Quote:

Now, would you like to work on the A1?

For what? I don't get your question.

Quote:

For what? I don't get your question.

if your skills are in FPGA design, the next A1 needs the skills to get rid of the Via chip. Get some open cores and go for it.

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

Quote:

if your skills are in FPGA design, the next A1 needs the skills to get rid of the Via chip. Get some open cores and go for it.

No sorry, we have no interest at all in that.

@ Palpatine


Now we need some nice (and very clever) person to
do an FPGA version of the Buster chip, so our Zorro III
slots can go full speed.

25Mhz * 32bit hmmm....100Mb/s maybe


Wol.

_________________
It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.~Albert Einstein

@Wol.

I don't think that is something that we could do.

@interesting

There are plenty of decent off-the-shelf southbridges on the market
just waiting to be picked up, some of them even from VIA. So no need
to replace that with a costum chip (actually it's the same stupid idea
that killed most of the next-gen Amigas from 1995 to 2002).

And just a side note, thats even true for northbridges, only that the
choice is somewhat smaller than with SBs.

Not to put down AHT, but there is a huge difference between adapting a
SoC-design to special needs (as done with the Ariana) or converting an
existing "simple" bus-adaptor into another formfactor on one side or a
costum North/Southbridge or a full G3-G5 mobo on the other one.

Back to the topic:

This one doesn't make any sense, that why I need one ;)

_________________
- We don't need good ideas, we haven't run out on bad ones yet
- blame Canada

@Wol

Yes!! It's been ages since I hear hardware people saying that the speed limitations of the ZorroIII bus lie on the Buster chip. It would probably even make Zorro2 PCI adapters go much faster...

_________________

José

Quote:

There are plenty of decent off-the-shelf southbridges on the market just waiting to be picked up, some of them even from VIA. So no need to replace that with a costum chip (actually it's the same stupid idea that killed most of the next-gen Amigas from 1995 to 2002).

Off- the-shelf for use with x86 maybe, not that much available for PPC. Further your looking at a much smaller market we are working from, i.e. our costs are higher per chip.

Do you see Via north or south in Apple products?

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

Quote:

This one doesn't make any sense, that why I need one ;)

I doubt that there is a market for something like this. I simply don't get it. Who would buy such a c... ?
Forget the Voodoo... way to slow anyway. Time to move on, even the (current-AmigaOS-supported-) Radeons are way too slow these days. Come up with something new...how many Z3 Amigas are out there - and run stable and reliable these days anyway ??
Also, no mention about what OS it supports. Is there OS4 support avail for it ? (native, not some crappy p96 68k emulation driver).

BTW: I have a brand new Mediator PCI Z3 bus board laying around here somewhere (Brand new in the way, "Unpacked, but never used"). Anybody interessted? Have no A4K any more. Doubt I will ever have one again (except we'll see a 1.7 GHz G4 cpu board at a certain point in time, I might get one from ebay). I guess this board will have native OS4 support (not yet, though).

_________________
AmigaOne XE G3/933/VIA/FM801/R200 (fixed),
G3SE/600/Voodoo3/Sil680/RTL8139/SBLive! (noiseless!)
µA1-MK2/G3/933/R200/CMI8738
XE/G4 (broken 7450/800)

Southbridges aren't x86 or PPC, they are designed for a certain
interface/bus. The VIAs used in A1 and Peg use the PCI-interface
(which actuall is the only kind that really deserves to be call
southbridge), and if someone really wanted he could use them on an
68k-system.

The real problem is that MAI/Eyetech have choosen the worst chip VIA
has to offer, combined it with a suboptimal northbridge and had never
had proper documentation to work with....

The fact that "our" market is so much smaller is the exact reason why
anything but off-the-shelf parts is not an option (except one is doing
realtivly slow design or retro-gadgets).

Designing on chip equalling a 3 year old would easily cost a million
even before you start producing them (which also won't be cheap at
such low quantities).

_________________
- We don't need good ideas, we haven't run out on bad ones yet
- blame Canada

@Jorge

It's a reworked Prometheus, so why shouoln't it be supported.

Bout Radeons or Voodoos, we are talking about systems will in best
case feature a slightly disabled 604 with 233mHz, rest assured the
Voodoo won't be the bottleneck in any of these systems.

The problem is that some people still fail to realise that anything
Amiga has long since turned to be a hobby/retro-computer, and in this
context it make no difference wether ones personal dream-Amiga is a
basic A500, a packed up G4 or something in between.

None of them can be argued for serious without makeing a fool of
yourself (which off-course won't stop some...)

_________________
- We don't need good ideas, we haven't run out on bad ones yet
- blame Canada

@JimS

There are problems in using an FPGA as a graphics adapter. One is that a small FPGA (by no means capable to perform as a VGA) costs as much as a low-end modern graphics card (around EUR 20). I don't know exactly how much hardware is in current graphics chips, but I guess that an adequate FPGA would cost at least EUR 500. And it would be slower too. Then, do not forget that someone should have to code the graphics adapter into the FPGA -- that is, someone should design a graphics chip from scratch, which is not a task easily done.

Last edited by gdg on 09-Jul-2005 at 11:18 PM.

A few questions:

Will this work with existing PPC accel. cards for the 3000/4000? (I'm guessing DUH - yes of course it can)

Will you sell "bare" boards (e.g., sans video card, just the PCI bridge)

Can more than one be installed - allowing a user up to 4 PCI slots?

What's the minimum demand for Z2 versions?

TIA!

_________________
The problem with AmigaOS on PPC isn't that PPC is big-endian. The problem with AmigaOS on PPC is that PPC is dead-endian.

Quote:

Will this work with existing PPC accel. cards for the 3000/4000?

yes.

Quote:

Will you sell "bare" boards (e.g., sans video card, just the PCI bridge)

Not from the start, but probably in the future.

Quote:

Can more than one be installed - allowing a user up to 4 PCI slots?

We are considering a 4-slot PCI version which would be cheaper obviously than having two complete cards, and only 'cost' one Z3 slot. However, note "considering" - no decision made there yet.
If we do so, of course there will be a possibility for daVinci buyers to trade in the 2-slot daughter card for a 4-slot version.

Quote:

What's the minimum demand for Z2 versions?

Too soon to tell, we have to evaluate the efforts needed to the full first, only then can we estimate the minimum qty. We will only start looking into this in more detail once the daVinci Z3 version is out, first things first.

Quote:

the next A1 needs the skills to get rid of the Via chip. Get some open cores and go for it. Quote: No sorry, we have no interest at all in that

No interest in what? Replacing the VIA? or more generally no interest in doing hardware for the A1?

It seems everybody thinks that A1 wouldn't need custom hardware. I would like to say that I would spend some money on buying a chip that could store the kickstart and let me boot my A1 in less than 5 seconds.
Who will be able to do such hardware?

Last edited by elwood on 10-Jul-2005 at 08:07 AM.

_________________
Philippe 'Elwood' Ferrucci
Sam460 1.10 Ghz
AmigaOS 4 betatester
Amiga Translator Organisation

Quote:

No interest in what? Replacing the VIA? or more generally no interest in doing hardware for the A1?

No interest in the A1, at least not from a commercial point of view.

how about demonstrating that thing @ boinged in belgium ?

_________________
- Proud Member Of The Belgian Amigaclub Since 2003 -

The Belgian Amiga Club on FACEBOOK !

The Belgian Amiga Club Website

Quote:

how about demonstrating that thing @ boinged in belgium ?

Unfortunately the Boinged in Belgium show does not fit the schedule at this moment.

Well I for one think this is an awesome new toy that gives A4000/3000D owners a little something to smile about. I personally hope a Z2 version comes out* for A2000 users (all 100 or so left in the world! ) but as you say, first things first. Best of luck on this endeavor!


*As well as a sweeeeeet PPC card...!

_________________
The problem with AmigaOS on PPC isn't that PPC is big-endian. The problem with AmigaOS on PPC is that PPC is dead-endian.

Still no answer on OS4 support. So ?

_________________
AmigaOne XE G3/933/VIA/FM801/R200 (fixed),
G3SE/600/Voodoo3/Sil680/RTL8139/SBLive! (noiseless!)
µA1-MK2/G3/933/R200/CMI8738
XE/G4 (broken 7450/800)