has been a big team effort. Davy, Alex, René, the Beta team, and Steven for taking ENDLESS emails when I ran out of hair to pull out.

If you really read all the way to here, you get a special bonus tip: When you open SYS:Prefs/AHI to adjust the driver settings, you might try dragging the prefs window a LOT wider. The rear-panel connections for line out, line in, and microphone in are all described with the color of the correct connector listed. With six color coded jacks on the back, this might be helpful to get it into the right hole in one try. 🙂

Now that X1000 owners have an open PCI slot, what will be the most popular new “toy” to play with ?

Classic Cinemaware Returns to AmigaOS

As stated in the official press release, Cinemaware’s original 68K games have been re-released for AmigaOS.

Wings

Screenshot of Wings™ on the AmigaOne X1000

Using original Amiga ROMs and Workbench files along with the UAE emulator, current AmigaOS 4.1 owners can enjoy complete Amiga 68K emulation on their PowerPC based systems. The RunInUAE package by Chris Handley makes it possible to double click on each game to automatically launch UAE. There is even a JIT compiler in the works which should dramatically speed up emulation when it is completed.

dotc-a500

Defender of The Crown® on the AmigaOne 500

Each Cinemaware game utilizes WHDLoad to enable it to run with a simple double click of the mouse. WHDLoad may be registered to remove the nag requester and help support even more original Amiga game conversions.

All that said, the emulation is not 100% perfect. This is where you come in. UAE is very configurable and specific config files are provided for some games. If you know of any tricks to help improve those UAE config files please share them. There is also the decision to use WHDLoad versions of the games. Some people prefer ADF versions instead. Please consider helping us improve the games and possibly provide ADF versions as well. The best way to get in contact with us is via the contact form or the support forum.

rr-a500

Rocket Ranger™ on the AmigaOne 500

AmigaOS 4.1 Update 6 users should note they must have the Emulation and RunInUAE updates applied to their systems for smooth operation. If you have not yet updated, this is a great reason to do so.

I would like to thank the AmigaOS beta testing team for helping to find and fix the many issues that cropped up during beta testing. A special thanks must also go out to Lars Fuhrken-Batista of Cinemaware and Ben Hermans of Hyperion Entertainment for making this project possible.

Steven Solie
AmigaOS Development Team Lead

Are you AmiUpdated?

blog_updateSince the release of AmigaOS 4.1 Update 6 there have been over 25 updates released via the integrated AmiUpdate system.

AmigaOS customers can expect many more updates as we catch up on component releases. There may even be some new features slipped in now and then to keep things interesting.

Simply select “Update software…” from the Workbench menu and apply the updates when it is convenient to do so.

If you have any troubles with the new software update system remember that support is available at support.amigaos.net and we’ll do our best to help.

AmigaOS 4.1 Update 6 Released

AmigaOS 4.1 Update 6 has now been released.

More details and a place for registered users to download the update can be found at Hyperion’s main web site.

The following AmigaOS platforms are supported:

Update 6 is a rather unique update in that it includes no bug fixes. What Update 6 does include is a new and more efficient way of delivering bug fixes. A new “Update software…” menu item on Workbench now launches AmiUpdate which will now handle all future AmigaOS software updates.

Since AmiUpdate does not do much without a back end database, a new AmigaOS update database has been created. This database tracks dependencies between components so that users can be assured they are applying the correct updates to their specific systems. The rollback facility may be used to undo updates in the event of problems.

Users are strongly encouraged to install Update 6 as it will be the only way to receive future AmigaOS updates between major releases.

Special thanks to Simon Archer for his amazing AmiUpdate product and the AmigaOS testing team for their invaluable effort on this release.

Yet Another AmigaOS Core Developer

Please welcome Fredrik Wikström as our newest AmigaOS core developer.

Fredrik has been busy on the Amiga scene for many years and has produced a lot of very useful software. More information about Fredrik’s work can be found on his web site.

Given Fredrik’s exemplary track record, I think we can all expect some very good things from him.

If you have used Fredrik’s software in the past, please also consider a donation to show your appreciation. If bounties are more your thing, he has been working on a few at Open Amiga.

Steven Solie
AmigaOS Development Team Lead

New AmigaOS Core Developers

Please welcome our newest AmigaOS core developers: Alex Carmona and Lyle Hazelwood.

Alex has been a dedicated beta tester and programmer for many years. He has decided to take the leap to OS development. Now he can fix all those bugs he has been filing…

Lyle took the plunge and purchased an AmigaOne X-1000 system. He has been a very active developer ever since. More information about Lyle can be found at his web site.

Their names have already been added to the credits page on the AmigaOS web site. You can also find both of them actively helping people on the AmigaOS support forum.

Memory Page Locking Confusion

With the introduction of the AmigaOS Documentation Wiki and the uploading of the latest Amiga ROM Kernel Reference Manuals we have been given the opportunity to bring the Amiga Operating System’s documentation up to date. Although not complete, several dedicated volunteers have been slowly improving on that documentation.

One of the most confusing changes to the API has proven to be Exec’s new LockMem() and UnlockMem() function calls. These functions are use to lock and unlock memory pages. Normally, a programmer should not have to worry about memory pages nor worry about what the swapper is doing. Such details should be left to the operating system. However, in special circumstances (e.g. device drivers) it may be necessary to use LockMem() and UnlockMem().

What really confused programmers is the fact that we advocated the use of UnlockMem() even when the programmer did not explicitly call LockMem(). The issue was primarily centered on MEMF_SHARED memory which, by default, is automatically locked. That in itself isn’t really a problem. Add in the fact MEMF_ANY memory is translated to MEMF_SHARED memory and you have the potential for a lot of locked memory pages and thus ineffective use of system memory.

AmigaOS programmers are always trying to be helpful. Pretty much everyone jumped on the bandwagon and declared this API change as a travesty of enormous consequence. Why didn’t the FreeVec() function unlock the memory for them? Why must UnlockMem() be provided the size of the memory to unlock? They were very close to rioting.

After much discussion and fact gathering, the AmigaOS development team have officially changed our minds. The new advice is to never call UnlockMem() unless you explicitly called LockMem() in the first place. The wiki has already been updated to reflect this.

AmigaOS programmers are also rather attentive. “What happens to those implicitly locked memory pages when I don’t call UnlockMem()?” The truth of the matter is that some pages will actually be leaked. That is, some of those memory pages will not be moveable and thus not swappable. This does not mean the memory is not available to the system. This means the underlying memory pages cannot be swapped.

Now before resuming the riots, please take a moment and think about this. The system has been running fine for years now without programmers calling UnlockMem() on implicitly locked memory. We only recently explained this on the new documentation wiki. Something deeper is indeed going on here.

Without going into all the internal details, the system will automatically unlock memory that has been freed even if you forgot to call UnlockMem() on that memory. This is not true for every memory allocation but it is true for the majority of the memory in the system. This is why everything has been running fine for years now.

So what is going to happen to those lonely locked pages that can’t be automatically unlocked? The plan is to modify Exec’s discrimination between MEMF_SHARED and MEMF_PRIVATE memory. They will be moving to their own page caches. This effectively eliminates the problem entirely without a single line of code changed in your applications.

We are very sorry for the confusion. In the end, we figured it all out and I think this new advice (only call UnlockMem() if you called LockMem()) is very easy for programmers to follow.

Steven Solie
AmigaOS Development Team Lead

AmigaOS 4.1 Update 5 Released

AmigaOS 4.1 Update 5 has now been released.http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/05/Boingball.png

More details and a place for registered users to download the update can be found at Hyperion’s main web site.

The following AmigaOS platforms are supported:

Besides the usual bug fixes, some highlights include:

  • Optimized DMA copy routines for 440ep and 460ex based platforms.
  • SM502 audio driver and Mixer for AmigaOne 500 systems (460ex).
  • Updated Radeon, R200 and Permedia2 Warp3D drivers. Per-application configuration is now possible to help work around bugs in old software. User documentation is provided on the wiki.
  • Catweasel driver for floppy disk, SID chip and joystick support.
  • MIDI support now included via the camd.library.
  • Professional photograph backgrounds provided by mediacube.
  • Improved Amiga 68K emulation. A full Workbench 3.1 installation is now included. Authentic Amiga ROMs and Workbench files are provided in the new Emulation drawer.

AmigaOS support is available via Hyperion’s support forum.

A special thanks to the AmigaOS development and testing teams for their hard work on this release!