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_________________
I HAVE ABS OF STEEL
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@OneTimer1

Quote:

OneTimer1 wrote: @cdimauro Answering yourself is a nice way of keeping the OT discussion going.

It wasn't OT, and details were important to understand the situation.
Quote:

Especially because none of the projects form Perifractic / Commodore are related to the Amiga.

As #6 already reported, this can happen in future.

Should I remind you that Commodore produced SEVERAL, DIFFERENT computers platforms?

However, actually the new Commodore is only working on revival of those platforms in retrocomputing key.

No, nothing modern, that can be competitive with the current mainstream platforms (and not even with niche ones).

The new Commodore could buy or merge with Amiga Corp, buy Amiga IP or license Amiga IP. Commodore already licenses non-Amiga Commodore IP from Cloanto/Amiga Corp. The MEGA65 recently received FPGA Amiga support which may require Amiga IP licensing if the MEGA65 was shipped this way. Commodore could buy or licensing the MEGA65 even if they did not go directly for the Amiga. The C64 Ultimate could be upgraded to simulate an Amiga as well. Both the MEGA65 and C64 Ultimate use a Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA but the Ultimate FPGA is smaller and the system has less memory. It probably makes more sense for a larger Amiga system to support a smaller C64 system but, at least in the MiSTer FPGA, the C64 FPGA resources are not smaller than the 68k Amiga resources.

I am not too worried about a 68k Amiga not being competitive for non-retro use. Cheap enough hardware would likely see some embedded use despite deficiencies. Good examples are the original ARM11 RPi and early Vortex86 SoC hardware.

Original Raspberry Pi
single scalar ARM11 CPU core - 1st ARM family with Thumb-2 but int performance/MHz below 68060
smartphone I/O was lacking for embedded use - only 26 pin GPIO with I2C, SPI, and UART support

Early Vortex86 SoC
original superscalar Rise mP6 based core - only 586/Pentium support with missing CMOV
Vortex86DX had terrible performance - Vortex86 DX2@800MHz inferior to Cyrix 6x86MX@250MHz
early I/O more retro than embedded

Worst x86 CPUs over the years
https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/worst-x86-cpus-over-the-years.74467/post-904602 Quote:

I would like to nominate Vortex86DX to this competition. The 800 MHz Vortex86 DX2 was released in 2009. Its performance is however WORSE than the performance of a Cyrix 6x86MX at 250 MHz. ... Its very hard to find any test where the Vortex86DX outperforms the Cyrix6x86MX. By the way, the Vortex86MX is a totally nice CPU, they have fixed this performance issue (thats about 2x-3x faster on the same clock speeds than the Vortex86DX).

As bad as the Vortex86DX performance was, someone responded that was using it for embedded use.

https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/worst-x86-cpus-over-the-years.74467/post-904643 Quote:

I have an embedded thin client PC with a Vortex86DX running at 1 GHz. And yes, except for its low power consumption, it's pretty useless.

DM&P may have replaced the early Rise mP6 based x86 core with a Cyrix 5x86 core.

https://www.cpushack.com/2010/10/07/the-rise-of-the-vortex86-embedded-x86/

A Cyrix 5x86 is low power but scalar. The superscalar 3.3V Cyrix 6x86 used more power than the Pentium P54C and more than double that of the 3.3V 68060 which had similar performance. It has been challenging for DM&P to obtain performance, low power and full x86 support.

Both RPi and Vortex86 hardware had humble beginnings as it is necessary to start without excessive capital investment. Mistakes were made but customers are often more forgiving of cheap hardware and hardware for small memory footprints, especially where there are few alternatives.

PS I am doing some major renovation around my house. I have read most posts but have limited time and energy to comment to them all now. Back to work.

Last edited by matthey on 29-Jul-2026 at 01:16 PM.

@matthey

Quote:

matthey wrote: The new Commodore could buy ... Amiga Corp, ...

A win in the lottery would be helpful

Quote:

Commodore already licenses non-Amiga Commodore IP from Cloanto/Amiga Corp.

No, the revived Commodore brand entities do not automatically possess or hold an active blanket license for Amiga intellectual property from Cloanto or Amiga Corporation.

Quote:

The MEGA65 recently received FPGA Amiga support which may require Amiga IP licensing ...

No

Quote:

The C64 Ultimate could be upgraded to simulate an Amiga as well.

I have my doubts

Quote:

the Ultimate FPGA is smaller and the system has less memory.

Maybe because a C64 is much smaller.

matthey Quote:

The new Commodore could buy ... Amiga Corp, ...

OneTimer1 Quote:

A win in the lottery would be helpful

Enter the "Let's Buy Amiga" Project. Crowd investor funded just to buy Amiga Corp and then crowd investor funded to make new Amiga hardware.

matthey Quote:

Commodore already licenses non-Amiga Commodore IP from Cloanto/Amiga Corp.

OneTimer1 Quote:

No, the revived Commodore brand entities do not automatically possess or hold an active blanket license for Amiga intellectual property from Cloanto or Amiga Corporation.

To clarify, I believe Commodore licenses Commodore 8-bit IP for their products. They could license Amiga IP for their Commodore OS hardware so Amiga emulation works out of the box but my understanding is that they did not do this.

matthey Quote:

The MEGA65 recently received FPGA Amiga support which may require Amiga IP licensing ...

OneTimer1 Quote:

No

Legally, how is MEGA65 simulation of the Amiga possible without Amiga Kickstart ROMs?

matthey Quote:

The C64 Ultimate could be upgraded to simulate an Amiga as well.

OneTimer1 Quote:

I have my doubts

The C64 Ultimate design could be upgraded while the already sold hardware would be difficult to upgrade. Increasing the price, especially by adding memory at current memory prices, is likely something Commodore does not want to do. Obtaining the MEGA65 design may be more realistic but the C64U and MEGA65 are similar and introducing the MEGA65 would likely hurt C64U sales.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect

The original Commodore Osborned the A600 with the A1200. Sega Osborned the Genesis/Mega Drive/Mega-CD with the Saturn.

matthey Quote:

the Ultimate FPGA is smaller and the system has less memory.

OneTimer1 Quote:

Maybe because a C64 is much smaller.

In the MiSTer FPGA, the Amiga uses less resources.

Commodore 64, Ultimax - 41.62% logic utilization, 39.44% block mem bits used, 46.43% DSP block utilization
Amiga - 35.82% logic utilization, 10.83% block mem bits used, 33.04% DSP block utilization

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wHetlC0RqFnBcqzGEZI8SWi6tlHFxl_ehpaokDwg7CU/edit?gid=0#gid=0

The FleaFPGA Ohm has Amiga support with a smaller FPGA than the C64U.

What FPGAs were used in the Flea FPGA Ohm and C64 Ultimate and which FPGA is larger?
Google AI Overview Quote:

The FleaFPGA Ohm uses a Lattice ECP5 (typically the 24K LUT variant), and the Commodore 64 Ultimate uses an AMD Xilinx Artix-7 FPGA. The Artix-7 used in the C64 Ultimate is the larger and more capable FPGA. FleaFPGA Ohm Chip: Lattice ECP5 (LFE5U-25F) Capacity: 24,200 LUTs (Look-Up Tables) / ~24K logic elements RAM: 112 KB on-chip Block RAM + 256 Mbit external SDRAM Commodore 64 Ultimate Chip: AMD Xilinx Artix-7 (commonly an XC7A35T or similar mid-range 7-series variant) Capacity: ~33,280 to 52,160 logic cells (higher logic density and vastly more robust internal DSP/clock resources) RAM: 128 MB external DDR2 RAM

The 68k Amiga does need more memory which is a consequence of a large flat 32-bit address space and is worth the small initial memory cost to be able to easily upgrade the memory without memory bank switching. It is possible to squeeze more into less with the 68k Amiga too. The original devs did not have time to squeeze more, most of the AmigaOS was written in C with poor compilers back then and the 68000 code density was not as good as the 68020. Much more is possible today if seriously trying to improve the 68k Amiga memory footprint but emulation and simulation says nobody is serious about the 68k Amiga.

PS lunch break

Last edited by matthey on 29-Jul-2026 at 07:02 PM.
Last edited by matthey on 29-Jul-2026 at 07:01 PM.

@matthey

Quote:

Legally, how is MEGA65 simulation of the Amiga possible without Amiga Kickstart ROMs?

That's easy, they did it on the Minimig / Mister before.
There is a link https://github.com/sy2002/AExp

It is a typical Not our Poblem solution:

Kickstart ROM

The core needs the Kickstart 1.3 ROM (revision 34.5, the 256 KB version that shipped with the Amiga 500). Put it on your SD card as

/amiga/kick.rom

as a raw dump of exactly 256 KB (262,144 bytes), no byte swapping. Without this file the core stops with an error message.
Kickstart is copyrighted software, so it is not part of this repository or of any release; you need to obtain a legal copy yourself,
for example from Cloanto's Amiga Forever.

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 01-Aug-2026 at 08:07 PM.
Last edited by OneTimer1 on 29-Jul-2026 at 07:28 PM.

@matthey

Quote:

matthey wrote: I am not too worried about a 68k Amiga not being competitive for non-retro use. Cheap enough hardware would likely see some embedded use despite deficiencies. Good examples are the original ARM11 RPi and early Vortex86 SoC hardware. [...] As bad as the Vortex86DX performance was, someone responded that was using it for embedded use. https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/worst-x86-cpus-over-the-years.74467/post-904643 Quote: I have an embedded thin client PC with a Vortex86DX running at 1 GHz. And yes, except for its low power consumption, it's pretty useless. DM&P may have replaced the early Rise mP6 based x86 core with a Cyrix 5x86 core. https://www.cpushack.com/2010/10/07/the-rise-of-the-vortex86-embedded-x86/ A Cyrix 5x86 is low power but scalar. The superscalar 3.3V Cyrix 6x86 used more power than the Pentium P54C and more than double that of the 3.3V 68060 which had similar performance. It has been challenging for DM&P to obtain performance, low power and full x86 support. Both RPi and Vortex86 hardware had humble beginnings as it is necessary to start without excessive capital investment. Mistakes were made but customers are often more forgiving of cheap hardware and hardware for small memory footprints, especially where there are few alternatives.

Yes, it's definitely possible to use products, on some markets, which aren't good for them.
The above Vortex is a clear example.
Another one might be the (now very) old Intel Galileo (which I had the pleasure to see in production just after that I've joined the company).

However, you can't expect them to become serious contenders, since they aren't competitive. They can sell a bit and even create a niche market, but nothing which can change the market.

That's why I don't expect anything impressive coming from the new Commodore.

Last edited by cdimauro on 01-Aug-2026 at 05:35 AM.

@OneTimer1

Quote:

OneTimer1 wrote: @matthey Quote: Legally, how is MEGA65 simulation of the Amiga possible without Amiga Kickstart ROMs? That's easy, they did it on the Minimig / Mister before. There is a link https://github.com/sy2002/AExp It is a typical Not our Poblem solution

It is a problem if you want to sell a ready-to-use product, like the new Commodore did with the C64 Ultimate.

Do you expect that all interested people are able to find the required C64 ROMs and put them in the right place to make it work? That's something which more expert people can do, but not the average Joe.

So, yes: you need the Amiga Kickstart ROMs (and a configured HD image with the Workbench and all that it's required) if you want to see a product like that, but reproducing an Amiga. And this requires, again (because Cloanto has C64 IP as well under its umbrella), knocking to Michele Battilana's doors to get them.

P.S. Please, edit you comment: it broke the layout of the forum.

@thread

Quote:

cdimauro wrote: ... interested people are able to find the required C64 ROMs ...

The product is called Mega65 not Mega64.


Quote:

cdimauro wrote: you need the Amiga Kickstart ROMs

The product is called Mega65 not MegaAmiga
I like to remind you to this sentence:

The author has clarified that this was largely an 
AI-assisted port of MiniMig that he won’t have time 
to maintain. 

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 01-Aug-2026 at 08:21 PM.
Last edited by OneTimer1 on 01-Aug-2026 at 08:19 PM.

@OneTimer1

Quote:

OneTimer1 wrote: @thread Quote: cdimauro wrote: ... interested people are able to find the required C64 ROMs ... The product is called Mega65 not Mega64. Quote: cdimauro wrote: you need the Amiga Kickstart ROMs The product is called Mega65 not MegaAmiga I like to remind you to this sentence: The author has clarified that this was largely an AI-assisted port of MiniMig that he won’t have time to maintain. Source: https://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=45892&forum=2 This little sentence should explain how less (not much) importance the Amiga option has for the Mega65 team.

You completely lost the context:

"The new Commodore could buy or merge with Amiga Corp, buy Amiga IP or license Amiga IP. Commodore already licenses non-Amiga Commodore IP from Cloanto/Amiga Corp."

The subsequent discussion was about what products could be delivered by the new Commodore.

Products that require licensed IPs when talking about an Amiga revival.

Exactly like the C64 Ultimate, which came from the same company, required licenced IPs.

Klar?

Quote:

cdimauro wrote: You completely lost the context Klar?

@all

Honest question:

has any of you, in the entire course of their natural life,
encountered a more obnoxious, perpetually lecturing, invariably sour individual?


/m

_________________
I HAVE ABS OF STEEL
--
CAN YOU SEE ME? CAN YOU HEAR ME? OK FOR WORK

@cdimauro

Quote:

cdimauro wrote: You completely lost the context: "The new Commodore could buy ....."

A win in the lottery would be helpful


Quote:

cdimauro wrote: The subsequent discussion was about what products could be delivered by the new Commodore.

In Neverland?

Quote:

cdimauro wrote: Products that require licensed IPs when talking about an Amiga revival.

Amiga Corp. is currently working with Retro Games Ltd. I don't know the contracts, but if they were done right, we will not see another Amiga licensed hardware soon.

Last edited by OneTimer1 on 02-Aug-2026 at 10:25 AM.

@cdimauro

Quote:

average Joe

Who?

None of the products discussed are targeting the mythical "average Joe", who btw would already have bought one of the many cheap emulation systems from Ali Express, RGL or similar. I know, as I have neighbours, family, friends and colleagues with those, and when they visit me and try my "fancy" FPGA systems very few of them see ("feel") the point. Frankly, the "tinkering" is much of fun with FPGA systems, finding bugs and compatibility issues, having them fixed, firmware updates, new cores etc. In contrast, UAE based software emulators are much more finished.

Last edited by kolla on 02-Aug-2026 at 12:04 PM.

_________________
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@OneTimer1

Quote:

Amiga Corp. is currently working with Retro Games Ltd. I don't know the contracts, but if they were done right, we will not see another Amiga licensed hardware soon.

You think RGL would get exclusive hardware license for making hardware with "Amiga" label? Considering that there's already other hardware vendors around that also have license to make Amiga hardware (for example A1200.net)... nah, you may very well see more Amiga licensed hardware Real Soon Now ("two more weeks", and I'm temped to refer to the orange toddler in the oh so very white house as for how long a time "two weeks" is, the pale leprechaun toddler on the oh so blood-red square would call it - три дн� - three days)

_________________
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@OneTimer1

Quote:

OneTimer1 wrote: @cdimauro Quote: cdimauro wrote: You completely lost the context: "The new Commodore could buy ....." A win in the lottery would be helpful

Irrelvant.
Quote:

Quote: cdimauro wrote: The subsequent discussion was about what products could be delivered by the new Commodore. In Neverland?

Irrelevant.
Quote:

Quote: cdimauro wrote: Products that require licensed IPs when talking about an Amiga revival. Amiga Corp. is currently working with Retro Games Ltd. I don't know the contracts, but if they were done right, we will not see another Amiga licensed hardware soon.

Relevant.

However, we had the (official) C64 Mini, C64 Max, and now the C64 Ultimate.

So, there can be space for other "Amiga" revivals.

@kolla

Quote:

kolla wrote: @cdimauro Quote: average Joe Who? None of the products discussed are targeting the mythical "average Joe", who btw would already have bought one of the many cheap emulation systems from Ali Express, RGL or similar.

Nevertheless, there could be space for other products.
Quote:

I know, as I have neighbours, family, friends and colleagues with those, and when they visit me and try my "fancy" FPGA systems very few of them see ("feel") the point.

Which is?
Quote:

Frankly, the "tinkering" is much of fun with FPGA systems, finding bugs and compatibility issues, having them fixed, firmware updates, new cores etc. In contrast, UAE based software emulators are much more finished.

Which is preferable for people which just want to turn on the device and play.

Only geeks/nerds like challenges and/or tinkering with systems, like you. But they are a niche, and they don't represent the mainstream AKA target for those products.

@matthey

Quote:

matthey wrote: The original devs did not have time to squeeze more, most of the AmigaOS was written in C with poor compilers back then and the 68000 code density was not as good as the 68020. Much more is possible today if seriously trying to improve the 68k Amiga memory footprint but emulation and simulation says nobody is serious about the 68k Amiga.

Large parts of AmigaOS 3 were 'downcoded' to asm for speed and/or to save space. I don't think recompiling would make it much better, but it would be a difficult task. Might be worth it if you just need to trim off a few kB to fit in your hardware, but other than that a waste of time.

"Nobody is serious about the 68k Amiga" is a silly thing to say. For most of us the Amiga has never been serious, and we don't want it to be. Nevertheless some people are putting serious effort into doing stuff for it - as serious as anyone did back in the day.

I am serious about maintaining the Amiga's spirit in a world where everything is transitory. This is retro computing, and the closer it is to what was possible back in the day the better. The non-serious people are those who are trying to turn the Amiga into something else.

@cdimauro

Quote:

cdimauro wrote: @kolla Quote: [quote]I know, as I have neighbours, family, friends and colleagues with those, and when they visit me and try my "fancy" FPGA systems very few of them see ("feel") the point. Which is?

Aside from the tinkering? Well, it's been a while, but on FPGA systems my scores on pinball games were much closes to those I achieved on real Amiga than the scores I got when using software emulator. But of course there could be many reasons for that, wasn't exactly a blind test...

Quote:

Quote: Frankly, the "tinkering" is much of fun with FPGA systems, finding bugs and compatibility issues, having them fixed, firmware updates, new cores etc. In contrast, UAE based software emulators are much more finished. Which is preferable for people which just want to turn on the device and play. Only geeks/nerds like challenges and/or tinkering with systems, like you. But they are a niche, and they don't represent the mainstream AKA target for those products.

Exactly, and that was indeed my point - FPGA systems for me, software emulators for your average Joe/Jane.... who, if they are at all interested, most likely already got it covered by now.

_________________
B5D6A1D019D5D45BCC56F4782AC220D8B3E2A6CC

@kolla

Quote:

kolla wrote: @cdimauro Quote: cdimauro wrote: @kolla [quote]Which is? Aside from the tinkering? Well, it's been a while, but on FPGA systems my scores on pinball games were much closes to those I achieved on real Amiga than the scores I got when using software emulator. But of course there could be many reasons for that, wasn't exactly a blind test...

Try the "Lagless VS (BR) 50/60" setting in the Display tab with 4 slices, a decent video card and monitor.
Quote:

Quote: Which is preferable for people which just want to turn on the device and play. Only geeks/nerds like challenges and/or tinkering with systems, like you. But they are a niche, and they don't represent the mainstream AKA target for those products. Exactly, and that was indeed my point - FPGA systems for me, software emulators for your average Joe/Jane.... who, if they are at all interested, most likely already got it covered by now.

Nope. It's not a matter of hardware (FPGA) or software (WinUAE) emulation: people like to have a "black box" with the joystick/joypad attached, and immediately start play. Even WinUAE requires tinkering / configurations, which is already out.

Easy-peasy stuff rulez!