@TheDungeonDelver

Quote:

Recreating such a thing is anathema to me. Yeah, "new" custom chips and all but really...honestly, a system that's compatible with the old chips but still manages to move forward would be of more interest to me: something that by default has a 2mb Agnus (or hell, why not go the WinUAE route and make it the 8mb chip-ram version?), a couple of PCI slots, etc. That'd get my attention. Not a clone of a machine that was outdated as soon as it was offered for sale by C=.

I think you're missing the point completely. Jens makes it quite clear they would be looking at something that would 'move things forward', providing the kind of experience a moderately expanded Amiga gives. What I see here is something similar to the Commodore One, rather than a 'next gen' Amiga to run OS4.

Last edited by dan.hutch on 11-Oct-2006 at 08:13 PM.
Last edited by dan.hutch on 11-Oct-2006 at 08:12 PM.

Quote:

Not a clone of a machine that was outdated as soon as it was offered for sale by C=.

Are you seriousely suggesting that the a500 was outdated in 87? Can you tell me of one pc that had the multimedia abilities of the amiga back then? Back then pcs were running mainly dos and had ega and mono pc speaker capabilities. The amiga had stereo sound, a fully graphical OS with multitasking, had a gfx chip capable of showing thousands of colours, had plug and play and so on..

The amiga was ahead of the competition until beginning-mid 90s

Last edited by Tomas on 11-Oct-2006 at 08:18 PM.

@TheDungeonDelver:

just so its said, by the sound of it you seem to have bought an a500 in 1994 or something.

In 1992 i had 20MB hdd, 4mb ram 4x floppy drives in my A500.

In 1993 i got my 1200.

Even my C64 had a HDD......so i really fail to see your point in any of this.


A500 was a major hit for years, it is a reason why its one of the most remebered Computers around....

WHDload is good indeed but back in the day HDD's was expensive and 20mb hdds costed "loose for pc" way more than an full AmigaOne.... in 1995 the first step towards cheaper hdd's was done and back then a 800mb hdd costed about 300 quid...and that was considered cheap.

Feel free to tell us more on the topic as i am very interested in knowing what youre on about.

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@TheDungeonDelver
One step at a time: The hard work is recreating the classic chipset - extending it would probably be relatively easy by comparison (at least if they designed it with that in mind).

_________________
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It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue...

Awesome ! Hope this leads to a amiga classic compatable board in the end .. !

Nice! But what use other than making alot of people clinging even longer to outdated
hardware (and some software)?

Maybe if this was put on a PCI card it could be used by OS4, MOS and AROS for complete
backward compatibility. But still, this is not a way forward for Amiga.

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[SOLD] µA1-C - 750GX 800MHz - 512MB - Antec Aria case

Avatar by HNL_DK!

Quote:

But what use other than making alot of people clinging even longer to outdated hardware (and some software)?

No other "use". After all, it's "only" a nice hobby to use retro hardware. Just realize that there are people who prefer the old original hardware and still enjoy very much using it and tinkering with it.
This has nothing to do with "clinging to outdated hardware". It's a nice hobby. Period.
Btw, your quote would apply to AmigaOne's and PPC in same manner.

* I'm quite excited about this baby! Would purchase......

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Put the needle to the record when the drum beats go like this...

Questions for those who would know:

1. Assuming replication of the AGA chipset can be done - how easy would it be to add the features that *should* have been in the AGA chipset, interface a DSP and allow 8MB (and more?) ChipRAM?

2. Once AGA is in FPGAs and possibly extended as above using RTG would it be possible and reasonable do-able to interface the chipset with, say a high level Radeon graphics chipset on a graphics card?

3. Even more interesting - would it be possible to create a motherboard that interfaced an extended AGA chipset, a decent PPC processor with suitable north and southbridges plus possibly an 030 to use co-processor for fickle tasks, and yet allow RTG to take over and use a graphics card in a slot - basically creating a suped up classic Amiga with potential OS4 compatibility - and would anyone be interested in such a thing?

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Sven Harvey
Amiga Mart in Micro Mart, Geekology 4M@, and other places
A1000, A2000, A1500 A500, CDTV, A500+, A600, A4000, A1200, CD32, AT A1200HD, A1-XE

Quote:

plus possibly an 030 to use co-processor for fickle tasks

That would be ugly. I suppose you will have the same problems like the dual CPU boards from phase5. Emulation with Petunia would be a better and cheaper solution.

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www.amiga4ever.de

@billt
Quote:

How's about a faster Buster chip too? :)

that would simply rock! I would buy a pair of über-busters for my 2 A4000 It would boost the speed of lots of Z3 cards... mmm

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This is pretty slick.... With the custom chip clones on their own headers, it sounds like a way to keep those old machines running as the original silicon fails....

But put it on a mini-itx also!

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It's got 32 bits and it uses them all. It's overclocked, watch the bouncing ball!

Not only that, but consider also electronic hobbyists who want to add more complex sound or graphics capabilities to their projects. Right now the choice is either a simple monochrome low-res LCD or going all out with PCI or an FPGA - the old chips used in 1980s computers are no longer manufactured (the recently released Parallax Propeller is intriguing, but it only allows for 4 colours out of 64 and there's only 32KB that it can use for its own code and the graphics buffer - so something like 320x200 at 32 colours won't fit in it). The amiga chipset could become a standard in hobby electronics!

I swear, you people...

The approach taken with the A2000 (expansion slots!) was what was needed; and the 500 should've gone out with an 020 or 030 and another meg of RAM, plus built in HD interface.

Oh, and I got my A500 in 1989 so

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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.

@JimS

Quote:

But put it on a mini-itx also!

Or better still on a PCI card that can be run on any machine... or have I missed the point?

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@Samwel

Quote:

Nice! But what use other than making alot of people clinging even longer to outdated hardware (and some software)? Maybe if this was put on a PCI card it could be used by OS4, MOS and AROS for complete backward compatibility. But still, this is not a way forward for Amiga.

Not a lot, but it's great fun for those of us who like 'clinging on to outdated hardware'.

Remember not everyone who is interested in Amiga is also interested in OS4, MOS, AROS. For me, OS4 is not what its all about, I love tinkering with my classic Amiga, playing classic games, and getting it to do neat things it was never really designed for.

Ok, you may not see this as a 'way forward' but for some of us hobbyists nuts it is exactly that.

I support OS4 and think its great, but its not everything, I think some folk have starting getting a little OS4 obsessed and could be in danger of forgetting all the othjer fun stuff, in their blinkered quest for OS4 hardware.

Last edited by dan.hutch on 12-Oct-2006 at 10:45 PM.

@SvenHarvey:
Quote:

1. Assuming replication of the AGA chipset can be done - how easy would it be to add the features that *should* have been in the AGA chipset, interface a DSP and allow 8MB (and more?) ChipRAM?

Not to mention finally support for that "sex and free beer" jumper.

Best regards,

Niels

One very easy deviation/improvement for a reworked OCS or AGA chipset would be to merge 4 channel 8 bit sound into 2 channel 16 bit sound. I think a lot of people are only set up for stereo output so just leave additional channels to be mixed in via cpu a-la OctaMed.

I'm aware of a few FPGA projects but haven't followed too closely - is a project of this size fitting into a single chip? What is the capacity (for want of a better word) of the FPGA we're expecting on the Samantha board?

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@TheDungeonDelver

You seem to be forgetting just how much those things cost back then, an 020/030 and an extra meg would have literally doubled the price of the 500.

Double the cost with four times the advantages. Just in my opinion.

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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.