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PosterThread
Chuckt 
The First $9 Computer
Posted on 8-May-2015 12:19:59
#1 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 22-Feb-2008
Posts: 445
From: Unknown

Can't we have some Amiga emulation here? Don't any of you develop?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1598272670/chip-the-worlds-first-9-computer

1 GHZ processor
512MG Ram
4GB Storage

8 digital GPIOs, one PWM pin, SPI, TWI, UART, USB, MIPI-CSI, Parallel LCD output, touchpanel input, and a whole bunch of power rails in and out. Most of these are set by the processor, but others are still subject to change as we finalize part selections. We’ll post more specific pinouts and electrical specs when we have finalized the design for “Alpha” modules in September.

Why can't we have new hardware with an Emulator?
Isn't it funny other people can come up with a computer but the Amiga camp won't entertain new hardware?

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pavlor 
Re: The First $9 Computer
Posted on 8-May-2015 12:22:58
#2 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 10-Jul-2005
Posts: 9578
From: Unknown

@Chuckt

Quote:
Can't we have some Amiga emulation here? Don't any of you develop?


As it is Linux device, port of some UAE derivate should be easy. 1 GHz is enough for A500 emulation.

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broadblues 
Re: The First $9 Computer
Posted on 8-May-2015 13:02:56
#3 ]
Amiga Developer Team
Joined: 20-Jul-2004
Posts: 4446
From: Portsmouth England

@pavlor

Quote:

1 GHz is enough for A500 emulation.


Just about.

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pavlor 
Re: The First $9 Computer
Posted on 8-May-2015 14:02:34
#4 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 10-Jul-2005
Posts: 9578
From: Unknown

@broadblues

Quote:
Just about.


Enough for Populous 2 or Gods, not enough for Lionheart.

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fishy_fis 
Re: The First $9 Computer
Posted on 8-May-2015 16:41:33
#5 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 29-Mar-2004
Posts: 2156
From: Australia

Interesting that for $150K this machine can be produced in bulk, benefitting from economy of scale, whereas the same cant be done for amiga-oid systems when more money is involved (that's only 80 a1x1000's, or maybe 150 Sams, etc.).

A 460ex cpu is dirt cheap to buy, yet there seems to be a huuuuge premium, vs something like this.

I'll leave it to y'all to fill in the blanks here

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broadblues 
Re: The First $9 Computer
Posted on 8-May-2015 17:07:26
#6 ]
Amiga Developer Team
Joined: 20-Jul-2004
Posts: 4446
From: Portsmouth England

@fishy_fis

Quote:

I'll leave it to y'all to fill in the blanks here


1. Ecomomy of scale only works if you can guarantee to sell the product. The kickstarter obviously offsets the risk here.

2. This thing is tiny, has no expansion connectors, minimal IO connectors, no conncetivity for real storage (USB harddrives barely count).

3. It runs linux => negligle OS support overhead / drivers required.

4. Specuation but perhaps it's a loss leader? The compny may hope to makeprofit by selling support hardware kits (even software)?

That's a start plenty more blanks you can fill in by yourself I'msure.

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Nameless 
Re: The First $9 Computer
Posted on 8-May-2015 17:15:17
#7 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 10-Nov-2008
Posts: 315
From: Unknown

@fishy_fis

Raspberry Pi 2 is still probably a better deal, and more useful for Amiga emulation. I think to even get this $9 computer to work with hdmi (or anything besides composite) you need an adapter than runs about $10-$15 extra. By the time you get it semi-useful, you'll be close enough to what the Pi 2 costs.

As for why nobody has done something like this for the Amiga... I'd guess it's a combination of rights issues being all over the place, and if doing it properly (meaning 68K in a cheap ASIC), it'd get pricey upfront for the manufacturer. Still... you would have thought somebody, somewhere, would have done a kickstarter type of thing for some sort of Amiga FPGA/ASIC or even JIT ARM device by now.

I also just read about the Spectrum Vega the other day, a new Spectrum in a controller type of device that should be coming out this year.

That is what a new Amiga should be, full-fledged retro device. Ideally I'd say handheld even, as with its library of games, it'd make a nice little games system.

Last edited by Nameless on 08-May-2015 at 05:17 PM.
Last edited by Nameless on 08-May-2015 at 05:16 PM.

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broadblues 
Re: The First $9 Computer
Posted on 8-May-2015 17:24:48
#8 ]
Amiga Developer Team
Joined: 20-Jul-2004
Posts: 4446
From: Portsmouth England

@Nameless

Quote:

That is what a new Amiga should be, full-fledged retro device. Ideally I'd say handheld even, as with its library of games, it'd make a nice little games system.


I don't use Amiga for it's retroness, so we'll ever agree on that aspect but there was this thing called the minimig?

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Samurai_Crow 
Re: The First $9 Computer
Posted on 8-May-2015 17:25:11
#9 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 18-Jan-2003
Posts: 2320
From: Minnesota, USA

@Chuckt

Keep in mind that this is a single-core 1 GHz ARM CPU (equivalent to a 250MHz Pentium II but, unlike the Raspberry Pi, may have 64-bit addressing support). I have a phone with roughly the same specs (Prism2) and it is dog slow under Android 4.3.

My RasPi 2 is a quad-core but not much faster since many programmers haven't multithreaded their code. (Sadly, this includes most UAE implementations.) An ARM JIT is in the works for Amiga emulators but this still yields sub-060 performance. Lastly, most phone SoC components only have OpenGL-ES drivers but no full OpenGL drivers so UAE needs some rework there too.

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Raffaele 
Re: The First $9 Computer
Posted on 8-May-2015 17:28:40
#10 ]
Super Member
Joined: 7-Dec-2005
Posts: 1906
From: Naples, Italy

@Thread

I will gladly donate for a $9 Minimig kickstarter or for a range $19 upto $29 MInimig 1200 Kickstarter!

Last edited by Raffaele on 08-May-2015 at 05:29 PM.

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RodTerl 
Re: The First $9 Computer
Posted on 8-May-2015 17:30:02
#11 ]
Cult Member
Joined: 6-Sep-2004
Posts: 589
From: Rossendale

Imagine just how powerful this machine would be with a decent round robin preemptive interupt drive multitasking microkernal, instead of something that has all hardwqare it will never see drivers loaded in in busy wait and demand load.

If this full on massively parralel bus SoC costs this price, how much would a 4 pin SoC cost to make?

How come, to massively save on costs, has nobody brought out an SPI LCD so that when using SPI Flash store, it requires no extra pins?

Or if you are going to make it SPI state selectable, a USB LCD so that you can plug 128 extra units on those oh so handy 2 IO pins, with the 2 Power pins.

If Alien Breed 3D runs on a 100 Mhz 060, and 3D Doom, Quake runs on 500 Mhz, why doesnt a supercomputer like this come with TRONM 3D file system, GUI, that uses less than 25% of its power, leaving 50% power for Inglish real time semantic parsing and inteliigence, and enough left over to run Wordpad, QB64, HTML layout parsers etc?

Why are modern machines so horrifically slow?


This is a great piece of kit, but to me, far too complex in everything in one instead of a cluster of modules for adaptive robotics etc.

I use a quick example. if I use a Composite display and a USB keyboard and mouse, hub power, how long from power on can I do the standard stages of coding.

Print "Hello World"

For f=1 to 10:print f:next f

for f=1 to 100:plot f,f,colour(0,255,255,0):next f

Mandelbrot set.

Save program.

Save mandelbrot as image file.

SAve Mandelbrot as data array.

Load files, data etc.

Hilbert transform the Mandelbrot data set.

Fourier transform the Hilbert set in complex, quaternion space?

Etc?

Can it run Barrys Python code to generate audio in terminal, python script for speech synthesis, music etc

How quickly can it run IO accessing Arexx script in UAE or even SAE?

Can a kernal be coded that uses unified memory space and bypassed the need for an MMU?

Is it limited to 32 bit, 32 PAE/36 bit, 48 bit, 64 bit, UUID or 256 bit unified addresses?

Is there Avail Flush available with kernal creation write out? So that subsequent boots are only on code used?

Can an optimised boot, hibernation file be setup easily by default, so changes cause a full reboot and scan etc?

Ah.

Sorry bout that.

This thing is more powerful than all except my primary PC, and its still being over and undersold at the same time, oversold with all the power sucky apps that abuse systems, and undersold because what it basically can do is far more than what most people ever want out of it.

I use a measure. I run Second Life. This thing should be able to run an optimised, trimmed version of its interface, at the very least, the text chat and audio interfaces with Doom style 3D screen.

Second Life. And a Word Processor cripples it more?

Really hope this thing takes off big time. One more step on teh road of getting people to realise just how stupidly powerful for a given price modern systems actually are.

Oh look, Intel announces a 256 Gigabyte RAM chip. Thats enough to run the Watson Server. Looks like IBM is on track to get Watson in a hand hold by 2017/8 or so.

I just wish I could code.

Please ignore the madman behind the curtain.

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Trewq 
Re: The First $9 Computer
Posted on 8-May-2015 17:30:50
#12 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 1-Jun-2012
Posts: 205
From: Unknown

@broadblues and all

And don't forget Acube's developing an AGA Minimig !


Last edited by Trewq on 08-May-2015 at 05:31 PM.

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fishy_fis 
Re: The First $9 Computer
Posted on 8-May-2015 17:41:00
#13 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 29-Mar-2004
Posts: 2156
From: Australia

@Trewq

Cool, I liked Asteroids. It's no Stardust, but still fun.


@broadblues

True, that's at least another $20.

Last edited by fishy_fis on 08-May-2015 at 05:43 PM.

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fishy_fis 
Re: The First $9 Computer
Posted on 8-May-2015 17:47:06
#14 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 29-Mar-2004
Posts: 2156
From: Australia

@Samurai_Crow

The RPi2's increased performance isn't due just to the fact its quad core/increased threads.
The A7 is significantly faster in some areas, especially fpu performance and simd extensions vs rpi1.

Last edited by fishy_fis on 08-May-2015 at 05:49 PM.

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Nameless 
Re: The First $9 Computer
Posted on 8-May-2015 17:50:40
#15 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 10-Nov-2008
Posts: 315
From: Unknown

@broadblues

Minimig unfortunately was not marketed widely nor priced anywhere near the disposable price range ($10-$100), ideally no more than $50. When I say that a new Amiga should be full fledged retro, I don't mean it would necessarily exclude AOS4/MorphOS. It doesn't have to be one or the other, both could exist.

But I do think a retro device, cheaply priced and marketed properly, is the only way for the Amiga to become relevant again at all. I don't mean relevant in the sense that it'd be used as a modern computer, or sell millions... just enough so there could be some developer interest (let's say a min. 50K-250K sold).

Last edited by Nameless on 08-May-2015 at 06:00 PM.
Last edited by Nameless on 08-May-2015 at 05:52 PM.

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kolla 
Re: The First $9 Computer
Posted on 8-May-2015 18:14:53
#16 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 20-Aug-2003
Posts: 2859
From: Trondheim, Norway

The so called NG OSes are just as retro as their ancestor, there's fundamentally nothing different about them, they are to OS3.1 what MacOS9 was to System7.

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Chuckt 
Re: The First $9 Computer
Posted on 8-May-2015 18:44:18
#17 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 22-Feb-2008
Posts: 445
From: Unknown

@Samurai_Crow

Quote:

Samurai_Crow wrote:
@Chuckt

Keep in mind that this is a single-core 1 GHz ARM CPU (equivalent to a 250MHz Pentium II but, unlike the Raspberry Pi, may have 64-bit addressing support). I have a phone with roughly the same specs (Prism2) and it is dog slow under Android 4.3.

My RasPi 2 is a quad-core but not much faster since many programmers haven't multithreaded their code. (Sadly, this includes most UAE implementations.) An ARM JIT is in the works for Amiga emulators but this still yields sub-060 performance. Lastly, most phone SoC components only have OpenGL-ES drivers but no full OpenGL drivers so UAE needs some rework there too.


The only thing I have against the Raspberry Pi is lack of GPIO pins.

I believe they will upgrade this unit and come out with different options because it will get incredibly popular and companies like Sparkfun, Make, and Adafruit will make different products and cases for it.

Should someone figure out how to put three of these together, I think there would be more power.

I still think we should follow what is going on and look into it further.
The idea that it has HDMI and VGA shields (daughterboards) means we will get badly needed video. I'm excited but I don't know which option to choose on the Kickstarter and I want to belong to a group that uses this computer for more than emulation. This is for programming and developing. This could teach computing and engineering. Someone could make money at it because it is a lot cheaper than a $30 Arduino. I supposed that $9 for a CPU, $15 for a video board and $10 for profit is what it will cost in the future. Plus add in a keyboard and it will cost more.

Last edited by Chuckt on 08-May-2015 at 06:56 PM.

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Chuckt 
Re: The First $9 Computer
Posted on 9-May-2015 4:01:24
#18 ]
Regular Member
Joined: 22-Feb-2008
Posts: 445
From: Unknown

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.

This is why new hardware is needed.

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fishy_fis 
Re: The First $9 Computer
Posted on 9-May-2015 4:12:44
#19 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 29-Mar-2004
Posts: 2156
From: Australia

@kolla

Quote:
The so called NG OSes are just as retro as their ancestor, there's fundamentally nothing different about them, they are to OS3.1 what MacOS9 was to System7


That's a pretty apt comparison actually.
I'd previously made a Win95 to Win98 parallel, but the OS7 to OS9 comparison fits a little better.

Slightly off the topic, but I wonder which is more capable, an "NG" amiga-oid system, or a Win95 machine with bells and whistles applied.....
I have some free time today, maybe I should investigate

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olegil 
Re: The First $9 Computer
Posted on 9-May-2015 5:43:47
#20 ]
Elite Member
Joined: 22-Aug-2003
Posts: 5895
From: Work

@Raffaele

The minimig includes an FPGA, it's hard to imagine it costing $9 when you can't get an FPGA to fit the code below that cost. So no company in their right mind is gonna take that deal.

Going by the digikey prices, for the same price as the xc3s400 used in the original minimig, it's possible to get an xc6slx16, which is roughly equivalent to twice the size. This could theoretically be able to fit the CPU emulation inside, but don't quote me on that (as I don't remember the size needed to include 68k emulation).

Then you have to add support components, PCB, connectors, flash and RAM. This'll add some cost.

Of course, noone should go by the digikey prices for Xilinx devices, ever. Full stop

Assuming that it could be possible to get almost a 50% discount from digikey prices for the, we're talking a minimum of 30 USD in direct component cost for a minimig, in extremely big quantities. Let's say 40 to be safe. Now, do you want this shipped to your home and do you want a warranty? How about EMC safety testing to insure it doesn't harm you or your TV set?

In short, do you want it to be made legally by a european company, or below the radar by some shady chinese outfit?

On the other hand, as I've explained many times before on this site, if we wanted to we could do a sub $100 next-gen Amiga, but it wouldn't be a laptop and it wouldn't be super-awesomely-fast and it wouldn't have an FPGA for AGA emulation etc ad nauseam. But every time those discussions end up derailing into "it needs to also have ..." which at least one of us knows is gonna add cost.

Please be realistic.

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