Hi all,

I have a rhetorical question: If a new company decided to support Amiga, in the form of manufacturing and marketing compatible HW, would you support its effort?

The reason why I ask is because I work for a company that designs and manufactures systems that use Freescale technology (the boss is a former Motorola engineer) for various (non-desktop) applications. Both Power architecture and 68k.

Anyway, last summer a little after I started working for them, we completed a couple of prototype boards for a control system. As a programmer, I worked on the firmware.

While doing so, I became intrigued with the hardware (Coldfire) and started to work in my spare time to see if I can get some 68k stuff to work on it, particularly Amiga and Atari ST.

Atari was really easy to get working, I had the TOS running in a little over a week. Then I started working on the Amiga. Not as easy... lots of hardware besides the processor.

Off and on, I researched and worked on this "side" project, and about 3 months ago, and I got it to run the Workbench and some apps.

The co-workers and I play with it during breaks, and people who have seen it agree that me getting the OS to run on it was no easy feat. I think that maybe the Amiga community might be interested in it.

Problem is, i'd have to convince my boss that my "toy project" could be worth something for the company, so that's why I ask you Amiga fans about it.

Would this be of some interest to the community, in general?

All and any input would be greatly appreciated.

@Cod3r

I would say that if the company you worked for was in the position to make new Amiga hardware then a lot of people would be really happy. I would certainly support an endevour that ultimatly benefits projects such as Aros and supports OS4.

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@Cod3r

It's sounds very interesting to me and congratulations on getting as far as you have with it...

Some more details about where you think this project could go, and an idea of what you envision as the final product...

Sounds like it could have many possibilities for those like me who love classic 68K hardware. Hopefully you can convince your boss there is a potential market there and he will put some more R&D into it...

I'm very interested in this already but like I say a few more details would be needed before anyone of us could really give an honest opinion on it...

Last edited by Franko on 14-Jul-2012 at 04:05 AM.

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@Cod3r

The problem is, "Amiga" is owned by a company that has no interest in its future, and licenses are provided to certain companies to use certain parts of the IP for certain purposes.

The way I understand it is that if you were able to produce hardware that can run the Amiga OS, then you would not be able to legally call it an Amiga or Amiga compatible device. You would certainly not be able to distribute workbench with it, or indeed any kickstart rom code.

I think it would be very difficult to convince your company that there's a big enough market for such a small niche of a hardware product.

Incidentally did you need to use kickstart roms to get workbench loaded, or did you find some other way around it?

@CritAnime

Well, we don't make any desktop-style systems, everything is embedded or industrial control machine stuff. So if we are in the position to do it or not is honestly unknown.

And i'm just a hired gun, don't know really what the company is capable of besides writing my paycheck.

@Franko

Thank you, but honestly, it is easy because I studied what others have done before and just re-implemented most in my own way with the hardware at hand.

Regarding a vision, honestly-I'd have to ask you guys. I was a little young when the Amiga first came around, so i'm learning about everything after the fact. And i'm no businessman, just a code monkey, so I have no solid concepts!

Maybe just make a new, modern Amiga compatible machine? I noticed that the classic Amiga hardware is really outdated, in the sense that everything a modern system is expected to do, is an add-on for the Amigas i.e. ethernet, usb, etc.

I would like to implement that functionality as standard. I hit a brick wall there, the prototype board we have has those functions, but I couldn't figure out how to make them work on the Amiga emulation I cobbled together.

The Coldfire is running at 200mhz on the system, but because it isn't directly compatible with 68k binaries, I had to make an emulator to run them. But it really is a low-level emulator, nothing like an emulator for a PC, for example. So it runs as a 68k Amiga at about ~74mhz or so. I think it could be optimized to go faster than that.

I used a couple of Altera FPGA's to emulate the other chips, although I don't have it working 100% as the games either start and crash, or just lockup the system. Sound chip isn't totally implemented yet, but enough of it is to make the system believe it is working, though there is no output (the prototype board doesn't have audio outs anyway).

That's all I have for now...

Quote:

Franko wrote: @Cod3r It's sounds very interesting to me and congratulations on getting as far as you have with it... Some more details about where you think this project could go, and an idea of what you envision as the final product... Sounds like it could have many possibilities for those like me who love classic 68K hardware. Hopefully you can convince your boss there is a potential market there and he will put some more R&D into it... I'm very interested in this already but like I say a few more details would be needed before anyone of us could really give an honest opinion on it...

@Cod3r

Nice "side" project. I think many of us would love to see a youtube type screencast and demo of what you accomplished here.

There are a number of independent hardware projects going on in the Amiga community, so it's hard to say if and where your coldfire project would fit into the mix. In particular, you may find the Natami project very interesting (or perhaps you've already checked it out):

http://www.natami.net/qa.htm

P.S. Glad you've decided to join our ranks! Welcome.

Last edited by jingof on 14-Jul-2012 at 05:31 AM.

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@Pleng

Regarding Amiga as a company, I know that we wouldn't really bother to license their stuff, because at this point (if i'm not mistaken) all they have is a name. We wouldn't need that, as we know how to implement the technology without any assistance from them.

In regards of licensing the name "Amiga" I don't really understand that point, because look at PC manufacturers, they don't license the name "IBM" to make compatibles. Correct me if i'm wrong, but a name is just a name, right? Look at Commodore and their Amigas, certainly different from the originals. And with them on the market, it would be confusing and counterproductive to use that name anyway.

And I called it Workbench, but I used the 68k version of Aros (the open source Workbench, if I understand correctly) to boot it. I modified the Aros sources and made it compile and work on our hardware. No infringing stuff, i'd lose my job for playing around with that at work.

I do agree that it would be hard to convince my boss about making an Amiga-compatible machine, but if we already have another product that just happens to be able to run Amiga stuff (with modification), maybe he wouldn't mind, as it doesn't cost us any R&D. I did my work off the clock for nothing.

Of course, i'm just thinking aloud and wondering if this could be worth something. I'm sure i'd get a heck of a promotion or maybe even ownership in the company if I could develop a new market for what we already manufacture.


Quote:

Pleng wrote: @Cod3r The problem is, "Amiga" is owned by a company that has no interest in its future, and licenses are provided to certain companies to use certain parts of the IP for certain purposes. The way I understand it is that if you were able to produce hardware that can run the Amiga OS, then you would not be able to legally call it an Amiga or Amiga compatible device. You would certainly not be able to distribute workbench with it, or indeed any kickstart rom code. I think it would be very difficult to convince your company that there's a big enough market for such a small niche of a hardware product. Incidentally did you need to use kickstart roms to get workbench loaded, or did you find some other way around it?

@jingof

I wouldn't even know how to do that (the screencast demo) other than taking pics or filming with my camera phone.

Natami almost sounds like what I did, and I didn't know about it previously. I wonder how Natami owners speak of their systems, I can't find any reviews of it.

If Natami is like their site describes, there is almost no purpose of my project, because it duplicates an effort already realized.

Quote:

jingof wrote: @Cod3r Nice "side" project. I think many of us would love to see a youtube type screencast and demo of what you accomplished here. There are a number of independent hardware projects going on in the Amiga community, so it's hard to say if and where your coldfire project would fit into the mix. In particular, you may find the Natami project very interesting (or perhaps you've already checked it out): http://www.natami.net/qa.htm P.S. Glad you've decided to join our ranks! Welcome.

@Cod3r

Quote:

I wonder how Natami owners speak of their systems, I can't find any reviews of it.

Last I heard, Natami was still in development. I don't think anyone has one yet. Anyone else have more news on that?

Quote:

there is almost no purpose of my project, because it duplicates an effort already realized

Well, if you can't beat 'em.. join 'em. Check out the natami forums, maybe you want to get involved? Or not.. just that firmware skills good enough to boot Workbench in your spare time are a rare and valuable thing in this community. So, maybe you can redirect your efforts, instead of abandoning them on grounds of "someone is already doing it".

Or better yet... boot Amiga Workbench on this thing:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console

Wouldn't THAT be awesome!

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@Cod3r

Quote:

And I called it Workbench

I think you might find that this is already a licensed trademark?

TrevorD

Last edited by TrevorDick on 14-Jul-2012 at 06:17 AM.

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@Cod3r

Maybe it is a stupid idea, but could you make a pci-card from it?

That is something we dont have now, so maybe it could be usefull.

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@Cod3r

wow! What you've described sounds almost like a Dragon ColdFire.

http://www.elbox.com/news_04_12_17.html

It never came out. Well I never saw it.

IIRC the CF core doesn't have bit rotations or shifts or something similar making it incompatible? Being able to set an interrupt vector to catch and simulate unsupported instructions would help. But the lack of any ColdFire Amiga accelerators on the market would suggest it's a lot harder than that and that practically the difference between 68K and CF is almost the same as 68K and PPC.

@TrevorDick

I read a court filing that the claim to "Workbench" was withdrawn.

@trans

Quote:

I read a court filing that the claim to "Workbench" was withdrawn.

You read it wrong.

It was Amiga Inc. who opposed this trademark (and terminated its opposition after settlement agreement with Cloanto).

@TrevorDick

Quote:

TrevorDick wrote: @Cod3r Quote: And I called it Workbench I think you might find that this is already a licensed trademark?

I assume he meant "called it Workbench in the first post", not "named my creation Workbench".

@Cod3r

1. Stay away from the "Amiga" trademark. In spite of it having no serious value currently, its history is an endless range of lawsuits.

2. The real development of nowadays Amiga-compatible systems is on PowerPC. Look at MorphOS and AmigaOS 4. Power users won't be interested in 200 MHz ColdFire, while they work on well above 1.0 GHz PowerPC. Retro fans won't be interested unless you deliver them a functional replica of A1200.

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@Cod3r

For information about natami-developement just got to:

http://www.natami.net/knowledge.php


The guy doing the developement is Thomas Hirsch.
He can tell you everything about this project.

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@Cod3r

There is already an Amiga clone, Minimig. To build proper Amiga clone you have to emulate custom chips and that is beyound your minimum-costs budget. Now if you cant include custom chip emulation you cant expect to sell more than few tens.

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@Dirk-B

Quote:

@Cod3r Maybe it is a stupid idea, but could you make a pci-card from it? That is something we dont have now, so maybe it could be usefull.

Dunno if it's feasible, but that would be great.