1) Forget about the 'old technology, ie. serial, parallel, ps/2, ide/eide
2) usb, Firewire (perhaps), SATA (serial ATA) for H/D, DVD etc, pci-express, gigabyte lan
Most of the major compter manufacturers will have new machines by March 2005 that only have the items listed in 2). By the end of 2005, everyone who wants to survive will meet the standard in item 2).
Item 1) will be dead and only used in 'legacy computers'.
Joined: 14-Mar-2003 Posts: 5211
From: Ylikiiminki, Finland
@digitaldisaster
I would be interested in both high end and low-end models. (miniA1 could serve the low-end need)
Also... perhaps nanoA1 with embedded PPC CPU would also be interesting... I could use some 10"*10" size modules..... and some might be interested in building Amiga (rendering/compiling) clusters with those...
I would recommend contacting KMOS, Hyperion and then Eyetech. ( in that order )
Perhaps your board and A1 could share same CPU slot specs and "custom slot" specs? Perhaps you could start with the development of A1 compatible CPU module... A1 users would love to upgrade their CPU to something like 1Ghz G3 with 1Mb L2 or 1.6Ghz G4.
Perhaps Eyetech would be interested in distributing (also) your board?
Other valuable partners could be Individual Computers and Elbox.
Also, how about letting Mac CPU card's to work on your motherboard?
Especially if KMOS & co do not pay any attention, head towards AROS as the development phase OS....
and..... one idea, even if it will never make profit ... simple G3 card for Amiga1200...
I have been having thoughts about what I would do if I had to create a computer from scratch.
At the moment G5 appears quite power-hungry - I don't know if this is the way I would want to go. Looking at the amount of low-power support out there I was having some pretty wild thoughts. Why not a modular G4 design?
I was thinking of something radically modular, connected only by external power and PCI-Express bus. I know the chipsets aren't there yet, especially for PowerPC but one has to dream... :)
Perhaps a very basic A500-style system could have the following: - External power brick (or internal power supply) - Core single-processor module This is where the BIOS, memory and bus controller live - Basic i/o module (includes hard drive) - Basic graphics module
There could be a master A500-style case to hold these 'raw' modules.
Each of these modules could be a fairly skimpy circuit board. The trick is they all talk over PCI-Express and each module is SMALL and LOW POWER. No more great honking huge PCI connectors. No heatsinks. No fans. If you want a radically fast graphics card then that particular module would have to do its own cooling separately from the rest of the system. If you want to upgrade your processor you replace that module. Sound familiar?
A more sophisticated system could be built up from: - External brick or beefier power module - Core single or dual-processor modules (perhaps more than one in a system - they would have to negotiate over the PCI-Express bus - lots'o'fun for the OS) - Separate I/O module with lots of fancy stuff like Firewire, USB, 6-channel audio, mouse (two?), keyboard, infrared, etc... - Separate high-end graphics module - Separate high-end disk i/o module (RAID, caching, mirroring, etc.)
Perhaps some of these modules would simply have a PCI-Express connector internally and you could plug in off-the-shelf cards?
If you wanted 4 video displays you could plug in 4 display modules.
Want lots and lots of I/O connectors? Plug in multiple modules.
These could be 'stacked' inside custom (injection-moulded?) micro-pizza boxes perhaps only 4" x 6" x 1" so you would build up a tower. You could also design a rack-mount enclosure to contain n modules as required.
Heck make the modules small and low-power enough and it isn't too far-fetched to progress to a laptop design.
Nifty add-on modules could include: - Back-up battery system - Solid-state storage (multiple slots for flash media)
This is a lot of design work and probably not worth doing at all but I figured it could be kicked around by smarter folks than I.
There's a big brain-dump. Have fun ripping it to shreds...
I think it sounds like a good ideal. And if I remeber correctly amiga.org was offering to host amiga related sites for free at one time. I don't know if the offer still stands, but you can check. (Some one correct me if I was wrong about the hosting)
Well, it sounds like a nice concept... I think that Hyperion are the ones to speak with in terms of OS4 being licensed and ported. Good luck with this project.
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