@Seiya

There is clearly demand for new "classsic" hardware solution (eg. high anticipation of Natami project).

Their page states the goal is 68020 400 MHz faster than any 68060. Well, 68020 400 MHz would be roughly as fast as 68060 70 MHz, not much for modern use. On the other hand, 400 MHz 68k CPU with similar performance per MHz as 68060 would be comparable to 603e in Efika - useable for basic webbrowsing and even 3D games (with R200 GFX card).

@Seiya

Quote:

The Team has moneys and times to spend for their dreams, so let them dream

+1

@pavlor

Quote:

Complete in sense specialy designed, manufactured and bundled with OS by default, exactly like Amiga models from Commodore era.

if the hardware was specially designed for the os or vice versa then the os would take advantage of the hardware features. instead its the foreign oses (linux distros) that take better advantage of the presumably specially designed hardware, be it a1, peg2, sam or x1k. we know a1 were not designed for os4, the os has been adopted to available third party design because of no better alternative. there was no choice what concerns the hardware features, they must have been accepted as they were. i guess similar was the case with sam and x1k designs. these boards were designed with something else in mind, but since they happened to be based on ppc cpu they might be made run os4. it probably sounds shocking in case of sam or x1k, but how else to explain such obviously unnecessary parts like not usable fpga or onboard xmos? for me it really looks like drafts from the bottom of the drawer. i see no comparison to commodore amiga which even if disputable quality was a complete logically assembled system usable for the tasks it was designed for at the time of release.

@wawa

Quote:

if the hardware was specially designed for the os or vice versa then the os would take advantage of the hardware features.

Since when AmigaOS uses ALL features of OCS/ECS/AGA chipset?

Quote:

we know a1 were not designed for os4

Correct for original A1 (Teron boards). X1000 is another beast - this computer was realy designed to run AmigaOS. Do you know other motherboard suited for desktop use with PA6T CPU, XCore and Xorro? Embedded or military customers would not need two PCIe x16 slots, 10x USB 2.0 connectors and both PATA/SATA. Such configuration is ideal for desktop OS.

Last edited by pavlor on 25-Jan-2013 at 09:20 PM.

@cdimauro

Personally I think any chipset support is just slows the transmission to modern graphic card and sound cards.

Instead some you are looking back to what was in mid 80's, instead of look at modern hardware and think about how you can take advantage of it.

The only chipset support I can se as some what useful if some created a modern paula soundcard that you can plug in to PC or AmigaONE, to help WinUAE/EUAE, and also it might support 8bit and 16bit sound, legacy compatible but modern, but it be used as normal sound card.

If 68k programs is run under AmigaOS4 or MorphOS is going to use Paula Sound card it will require changes like to program code, any program that is to use PCI card has to be able to scan PCI ports to find the paula chip (or zorro, usb or what ever), this is not possible when address of paula chip is hardcoded into the programs and games.

I really feal that past developers have painted there software into a corner by not having API to ask for address of Paula sound card.

AHI came around 1992 but there are not that many programs and games that support the API.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 25-Jan-2013 at 10:23 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 25-Jan-2013 at 10:07 PM.

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@pavlor

Quote:

Since when AmigaOS uses ALL features of OCS/ECS/AGA chipset?

so far i know amiga kickstart and workbench has supported those chipsets quite well, how else would you get any picture or tone out of your amiga? dedicated devices and libraries are integral parts of the sytem. sure you could push it to the limit and there was enough third party software banging the hardware. anything like that for xena on a1k or the fpga on sam? and yes, ive seen the blinkig diode. im not even talking about the rest of built in hardware that isnt or is poorly supported up till now on sam and x1k systems.

Quote:

. X1000 is another beast - this computer was realy designed to run AmigaOS.

thats what everybody assumes. perhaps it has been assembled for os4 but was it really designed for it any more than teron boards? im not sure if even trevor knows the entire truth. we know that the varisys functionality tests have been done with linux, which means from the pov of the hardware designers nemo board was built for linux and linux was the right system to prove that they carried out their task as appointed. trevor himself mentioned, os4 was not something varisys engineers were really interested in, found of or had any knowledge about.

Quote:

Do you know other motherboard suited for desktop use with PA6T CPU, XCore and Xorro?

actually exactly xmos core on board indicates the design concept had apparently (initially) nothing to do with amiga, heck, with os4.. it is completely useless. and dont give me "you, the users,will tell us what it is good for" crap. it doesnt soud convincing. imagine jay miner throwing lorraine at the first amiga customers and telling them such a thing. you should provide customers with solutions to their ideas not with your own insecurity and riddles. the so called xena and xorro are much easier to explain as a part of a genuinely own varisys concept design they may have had available since pasemi cpu went out of production, without having actually a customer for it.

Quote:

Embedded or military customers would not need two PCIe x16 slots, 10x USB 2.0 connectors and both PATA/SATA. Such configuration is ideal for desktop OS.

who knows. perhaps as i said it was just a concept design with a ppc cpu they have used without having a clear target. perhaps they just incorporated all available interfaces they had available on the soc (and the support chipset) for the sake of excercise. i dont know. but it sure looks as weird as putting that board into a server (?) case with cages for twenty hard disks.

Last edited by wawa on 25-Jan-2013 at 10:11 PM.

@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

If 68k programs is run under AmigaOS4 or MorphOS is going to use Paula Sound card it will require changes like to program code, any program that is to use PCI card has to be able to scan PCI ports to find the paula chip (or zorro, usb or what ever), this is not possible when address of paula chip is hardcoded into the programs and games.

there is solution for this apparently working for amithlon, no need to hack the software, just substitute audio.device with this:

http://aminet.net/package/driver/audio/eaudio_device_68k

im not sure if it solves hardware banging, but the system conform software will likely work without the need of ahi.

Quote:

Personally I think any chipset support is just slows the transmission to modern graphic card and sound cards. Instead some you are looking back to what was in mid 80's, instead of look at modern hardware and think about how you can take advantage of it.

you need the chipset for the legacy reasons. otherwise i dont see how it slows down any transition? i have amiga chipset, rtg and a soundcard in my amiga next to each other with no problem. why these conspiracy theories?

Last edited by wawa on 25-Jan-2013 at 10:21 PM.
Last edited by wawa on 25-Jan-2013 at 10:18 PM.
Last edited by wawa on 25-Jan-2013 at 10:18 PM.

@pavlor

Quote:

Do you know other motherboard suited for desktop use with PA6T CPU, XCore and Xorro?

Is FPGA and UMTS/GSM module included, like in the leading competing product?

_________________
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Amiga 500, Efika, Mac Mini and PowerBook

@wawa

Quote:

so far i know amiga kickstart and workbench has supported those chipsets quite well

Not all features offered by chipsets, most games even bypassed OS for optimal performance.

And of course, do you remember first A600? These little computers not able to realy use onboard IDE without Kickstart upgrade?

Quote:

thats what everybody assumes. perhaps it has been assembled for os4 but was it really designed for it any more than teron boards? im not sure if even trevor knows the entire truth

Trevor stated OS4 developers set features they would like to see on new high-end motherboard and Varisys designed and manufactured it. Addition of XCore was of course idea of Varisys, that is known fact since 2010.

Quote:

but it sure looks as weird as putting that board into a server (?) case with cages for twenty hard disks.

X1000 uses same (modified) case as PC of my brother.


To summ it up:
1) Trevor contracted Varisys to design desktop computer based on multicore PPC with features set by OS4 developers.
2) There was no prior motherboard design by Varisys similar to Nemo.
3) Nemo is clearly desktop computer, designed to run desktop operating system.
3) Trevor´s intention was to use this new motherboard for AmigaOS.

Conclusion: X1000 was designed to run AmigaOS.

@itix

Quote:

Is FPGA and UMTS/GSM module included, like in the leading competing product?

I don´t think X1000 has any competition in its price league on the OS4 market.

@pavlor

Has anyone demonstrated a use for XMOS being on the motherboard as opposed to being on a USB connection or not connected at all functioning as an independent system?

@wawa

Well yes audio.device even less programs supports it, and AmigaOS4 already can do that.

Well I think best approach is to ask developer who wrote the orignal program for source code, add AHI support and Timer.device support, ask if its okay to disassemble and fix it.

Disassemble programs has turned messy, my experience whit it is that IRA disassembler is great at generating code, but horrible to understand that text is not Assembly code.

And so doing a quick fix is not as easy as first looks, guess thats way there not more programs being fixed.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 25-Jan-2013 at 11:08 PM.

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@pavlor

Well the Paula chip is simple thing to program it should be easy to emulate in the XMOS chip
if the XMOS has direct access to RAM like DMA controller, as the Paula chip only gets the address of the sample and frequence and length of the sample, the sample is not loaded into the chip, If and only if you can reserve the addresses that Paula chip uses and read data bus when data is writen to this address, and yes XMOS is only software driven CPU not a FPGA, the only issue I have whit is that there is no audio connectors connected to the XMOS, I'm simply not going to put a soldering iron neer a 18000 NOK + 3000 NOK MVA computer, that is sold out.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 25-Jan-2013 at 11:12 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 25-Jan-2013 at 11:09 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 25-Jan-2013 at 10:55 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 25-Jan-2013 at 10:54 PM.

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@pavlor

Quote:

Not all features offered by chipsets, most games even bypassed OS for optimal performance. And of course, do you remember first A600? These little computers not able to realy use onboard IDE without Kickstart upgrade?

one may argue that at the time a600 was released a harddisk was a mandatory part of any computer. not so with amiga alas. i had an a600 and never had a hard drive in it. it was pretty silent little machine, totaly usable for what it was. however if i had a harddisk in it and had no driver to make use of it, i would be disapointed. not to mention it was a bargain deal from a supermarket, soon it got replaced with an a1200 anyway.

Quote:

Trevor stated OS4 developers set features they would like to see on new high-end motherboard and Varisys designed and manufactured it.

very convenient, then why did the os4 developers not support the features they demanded with appropriate drivers up till now?

Quote:

To summ it up: 1) Trevor contracted Varisys to design desktop computer based on multicore PPC with features set by OS4 developers.

thanks for reminding me about that the cpu is multicore, almost forgotten. really, can you explain why trevor let design a machine with features apparently impossible to support by os4, and that in accordance with os4 developers?
Quote:

2) There was no prior motherboard design by Varisys similar to Nemo.

may be. i wasnt to their labs, but they could have at least a close draft in a drawer.
Quote:

3) Nemo is clearly desktop computer, designed to run desktop operating system

with xmos, some weird custom interface built in? well its not as entirely clear as you try to suggest. but if it was designed to properly run desktop os, the it was not os4 but linux as ive already mentioned. and this is the plain reason why linux runs apparently better on it.
Quote:

3) Trevor´s intention was to use this new motherboard for AmigaOS.

and that is something that i do not doubt. he obviously had no better choice.

@persia

Quote:

persia wrote: @pavlor Has anyone demonstrated a use for XMOS being on the motherboard as opposed to being on a USB connection or not connected at all functioning as an independent system?

Well a XMOS on USB card is not going to be useful for Paula or AGA support, there are USB pcb broads you can buy and program, like teensy products.

http://hackaday.com/2012/09/05/meet-the-teensy-3-0/

this cards can be used to convert a legacy joystick to USB joystick
or connect you A500 or A1200 keyboard to a PC, floppy disk controller, it flexible, and cool, but at the end of the day it not going solve any major legacy issues.

I guess the best chance is if you connect a PCB to the DDR2 socket, that has FPGA on it.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 25-Jan-2013 at 11:37 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 25-Jan-2013 at 11:37 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 25-Jan-2013 at 11:34 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 25-Jan-2013 at 11:33 PM.

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@wawa

Quote:

very convenient, then why did the os4 developers not support the features they demanded with appropriate drivers up till now?

PCIe is supported and used for development of 2D/3D drivers (realy good to have 2 PCIe x16 slots).

Quote:

almost forgotten. really, can you explain why trevor let design a machine with features apparently impossible to support by os4, and that in accordance with os4 developers?

Can you provide source for such claim?


Of course not...

Dual-core CPU was demanded by Frieden brothers exactly for future multi-core support.

Quote:

may be. i wasnt to their labs, but they could have at least a close draft in a drawer.

And OS5 will be better than MacOS X.

Quote:

the it was not os4 but linux as ive already mentioned

Who sane would design such motherboard for Linux?

Quote:

wawa wrote: @cdimauro Quote: It's interesting because we can have a reference for MMU implementation. I read something, and it seams that the JIT is disabled, so performance will be very slow right now. if you read exactly, toni says its going to stay like this. jit and mmu are mutually exclusive, so okay, some sort of fpga implementation may be a better choice if achievable. yet i heard its very complicated, gunnar of natami team didnt even want to talk of it.

Ah, OK. If you want something like an MMU running with good performance you have to wait a bit.
Quote:

Quote: The problem is that it's what Alberto doesn't want / need for his company. I don't think that we can take into consideration this solution. for gods sake, im not trying to talk you into it. im only portraying an interesting alternative. actually i prefer you follow your roadmap as is, the decisions start to sound reasonable. would love it become reality.

Alberto explained to the team the reason to start the TiNA project. In short: they needed an home-built system which resembles an Amiga for their specific business. So they decided to not the invent the wheel again, but start with an Amiga-like project, with defined hardware, existing software, and a community which is still active.

That's why the boards will not cost so much: it's not his core business, but you can consider a graceful "side-effect" for the Amiga community.

I think that it suffices to answer a lot of questions (even to NutsAboutAmiga, that raised similar ones).
Quote:

wawa wrote: @cdimauro Quote: The Minimig one (which is TG68 based, if I remember correctly), since we have found nothing else. A forum user has tried to contact Minimig v2 / FPGArcade people, but hasn't received any answer, unfortunately. the cooperation here might be most desired. fpga arcade seems to be mature baseboard solution, allowing for extensions. lets not underestimate the whole finetune components and interface work. the problem is it gets constantly delayed. one reason is the sourcing components and fabrication problems as it seems, another perhaps that mikej tries to hit too many targets at once. even though claims the fabrication problems been solved at last im not sure if i trust it. the company like this of your friend may help with with fabrication while benefit of building upon available baseboard and chipset+cpu core. just an appropriate daughterboard with huge fpga would cost much less time and ressources, and may be most suficcient to develop 68k core individually. one would have to work out an agreement though. this is what i mean by modularizing projects. im aware though even if reasonable from the pov of amiga community it might be another alternative that doesnt fit into the your friends concept.

Absolutely. We are seeking for active people for the project, and joining forces is, IMHO, the only way to make projects like this to survive.

The company, as said, has in-house capabilities to develop and build motherboards, and they are already working on this. So the "physical", hardware, side of the thing will have a solid base where to start from.

What is needed now is other people that works to the firmware, which has experience on VHDL or similar things (I have none, but I'm interesting in contributing with my experience and with some "logical" parts; other engineers have experience on FPGAs / VHDL). The Minimig, FPGArcade, and even Natami guys are best candidates, and they can see this like a great opportunity to work on much better platform, with A LOT of hardware resources that are available to make their dreams true (yes, Seiya was right here ).

That's all. If we want to further discuss about TiNA, its forum is the right place: there are several English-only sub-forums that are opened for this.

Quote:

Massi wrote: @cdimauro In my opinion, in all your articles about the modern Amiga you are never unbiased thus not reliable at all! You are very negative and always come to the same expected conclusions! You are boring (seccante) while I would prefer something more constructive instead. Regards

Facts are facts, guy: they cannot be labeled as "unreliable" just because you don't like them. Logic: what a wonderful word...

If you find my articles "predictable" and so negative, why do you read them? Nobody is forcing you, so don't do that anymore.

P.S. There's no "modern" "Amiga". Amiga as I said, is dead platform.

@cdimauro

So why you waste your time writing articles about a dead system???
Move to another subject then!!!

Do not bite the hand where you eat!

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@cdimauro

It is clear that you don' t know much about AmigaOS 4.x both hardware and software sides, so you better stay silent and respect it!

Our community doesn' t need bullshit!

Full stop.

Last edited by Massi on 26-Jan-2013 at 09:26 AM.

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