On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 9:58 AM, Simon McVittie <[email protected]> wrote: > On 04/06/13 13:58, [email protected] wrote: >> One thing I'd suggest is that >> altivec is enabled based on the CPU itself, and not just PPC vs PPC64. > > Sorry, I'm not going to do significant development on this myself, but > if you or another powerpc porter want to put a patchset together, > upstream would probably take it. There seems to be some support for > runtime detection already, but AIUI, compiling the whole thing with > -maltivec means that's useless, because gcc is within its rights to emit > Altivec instructions anyway? > > Another possibility would be to have a separate "lowest common > denominator" Q3 binary for PowerPC-without-Altivec, and have it > transparently exec the Altivec binary (with the same command line) if it > determines that we do actually have Altivec. It would probably need to > behave like its own mini-architecture within the Quake 3 engine, with a > separate suffix or directory for loadable modules (perhaps *ppc.so for > Altivec and *oldppc.so for non-Altivec?) > > What I'm more concerned about is whether the PowerPC JIT for the Quake 3 > bytecode language (code/qcommon/vm_powerpc*) emits Altivec opcodes - I > have no idea how I'd determine that. That's why I'm specifically asking > for testing with the bytecode game logic.
I did some tinkering with runtime detection when I was working on getting PPC64 support under Quake II, so I'll see if I can make something work. Maybe *ppcaltivec.so, *ppc.so, and *ppc64.so > >> Is Rage128 still a supported 3D accelerator? I know it'll be slow as >> heck, but it's the only card I have for my PowerMac G3s. > > Your guess is as good as mine :-) > > If all G3s are likely to be this low-spec, perhaps ioquake3/powerpc > should just continue to require Altivec, and put a note in xmessage(1) > on older machines... Yeah, for the most part, non-altivec PPC/PPCSPE machines are probably going to be incapable of running Quake III at a reasonable speed. AFAIK, the highest end PCI card that there's a Macintosh ROM for is the Radeon 7000. I'll see if I can get a build machine up later today, since actually compiling on a G3 would be exceptionally slow. Logan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/cam3km_lyxjvfwc8mvpbkrkpetcusbdtukq1c9u+kvjewznr...@mail.gmail.com
