Flare Technology and the Canceled Konix Multi System

[swapd0]

What I really would like to get to, eventually, is the Sequencer stage of the Blitter. I can't believe they had this feature in '88, but removed it for jag ! You could, in 1988, create a list of blitter commands and then just let Blitter crunch through it (without the interrupts on jag). Granted, 8088 becomes halted, but the DSP continues to run in parallel. In 1988 ! Stunning !

 

That's what I've said a lot of times about how the blitter should work, I can't understand why it's not implemented into the blitter from the start.

 

The Jaguar it's supposed to be the v3.0 of the konix console (Panther = v2.0), so why did you remove the nice features from previous versions?

[mqark]

That Konix thing is indeed very catchy

 

Took me one evening to debug through all the interrupts that Jeff was using (instead of timer code) for basically everything, but eventually I managed to get a blank screen without any camel nonsense putzing around

Took another evening to figure out which asm instructions actually work and which don't (e.g. forget mul/div etc.), as the assembler was indeed built to support only instructions and addressing modes that Jeff was using

 

This is the fourth assembler I've been using in last 2 weeks (6502:Atari 800, 68000:Jaguar, GPU Risc:Jaguar, 8088:Konix), but I still believe I'm sane

 

Tonight, I took the liberty of adapting the dataset from Atari 800 and few stages of the 3D pipeline. This is a reference rasterizer (drawing pixels just on CPU) that will assist in troubleshooting Blitter rasterizer.

 

Konix00.gif

 

What I really would like to get to, eventually, is the Sequencer stage of the Blitter. I can't believe they had this feature in '88, but removed it for jag ! You could, in 1988, create a list of blitter commands and then just let Blitter crunch through it (without the interrupts on jag). Granted, 8088 becomes halted, but the DSP continues to run in parallel. In 1988 ! Stunning !

 

Another thing: The Blitter has available bandwidth of 9.2 MB/s. In 16-color mode that means that there's 160 KB worth of bandwidth per frame (at 60 fps). But clearing that screen takes just 25 KB of those 160. So, one still has about 85% of frame time available. I sure wish I had that on jag.

 

Clearly, even without DSP, this thing could have 20-30 fps flatshaded games, as at 6 MHz, the 8088 can easily prepare the command list for Blitter in 1-1.5 frame, and Blitter would take less than half frame to render it.

With DSP's 12-25 MIPS, and parallel execution, 60 fps (for simple/moderate 3d scenes), easy.

 

It's extremely unfortunate, from technological perspective, this beast didn't get a chance to catch on...

 

I love coding on jaguar, but this is just another level, given the 1988...

 

 

To me, this is equivalent of NASA's Moon Landing. Some day I would love to meet Flare guys... ***RESPECT.GIF***

 

That's the first bit of code to be written for that machine I believe by anyone in the world for what, 30 years?

Amazing!

 

I'm looking forwards to seeing what you can get the little machine to do!

[VladR]

- I spent a lot of effort during weekend on debugging functionality through value printing, as based on my experience with jaguar, that's where most of time is lost. I have all the combinations of array and number printing I could possibly need. Thank god this is not jaguar, so there's no 4 KB code limit !

- I finished some remaining research (on middle lane stripes) and experimenting with my EclaireXL road rendering prototype (the 8-bit 6502 Atari @ ~20 MHz) and ported it to the Konix

- In short, this new engine allows a best combination of both scanline&polygonal worlds

- the road is rendered with per-pixel scanline precision (so, curves can be nice and smooth) as if it was a classical scanline system (e.g. like in Pole Position)

- but this is merely optical illusion, as each scanline exists in a full 3D worldspace and is merely remapped from the 3D to screen

 

- Advantage 1: all objects (cars/roadside objects/bridges/whatever) can be full 3D and flatshaded and thus naturally blend with the road

- Advantage 2: camera - the camera view is configurable - I have several presets (e.g. 3rd person from distance, inside the car, at the spoiler, etc.) and each preset behaves accordingly - e.g. when you are the spoiler level, the sense of speed is much greater than when the camera is further behind the car (even at same car speed), just like it's in real world or every other modern racing game. Accordingly, the width of the road in the view adjusts, as per the camera view

 

- The middle lane markings are actually created from separate 3D quads (so, quite an overkill), as I'd like to generalize this into a skidmark solution (e.g. from braking hard or turning at the edge of traction). I believe I experienced it first in NeedForSpeed, but other platforms might have had the skidmark solution earlier (I'm guessing Virtua Racing was one of the first ones to have that feature). It's too early to tell the full performance impact, but doesn't hurt to have an alternative, or an option one can turn on/off.

 

- Visually, in an effort to differentiate from a classic "racing" look, I want to do a night driving environment at 16 shades of greyscale.

- This will translate well also to the EclaireXL, as one of its Antic 4x gfx modes is 320x192x16.

- On Konix, this will have the added performance benefit as the Blitter can spin at full 9.2 MB/s speed (157 KB at 60 fps).

- I would like to do a light cone from the headlights, seeing as we have 16 shades of grey

- to allow easy debugging, I'm currently running it in 256-color mode

 

 

I have benchmarked the road rendering (not the stripes, yet):

- At 60 fps and 6 MHz 8088, CPU has exactly 100,000 cycles available each frame

- The main road loop takes 35,410 cycles

- Blitter uses 16% of its available bandwidth per frame, and since it halts CPU during drawing, this takes away another 16,000 cycles

- 16,000 + 35,410 = 51,410c or ~51% of frame, so we still have some buffer and keep 60 fps (though of course, 20-30 would be a more likely target with everything else the engine needs, unless I get the code to run on DSP )

 

[+madman]

I'm looking forwards to seeing what you can get the little machine to do!

The only question is: Will it be as good as all his Jaguar releases?

[mqark]

I'm never afraid to dig up old forum threads - so here goes.

Well - I'm not dead, I must say that I got to a point where I thought I really couldn't find any more out about the Multisystem, but there's always little drips of info coming in and this opens up various leads that I usually follow up. So the website does get occasionally updated.

Lee had been very busy refining the emulator and working on a MiSTer core for the Konix (not yet ready for release) which allowed him to find bugs or discoveries regarding the chipset that allowed some previous code that wouldn't run to either work properly or to get further.

I'd love to see someone explore what the Konix could have done - I got excited when VladR showed an interest, but he's been the only one so far. I'm a little torn though, because I think what I'd love to see is a genuine reflection of the everyday performance and ability of the machine that would have come from the constraints of trying to get a game launched and to market. I've seen far too many demos and games produced these days for retro machines that push the technology to astounding almost incomprehensible levels (I'm thinking things like the C64 48Khz HiFi Digi Player).

I really think we're pretty much at the limit now of what Konix source code is available, but you still never know, developers often stumble upon boxes of floppy disks and suddenly discover a treasure trove.

Finally, there's still a few guys I can talk to with different experience, so I keep going - but it's very much not the focus of my spare time now.

I'll pop in here every now and then and see what's going on. Might not wait 5 years next time...

[kool kitty89]

On 4/19/2023 at 12:57 AM, mqark said:

Well - I'm not dead, I must say that I got to a point where I thought I really couldn't find any more out about the Multisystem, but there's always little drips of info coming in and this opens up various leads that I usually follow up. So the website does get occasionally updated.

Leonard Tramiel seems to be more talkative the past year on his time at Atari, including the period with the Panther and Jaguar development with the Flare guys. I haven't seen anyone ask him about the Slipstream or Multisystem, and it'd certainly be interesting to know if Atari ever considered licensing that chipset for their own use (as an alternative to the Panther) or localizing the entire Multisystem. Or for that matter, given the funding and manufacturing logistic issues Holloway had with actually bringing the Konix Multi System to market, if he ever approached Atari (or at least Atari UK) to partner with the UK release as well. On top of that, the few developers who had access to working Panther development systems also seem to be ones who'd been developing for the KMS.

It seems pretty clear that Konix had a non-exclusive license for the slipstream chipset, so Atari could've used it for its own purposes without legal trouble there, unless maybe Atari insisted on having exclusive rights to the hardware. With the DRAM cartridge limited to use as an add-on, the KMS itself already fit the same bill as the Panther in the "no DRAM" design goal that prompted the Panther's development. It used PSRAM, but that would still be outside of the DRAM commodity market with severe shortages in 1988/89/90 (though this improved significantly by the end of 1990), plus the US import price floor restrictions on Japanese DRAM was specif to actual DRAM chips, not PSRAM. (that issue was also avoided by Atari's overseas assembly plants, but would've restricted the ability for them to expand assembly to the US, which they were interested in doing in the late 80s, plus domestic production makes smaller scale test market sorts of volumes or iterations of pre-production prototypes a lot easier and you'd want to use the same mix of component manufacturers for that as for final production to ensure reliability)

The only people I've seen post interviews or even just short correspondence with Leonard seem to be mostly focused on the Atari stuff or maybe Atari and Commodore without much knowledge of the overlapping work with Flare and Konix in 1987-1990, or if they're at least aware of the Multisystem, they haven't read deep enough into your website to realize the potential for other companies to make sue of the Slipstream ASIC.

[mqark]

Interesting - thanks.  Have you got any leads on getting in touch with Leonard - it's always worth a shot, but TBH I think Richard Miller was much more involved.

[kool kitty89]

On 7/21/2023 at 5:49 AM, mqark said:

Interesting - thanks.  Have you got any leads on getting in touch with Leonard - it's always worth a shot, but TBH I think Richard Miller was much more involved.

Other than trying to send him a message on facebook, I wouldn't know where to start. Recent accounts from people who have spoken with him (or met him at one of the recent conventions) point to him being more interested in talking about this stuff than he was some years ago. (though he's much more interested in Astronomy, popular science, and education related stuff from what I've seen, more is actual passions) The fact he's been open to going to conventions and has apparently enjoyed himself is helpful.

Also one thing that's been nagging me after I noticed it again on your site, regarding the Slipstream 4 Version 3.3 documentation.
Described as:
   "Slipstream Rev4 Reference Guide v3.3

    5^th October 1993

   The 3^rd document from John is thankfully in perfect condition and required no fixing. It is from a much later SS4 revision of the Slipstream chipset and now mentions CDROM, and the 386sx processor

   This is the last possible step in the Slipstream product evolution before Flare developed the Atari Jaguar Flare Two based hardware. It will be interesting if any Jaguar enthusiasts can spot any early signs of Jaguar technology in there..."

The data of that revision of the document is after Atari had locked down the Jaguar for mass production and about a month before the limited US release in November of 1993. But that's a late revision (Version 3.3 after all) of the SS4 chipset and there's no other, earlier documents for that version. Were there any indications from John Mathieson or Martin Brennan where that stage of the Slipstream fit into the timeline? It's got some features the Jaguar Blitter got (gouraud shading and bitmap rotate mode for scaling/rotating sprites and texture mapping polygon spans) but is otherwise a much more straightforward refinement and enhancement of the Slipstream ASIC (much, much simpler and probably a good deal cheaper than the Jaguar's TOM and JERRY). The simplicity of it points to it possibly dating to before the Jaguar seriously got going, or before the first prototype chips taped out in late 1991, or early Jaguar development and further development of the Slipstream could've been in parallel all "on paper" all around the 1990/91 period. There's also nothing on the Slipstream 3, or what that stage of development looked like. (The Slipstream 2 being the 1989 8086 based Production  version of the Slipstream for the KMS). Otherwise there's the possibility that they did most/all of the added design work on the Slipstream 4 after the Jaguar was set for mass production in late 1992 (or at least that's when the final revisions of TOM and JERRY went out for production, a good 10 months before any saw store shelves).

The SS2 would've been aging quickly by the time the Panther was formally cancelled in Spring of '91 and the Jaguar obviously a good way off (still entirely on paper design), Atari was hurting for new projects and the SS4's specs (and projected clock speed) are much more feasible for a low-cost early 3D based console with decent-ish 2D capabilities. (by console and arcade standards) Plus the Jaguar's texture mapping function has no effort put into it to use the full bus with or speed, so would've been just as fast on the SS4 blitter. (ie texture heavy games bottleneck the Jaguar so badly that the SS might have done them faster, plus the Slipstream at least has a 16-bit bus latch to reduce host CPU bus conflicts, the Jaguar doesn't even do that for the 68000 ... and that's assuming Atari went with the Cheaper 68000 option and not the 386SX Flare was suggesting or Holloway had requested)

On a side-note, there's some interesting, possibly ironic parallels between Konix's MS development and Epyx's development of the "Handy" (that became the Lynx) with several of the Amiga engineers doing that work (some of them Ex-Atari Inc engineers as well) vs Konix with ex-Sinclair engineers. Both Epyx and Konix having significant game joystick product lines and sharing licenses of some of the same joysticks. Both companies running out of money to actually bring the product to market, and Epyx ended up handing it off to Atari (who they'd already been making games for and had a connection to with Mike Katz running Atari's Entertainment division had previously been president of Epyx, though he left before the Lynx was released), but Konix ended up selling off their joystick line and betting the farm on the Slipstream rather than finding a business partner to front the necessary resources to bring it to market. (Atari was only in the very early stages of the Panther concept in mid '89 and had just prior been working on the Super XEGS concept with plans to source chips from Ricoh in Japan, so they were looking for a new 8/16-bit game system or console/computer hybrid to fit that side of the market) Granted, if Atari had the slipstream, or localized it for North America, it probably would've been more like the XEGS if anything in as far as a disk drive being a separate accessory and probably not using the built-in modular controller Konix was using, but probably considering keyboard and mouse accessories as well as Konix's modular controller as a separate accessory.






 

[Jag_Mag]

Members should not give massive amounts of praise to programmers that have not completed a project and released it.These are programmers that cannot complete a full project and love the praise and attention.

[mqark]

It's probably not news to most people in this Forum, but nether-the-less, The Konix Multisystem is going to get a lot more exposure very soon thanks to Digital Eclipse's Jeff Minter documentary which features the Emulation of the unfinished Attack of the Mutant Camels '89. 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2236680/Llamasoft_The_Jeff_Minter_Story/

Pretty exciting to see it emulated on multiple platforms!

I still think with the disappearance of Vladr, we've lost the only person who could be bothered to try to investigate what could be done with the Multisystem from a more modern perspective. perhaps this release will spark some interest.

[Clint Thompson]

5 hours ago, mqark said:

I still think with the disappearance of Vladr, we've lost the only person who could be bothered to try to investigate what could be done with the Multisystem from a more modern perspective. perhaps this release will spark some interest.

While I personally think it’s kind of a cool curiosity, I’m not sure what room for caring enough to explore what a system that predates not only the Jaguar but also the Panther can do really offers much in way of excitement. The Panther seemed insanely limited and honestly, don’t remember at all the specs of the Konix but it was definitely not next gen. 
 

I will always prefer to explore spending time on an actual released console and in this case specifically, the Jaguar. 
 

Do love some Jeff Minter goodies so definitely looking forward to all this for that reason alone. 

[+Stephen]

5 hours ago, mqark said:

I still think with the disappearance of Vladr, we've lost the only person who could be bothered to try to investigate what could be done with the Multisystem

LMFAO - the only thing we lost with Vladr was a ton of numberwang.  If you want, I can prepare several pages of spreadsheets showing cycle counts, and tell you how awesome I am at coding, then never deliver anything if that's what makes you happy.  I'll leave here with this gem which shows his true coding abilities.

[Bill Loguidice]

7 hours ago, mqark said:

I still think with the disappearance of Vladr, we've lost the only person who could be bothered to try to investigate what could be done with the Multisystem from a more modern perspective. perhaps this release will spark some interest.

Thanks for that link, but can you clarify the Vladr thing? I'm in the camp that I never did see him produce anything close to a complete game that actually took advantage of a system's capabilities. Lots of talk, little action, etc. (and this is a genuine question, not an attack)

[Biff Burgertime]

8 hours ago, Bill Loguidice said:

Thanks for that link, but can you clarify the Vladr thing? I'm in the camp that I never did see him produce anything close to a complete game that actually took advantage of a system's capabilities. Lots of talk, little action, etc. (and this is a genuine question, not an attack)

The tl;dr from where I was sitting as this 43-page thread went on was (going by memory here, set me straight if any of this is inaccurate):

• Vlad would write long posts full of number-crunching, hypothetical benchmarks that didn't really mean anything.
• Whenever someone raised the topic of "...are we talking about real hardware or Virtual Jaguar?" He'd completely ignore it. So it was obvious he was getting far better performance thanks to the emulator but trying to pass it off as the result of his genius.
• More number crunching - really, I can't overstate how many long posts full of numbers he wrote.
• At some point he concluded once he had a basic 'racing game' framework set up, he could then easily create variants within a short amount of time. So suppose he gives us a Need For Speed-like game today, in 6 months we'd get a Wipeout-like game, and so on.
• Multiple promises of showing off the progress he's made in video form by [date], only for something to cause a cancellation at the last moment, often weather-related.
• Talk of how much money he was losing each day by choosing to do full-time Jaguar development instead of a have a job.
• Every once in a long while he'd post a new video, but the changes were minimal to say the least, especially after all the hype about benchmarks he was posting about constantly. You can see some of these micro-updates on his YT channel.
• Finally, it concluded with Vladr making a personal appearance at PRGE 2019 to display his "progress"...

Just... what the hell is that?

So ever since, the image @Stephen posted has become one of those "expectations vs. reality" warnings, like the Big Mac you see in commercials vs. semi-crushed one you get served in person.

 

I'm sure someone can fill more/better details because this shit went on for months, but that's how I remember it.

[Biff Burgertime]

Epilogue:

• Perhaps (finally) realizing he's made a fool of himself in the Jag community, he tried out the Lynx community for a short time. His Lynx project bore a striking resemblance to his Jag project...
• That never lead anywhere.
• Vladr packs up and heads for another hardware platform, this time in a community beyond AtariAge. This time his sights are set on the Amiga, and things have escalated a bit:
  • His game now has a title: Heimdall. Unfortunately there's already an Amiga game with that name. Shows how much thought he's put into it.
  • He starts off by posting a 20+ minute video explaining his multi-racing-game roadmap.
  • He's not fucking around this time, he's taking pre-orders straight off the bat! Yup, first post and this random dude is asking for money. Unfortunately, a few people give it to him (and later have a very difficult time getting refunded).
  • As you can see later in the video (17:05, timestamped) his basic polygon demo now has a roof and some extra colors to make it look brought and shiny, but these changes are superficial at best.

and that's the last I've seen of him. So to recap:

• Years of number-crunching, benchmarks which are pointless as they're not based on real hardware, countless promises, hype, excuses, repeat... and by the end, all he's got to show for it is hardly any different than what he started with.
• Vladr's a man who clearly loved to make promises and type a lot, but did not enjoy actually getting shit done.

[+Stephen]

I can't stress this enough to anyone still thinking this guy will ever produce anything for any console.  After he got laughed out of this place, he went on to do the same shit, only this time asking for money upfront, for Amiga work.  I made sure to post warnings there as well.

[Biff Burgertime]

God I love AA sometimes. I recall being sick all week when I found that thread, and it helped pass the time with its absurdity.

[agradeneu]

Should be no problem going from that to Final Lap and Need For Speed in 4 months+.;)

Same old trick, he was called out being an utter charlatan, and rightly so!

[Biff Burgertime]

God I just remembered his shit about H.E.R.O. and Klax too! He was doing the usual "I've got a 3D renderer with an impossibly-good framerate because [numberwang]" (in reality, it was because Virtual Jaguar, not real hardware).

 

Here was his mockup for a 3D Klax:

The speed at which the blocks 'fall' ...what?!

 

So this video comes next:

Notice the blocks don't tip over end-over-end like they do in the real game? This is where the funniest bit of the entire thing is for me...

Vladr didn't know because he's never actually played Klax! So how did he even get into this argument in the first place?

It's doubly-funny because Klax isn't some super-elusive game, it came out for (not including homebrew ports):

• Arcade
• Amiga
• Amstrad CPC
• Atari 2600
• Atari 5200
• Atari 7800
• Atari ST
• BBC Micro
• Commodore 64
• DOS
• FM Towns
• Game Boy
• Game Boy Color
• Game Gear
• Genesis
• Linux
• Lynx
• MSX
• NES
• PC-88
• PC-98
• SAM Coupé
• X68000
• Master System
• TurboGrafx-16
• ZX Spectrum

 

Then the H.E.R.O. stuff... peak Vladr benchmarks. Here's a playlist of the 5 videos posted. They were these weird little scenes of a camera panning slightly to the left & right  under different conditions, for maximum numberwang. The best part of all of this... Vladr would post these novel-sized comments full of bullshit which must've taken an hour to write, only for CJ to invalidate the entire thing with a mere 1 or 2 sentences.

 

Perhaps Vladr's benchmarking can best be summed up with this quote:

 

Now I hope I don't remember anything else, my mind's spinning and can't take much more...

[+CyranoJ]

Ah, "Leather Dude in the Land of the Melting Rubber Buildings" .... good times!

 

The funniest part of all this for me is that the usual suspects threw themselves on their swords (again), prepared to die on the hill of all praise Vladr, intrepid adventurer who will unlock the secrets of the untapped potential that exists inside the Jaguar shell.

 

 

It will happen again.

It's just a question of when.

[+remowilliams]

21 hours ago, Biff Burgertime said:

The tl;dr from where I was sitting as this 43-page thread went on was (going by memory here, set me straight if any of this is inaccurate):

 

21 hours ago, Biff Burgertime said:

Epilogue:

 

Congratulations on putting in more effort and tangible results in summary than Vlarse did in coding.

[+Stephen]

HAHA - how could I forget the "well no, I never played it.  I don't need to, I studied the frames on YouTube when I was counting my frames and cycle numberwanging!"  Maybe he is just doing one of his 14 times a year long moves across 6 states while spending X dollars per day.  I miss those stories too.

[Biff Burgertime]

On 1/11/2024 at 6:35 PM, remowilliams said:

Congratulations on putting in more effort and tangible results in summary than Vlarse did in coding.

Lurkin' Ain't Easy!

[roots.genoa]

On 1/12/2024 at 12:16 AM, Biff Burgertime said:

Notice the blocks don't tip over end-over-end like they do in the real game? This is where the funniest bit of the entire thing is for me...

Vladr didn't know because he's never actually played Klax!

My guess is he was just too lazy to program the actual rotation of the blocks.

[Lostdragon]

On 1/10/2024 at 2:45 PM, Clint Thompson said:

While I personally think it’s kind of a cool curiosity, I’m not sure what room for caring enough to explore what a system that predates not only the Jaguar but also the Panther can do really offers much in way of excitement. The Panther seemed insanely limited and honestly, don’t remember at all the specs of the Konix but it was definitely not next gen. 
 

I will always prefer to explore spending time on an actual released console and in this case specifically, the Jaguar. 
 

Do love some Jeff Minter goodies so definitely looking forward to all this for that reason alone. 

Totally agree regarding the Panther seeming insanely limited. 

 

The more information that comes to light regarding it, the more that feeling is reinforced. 

 

Once again, for clarity, the most recent soundbite... 

 

 Retro Gamer Annual, Volume 10,there is a quote from D. Scott Williamson, regarding the Panther.

"I worked on the Atari Panther and technically it was probably too much like the older Atari 8-bit computers to be competitive"

 

Both the Konix and Panther deserve their places in history as historical curiosities and  i for one, welcome any new insights from the people involved with them at the time. 

 

But it's become extremely evident they were massively over-hyped, performances wise