I am working quite long on a side project i call AmigaNX.
It is about getting missing features working on a SAM.

The system is based on a Hardware extension fitting into a free 3.5" or with adapter in a 5.25" slot.

Basic system would cost 169€ and would offer playback of H264 videos. The files can be placed on the Amiga HD. The videos will be transcoded in a "reduced bitrate" in realtime an can be played back with AMC (included in the package).

This can be extended with a bluetooth and wifi module. Both optional.
Bluetooth and Wifi can be managed via supplied AmigaOS config tools. Each 25€ extra.

I would like to hear if you are interested because i need to "prepay" a not so small sum.

The basic setup comes with Ethernet and USB-Port (for printer) which fits into a free PCI-Slot.

I don't need pre-orders. Just a indication of interest

Last edited by phoenixkonsole on 23-Jul-2015 at 02:06 PM.
Last edited by phoenixkonsole on 13-Mar-2015 at 06:35 PM.
Last edited by phoenixkonsole on 02-Mar-2015 at 07:16 PM.

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@phoenixkonsole

so this should work in any pci slot like AmigaOne has ?

@lionstorm
Yes, sure AmigaOne's as well. You need 1x Pci and 1x free 3.5" drive bay. With a plastic adapter a 5.25" will do it also.

The problem is that the Amiga CPU must still be able to play a h264 based stream.
The slower the cpu the lower must be set the bitrate and so you get of course a quality loss. The benefit is that you can play those videos without pre-converting with ffmpg.

I am not sure how the g3's in old Amiga One compare to the SAMs.

Last edited by phoenixkonsole on 02-Mar-2015 at 07:50 PM.

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@phoenixkonsole

The wifi and Bluetooth would only be available for streaming of data to the H.264-module for video and media I assume? I.e. one won't get "real" wifi or bluetooth in AmigaOS?

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@phoenixkonsole

depending on how good the software is on the AOS4 side of things, i'm in!

-- eliyahu

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"Physical reality is consistent with universal laws. When the laws do not operate, there is no reality. All of this is unreal."

@phoenixkonsole

More detailed info needed before I could say if I would buy such a device or not.

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Amiga! The computer that inspired so many, to accomplish so much, but has ended up in the hands of . . . . . . . . . .

@phoenixbla

"How much would you pay ...."

1 Amicoin 😎

@phoenixkonsole

very interested for printing & bluetooth only when I see the actual product working

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c64-2sids, A1000, A1200T-060@50(finally working!),A4000-CSMKIII
! My Master Miggies- Amiga 1000 & AmigaOne X1000 !
mancave-ramblings
X1000 I BELIEVE

I need more details please.

Will wifi and bluetooth be supported in general under aos4 or just for playback?

Sounds like a good hardware expansion.

I am interested about it for the Sam 440.

Last edited by Morphix on 03-Mar-2015 at 11:56 PM.
Last edited by Morphix on 02-Mar-2015 at 11:31 PM.

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Peg1, Peg2, Efika,
Amiga 500, Amiga 1230,
Amiga 4000PPC,
Sam 440EP, AmigaOne XE,
MacMini PPC, PowerMac G4, G5

@Morphix
Bluetooth will be passed through.
At first only for sharing files over Bluetooth.
Bringing Bluetooth devices to live will need a bit programming and could be done with this
http://synergy-project.org/?hl=de

Wifi is managed by the included arm soc . Configuration happens with amigaos.
The soc shares his connection with the amiga.

Amiga->amigaNX->router

More or less a bit like Siamese rtg.

For printing we will use a own print tool which can understand common filetypes.
Every printer for which a linux driver is available will work

I think the interest is there.
Is the price something you could consider ?

Last edited by phoenixkonsole on 03-Mar-2015 at 07:01 AM.

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AROS Broadway - AEROS - Aminux - AmiCloud - indieGO! Appstore - AmiWallet - VAN lossless video codec - AMC Amiga media Center -KrypUnite - LibertyNet - MinX - amigaNX

@phoenixkonsole

Very interesting project! What would the performance be on SamEp (667-733Mhz ) though? Would the expansion fit on the mPCI slot? Also, how about a MorphOS version? Imho, many machines running MorphOS are G4/G5 PowerMacs boasting more than enough from the required horsepower :)

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@Cool_amigaN
MorphOS should be no Problem. Synergy for example is already available for MorphOS.

mPCI would be possible. I am considering to "opensource" it for a fixed sum.
The Connection between host and guest is technically just a Ethernet Connection. Nothing Special.

Also it is modular (allowing to use other e.g ARM Rpi for example, ATOM soc's, or Parallela (ARM + 18core epiphany coprocesser ; ) - > to be honest i found no use yet for this ). ) Only Limitation would be the power consumption. Some soc's work fine with the standby power of a ATX supply.

Give me two months for a demo I have ordered some parts yesterday to finish 2 prototypes.

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@Naz

Quote:

@phoenixbla "How much would you pay ...." 1 Amicoin 😎

if you would be one of the top10 devs each month you would get one for free after 17months.. for 16900 amicoins.

Last edited by phoenixkonsole on 03-Mar-2015 at 10:10 AM.
Last edited by phoenixkonsole on 03-Mar-2015 at 10:06 AM.

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AROS Broadway - AEROS - Aminux - AmiCloud - indieGO! Appstore - AmiWallet - VAN lossless video codec - AMC Amiga media Center -KrypUnite - LibertyNet - MinX - amigaNX

@phoenixkonsole

If you make it available for MorphOS too, count me in, I would buy it in a heartbeat. Btw, most (.mkv) files that come with h264 are also encoded with 5.1 sound output. Though you might not get 5.1 audio on AmigaNG, I think this alone makes the processing of the file even more aggressive for the cpu. Or am I mistaken?

EDIT: BTW, what's the average bitrate loss from the on-the-fly transcode?

Last edited by Cool_amigaN on 03-Mar-2015 at 11:08 AM.
Last edited by Cool_amigaN on 03-Mar-2015 at 11:05 AM.

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@Cool_amigaN
Yep Sound is also a big factor. The simplest transcoding can be done with gstreamer and omxtx (https://github.com/dickontoo/omxtx)

You can look at omxtx and gstreamer for Linux. Even a raspberry Pi1 (because of its HW Decoder can de- and encode any HD material to any Bitrate and resoulution you like. Works for Mpeg2 and H264.

Basically you could now just buy a Switch (if you Need wired Internet) on your SAM, a rPi and do a proof of concept.

All I do is making a bunch of Amiga Software to control the Pi and a modular enclosure to house and power it inside your Amiga case, well and a Ethernet like connection.

No Magic, just thinking around Corners... : )

Last edited by phoenixkonsole on 03-Mar-2015 at 11:23 AM.
Last edited by phoenixkonsole on 03-Mar-2015 at 11:22 AM.

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AROS Broadway - AEROS - Aminux - AmiCloud - indieGO! Appstore - AmiWallet - VAN lossless video codec - AMC Amiga media Center -KrypUnite - LibertyNet - MinX - amigaNX

@phoenixkonsole

Out of my price range and AMC really puts me off, a handler & dosdriver would be far better so you could just send something like ANX:dh4\movies/mymovie.mp4 to mplayer or dvplayer.

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OS4 Rocks
X1000 beta tester, Sam440 Flex (733)

Visit the Official OS4 Support Site for more help.

It may be that your sole purpose is to serve as a warning to others.

@phoenixkonsole

Well lets see:

If I were a SAM4x0 system owner I would have paid about $1,000 for the system, which is about 3x-4x more than I'd pay for an x86/PPC Mac based system with the same specs. The Macs would come with all of this and I would need to spend about $30-$50 to add Bluetooth and WiFi to a PC that didn't already have it.
So in this case paying 3x-4x as much, which in the SAM world is at most $200, which in turn is about 20% of the system cost.

But if you market this at the X1000 owners you'll make more money as 20% of that system is like $850.

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All the way, with 68k

@phoenixkonsole

Ok, I don't quite understand how it all fits together, but this is my understanding. Please correct me if I'm wrong:

- There is a PCI card. (PCI or PCIe??)

- There is a module sitting in a drive bay (because it was too big to (also?) fit on the PCI(e) card?).

- It has a custom connection cable with the PCI card? Or is it completely separate using ethernet/WiFi only?

- The whole thing can mount and read Amiga harddisks?
- Or the thing appears as a harddisk from which you can play realtime transcoded video files which are being read from the Amiga harddisk?
- Or the thing has a harddisk/flash card connected onto which you need to first upload all your videos?

What does Ethernet/WiFi/Bluetooth/Printing has to do with any of this? Is it just extra features on an one-box-to-do-it-all?

Do I have to "login" to this box and start some Linux services to make it work as expected?

I have an X1000 but I would be interested in this if it makes me able to (more easily) watch my HD videos without transcoding first.

Last edited by Deniil715 on 04-Mar-2015 at 12:12 PM.

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> Amiga Classic and OS4 developer for OnyxSoft.

@Deniil715
Hi the extra 3.5 or 5.25" housing is needed because i (myself) like to be able to add 2 soc's or replace them later with other devices - > also some pico-itx boards fit better in 5.25".

The drive bay holds a modular plate which can be replaced in order to make other soc's with different mount points possible. Also it includes a ethernet switch.

The PCi card is not active (just a dummy) and mainly used to route out the ARM USB and 2x Ethernet-connection (one for the amiga and one to the router -> both connected over the switch).
(So if PCI pr PCIe doesn't matter- we just use the pci-slot-bracket)

The connection between ARM and Amiga is over LAN.
The ARM provides ICS (internetsharing -> Wifi) -> we provide a Amiga tool to manage ARM wifi from Amiga side.

We will provide a Amiga tool which allows to play back media files as stream (transcoded by the ARM. The file can be on a shared drive. You can also access the ARM Flash storage but it is not needed to put files there. Also a USB-attached storage will work (we route out the ARM USB ports to the PCI-bracket at the back of your computer).

You will not have to login into the box over ssh or vnc or something.
We provide Amiga tools to access it and configure things as if they would be done by a usb-dongle.

All that is no magic. It can be done by everyone now with those parts. All i do is to put them into one enclosure fitting in your computer case and without the need of extra psu's /wall sockets to power them.

With VNC you "could" run AEROS, XBMC, RetroPi or whatever on your workbench.

We can make it open source including enclosure design so people can build/print them by themselves. And maybe expand the software side.

Long story short.. I will finish to protoypes whiting the next 4-8 weeks. I am waiting for last parts for the power supply. I could provide each part and software independently so people can just order what they really need. Theoretically also the housing as 3D data for printers.

Last edited by phoenixkonsole on 07-Mar-2015 at 12:35 PM.
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Last edited by phoenixkonsole on 07-Mar-2015 at 12:32 PM.
Last edited by phoenixkonsole on 07-Mar-2015 at 12:29 PM.

_________________
AROS Broadway - AEROS - Aminux - AmiCloud - indieGO! Appstore - AmiWallet - VAN lossless video codec - AMC Amiga media Center -KrypUnite - LibertyNet - MinX - amigaNX

@phoenixkonsole

One of the most interesting projects lately, would like to use this with Morphos and maybe classic aswell ? :D 200Euros. good price range if this really works :)