Your support is needed and is appreciated as Amigaworld.net is primarily dependent upon the support of its users.
|
|
|
|
 |
Hardware News : An interview with Coldfusion developer Oliver Hannaford-Day |
| posted by bugg on 12-Mar-2004 16:43:38 (7619 reads) |
I recently got in contact with Oliver Hannaford-Day the developer of the Coldfusion accelerator, to ask him his view about amiga and quiz him about his latest invention. Read more for the interview.
1) Oliver please can you tell us a little about yourself, you background, where you work etc.
Yep, no problem, I am Oliver Stephen Hannaford-Day, I'm 22 (28th Dec) and live in Lichfield, West Midlands, England. I work at our family business, a marina near Lichfield where we do up and sell boats, although not for much longer as everyone but me is retiring. ... they wont let me retire. 
I've had a computer since I was about five, the first was a Sinclair ZX80, followed by a ZX81, 128 and 128+2, I stayed with that till 1993 when I got my first Amiga, of sorts, the CDTV (I wanted a CD32 but my parents were still picking what computer I got so 16bit for me), from then on its all gone a bit mad, I now own 2x A4K's, 1x A3K. 1x A2k, 1x A1200, 1x A600, 1x A500, 2x CD32's, 4x CDTV's and a CDTV CR Prototype, 14 Amiga's in total, all but two in the same room. lol
Electronics wise I have a very limited background, when I started the CDTV website (www.cdtv.org.uk at the moment) I started playing with some basic cards, a diagnostic to Zorro slot adapter, diagnostic to A2K CPU slot adapter & an RGB to SVGA adapter (internal version of the sliver box used on the A4K), none really got that far, the designs were done but not prototyped, I still intend to actually print them one day. 
2) What exactly is the ColdFusion Accelerator?
Basically its a CPU upgrade using the Motorola V4 / V4e Coldfire CPU for the (so called) "Classic" range of Amiga's. As standard the card will have a minimum of a V4 Coldfire running at 220Mhz (Although the prototype is a 162Mhz Coldfire clocked at 150) with a PC100 SD-Ram DIMM or SO-DIMM memory slot for up to 512 Meg of fast ram.
The card may have other things like an AC97 audio codec, USB, and such like but the above is the minimum needed to get the card running. (That, a flash chip and transceivers, and that PCB thingy.)
3) What inspired you to create the ColdFire Accelerator?
Basically because I love my CDTV's but it has one problem, a 68000 just isnt fast enough, so I wanted to make a CPU upgrade, I started just looking at the 68020 or 030 chips as some of the pictures of 030 cards looked so simple but then on A.org was a news post about the launch (?) of a V4 Coldfire running at 162Mhz, Mmmmm, I looked at the chip and it didnt look that different from a 68030 (you know, it had a data bus, address bus and some other bits that didnt do much ;) so I figured I would give it a try.
4) How did you decide on which parts(processor and other features) to use?
The CPU was just because it looked as easy to design a Coldfire as it was a 68020, and it was faster, nothing other than that really.
The SD-Ram feature was built in to the Coldfire so that was a freebie that I couldnt simply leave unused.
As for USB, well that came much later (After the first prototype) and was simply because I saw it in the Digikey catalogue, same goes for the Firewire really. (Although that isnt as important and takes up more space so probably wont be on the CPU card, maybe a Zorro card though.)
The IRDA (Infra red) and AC97 (audio) is simply because the CPU has built in support for these, they are cheap and small. I think thats all thats on the cards at present, I have done a few designs with expansion slots but with the news of the V4e it may be a better idea to leave the first card with just USB and maybe the AC97 codec, keeping the price down, get the cards out sooner and later having a V4e version for people wanting more built in as standard.
The IDE interface was because I ran a poll on the projects newsgroup and people wanted a fast IDE interface.
5) Which model will be finished first, the A4000 or A1200 version, and which other Amiga models to you see designing this card for?
All the prototypes have been for the A4000 and as such it will most probably be finished first, I have done an A1200 design which should work but having two prototypes on the go will slow things down even more. (I know what your all thinking, just dont say it, ok
As for other cards, well the A2000, CD32, CDTV and A500 versions would be done, as I want all of them, the A1000, A600 and Draco versions would have to be looked at after the others are launched but I would like to see a Coldfire upgrade for all of them even if it didnt make economic sense.
6) You told me in a previous email, that the project had ground to a halt for now, why is this and when do you see it getting underway again?
It isnt as fatal as it sounds, this is the biggest project I have ever done and as such I dont have any of the stuff needed to do it so when I get to a point where I need something I dont have everything stops until I get it, at the moment its a load of test equipment (A decent oscilloscope being top of the list(ed: offers please ;)) for the prototype, so its time to go shopping.  I have been doing things while the project has stopped though, work on a new
website and some other stuff.
7) Will it be easy to create a 16 Bit version, what would be required?
Oh yes, it shouldnt be hard at all, the main work will be altering the bus logic to interface with the older bus but the code for the A2630 is available as a nice base to work from. The main work needed is the PCB design, but I like doing that bit.
8) How much is this card likely to cost?
Ahh, Well I am saying between £170 - £220 but that is being safe. The card would only be printed in small batches which adversely effects the price but one option to bring the price down a bit would be to do one batch from pre-orders, it would depends on how many people wanted to pre-order. (after seeing it and a number being sent out for review, I wouldnt do pre-orders on something that isnt finished)
9) What do you think the new Amiga One will do to aid amiga?
Im not a big fan of the A1 or Pegasos, not because they dont do the job well, I am sure they do, but I look at them and cant help thinking PC, (or wow, a PC in a microwave) it just looks like a standard PC motherboard but using a PPC. For me the Amigas stength has been in its hardware, when OS1.3 was used it didnt really matter as all the games didnt need to touch it, but now its flipped around with the OS being the most important thing, sad.
As for will it aid Amiga, I dont know, Amiga's plan originally (from my point of view) was to do the Amiga DE and forget about the rest, and the Amiga One was only done after a lot of Amiga users said they didnt want that, the A1 was simply a stepping board to a platform independent OS, but the DE looks dead to me, Amiga havent changed their plan and its all a bit in limbo, is the DE still the way they want to go? Is the Amiga One and OS4 combo good enough to bring back all who have left? Can it ever be technically as good as a high spec Mac as Mac get the fastest chips first....
I can totally see the A1 and OS4 being used by most Amiga users but I dont know whats next...... Awww, now Im all sad. lol
10) Where do you see Amiga in 10 years time?
Lol, well you asked.....
One using a V6 Coldfire clocked at 800Mhz, with a new custom chipset that no one wants to change for a PCI card and software available in every computer shop. Two versions would be available, an A1200/500 lookalike and a powerful
A2/4000 version not for people like me.
An Amiga you could stick a DVD (or whatever is around then) in and play a real nice game like on a game console or have the slot empty and it boots to a bug free, stable Workbench 3.9 style OS for writing a letter or surfing the net.
Thats the Amiga in 10 years time... maybe
If you have any other questions please ask, Im always happy to talk.
www.cdtv.org.uk/coldfire/ |
|
|
|
|
| STORYID: 1298
|
Goto page ( 1 | 2 )
| Poster | Thread |  DawnBringer
|  |
Re: An interview with Coldfusion developer Oliver Hannaford-
Posted on 13-Mar-2004 23:02:28
| | [ #21 ] |
| |
 |
Member
 |
Joined: 12-Jan-2004
Posts: 81
From: Donsö, Gothenburg, Sweden | | |
|
| Quote:
| If it runs AmigaOS natively, it's an Amiga |
Not if that set-up can't run the majority of the software written for that system. That's like using a boingball for your Windows bkg and think that's gonna make it closer to an Amiga.
Quote:
| I'll tell you what, when you get that 220MHz Coldfire Amiga running, let's put it up against an AmigaOne running OS4 and see which one outperforms the other. How's that? |
No need, I'll happily stick with my Blizzard060-AGA system...I have nothing I need to be done faster than my 060 can perform (I don't raytrace much these days - and my AMOS games run at full speed un-compiled).
But don't get me wrong, I think it's great that people buy new Amiga hardware (rather than M$)...I just hope they still have some machine that can run classic stuff
_________________
Richard Fhager - MegaMuchoCoolerz
|
| | Status: Offline |
| | herewegoagain
| |
Re: An interview with Coldfusion developer Oliver Hannaford-
Posted on 14-Mar-2004 0:00:37
| | [ #22 ] |
| |
 |
Elite Member
 |
Joined: 8-Jan-2003
Posts: 3270
From: Charlotte, NC | | |
|
| Quote:
| Not if that set-up can't run the majority of the software written for that system. That's like using a boingball for your Windows bkg and think that's gonna make it closer to an Amiga. |
Hmmm.... Well, it's been said that the compatability level for old software will be fairly high. (I seem to recall something like ~85-90%) So that shouldn't be a problem. That would, in fact be the majority of software. Even if it has to run some things under UAE emulation that's okay for me. Then I have the best of both worlds.
But to be quite honest, I have alot of software that I purchased years ago that won't even run on my A3000. That doesn't mean that my A3000 is not an Amiga. Things "break" when changing the architecture and the OS of a system. It happens, especially when making such a big jump in the physical architecture. It happened with the PC, it happened with the MAC and it happened with the Amiga, yes, even the "true" Amiga's. That's the price of the evolution of a computing platform.
Difference being is that those platforms had developers still around to produce patches or updates so that the programs still ran on the newer stuff. We are not as fortunate (though we still have alot of good talent in this market). But hopefully this new hardware will bring a few good developers back around eventually. Without it, they will never give us another look.
Quote:
| No need, I'll happily stick with my Blizzard060-AGA system...I have nothing I need to be done faster than my 060 can perform (I don't raytrace much these days - and my AMOS games run at full speed un-compiled). |
That's great. I hope it lasts a long time for you, I really do. But for some of us, we do have want's and needs for more modern things. Actually, for you, this Coldfire would probably be just right. There is a market for it, albeit a small one. Personally, I would have opted for a lowcost G3 card for classics as then you would still be able to run OS4.
Quote:
But don't get me wrong, I think it's great that people buy new Amiga hardware (rather than M$)...I just hope they still have some machine that can run classic stuff |
I see where you are coming from, but I don't think it will be a big problem for most software. If it is, then just buy a spare A1200 for that ocassional need for something that is not compatable with the new stuff.
BTW, to the original poster, thanks for the interview. Interesting read. |
| | Status: Offline |
| | Roj
| |
Re: An interview with Coldfusion developer Oliver Hannaford-
Posted on 14-Mar-2004 1:45:27
| | [ #23 ] |
| |
 |
Member
|
Joined: 18-Nov-2003
Posts: 69
From: The Avatar Contains a Vital Clue | | |
|
| Quote:
But anyway the classic Amiga and the consept with which it was made, while nice in many ways, has been eclipsed by modern hardware. Why deny ourselfes it?
|
I saw this remark and had to stop and say something. This is something that's been true according to a large number of people even as far back as the Amiga's heyday. I fail to see what has happened recently to change it. Either you like what Amiga hardware and software offers or you don't. Constantly comparing Amiga technology to other platforms has always and will always be frustrating. Nothing new there at all. I don't believe the reason we all appreciate the Amiga has anything to do with what we see when we compare it with the other side of the fence. The Amiga just works different, plays different and gets done what it does in a way that's liberating and refreshing. To me, that's what it's about. You can get the job done on any computer platform, but it just feels better on a real Amiga.
_________________
Ideas on the Internet are like pictures of my family. Snap enough of them off and eventually one of them will be worth keeping.
|
| | Status: Offline |
| | bugg
| |
Re: An interview with Coldfusion developer Oliver Hannaford-
Posted on 14-Mar-2004 4:55:10
| | [ #24 ] |
| |
 |
Member
|
Joined: 28-Oct-2002
Posts: 97
From: leeds, england | | |
|
| Quote:
| BTW, to the original poster, thanks for the interview. Interesting read. |
No probs Herewegoagain I thought it would be a good article to post amid all this A1 hype.
And I must thank Oli_hd for taking the time to answer my questions and for creating something that i'd quite happily slap in my A3000 ;)
_________________
hmmmm
A3000 - 040 - 32Mb Ram - 1.2GB SCSI HD - OS 3.9 - Cybervision 64/3D / 19" Rackmount - Int
|
| | Status: Offline |
| | Oli_hd
| |
Re: An interview with Coldfusion developer Oliver Hannaford-
Posted on 14-Mar-2004 9:30:30
| | [ #25 ] |
| |
 |
Regular Member
 |
Joined: 13-Mar-2004
Posts: 129
From: Unknown | | |
|
| Hi,
Quote:
| We came to the conclusion that this would not have any benefits, as the ColdFire v4 CPU still lacks some very important instructions (for example the DIV (division) instruction, which is widely used in every Amiga program). Have you already started to make a concept for the emulation of unsupported instructions (maybe a JIT), to minimize the performance loss due to the emulation? |
Im using the one Motorola supply, the CF68K Library.  |
| | Status: Offline |
| | Intuitioned
| |
Re: An interview with Coldfusion developer Oliver Hannaford-
Posted on 14-Mar-2004 20:23:06
| | [ #26 ] |
| |
 |
Super Member
 |
Joined: 27-Oct-2003
Posts: 1340
From: Unknown | | |
|
| I would also be interested in putting a Coldfire in my A1200 for the fun of it. It would be interesting to have a A1200 that fast(!) with virtually no OS 68k emulation. However, personally, if I was bright enough to make a Coldfire accelerator, I would make a smallish passive G3 one instead for OS4 readiness.
_________________
|
| | Status: Offline |
| | Intuitioned
| |
Re: An interview with Coldfusion developer Oliver Hannaford-
Posted on 14-Mar-2004 20:37:45
| | [ #27 ] |
| |
|
Super Member
|
Joined: 27-Oct-2003
Posts: 1340
From: Unknown | | |
|
| Regarding A1 not a true Amiga debate.
I can see where they are coming from. What spoils the A1 experience for me is that the machines look like PC's with mainly PC hardware, and that 80x25 PC text mode during UBOOT leaves me COLD! You can take an ATX case and make it black with a little blue window, but it still looks like a PC to me. However Mac's uses mostly PC parts like ATI or GeForce cards, memory, soundcards etc. Nobody says they're not Mac's. It helps however that they have distinctive looking cases though.
Systems have to move on. If it means a bit of incompatibility then so be it. Most productivity 68K OS legal software will run under JIT, and most game will run under UAE. The software that doesn't run is probably to primitive to be of any interest today anyway. The price of progress is incompatibility and it is not only an Amiga thing. I doubt old DOS games that directly mucked about with system resources would work properly (if at all!) on 2000 / XP today. I bet the Mac had incompatibilities when it switched over to PPC. I just wished the Amiga went PPC ten years ago with the PowerPC 601.
The only good thing to survive with the Amiga is the software. I look forward to the day that the Amiga OS runs on other more powerful and up to date hardware, in the form of OS5 / DE / Taos Intent. Java's main selling point is that it is hardware independant. Imagine a efficient, well designed, hardware indepentant OS that is AmigaOS. To me OS4 / A1 is a stopgap, but one that I support because it is essential stepping stone for OS5.
_________________
|
| | Status: Offline |
| | Geri
| |
Re: An interview with Coldfusion developer Oliver Hannaford-
Posted on 15-Mar-2004 16:54:59
| | [ #28 ] |
| |
 |
Elite Member
|
Joined: 7-Oct-2003
Posts: 2038
From: ST/AT | | |
|
| | | Status: Offline |
| | nzv58l
| |
Re: An interview with Coldfusion developer Oliver Hannaford-
Posted on 15-Mar-2004 20:35:32
| | [ #29 ] |
| |
|
Super Member
|
Joined: 7-Oct-2003
Posts: 1640
From: Michigan | | |
|
| It would be nice to see this materialize. One thing my classic can do that I do not see the A1 doing is run the Video Toaster/Flyer with on the fly editing. This would definitly be a shot in the arm for that. I think the custom chipset bit the dust when it comes down to how much it would take to introduce a new chipset on an A1 that was compatable with the old chipsets. I still like the idea of planer graphics and the copper. However, we who have bought A1's will have to be content without the chipset and hope that OS 4 will make up for the loss. I think with the built in hardware it made it easier to program as everything was standard. I think Hyperion are feeling this right now even with just trying to support the Radion and Vodoo graphics cards. If I were you I would start with the most popular models of Amigas starting with the 1200 as most people own these even though I do not. What I would like to see is an add on card for the A1 that would give it a compatible, but totally upgraded graphics and sound, although I doubt if this will ever happen. I do plan to be using my A1, although I am sure that as time goes on I will be using less of the classic software in lew of the new software. |
| | Status: Offline |
| |
|
|
Goto page ( 1 | 2 )
[ home ][ about us ][ privacy ]
[ forums ][ classifieds ]
[ links ][ news archive ]
[ link to us ][ user account ]
|
16 crawler(s) on-line.
135 guest(s) on-line.
0 member(s) on-line.
A1SE: G3@600MHz, 2GB, 1GBit network card
A1XE: G4@933MHz, 2GB, refitted AC'97 codec