@olegil

Thanks for explaining that costs of FPGA are ridicolously high. I was not aware of that.

So to be realistic, what about a 60/70 max 79 US$ Minimig then?

_________________
"When the Amiga came out, everyone [at Apple] was scared as hell." (J.L. Gassée, former CEO of Apple France and chief of devs of Mac II-fx, interviewed by Amazing Computing, Nov 1996).

@Raffaele

FPGA costs are ridiculously low compared to an ASIC with an error or just an ASIC if you aree doing small runs.

@Rob

And this gratuituos exit about ASIC chips what does it means? Are there ASICs in Minimig?

_________________
"When the Amiga came out, everyone [at Apple] was scared as hell." (J.L. Gassée, former CEO of Apple France and chief of devs of Mac II-fx, interviewed by Amazing Computing, Nov 1996).

@Raffaele

He's pointing out that the thing you complain about be "ridculously expensive" is by far the cheapest solution to the hardware emulation problem, certainly at the volume you would be selling minimig types products at.

_________________
BroadBlues On Blues BroadBlues On Amiga Walker Broad

@Trewq

Quote:

Trewq wrote: @broadblues and all And don't forget Acube's developing an AGA Minimig !

And maybe it will come with the latest Workbench 3.1 (or even Workbench 3.X?) pre-installed as standard?

That would be sweet!

And maybe assembled in a 1200 style keyboard case, an "Amiga Forever 1200"!

@kolla

Quote:

kolla wrote: The so called NG OSes are just as retro as their ancestor, there's fundamentally nothing different about them

Not true, there were many updates to make them run on modern H/W and many other updates as well, especially in MorphOS. This is definitely not minor at all. But I know you mean stuff like 64-bit, SMP, etc. Which can't be there in a binary compatible Amiga environment.

@Chuckt

Quote:

Chuckt wrote: In about 24 hours, this project was funded 640% with 28 days to go. People want this made. The target was $50K and it has surpassed $320K.

Demand-driven development instead of wierd tech driven development ("Hmm, let's use PPC, not because it's fast, cheap or good in any way, but because it's not Intel, and let's use this cool CPU called PA6T that I have read so much about, it's mythical, doesn't matter that it's dead and end-of-line, and let's make something that will make people think of the old Zorro expansion, hmm, "Xorro" - "What is 'X'?", WOW now we have something, this can be used for... eh... uhm, well I'm sure there will be lots of use of it. Oops, the system now cost €3000, but hey, Amigas has always been expensive, right?")

Quote:

This is why new hardware is needed.

Not really. New H/W comes all the time. There are plenty of H/W everywhere, including this $9 machine!

@TRIPOS

Quote:

let's use this cool CPU called PA6T that I have read so much about, it's mythical, doesn't matter that it's dead and end-of-line

PA6T was very good choice back then and not dead or end of line; it was pity that Apple buy it but this was "AFTER" the choice was made. Remember that the iphone ARM cpu (that probably you admire) are designed by the PA6T team. So if the purchase was not been made all these skills would have been used in impove the PA6T line and now would have PA semi PowerPC line of cpus with more cores, more powerfull and much much more electricity efficients. Blame Apple on this and not to A-eon

_________________
No PowerPC, No Fun
Make Amiga Great Again

another project that Amiga could/should be aimed at

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2015/05/retro-vgs-console-aims-to-revive-the-humble-video-game-cartridge/

_________________
No PowerPC, No Fun
Make Amiga Great Again

This device might sound cheap but with the international shipping added it will cost me almost as much as a raspberry2. I hope they can lower the shipping price somehow, $20 dollars to ship this is way too much.

@Fransexy

Not sure what your talking bout (but must be something very different to what TRIPOS wrote)....

PASemi and it's P6T were dead in thw water YEARS before Trevor even thought about doing a motherboard.

It was only available as NOS (military) surplus and thats why prices went sky high even on the tiny demand created by AEon.

What if PASemin had not been bought of by Apple ?
Just as dead/obsolete as "current" PPC chips by FreeScale or AMCC as their whole modus operandi was based on the flawed idea that Apple would need a dual core PPC chip to update the PowerBooks in 2006 and beyond when in reality Apple had allready had decided much earlier to drop PPC.

With Apple dropping PPC there was no market for desktop/laptop suitable PPC-CPUs and even the market share in embeeded has been declining eversince.

_________________
- We don't need good ideas, we haven't run out on bad ones yet
- blame Canada

I have been more and more tempted with a raspberry pi for some little project but just dont have the time and the fact that actually sometimes an old PC is better and cheaper, in fact there are places that give you old computer for free, ( http://www.freebyte.com/free_computers/ ) ok the size and power of these new little computers are great, and maybe I might get into it.

_________________
AmigaNG, YouTube, LeaveReality Studio

@Fransexy
Quote:

PA6T was very good choice back then and not dead or end of line

PPC was a wrong choice already in the nineties. The right choice would have been to follow the marked and the software developers choice of hardware platform, me think.

Last edited by Hillbillylitre on 09-May-2015 at 03:27 PM.

_________________
Using: One Commodore C64 - One Commodore Amiga 500 - One Commodore Amiga 1200 with BVision and Blizzard 68060 with PPC coprocessor running Amiga DOS - One Hellbillylitre Amigatwox86x64x6000x running Windows7

@Hillbillylitre

Quote:

Hillbillylitre wrote: @Fransexy Quote: PA6T was very good choice back then and not dead or end of line PPC was a wrong choice already in the nineties. The right choice would have been to follow the marked and the software developers choice of hardware platform, me think.

as a proverb in my country says: "to past bull we are all bullfighters"

Last edited by Fransexy on 09-May-2015 at 04:20 PM.
Last edited by Fransexy on 09-May-2015 at 04:19 PM.

_________________
No PowerPC, No Fun
Make Amiga Great Again

@TRIPOS

Quote:

TRIPOS wrote: @Chuckt Quote: Chuckt wrote: In about 24 hours, this project was funded 640% with 28 days to go. People want this made. The target was $50K and it has surpassed $320K. Demand-driven development instead of wierd tech driven development ("Hmm, let's use PPC, not because it's fast, cheap or good in any way, but because it's not Intel, and let's use this cool CPU called PA6T that I have read so much about, it's mythical, doesn't matter that it's dead and end-of-line, and let's make something that will make people think of the old Zorro expansion, hmm, "Xorro" - "What is 'X'?", WOW now we have something, this can be used for... eh... uhm, well I'm sure there will be lots of use of it. Oops, the system now cost €3000, but hey, Amigas has always been expensive, right?") Quote: This is why new hardware is needed. Not really. New H/W comes all the time. There are plenty of H/W everywhere, including this $9 machine!

I was reading about the Commodore 64 and how people who programmed on them are called Old Fogies. I guess I am an old fogie now. The fact is they were perfect on teaching programming and if you ever got an old computer magazine, there were pages long programs that no one wanted to type in so I would type for three days and save my program to the disk drive. I practiced my typing on that.

Now those days are gone. You are all consumers instead of programmers (mostly).
How boring. You're all waiting for someone to give you a product instead of make one.

Hardware doesn't come all of the time. How many of you are into hobby electronics? Writing code at the system level is not the same as using a compiler. Most of you would say, "no..we can't program or do electronics" so you will never get machines. You have to stop clinging to your old machines and realize they can stop working at any time and then you won't have one.

The Old Hardware rules are keeping you in prison because you need new hardware and sometimes that means abandoning the past and using Amiga / Commodore themes and incorporating that in new off the shelf hardware and being free. Or you can buy an IBM and web surfing and setting up email in the nursing home will be your computer club.

@smf

Not to mention the extra card for VGA or HDMI.

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@olegil

A sub $100 Amiga (ideally around $50-$75, and a handheld), could sell if it was marketed properly. That means a toy company, or at least a real company, who could get products onto store shelves somewhere, and bundled with 100s of games/old applications. It wouldn't need to be superfast, or have modern graphics... nor do anything modern computers do. It'd be a retro game system whose appeal would be based on nostalgia.

Spectrum is doing it at an even higher price than $100 (for initial backers) and there was that Neo-Geo remake that was a tad pricey too. So anything sub-$100 could sell.

I know folks here sometimes come up with their 'dream' Amigas from time to time, which invariably are things like super modern Amigas, Quantum CPUs, or made up stuff that has no basis in reality.

My dream Amiga would be a 3-4" gaming handheld, perhaps slider keyboard or flip style (Nintendo DS), full backwards compatibility, proper 3.1 OS with Roms, and if going fancy, touchscreen + the ability to download adf files/check email/rudimentary web browsing.

With ARM JIT becoming a reality, I guess something like that could be a possibility on the cheap too. I mentioned one idea in the past for the slower Pi, and perhaps it wouldn't make sense as much now, but I've also wondered if it'd make financial sense to pair a slow ARM using JIT emulation just for the CPU and pair it up with a super cheap small FPGA that handles the sound/graphics chips. It could mean a higher level of compatibility and sort of has the 'cool factor' of not just being a straight emulator type of system ... a certain amount real hardware, even in FPGA, just seems to appeal to people more.

@Nameless

handheld means it has to include a screen, which adds cost.

So again, instead of being realistic you increased the cost and decreased the price, making the project impossible.

Here's what I mean:
A NG Amiga (without OCS/ECS/AGA support other than through emulation, which will be slow) can be made for sub 100 USD. Included in this price is a slow CPU, a few PCIe slots, maybe even some SATA ports, USB, ethernet. NOTHING ELSE. This is apparently not interesting to people. Either because it's not going to be fast enough, or it doesn't have onboard WHATEVER, or it isn't a laptop.

A classic clone exists and it's called minimig, very little margin exists here for making it cheaper, due to needing a medium sized FPGA plus a CPU or possibly just a single big FPGA.

It simply is not realistic to start with the minimig, add cost and then sell it for half the price in thousands of unit numbers. This is a pipe dream.

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.

@olegil

>A NG Amiga ...) can be made for sub 100 USD. Included in this price is a slow CPU, a few PCIe slots, maybe even some SATA ports, USB, ethernet. NOTHING ELSE. This is apparently not interesting to people. Either because it's not going to be fast enough, or it doesn't have onboard WHATEVER,

With 1,4Ghz 1...4 e5500 + 2...4GbRAM (with or without onboard GFX), it is interesting to some.

>or it isn't a laptop.

If the backplate and components are not too tall, that board sould fit in DIY laptops (at least)?
( http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/itx-laptop/ )

And AGA fan(atics) can always plug FPGAGA in via PCIe... / mPCIe

Last edited by KimmoK on 13-May-2015 at 12:28 PM.

_________________
- KimmoK
// For freedom, for honor, for AMIGA
//
// Thing that I should find more time for: CC64 - 64bit Community Computer?

@KimmoK

sub 100 means sub-25 for the CPU alone, so the 1.2GHz 2-core T1 is too expensive for such an endeavor.

But sub 200 as a handheld device could theoretically be done (add touchscreen, battery, enclosure and the higher CPU cost plus margins and taxes to the equation).

Of course, now you lost the graphics card option so you're stuck with the rather slow 2D framebuffer. But for a handheld maybe that's good enough.

_________________
This weeks pet peeve:
Using "voltage" instead of "potential", which leads to inventing new words like "amperage" instead of "current" (I, measured in A) or possible "charge" (amperehours, Ah or Coulomb, C). Sometimes I don't even know what people mean.