@ChrisH

Quote:

This appears to be untrue, according to this Natami quote Quote: Quote: The purpose of the project is to recreate a "smart and reliable computer which can... compete with current established systems."

Quote mining. Interesting sport.

Let's go to the real source of information, not the Amiga history site:

This is taken from Natami's site Q/A section.

Quote:

The major long-term intentions for NatAmi are: * beeing an Amiga compatible design * have the original AmigaOS, binary OS replacements and Amiga applications running * enable playing new and classic Amiga games * expand features to 24bit truecolor gfx and 16bit audio on custom chip register level * implement USB, Ethernet and flashdisk support * provide immediate system on/off and hilbernation * provide enough resources and power to surf the internet and watch online videos * add features to be able to playback DivX, Xvid and DVD We think that in this area the AmigaOS still has some major advantages. The original AmigaOS is very efficient. The combination of this very efficient OS and the usage of the powerful SuperAGA, will result in a very swift computer. The Natami will not be a competitor to a Wintel Desktop machine, nor will it be a PlayStation 3 killer.

They say it explicitly. Do you need more?

@Hammer

Quote:

Quote: The purpose of the project is to recreate a "smart and reliable computer which can... compete with current established systems." One can bet this Natami would not be competitive against XBox 360 or PS3 or low-mid-range "Games For Windows" PCs

You can bet on it because it wont compete with them. There is not even the intent to do it:

From Natami's Q/A section:
Quote:

The Natami will not be a competitor to a Wintel Desktop machine, nor will it be a PlayStation 3 killer.

@Arko
Al4 is obviously overestimating the Natami project.

But then, as I said before. We should wait for real hardware to see what they can really offer to us before jumping to conclusions.

Natami hype is as unneeded as Natami bashing. I recommend paying attention to the small but continuous stream of information that comes from their official site. Natami is not as bad/evil nor as good/orgasmic as people say.

I really don't understand such strong reactions. Is just an FPGA on a board and some memory.

@Channel_Z

Talk about Amiga custom chips is baffling. Suppose you took the Amiga custom video chips and improved them and put them on a separate card that you could plug into any computer. Well, you'd have an AmigaOne with just about any off-the-shelf video card.

_________________
X5000 / microA1(OS4.1 FE U2) / CodeBench / Imagine / Blender
Lightwave 2019 / Microsoft Visual C++

@xispo

Quote:

xispo wrote: @Darth_X Quote: I think it would be loonie to create new hardware that doesn't support HDTV.. If you mean being to able to display old resolutions on new tv sets, that's only a matter of having appropiate connectors and display adapters, a matter of compatibility. If you mean generating content in full HDTV resolutions with a Cyclone 3 FPGA, which can, hopefully, reach 200Mhz, then you are asking for something unrealistic. Not living in reality is a symptom of lunacy.

I hardly think asking for a 720p HDTV mode is lunacy when the original AGA chipset had resolutions that came close to it..

Cyclone3? I'm thinking more of something like a Virtex-5

_________________
Men who have girlies in their avatars are Girliemen!

@Darth_X

Quote:

I hardly think asking for a 720p HDTV mode is lunacy when the original AGA chipset had resolutions that came close to it.

But you know, loonies always ask for the moon. In particular, the one that is 1080 pixels in height and is 3D accelerated. They can buy a PS3 if they want to. But they keep asking anyway.
;)

@xispo

Quote:

xispo wrote: @Darth_X Quote: I hardly think asking for a 720p HDTV mode is lunacy when the original AGA chipset had resolutions that came close to it. But you know, loonies always ask for the moon. In particular, the one that is 1080 pixels in height and is 3D accelerated. They can buy a PS3 if they want to. But they keep asking anyway. ;)

If each of the loonies were forking out $10000 to the developers of Natami, maybe they would change their minds

_________________
Men who have girlies in their avatars are Girliemen!

@Darth_X

Quote:

If each of the loonies were forking out $10000 to the developers of Natami, maybe they would change their minds

You cough up some cash first !

_________________
"The system no longer works " -- Young Anakin Skywalker

@thinkchip

Not at all. That off-the-shelf card and A1 won't give me the possibility to draw planar graphics with 68k ASM. It won't give me the proper Paula filter when playing lo-fi sound. I can't use the copper to wait for a scanline and then tell the blitter to draw objects, because the chips don't exist.

I want FULL backwards compatibility. Natami will give me this. A PPC system with OS4 won't. It doesn't even have a UAE port working at decent speeds yet.
The Natami will work as an Amiga system is supposed to work, while still providing as much speed as the FPGA can provide.

I do understand and respect that people are satisfied with OS4 and the limited amount of software available for it. But please respect that there are people with other demands, too. Amiga isn't just the operating system.

I've only seen pictures of OS4 and read about it. I really hope that Hyperion are working on ARM, though. PPC doesn't seem to have much of a future in the consumer market. I think ARM and Amiga (OS4.1) is probably a good match - a light OS and power-efficient processor on a board.

I also like the original Amiga. I think that "classic" is a poor word to use to describe it, and this will be more so when it goes at a "proper" speed as Natami.

Anyone want to lay down the differences between original Amiga (hardware and OS) and current Amiga as developed by Hyperion?

In particular, integrated chips (sound and video) on m68k/Natami versus pci add-on cards for OS 4.1 - which are better?

@Al4

Quote:

In particular, integrated chips (sound and video) on m68k/Natami versus pci add-on cards for OS 4.1 - which are better?

That's one of the sillier questions I've seen in while.

The PCI outstrip the amiga originals in everyway, can paula do 24bit 96Khz audio? My teratec can and hey it can record audio too!

Can't remeber the name of the aga video chips , but I'm sure they aren't a fast aor high res as the lowest spec radeon 7000 supplied with an A1. PCI give highre resolutions and 3d accell that outstrip anything an aga amiga has.

_________________
BroadBlues On Blues BroadBlues On Amiga Walker Broad

@Channel_Z

Quote:

Not at all. That off-the-shelf card and A1 won't give me the possibility to draw planar graphics with 68k ASM.

You can do that whit AmigaOS4.1 does support classic 8bit screen modes, and its no slower then a classic Amiga.

680x0 stuff runs faster on AmigaOS4.x then on real 680x0 CPU, thanks to petunia JIT.
http://www.amiga.hu/amigos/rachy/petunia.html

Quote:

It won't give me the proper Paula filter when playing lo-fi sound.

We do you wont lo-fi sound when you can get better hi quality sound, we are not talking some thing as unique as the C64 sid chips her? And sound filtering was mostly annoying anyway.

If you use sound.device or ahi or ptplay.libraray or octamed.library or some like then you programs will not stop working on AmigaOS4.x

Quote:

I can't use the copper to wait for a scanline and then tell the blitter to draw objects, because the chips don't exist.

Thats true, but if used graphic library commands for this it will not stop working on AmigaOS4.

Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 19-Jul-2009 at 06:09 PM.
Last edited by NutsAboutAmiga on 19-Jul-2009 at 06:06 PM.

_________________
http://lifeofliveforit.blogspot.no/
Facebook::LiveForIt Software for AmigaOS

@Arko

Quote:

Arko wrote: @Al4 Quote: Al4 wrote: Natami will mean a new 68k Amiga machine, and a much faster one than the A4000. What Natami ? - The one with the 68030 they are desperately try to build as prototype ? - the 68060 with over clocked 68060 CPU ? - or the one with the ultra sophisticated 68070 sorry 68050 CPU that doesn't even has a build in FPU ? Quote: Natami might negate the work of Hyperion, at least so far, on Amiga OS on a new architecture. If the Natami is faster than a Sam440 or even the Efika, than the AOS4 or MOS developers made something wrong. Quote: If completed, you might choose to go to the 68050 chip and Amiga OS 3.1/9. It may also get onto different "small" devices that may be created containing the 68050. Maybe Amiga never really stopped. 68050 a CPU without FPU, that would be worse than most CPUs used in mobile phones today. The Natami board will be as expensive as the AmigaONE board was and a lot of modern features will be missing cause the Natami team has no one that writes drivers for it. And 68k Games using the built in 3D blitter of the Natami where should they come from ? There are still not eaough games for AmigaOS4 or MorphOS.hat supports the 3D GFX available in this systems.

The floating point will be handled by the "Robin" DSP core instead of the 68050. The Robin core will also handle all of the sound mixing and be multithreaded if everything goes according to plan. What is really important about the Robin core is that it will handle matrix math using an architecture similar to the stream processor used by the Cell chip on the PS3. (Albeit clocked down to about 40 MHz per thread with a total of 200 MHz for all of its threads put together.)

The operating system will be based on AfaOS which is AmigaOS 3.9 with features backported from AROS so it will only be as out-of-date as AROS itself is.

The Natami will be faster per clock cycle than OS 4 since it doesn't have nor support an MMU except in the developer version which will come with the overclocked 68060 as a diagnostic tool. for running MuGuardianAngel and Enforcer and the like.

The real deficiency of the SuperAGA chipset will be that it will only run some of the earlier OpenGL ES styles and may not have full shader support. If OpenGL 2.0 support is added to OS 4.x then it will still be ahead of the Natami.

@Samurai_Crow

Quote:

The Natami will be faster per clock cycle than OS 4 since it doesn't have nor support an MMU except in the developer version which will come with the overclocked 68060

- NetAmi will be hard to develop for because it does not even have an MMU
- Faster then Radion9250 I don't think so, faster then a G4 1 Ghz, I don't think so.

Quote:

as a diagnostic tool. for running MuGuardianAngel and Enforcer and the like.

sorry that won't work whit out a MMU.

What NetAmi provides a faster and better Amiga4000 thats all.
NetAMI will have some advantages in planar graphics and 2D imaging, I full agree, but not be faster then my AmigaONE-XE sorry.

I guess this mostly aimed at hard core Amiga gamers that like to play AGA games, and look at or develop demos, I wonder how many demo coders that are left.

_________________
http://lifeofliveforit.blogspot.no/
Facebook::LiveForIt Software for AmigaOS

@NutsAboutAmiga

Quote:

- NetAmi will be hard to develop for because it does not even have an MMU

It is not that difficult to develop without the MMU. Not more difficult than on OS4 or MorphOS respectively.

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

@NutsAboutAmiga

You misread what I said. I never said that a 100 MHz processor would be faster than a 1 GHz processor, I said faster per clock cycle. This means that it will be faster than a PPC at 100 MHz. The whole advantage of a RISC machine over a CISC machine is that it can supposedly be clocked faster. The whole disadvantage of a RISC machine is that the code takes up more memory and therefore makes less efficient use of cache. Also, what is the top clock speed of a Radeon 9250? If it is more than 200 MHz then i wouldn't expect similar performance between the two graphics cores either.

As for the MMU, the overclocked 68060 will have an MMU. It is the 68050 core on the FPGA that will not. If all goes well with the instruction decoder, the 68050 will have a clock speed of 133 MHz making it about as fast as the superscalar '060 without superscalar architecture.

Please read my post before you reply to it in the future.

Last edited by Samurai_Crow on 20-Jul-2009 at 12:29 AM.

@Samurai_Crow

As much as would like to see Natami released, I think there is more chance we'll see the FPGA Arcade.

If you want to release an updated classic MB today, it makes sense to use FPGA's for the updated custom chips. It also makes sense to use an 030 because they still make the little buggers and they are also very compatible with classic software.

Even a humble 50mhz 030 would run most classic software faster on a reworked MB than an 060 could run on an old AGA board.

To make any money out of such an updated MB, you'd either sell it as a bare mini-itx board or as a drop-in replacement for classic user's.

Last edited by NovaCoder on 20-Jul-2009 at 01:49 AM.
Last edited by NovaCoder on 20-Jul-2009 at 01:44 AM.

IIRC, the Natami team made it clear that they weren't trying to replace or compete with Amiga OS 4.x, but just wanted to make something that extends and modernizes the AGA chipset and classic Amiga. As such, it's more of a "let's see how far we can take this old design" rather than "we're going to make an x-box killer."

It's a cool project, but it's not going to replace Amiga OS 4.x. Heck, if they managed to put a PowerPC processor on the board, they might even be able to get Amiga OS 4.0 classic running on it.

Hans

_________________
Join the Kea Campus - upgrade your skills; support my work; enjoy the Amiga corner.
https://keasigmadelta.com/ - see more of my work

@Hans

At one point the team bought some old G3 and G4 PCI accelerator cards. It's the old Sonnet Crecendo G3 and G4-based models.

@Hans

I am all for the success of the Natami crew. I really do hope they succeed. One of my dreams when I was younger was to have bought a "AAA" Amiga. I really do hope they succeed; I think to track mods and watch great demos it will be a fantastic machine to play with; not to mention the excellent 68K software still out there to use on it; and a very nice "revamped" Os3.9 in all its high resolution glory.

One will be able to do quite a bit with Natami, at least on the multimedia side most things will be covered... web browsing will still be a dog though...

Q!

"i am home"

Last edited by QuBe on 20-Jul-2009 at 03:50 AM.