Moderators: Mug UK, Silver Surfer, Moderator Team
BlankVector wrote:I must agree with you. Even if that FPGA stuff is interesting, it is completely unrelated to Atari machines or operating systems. That is particularly visible in "Active topics", where we mainly expect to find Atari stuff.
That's just my opinion, anyway.
Eero Tamminen wrote:I don't mind them. Open Source FPGAs are important preservation platforms for all things Atari, as eventually there won't anymore be original spare parts left, or they're at least very hard to acquire.
They could also provide new members to the Atari community. Without new members community will just dwindle out.
However, FPGA systems don't seem to survive without additional users from other platforms than Atari, and there's still a lot to do to get them accurate enough to run things like demos.
The existence of Atari does not depend on FPGAs
The Atari clones also deserve that category, but the emulators and multicore FPGAs are very distant relatives and do not deserve the main role of an Atari forum.
If the activity of an Atari forum is subordinated to non-Atari cores, FPGA and emulator ... it is no longer Atari and we should sincerely ask ourselves what is being done.
Eero Tamminen wrote: Without emulators, I don't think there wouldn't be much new SW done for the original HW. Many of the people still writing SW for Atari use an emulator for large part of the development, they do just final testing on real HW.
(Debugging is easier with emulators, they're faster, and ST & STE emulation is nowadays accurate enough for about everything. Real HW is fragile and takes extra desk space.)
Emulators also advance the knowledge about the HW. Notable part of emulator development is research into how the HW details work (specifically written tests run on real HW etc).
My argument is that these new "Ataris" need the other cores to survive in the long run.
mfro wrote:Personally, I don't care (and consequently, abstain from voting). I just don't read what I'm not interested in.
If you want more interesting Atari topics on top, there are basically two options:
- go ahead and write them (best option, IMHO)
- phpbb can suppress posts from appearing on the active topics list (can be activated by forum)
Atarieterno wrote:I respect your option not to vote, but it's not my style, I consider it more typical of politicians who look the other way and expect issues to resolve themselves.
mfro wrote:Atarieterno wrote:I respect your option not to vote, but it's not my style, I consider it more typical of politicians who look the other way and expect issues to resolve themselves.
Umm. No. In my opinion, there is no issue. I'm not interested in 'non-Atari FPGA posts' as well but have no problems to just not read them, then.
What you appear to target at is - IMHO - a restriction in freedom of speech.
As it is, it is my decision what I read and what not. If you prohibit such posts, it will be the moderator's decision. No improvement in my opinion, not for the moderators and not for me. This is what led me now to vote with 'YES' although I still do not care
Am I interested in what Atari might have appeared (or not) in a (very) bad movie about drinking beer (or whatever)? No, I'm definitely not, but I do not complain.
Am I interested in any Kiddie's first attempts to correctly throw together a few lines of Basic? No, I'm not (even if it is Atari-related), but everybody needs to start somewhere.
Do I want to read about an improved Amiga core that fixes a bug in the m68k TG68 part? Yes, I definitely do, since I own a MiST (using only Atari cores) that might benefit from the same fix.
Do I want to read about a - whatever - core for the MiST that improves the speed of the MiST's memory controller? Yes, I do for the same reasons.
And I don't want to have moderators decide that for me.
calimero wrote:I really dislike to see first 5 RECENT TOPICS polluted with FPGA stuff.
I occasionally open atari-forum.com just to see 5 recent topic and almost always I see 5 topics about FPGA in "recent topics". And I am not interested in FPGA at all.
There is no need to prohibit anything, just move this FPGA topics to complete another forum
Thanks Atarieterno for opening this topic. I also like joska find this forum less and less interesting.
btw who are 4 Atari gurus have left forever?
Atarieterno wrote:In the Facebook groups, the logical order is fulfilled: a group of TT talks about TT, a group Mega STe talks about Mega STe, and so on and so on.
I wrote:With FPGA type systems, they kind of fall into a big grey area. As they don't fully fit into any forum for 1980s or 1990s computers. But most were developed based on the core hardware of a real 1980s or 1990s computer.
A FPGA is not an emulator. The logic gates in the FPGA chip are just configured electronically at the power up of the chip. They are an evolution and development of EPROMs, SRAM and PAL/GAL programmable logic chips.
Remember, in the prototype Atari ST, Atari used lots and lots of glue logic chips to create the functions that were later provided by custom Atari chips. If Atari existed today, and were developing a ST computer system, rather than using lots and lots of glue logic chips, they would use FPGA chips. Then from the logic design data, they would produce custom Atari chips (assuming that they were intending to sell them as a mass market system).
Where they should fit in a computer forum, well in their own area, at least. Same as emulators should have their own area.
Beyond that, I don't know...
joska wrote:Atarieterno wrote:In the Facebook groups, the logical order is fulfilled: a group of TT talks about TT, a group Mega STe talks about Mega STe, and so on and so on.
...with crossposting between several similar groups, e.g. the three different ST/STE-groups and atleast two TT-groups where atleast one is private because the creator was kicked out of the public one. The same questions are posted both on a couple of FB-groups and here (or atariage), with the discussion going in different directions on each forum/group. Person A replies to a question without knowing that person B has already answered because person B has blocked person A from seeing all of person B's posts and all replies to their posts because person B got offended by person A two years ago. And the really amazing thing about Facebook - impossible to quote, impossible to see who's answered who, posts disappears from view according to the whims of the facebook algorithms, impossible to search...
I have left the facebook groups today, just too frustrating to deal with.
atari-forum has been the "place to go" for Atari-stuff for years, but not anymore. There is currently no central place for Atari users. This is really sad, and I must say that my motivation to work with and use my Ataris has been declining rapidly the last couple of years due to this. There is no sense of community anymore, which is the #1 motivation for people to contribute.
The real problem is not that there are too many or too active emulation/FGPA/Amigacore posts, but too few posts about the real stuff.
1024MAK wrote:Now, I don't know if it is possible, but maybe it is something that maybe the developers of the phpBB software can look at introducing in the future. What am I on about? My idea is to have multiple 'Active topics" pages. Here there would be one for original Atari ST and related hardware/software, one for FPGA systems, one for emulators, one for other systems and one for the off-topic discussion threads. Then each member could choose which 'Active topics" page the site uses when they log-in.
Mark
1024MAK wrote:Now, I don't know if it is possible, but maybe it is something that maybe the developers of the phpBB software can look at introducing in the future. What am I on about? My idea is to have multiple 'Active topics" pages. Here there would be one for original Atari ST and related hardware/software, one for FPGA systems, one for emulators, one for other systems and one for the off-topic discussion threads. Then each member could choose which 'Active topics" page the site uses when they log-in.
Mark
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