@olegil

Quote:

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.

demonized for making profit? this is by far one of most expensive markets for the customers, who are used to preorder, pay in advance, create bounties to be fulfilled in years best case (and never -the worst), who resign on customer privileges and support commercial products (they buy) for free with they own work etc. etc... an im not speaking of any special case but about general attitude, and yet you blame it on the community?

@Pendergast

Quote:

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.

the question is, must that be a "68k" compatible cpu even if it needs emulation to run genuine 68k soft? is there no alternative? is ppc amiga-like enough but x86 or arm still evil? is there any technical reason not to look at those cpus or just resentment? just asking..

@wawa

Ok, in regards to what I did to Aros would be difficult to explain, but I basically optimized it for ColdFire, and cleaned up the code. Some of the routines needed to be re-written and re-implemented. I worked mostly on the kernel code. It simply wasn't tight enough.

Aros has some "iffy" programming in parts that ultimately affect other routines that depend on them. Fix those parts, and bugs in other parts of the system start to disappear.

I'd have to comment my code better before I give it out. It isn't pretty, but it works.

And I reiterate, I didn't choose ColdFire, the prototype already had a ColdFire on it, I didn't choose it or put it there. I don't design the boards.

Quote:

wawa wrote: @Cod3r if you are under nda not allowed to show the hardware its hard to believe you could market it as a side project. and honestly its hard to believe a serious company will be interested in producing amiga compatibles. may i ask what did you need to do to make aros work, except recompiling for coldfire and adapting bootstrap, which is still designed for special situations such as original hardware or winuae. also you could propose your patches to aros dev team: https://www.hepe.com/mailman/listinfo/aros-dev/ or i may establish a contact if need be. on the other hand, since you are already running 68k emu on coldfire i have to ask, why coldfire? there are much faster cpu alternatives to run 68k emu on.

Last edited by Cod3r on 15-Jul-2012 at 02:48 AM.

@Cod3r

im not the person to tell, but aros has as it seems kernel issues left, that might be those giving us headaches with 68k apps compatibility. so i fyou have any comments/thoughts feel free to contribute or signalize them, these things dont even need to be fixed right away but found and known beforehand would be helpful. we have not enough experienced 68k testers, talking as one myself. so blame this on us.

@Franko

Thanks Franko for the insight on the intellectual property. I have no desire to use anyone's name or trademark for what i've done. I am more about the product's quality than the name of it.

I 100% agree that Amiga isn't about PPC. PPC isn't related AT ALL to 68k. They simply aren't related. PPC is no more to Amiga than ARM or x86.

But it appears some people in this community are chip fans. I don't understand it. And being the "new guy" here, maybe I just don't get it.

Regarding the Amiga name, it just doesn't interest me. Why call something a name that it is not? That's like calling a piano a xylophone. Would a good quality piano have to be called a xylophone to sell? Another thing I don't understand.

Regarding the emulation on the prototype: I could get the stuff much more compatible if I had the time. I'm still working on it...

And I really don't see how it would compete with Minimig because I read that the fastest they have it going it 28mhz or something in turbo mode, my emulation on the ColdFire is roughly equivalent to ~74mhz right now. And I could optimize it and the speed would increase.

Quote:

Franko wrote: @Cod3r Hopefully this will clarify a few things for you... The Workbench trademark is currently registered by Cloanto, it's perfectly fine to use it when your talking about your project here as it's easy to understand what you mean when talking about it, but obviously you cant use the Workbench name in a commercial product without seeking the appropriate permission... The Amiga is not about PPC, though a lot of people wish it was... People who say they see no support for 68k Amigas have their own agenda and will try to dissuade you from going that route but as you have clearly stated your project is 68K assembly based and the vast majority of Amiga users are still 68K based classic hardware users, so a 68K based project is still your biggest market here... Also there are still companies/ individuals around who do produce new hardware for 68K Amigas, things like the FastATA IDE board and the OCA 030 accelerator board.... The NatAmi was what most of us were really looking forward to but that project seems to be in limbo right now and sadly is looking unlikely to ever happen, which is a shame as it promised to be from it's specs the almost ideal solution to what us classic 68K Amiga users had been waiting on... As for the Amiga name... yes it's very important as arguments over it and a certain USA company on these forum have proven over the past two years. Sadly though using the Amiga name would be next to impossible and is mired in legal controversy & crap, so it's obviously best to come up a new name for a final product... To me your first goal should be to get as fully functioning an emulation as possible working first on your project (including all the Amiga custom chips) before even thinking about adding things like USB support etc... The idea of a new alternative 68K based system is appealing to the vast majority of Amiga users (as I said they are still the largest Amiga group around) so really it all depends on how well you can implement this as your going to have to compete with things like the MiniMig and FPGA Replay Board and so it would have to be at least equal if not better to have a chance of succeeding, which I sincerely hope you do...

@Birbo

I would be open to that. I agree that Natami looks interesting.

Quote:

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

@Cod3r

Just bypassing all talk about NatAmi and stuff. I would like to support a company that supports Amiga, but not Amiga Classic. I'm only interested in NG and the lastest version of AmigaOS, which currently is PPC and OS4.x.

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@itix

Are you a programmer? How can you say something like that without knowing my level of expertise? Is it because you can't do it?

With all due respect, you would have to be a bit misinformed to believe a professional, low-level systems programmer couldn't emulate a 1985 desktop computer in 2012 with a more powerful hardware platform.

Or maybe you simply don't know what is possible with expertise and training.

In regards to the CPU clock, you know you could always drop down the speed for compatibility with troublesome software. Simple to do... with a timing routine.

Quote:

itix wrote: @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.)

@Fransexy

Jumping the gun, aren't we?

Quote:

Fransexy wrote: @Cod3r Another attemp to fool the community?

@Deniil715

I completely understand. As I can see, there are quite a few great products available doing exactly that.

Quote:

Deniil715 wrote: @Cod3r Just bypassing all talk about NatAmi and stuff. I would like to support a company that supports Amiga, but not Amiga Classic. I'm only interested in NG and the lastest version of AmigaOS, which currently is PPC and OS4.x.

@Cod3r

Quote:

Ok, in regards to what I did to Aros would be difficult to explain, but I basically optimized it for ColdFire, and cleaned up the code. Some of the routines needed to be re-written and re-implemented. I worked mostly on the kernel code. It simply wasn't tight enough. Aros has some "iffy" programming in parts that ultimately affect other routines that depend on them. Fix those parts, and bugs in other parts of the system start to disappear. I'd have to comment my code better before I give it out. It isn't pretty, but it works.

Link says it all

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@terminills

Erm... the link actually says nothing in relation to this thread, all it shows is a bunch of numpties squabbling over something obscure...

Care to let the rest of us in on what you think you know or are hinting at...

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@Franko


to quote. "Code patches or it didn't happen" ;)

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@Cod3r

In your original reply to me you stated that, even thought you're not interested in the Amiga name, you don't see why it would be a problem and you cited the "IBM Compatible" case. I suggest you look up the history of that as it was based on reverse engineering of a BIOS which enabled people to make the "compatible" claim.

Secondly, you have a lot of people here telling you to ignore the naysayers, claiming that their answers are fulled by a bias towards PPC, and telling you that there is a much bigger market potential for Classic hardware. Of course, these posts are coming from classic enthusiasts, so you might well need to understand that there's potentially just as much bias in these posts.

I stand neutral - I don't have any classic or NG hardware, and haven't really had anything to do with the Amiga in years. I just pop in here out of interest when I have too much free time on my hand. I have no idea which propaganda is more accurate I'm afraid. All I know is that all Amiga markets are small markets.

Thirdly, you started off by saying that you got "Workbench" running on your system, but then admitted that what you have running is Aros. Aros already runs on many platforms, so I'm not really sure how special what you've achieved is? Does it run any Amiga system friendly software natively (which is the point of Aros M68k)? Or does it only run software which has been compiled for Aros? If it's the latter then, really, I don't see anything special in what you've got - There are already cheap x86 and ARM architectures that run Aros quite nicely. A coldfire Aros board that can't run any classic software doesn't seem to be anything to get terribly excited about, unless I'm missing something?

@Cod3r

wrote:
Quote:

@jingof Oh, I understand... it is unreleased. Sounds very interesting to me. Maybe some of my work could be contributed to their project, at least the code I made, if nothing else.

Yeah.. Natami is definitely a hacker's dream machine, especially if they open source it. I think it is the most interesting community-based hardware project going on anywhere, in any space.

And if you're willing to contribute your code, and more importantly, your skills and spare time.. well, let's just say you could be well-timed, as it seems like the Natami project could use some fresh legs. The project has been going on since 2005, and Thomas has put together what looks to be a top-shelf, professional MX board. But much of the team seems to have shifted focus toward the 68060 softcore (as samurai pointed out), leaving many puzzled and frustrated at the prospect of refocusing on a huge sub-project that didn't seem to be a prerequisite for a more limited MX board release. So, my sense is that shift could have created some vacancies elsewhere (i.e. on the board itself.)

But it is kind of hard to say really, since the leaders of that project have gone mostly silent of late. Still, the team has grown substantially over the last 2 years, so they've certainly demonstrated they are open to capable people coming in and contributing.

According to the Hardware page of the Natami site, the MX developer boards have been available since Feb 2011. Does anyone know if developers can still get their hands on one, or (more likely) is the latest production run already used up for the foreseeable future?

Last edited by jingof on 15-Jul-2012 at 06:27 AM.
Last edited by jingof on 15-Jul-2012 at 06:20 AM.

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@Cod3r,

I have to agree with jingof that the Natami is one of the most interesting Amiga projects ever to be proposed and there are hundreds, if not thousands of Amiga enthusiasts that are hoping and waiting for it to become reality and be produced and offered for sale to the public.

If you can be of any assistance toward getting the Natami finished and into production by offering your coding skills, you will become an instant hero in the Amiga community (anyone who helps the Natami become available for me to purchase will be my personal hero, right next to Trevor Dickinson).

Your ColdFire board might be interesting, but I doubt it would ever sell in large quantities to the Amiga community, unless it can surpass the capabilities of the existing MiniMig by a wide margin, while providing near perfect Amiga emulation and providing Ethernet, USB2, SD Card and/or Compact Flash storage & more RAM. The FPGA Arcade Replay board with it's proposed daughter card will soon provide 75MHz to 100MHz 68060 CPU speed with all of the just mentioned expansion ports and extra RAM, so if you can't provide your Cold Fire project at the same or less price, or better performance than the FPGA Arcade Replay board and it's daughter card with a real 68060 onboard at up to 100MHz, it might not be worth pursuing it further, unless you only want to do it for fun and are not doing the project for the possibility of a small financial gain with sales.

Is it possible to replace the currently installed 200MHz Cold Fire CPU with the 500MHz Cold Fire previously mentioned in this thread? If not too expensive, this might distinguish your project from the proposed FPGA Arcade Replay w/daughter card & 68060.

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@Cod3r

Quote:

Are you a programmer? How can you say something like that without knowing my level of expertise? Is it because you can't do it? With all due respect, you would have to be a bit misinformed to believe a professional, low-level systems programmer couldn't emulate a 1985 desktop computer in 2012 with a more powerful hardware platform.

You can emulate custom chips, it is already done (WinUAE), but dont expect it works. Games rely on exact behaviour like timing, response times, undocumented features or HW bugs. You have to go through lot of games to verify custom chip emulation works and when it doesnt work you have to figure out why it doesnt work.

I am a programmer and I havent ever done anything complex like that but I know how complex Amiga custom chips are. It takes lot of effort to emulate custom chips properly.

Quote:

In regards to the CPU clock, you know you could always drop down the speed for compatibility with troublesome software. Simple to do... with a timing routine.

It is probably enough.

_________________
Amiga Developer
Amiga 500, Efika, Mac Mini and PowerBook

I'm totally with fransexy & terminills here.

Sorry cod3r if youre for real but I think you're just yanking our chain here.
And I did so already after the first page of this thread.

No need to clean up the Aros code before you post a link to what fixes
you had to do to it. We have lot's of Aros experts here that maybe even could
improve your code or help you, for example Jason and Toni.

_________________
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hardware-intensive solutions. And they'd go faster.-- D.Haynie

@Manu

I think the picture is always the same: someone figures out he could really (really.) be able to do something for the Amiga community. Something that involves hardware, or software, Aros, whatever. The guy can really make it happen - either because he knows how to accomplish the task in person, or he knows someone that can deliver it.

BUT he wants to know if it's worth the effort.

So, the guy comes to the Amiga community, and asks. And he has to lie, he just has to do that because just saying "listen, I can do this but it's still just an idea, I did nothing" would result in the community crushing him instantly. So he lies, he says he already did something, and that it worked, and ... and and and. This is how it ALWAYS goes.

Everyone loses, and the hatred skyrockets.
Who-hoo!

@Cod3r

Quote:

my emulation on the ColdFire is roughly equivalent to ~74mhz right now.

A 74Mhz 68000 on a good day is only about a 6 Mhz 68060. I am a total lamer and I have a 50Mhz 68060. Elite dudes have 80Mhz 68060s.

Quote:

And I could optimize it and the speed would increase.

Can u increase it to about 10x faster (~740 Mhz) so that it can compete with 1990's Amiga CPUs? Thanxorz

Good luck!
May the source be with u!

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