@Franko

Quote:

as I said they are still the largest Amiga group around

Question is: Would they pay for new hardware? UAE is so cheap.

@pavlor

who knows? ;D

@pavlor

Quote:

pavlor wrote: @Franko Quote: as I said they are still the largest Amiga group around Question is: Would they pay for new hardware? UAE is so cheap.

Pretty sure a lot of them would, otherwise the Amiga section on eBay would have disappeared long ago, along with Amibay and Jens wouldn't be selling his products and Amigakit would now be a PC parts company or have shut up shop...

UAE may well be cheap but the fact still remains there are more classic hardware users out there than any other variety, so there is still a potential market out there...

Even though a lot of us still spend quite a substantial sum keeping our Amiga going there are a lot of tightwads in Amigaland who want everything for next to nothing or for free though...

I just hope something comes of this project as something new 68K wise is long overdue and more than welcome...

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@Birbo

Quote:

So if you could help Thomas Hirsch to finish his project, that would be awesome.

i dont think thomas is going to accept help.
instead one could help this guy:
http://www.natami.net/knowledge.php?b=6¬e=32232

or even better help with fpgaarcade cores..
but as goals differ i dont think there is much room to help each other.

Last edited by wawa on 14-Jul-2012 at 01:49 PM.

@Franko

Quote:

I just hope something comes of this project as something new 68K wise is long overdue and more than welcome...

That is also my hope. However, I´m less and less eager to spend money on my classic machines (I fear my A1200 could explode to my face with additional hardware pieces ), I will maybe add newer HDD (eg. CF) and scan doubler, but nothing more. I would surely not pay more than 500 EUR for enhanced clone of any classic computer. I had high hopes for Natami (I was tempted despite proposed insane price), but this direction seems to be effectively dead way. My money will now go only to "NG" Amiga derivates.

@Cod3r

Quote:

Emulating chips is easy if you know the specs. With FPGA, that is very simple. Heck, if you know what you're doing, you can do it in software alone.

I dont think so.

Quote:

From what I read about Minimig, it uses an original 68k cpu. I use binary translation on ColdFire. Not the same. And at the speed it runs at, it really isn't an upgrade to what the original Commodore did before (please correct me if i'm wrong).

If you want compatible implementation it should run roughly at the same speed than the original 68000 clocked at 7 MHz. Failing to do that some games will not work. On the other hand well done Amiga 500 or Amiga 1200 replica could sell well. Minimig didnt but it was never marketed outside current Amiga world.

Now if you dont care about compatibility it is lot easier but demand for Amiga desktop system is low. It would be competing in very fragmented and small "high end Amiga" "segment" where users can already choose from AROS, MorphOS, AmigaOS 3, AmigaOS 4 and WinUAE.

So in the end you have to decide what you want to sell. Proper Amiga clone is easier to sell but you have to sort out compatibility issues, licensing issues, sales channels and marketing. Proper Amiga "high end" system could sell tens or few hundreds with a minimum effort but sooner than later the market is saturated and sales stall.

If I was you I would evaluate existing Minimig design and use that as a starting point.

(Note that I have real Amiga 500 here because I want to play old games like they were meant to be but have several MorphOS systems where I can have my daily computing.)

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Amiga Developer
Amiga 500, Efika, Mac Mini and PowerBook

@Franko

Here's another new one for you.

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=65047

#6

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This posting, in its entirety, represents solely the perspective of the author.
*Secrecy has served us so well*

@number6

Quote:

number6 wrote: @Franko Here's another new one for you. http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=65047 #6

Thank for the link...

Interesting board but it's not for me (it's A500 & A2000 only) I only use A1200's...

Not sure why it has the ability to hold 6 Kickstart ROMS though (seems like overkill), as using 3.0 or 3.1 ROMS and WHDLoad or patching/ fixing things to work I never have the need to switch ROMS to run old stuff...

Reckon some folk will find it useful though...

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@wawa

i was hoping the natami would come, sure it was too good to be true, im really happy i went for sam460ex..

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nox's in the house!

@Cod3r

First of all, congratulations for your achievement! Don't be fooled by the responses from this website since most ppl here are pro NG users, the classic amiga scene (68k) is far wider than the PPC one. There have been successful attempts to recreate a classic amiga environment; Minimig is a FPGA re-implementation of A500. Clone - A is an similar concept (FPGA - A500) that is still being worked on. A new FPGA project was recently completed that re-implemented an A1200. Natami is a project that not only "mimics" a A1200 but also opens new hardware paths by expanding the capabilities (e.g. faster type of memory). Note that by "re-implementing" it is meant not only being 68k compatble but also re-creating the custom chipsets (sound and video) of the classic amiga line. The coldfire platform on the other hand is a dead end since it is common knowledge that it isn't compatible enough (68k wise) and Workbench (classic AOS) will crush. Still your code can be helpful to various projects (e.g. Natami) mentioned above.

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@Cod3r

Another attemp to fool the community?

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No PowerPC, No Fun
Make Amiga Great Again

@Fransexy

id give it benefit of doubt but as usual, but remain skeptic as long as no proof of that achievement exists..

@Cod3r

You know, if you could get a system ~99.99% compatible with original Amigas and cost wasn't prohibitive then certainly some people will be interested. But will it be enough to make it worth it? I don't know. I suppose if you can produce them on demand at very low overhead then its possible.

Now if you could take that same design and shrink it all down to a single SoC... Now that would be AWESOME, and I think just about every Amiga enthusiast would be interested. But I have no idea how possible such a thing is. Is the chip market evolved enough that you can order custom chip batch productions more-or-less on demand?

HA!!
Wait.. your company creates 68k based stuff?

Ok here we go:
I would like an Ares CL AmigaClone running AROS.
Where do I need to subscribe the contract ; )

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AROS Broadway - AEROS - Aminux - AmiCloud - indieGO! Appstore - AmiWallet - VAN lossless video codec - AMC Amiga media Center -KrypUnite - LibertyNet - MinX - amigaNX

@Cod3r

As has been mentioned earlier, the MiniMig cores are an open-source alternative to the NatAmi. While the NatAmi is focused on making performance come alive on the FPGA-based hardware, the MiniMig is not far behind as it being implemented for the FPGAArcade Replay board. Since neither the NatAmi nor the FPGAArcade Replay board are in production yet, you'd have to contact the makers if you wanted to make another one at your company.

I have ties to the NatAmi team but most of the efforts there are toward making an efficient 68k compatible soft-core recently. The aim is to beat the 68060 in performance using an Altera FPGA.

Regarding PPC, it can keep up well with a 68060 when running the JIT either on MorphOS or AmigaOS 4+. What they can't keep up with is the old AGA graphics chips. The graphics chips don't resemble PC-style graphics chips very closely. As such even modern AmigaOne-series computers cannot run old software without an emulator. If you're going to go the route of running older software under an emulator, you might as well be running WinUAE since it is the best emulator for the Classic 68k Amigas. Unfortunately, WinUAE is a Windows app.

What a lot of people (like myself) would like to see is a Classic Amiga capable graphics card that will run faster than the UAE-series emulators. This would allow the Trance JIT on MorphOS or the Petunia JIT on AmigaOS 4 to run old software better.

I hope this answers some of the questions you have. Feel free to contact me privately if you want an assessment of the NatAmi project.

@Cod3r

i think anything is interesting to hear about. how does your project compare to fpga-arcade in terms of features and performance, as that seems to be what any other 68k amiga-alike will be competing with. compatibility with system friendly stuff should be ok with a p96 driver etc. like draco was. if want more compatibility then put in an fpga for minimig stuff. what features does your board have? pci slots? ide or scsi? ps2 or usb? etc

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All glory to the Hypnotoad!

@Cod3r

Quote:

Cod3r wrote: I regards to using ColdFire to emulate 68k, ...

Amiga fans where fascinated by the Coldfire because this CPU was marketed by Freescale as 68k compatible CPU. If the Coldfire has to use emulation technics (Interpreter or JIT) it will not give them a 68k CPU with much higher speeds than a 68060 could do.

A Coldfire accellerator for the Amiga was already demonstrated and it was disapointing.

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AmigaONE. Haha. Just because you can put label on it does not make it Amiga.

I borrowed this comments from here (#27 & #28):
http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=38873&forum=2&start=20&order=0

@Cod3r

Let's just say it once and for all: If you make a profit, you'll be demonized.
If you don't you'll tank and people will think you made a profit and ran for it.

Companies are never gonna win in this "community".

Now, if you have such a mature product and you KNOW it's gonna work, then maybe.

I bet your boss is used to industrial markups (cost x 4 before special high-volume or return-sale deals). He won't be seeing those in this market, as people here will quite happily count the cents on the components on the board and figure it out. Not even figuring out that they're also paying for assembly, testing and R&D.

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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.

@Cod3r

Interesting project. Whether it is something worth pursuing as a commercial project depends on a couple of factors.

What sort of pricing are you talking about for a final product? For a niche, side-product, maybe sell 100-300 boards type of thing, you can maybe get by if it's a couple of hundred dollars using AROS. People can bring their own OS/kickstart, if needed, as most here will own real Amigas.

If you want a big commercial project, 10s of thousands of sales, then you'd need to get costs down... a lot. Into OUYA range or less. And also get AROS working perfectly, or figure out some licensing deal to get WB/kickstart.

Also keep in mind you can get Atari people interested too. Although I think they already have their own coldfire project going on/completed? I lost track of that.

A V5e Coldfire running at over 500 MHz exists... These get around 1000 MIPS. if one could get hands on those CPUs I'd be very interested in an Amiga related product using V5e.