@wawa

Probably the reason why NASA chose PPC for its rovers

_________________

@megol

NutsAboutAmiga had a pretty good idea to use Raspberry PI so
that it would run some sort of modified UAE but to use cheap
FPGA Expansion Card for Pi (about 100 $) to hardware emulate
AGA chipset ...

Is it possible , how much would it cost and considering Pi-s
ability to overclock how much speed could emulated 68k
have compared to fast 060 ?

@AmigaMac

Quote:

Probably the reason why NASA chose PPC for its rovers

Most likely is there are so few radiation harden CPUs out there that have any significant horsepower. Last I looked, the top Intel harden CPU was a 486 class and that is pretty distant to a G3's capabilities.

_________________
Dammy

@blizz1220

Combining a Raspberry pi with a fpga is of course possible but not near optimal. The Raspberry uses an old ARM11 processor at 600MHz, something with a Cortex A9 would be preferable (it have much higher performance) but I don't know if there's a cheap board with the required connectors.

If it would be possible to get SoC FPGAs cheap it would be the best solution as both Xilinx and Altera have dual core ARM A9 combined with FPGA logic in one chip.

@megol

I think you can clock Pis CPU up to 1 Ghz stable maybe
even a little more ... I have no doubts that they will make
next Pi faster ...

NutsAboutAmiga found interesting premade card that
plugs into Pis expansion slot , it had FPGA with 300 000
gates I think but now I can't find it anywhere ...
I was wondering if it can be used for AGA ...

@nutsaboutamiga

Could you link the card to Megol ?

EDIT :

Found it :

http://www.astro-designs.com/pixi-200.php

Last edited by blizz1220 on 28-Jul-2013 at 08:27 PM.

@blizz1220

I can't see a price?

I'd prefer something like this instead:
http://shop.trenz-electronic.de/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=1_65_260&products_id=1387

It's much more expensive and would require an interface board but have two Cortex A9, cores much bigger and faster FPGA and 1GiB RAM on board.

@megol

Quote:

I can't see a price?

Maybe it's not available anymore ... Price was about 100 $ but
I think it could be slightly less if bought in bulk ...

Quote:

I'd prefer something like this instead: http://shop.trenz-electronic.de/ catalog/product_info.php?cPath=1_65_260&products_id=1387 It's much more expensive and would require an interface board but have two Cortex A9, cores much bigger and faster FPGA and 1GiB RAM on board.

Yes , Super Amiga

The point of above would be to build Amiga system that would
cost under 150 Eur and could be as fast as A1200/060 so the
price would be the main objective of the project ...

If possible at all with cheap Pi and Pixie ???

Last edited by blizz1220 on 28-Jul-2013 at 09:52 PM.

@megol

Quote:

megol wrote: I'd prefer something like this instead: http://shop.trenz-electronic.de/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=1_65_260&products_id=1387 It's much more expensive and would require an interface board but have two Cortex A9, cores much bigger and faster FPGA and 1GiB RAM on board.

That one would be nice if it could output video...

_________________
Wanna try a wonderfull magical Amiga strategy game?
Total Chaos AGA

@ChaosLord

Here's an idea in detail :

You write UAE with JIT for Pi to run on some most
lightweight Linux distro for the Pi ...

You modify that UAE so it doesn't emulate Amiga
( AGA ) chipset but uses cheapest possible FPGA
card for Pi to do the real stuff in hardware (so you
get perfect compatibility on the chipset side where
it's needed the most) ...

It uses Pi to emulate the rest (video,audio,etc) ...

When the new faster Pi hits the market you just
put the card in that and your Hybrid becomes
even faster and remains cheap and compatible ...

@blizz1220

Quote:

blizz1220 wrote: @ChaosLord Here's an idea in detail : You write UAE with JIT for Pi to run on some most lightweight Linux distro for the Pi ... You modify that UAE so it doesn't emulate Amiga ( AGA ) chipset but uses cheapest possible FPGA card for Pi to do the real stuff in hardware (so you get perfect compatibility on the chipset side where it's needed the most) ... It uses Pi to emulate the rest (video,audio,etc) ... When the new faster Pi hits the market you just put the card in that and your Hybrid becomes even faster and remains cheap and compatible ...

I agree its an awesome idea!

I have been looking around the last few weeks to find someone that I could cast some Brainwash spells onto to get them to code an opensource ARM JIT. UAE needs its JIT.

_________________
Wanna try a wonderfull magical Amiga strategy game?
Total Chaos AGA

@ChaosLord

It was actually NutsAboutAmiga's idea

I don't think there would be a way to force
someone by any means I can think off to
write that UAE and JIT though ...

Nor the FPGA programming

Only way to do this would be a kickstarter
project which would gain enough money
to hire professionals to do this ...

I think price could be as low as 120 $ if
there was enough interest to build at
least 1000 board but even if there wasn't
it probably shouldn't be more than 160 $ ...

EDIT : But somebody with more FPGA experience
should tell us first if it is doable ?

Last edited by blizz1220 on 28-Jul-2013 at 10:34 PM.

@ChaosLord

Well it can but there needs to be an adapter board with connectors. To output analog video either a video DAC or resistor ladders are needed but to connect to an LCD panel with LVDS signals only the connector is missing.

So... according to natami.net the natami project is not dead. A new website and a new project name is incoming apparently.

Well its good news but i hope to fuck pragmatism and realism are the watchwords from now on as regards this project. Still good news all the same.

Whether this means Thomas Hirsch has returned from hibernation or that the remaining team members have decided to continue with the project is anyone's guess.

@blizz1220

Not that it really matters, but Pi + FPGA add on was actually my idea. I brought it up in the fpga accelerator thread. There were some cpu estimates (very rough) in that thread too. I wouldn't say it's impossible to reach slow 60 speeds, but it'd require an ARM JIT. Interpreted was estimated at perhaps A1200 speed. But they were all mostly guesses.

This is the board I mentioned: http://www.astro-designs.com/pixi-200.php

I don't think it'd be useful as-is, as I think it needs an extra chip or two, and no idea if it's big enough. I think minimig used 320K gates, while the one in the pixi is 200K. It may be big enough to stuff AGA onto it though.

Last edited by Nameless on 29-Jul-2013 at 09:12 PM.

@adrianbrowne

Quote:

Whether this means Thomas Hirsch has returned from hibernation or that the remaining team members have decided to continue with the project is anyone's guess.

the first is highly unlikely the other simply impossible.

@Nameless

it doesnt take a genius to realize the way forward is some cpu running 68k emu + and amiga or fpga containing its chipset. many had this idea for years and even spelled it out (in public)..

@Nameless

Sorry , that's the second identity mistake I made
on this forum , again , didn't mean to ...
I read all forums concerning Natami,Fpga Arcade,
Tina etc and I never read idea to combine Pixie
and Pi before and , yes , it's yours.

I checked with a guy and he said (but he didn't
look into it) that Pixie 200 board could do AGA
as AGA just isn't that complex by today's
standards ...

And we already know that PiUAE + JIT is
possible so the question I guess is what
do you or anyone else want do about it ...

Kickstarter sounds like a reasonable
option I guess.This is how it works in
case anyone ever wondered :

http://www.kickstarter.com/start

EDIT : I think that with good coder and
JIT in place it should beat even 060
at 100 Mhz

Last edited by blizz1220 on 29-Jul-2013 at 09:49 PM.

Simlpy run UAE on a fast cpu.
Setup a minimal Linux system.
No FPGA neded.

@Tom01

Raspberry Pis are cheap because they are about
the speed of fastest Pentium II ...

Having Blitter and Copper (and what else in needed)
would give you real Amiga HW experience and 68k CPU
speed of an WinUAE running on a Pentium 4 ...

So it would be closer to say Amiga1200 with PPC card
(only with super fast and compatible JIT 020) than to
just UAE ...

EDIT : Joyports and catweasel-like addons would be
cool in this setup too ...

Plus P96 would be there and LAN too ...

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@wawa

Yeah, I didn't mean for it to sound like some great revelation on my part. I simply mentioned I brought up the pi + fpga idea, as if he or anyone wanted to look up the past conversation on the fpga accelerator thread, it's a lot easier if you know what username to look for.

One advantage to using the Pi is it solves one problem ... economies of scale. Instead of relying on short production runs and higher than usual prices, like most Amiga projects, anyone can buy a $25-$35 Pi. It's also a built-in market of over one million Pi users, who may be willing to purchase an 'Amiga FPGA' upgrade.