PiStorm - can PPC for classic Amiga make a come back?

@ancalimon

Because pistorm uses a GPIO interface to communicate with an Fpga which translated this into the 68k bus.
For the rpi4, these GPIO pins are directly connected to the broadcom SoC. For the Rpi5, these GPIO pins are now connected to a separate companion chip which is connected with PCIe to the broadcom SoC. This PCIe interface creates too much latency which will make the 68k bus communication unbearable slow.
Otoh, OS4 shouldn't care for anything original a1200 and can use the a1200 as dongle for keeping up appearances

Yeah., I've already posted that PiStorm is currently stuck at Pi4 Max but I guess my posts are not visible or new readers (not you geennaam!) just don't want to believe it.

Reading through the thread again, I don't desperately see the point of PiStorm PPC to run OS4.1 on classic hardware. The vast majority of software (games at least) that we use OS4 hardware for would end up a terrible experience at best, if not a slideshow.

OK, you'd get a nice workbench experience and some utility stuff would probably run just fine. But I think that's about it. And it's all hypothetical, someone would need to do it first. And is it that much nicer than a well put together OS3 workbench running at 1440p? Probably not. Mine's pretty sweet for example.

The concept is sound. And we wait to see if CM5 helps with the GPIO situation (I think I read that it won't, but don't quote me on that), but I think the concept is better applied to other projects like other 68K targets or other architectures.

Were there even any other 16bit architectures? It all seems to be about 68000 all the time.

@MartinW

The problem here is that the rpi is perfectly fine for its intended purpose. A swiss army knife for hobbyists.

The hardware decoders allow for a cheap mediaplayer with libreelec/Kodi
The quad core Cortex A72 allow for
- audio/media/file server
- light dektop usage
- Generic controller tasks like home automation
- Weather stations with nice gui

And of course it makes something that was created for a 14 MHz 68020 fly. Even if you just get a 68020 at ~250MHz clock speed

Problem for OS4 is that it's baseline is not a 14MHz 68020. But a 800MHz G3.

And then a ~250Mhz PPC is crawling in comparison.

I would be very much surprised if the CM5 is that different from a RPI5. It will definitly be the broadcom SoC + companion chip solution