Table of Contents

About

Getting hardware acceleration to work on on the Amiga is tricky due to the disparate information available and the varying degrees of stability of drivers. This guide summarizes the procedure, offers download links and provides some notes on how to get hardware acceleration.

Overview of Available Hardware

The procedure varies greatly depending on the available hardware and this tutorial makes a few assumptions based on the current layout of a given machine.

Assumptions

Install Instructions

The Mediator should be configured via jumpers to match the following setup:

The 8MiB configuration is vital to getting 3D acceleration working; albeit disabling PCMCIA.

MMULib

Perform a full installation of Thor's (Thomas Richter's) MMULib package from AmiNET including starting all programs on boot whilst accepting defaults. The critical part is getting the BPPCFix, mmu.library, MMU-Configuration, the 680x0.library and corresponding 68040.library or 68060.library. Additionally, installing all the other programs is safe and the patches will only apply if they are needed or hardware is available.

You can disable BlizKick if you have it installed since the MMU libraries replace most of its functionality. If you are kicking devices and libraries, you can fallback to the OS3.9 standard LoadModule and LoadResident lines. A safe s:startup-sequence configuration looks like the following:

Workbench:System/MuTools/MuMove4K A1200 NoReboot
SYS:C/BPPCFix >NIL: Install Reboot

FailAt 21
SYS:C/LoadResident >NIL: DEVS:card.resource DEVS:trackdisk.device L:KingCON-Handler LIBS:mathffp.library LIBS:mathieeesingbas.library

FailAt 20
SYS:C/LoadModule >NIL: DEVS:battmem.resource DEVS:console.device DEVS:FileSystem.resource DEVS:misc.resource DEVS:potgo.resource DEVS:scsi.device L:FastFileSystem L:Ram-Handler L:Shell-Seg LIBS:dos.library LIBS:layers.library REVERSE NOREBOOT

SYS:C/SetPatch SKIPROMUPDATES console.device,dos,filesystem,FileSystem.resource,ram-handler,scsi.device,shell,icon.library,mathffp.library,mathieeesingbas.library QUIET

The most important line here is perhaps the BPPCFix command that will turn off the internal blizzard PowerUP ppc.library and allow the WarpUP kernel to run. Since ppc.library will be turned off, download ppclibemu and install it following the prompts. ppclibemu will emulte PowerUP ppc.library on WarpUP making it available to programs expecting ppc.library to be available.

You can now reboot.

Troubleshooting

WarpUP

Install WarpUP, versions 4, then 4 Update 1, then 5. The Mediator CD contains version 5 whilst the archives from haage-partner.de contain version 5.1.

WarpUP allows the PPC to live alongside the m68k processor and is required / supported by most 3D packages.

You can now reboot again.

Picasso96 and Voodoo 3

Install the mediator files from the MM CD (provided as an archive). The files contained in the MM CD are outdated, so update each driver from the same link. Of particular interest is pci.library which, at the time of writing, is at version 12.0 and should overwrite the file from the MM CD at LIBS:pci.library.

Execute MedConfig and follow the on-screen prompts to configure your Mediator board. Now, open a shell and issue:

cd ENVARC:Mediator/

followed by:

dir

to get a list of global environment variables that have been set by MedConfig.

You can issue the command: type MMU, for instance to show the current contents of the file. The relevant files in ENVARC:Mediator/ should have the following contents:

The Picasso 96 install follows:

Next, double click the Voodoo monitor icon to load the monitor driver and open P96Mode from SYS:Prefs/. Attach the settings to the Voodoo card and adjust the modes. Note that the Voodoo cannot do interlaced modes such that you should go through the entire list of modes and untick Interlace whenever you see it. Finally, save the configuration - if you are prompted answer to enable all modes.

You can now reboot and then use ScreenMode from SYS:Prefs/ to set the mode to a Voodoo 16 bit PC mode - otherwise, most of the Warp3D demos will crash or end in a white screen.

Troubleshooting

Warp3D

The drivers installed by Warp3D from the MM CD unfortunately copy over drivers that are meant for the A4000 whilst also leaving out the Avenger (Voodoo driver). You will have to check the directory LIBS: directory such that it has the following filesystem layout:

LIBS
  +
  |
  +--+ Warp.library
  |
  +--+ Warp3DPPC.library
  .
  .
  .
  +--- Warp3D
         +
         |
         +-----+ GFXdrivers
         |           +
         |           |
         |           +--- W3D_Picasso96M.library
         |           |
         |           +--- W3D_Picasso96MU.library
         |           |
         |           +--- W3D_Picasso96M_PPC.library
         |
         +-----+ HWDrivers
                    +
                    |
                    +--- W3D_AvengerBEM.library
                    |
                    +--- W3D_AvengerBEMU.library
                    |
                    +--- W3D_AvengerBEM_PPC.library
                    |
                    +--- W3D_AvengerLEM.library
                    |
                    +--- W3D_AvengerLEMU.library
                    |
                    +--- W3D_AvengerLEM_PPC.library
                          

Any other file present under LIBS:Warp3D/GFXDrivers and LIBS:Warp3D/HWDrivers should be deleted - tersely, any file without a capital M in its name should be trashed.

Change directory to ENVARC:Mediator and create the following settings:

Followed by the PowerPC environment variable in ENVARC:PowerPC:

Create a new setting at ENVARC:Warp3D/Mediator/memsize and set it to 7.

Finally, reboot for the last time.

Getting the Demos to Work

The general rule runs along the lines of: if any of the Warp3D demos do not work then you have a problem!

All the demonstration files installed with Warp3D in the directory W3DDemo should work, this includes WarpTest and all the gears for the PPC version AND all the gears demos for m68k. The first one to try is WarpTest followed by the m68k gears test, followed by the PPC gears test.

Troubleshooting

If you get a white screen when the gear demos load:

WHDLoad

In case WHDLoad games seem to misbehave then you will need to set VoodooInt to No. Edit ENVARC:Mediator/VoodooInt and set the contents to No.