Wither Natami?

[Ral-Clan]

A toast to my trusty old A2500 (R.I.P.) which served me well for 12 years as the centre of my home music recording setup.  This week a cascading failure beginning in the A2091 lead to the death of the card, a CD burner and hard drive.  

I knew this day would eventually come.  It will take much work to get the setup back to where I initially had it.  Even then, due to the age of the hardware, it could fail again at any moment.

Just an encouragement to those who are developing the Natami and A-Clone.  We desperately need fresh, healthy new Amiga clone hardware, soon.  Emulation is great, but for doing MIDI work where timing is everything, running straight on native hardware just can't be beat.

I'll buy the first clone that can reliable meet or exceed the capabilities of my old A2000/040/32MB RAM.

[bloodline]

ral-clan wrote:

 Emulation is great, but for doing MIDI work where timing is everything, running straight on native hardware just can't be beat.

I'll buy the first clone that can reliable meet or exceed the capabilities of my old A2000/040/32MB RAM.

MIDI is VERY sloppy, the cheapest new PC you can buy would easily run WinUAE and any MIDI software you have perfectly... I know because I've been doing that for 8 years...

[weirdami]

@bloodline

I know because I've been doing that for 8 years...

being sloppy?  :-P

[bloodline]

weirdami wrote:
@bloodline

I know because I've been doing that for 8 years...

being sloppy?  :-P

I've been sloppy a lot longer than 8 year :-D

[Ral-Clan]

I'm not sure what you mean exactly when you state that "MIDI is sloppy".  Do you mean that MIDI is a very loose format, so it doesn't matter what you run it on?  Or are you saying that MIDI under Amiga Emulation on a PC is so sloppy in timing that it's crap?

What MIDI software are you running in UAE on the PC?  How is the timing via the MIDI port?  What sort of PC MIDI interface are you using (game port?  USB) that works with Amiga emulation?

I want to be able to run Bars & Pipes and OctaMED, mainly, as good as they run on a real Amiga.

Just as an aside.  Can you run Amiga MIDI apps under emulation and have them run in sync with PC multi-tracking apps?  i.e. use Bars & Pipes in UAE and have ProTools running on the PC side, and have the two sync up?

[bloodline]

ral-clan wrote:
I'm not sure what you mean exactly when you state that "MIDI is sloppy".  Do you mean that MIDI is a very loose format, so it doesn't matter what you run it on?  Or are you saying that MIDI under Amiga Emulation on a PC is so sloppy in timing that it's crap?

What MIDI software are you running in UAE on the PC?  How is the timing via the MIDI port?  What sort of PC MIDI interface are you using (game port?  USB) that works with Amiga emulation?

I want to be able to run Bars & Pipes and OctaMED, mainly, as good as they run on a real Amiga.

Just as an aside.  Can you run Amiga MIDI apps under emulation and have them run in sync with PC multi-tracking apps?  i.e. use Bars & Pipes in UAE and have ProTools running on the PC side, and have the two sync up?

MIDI is very low frequency, and has serious lag in long MIDI chains... so it will work find even on quite bad emulation.

I used a MIDI loopback so I could use OctaMED in WinUAE an loop it back into Various soft synths I had running in Windows.

It's quite easy and fun to do, have a go :-)

[utri007]

Some people just want to do it with real amiga ;)emulation is great thing but it's not like real thing.

[bloodline]

utri007 wrote:
Some people just want to do it with real amiga ;)emulation is great thing but it's not like real thing.

Natami, CloneA and MiniMig are not real amigas...

[TheDaddy]

>>Natami, CloneA and MiniMig are not real amigas...

And who says so?

[the_leander]

TheDaddy wrote:
>>Natami, CloneA and MiniMig are not real amigas...

And who says so?

In the case of both MiniMig and Natami, their creators do (I've never heard of CloneA).

Quite frankly, the creators of these devices are in the best position to state whether or not they are "real" amigas I would think.

MiniMig is a hardware emulation, for all intents and purposes (and please, I mean no disrespect to the chap who created it) it is UAE on a chip.

Natami as I understand it is basically the same principle as the minimig, but with support for AGA coded into it, as well as a AAA style update for the chipset.

By no definition I know of (given their respective creators words on the matter if nothing else), could these two projects be called "real" amigas, since everything is being done by an emulator coded into an fpga.

[bloodline]

TheDaddy wrote:
>>Natami, CloneA and MiniMig are not real amigas...

And who says so?

Anyone with a clue?

[TheDaddy]

>>In the case of both MiniMig and Natami, their creators do (I've never heard of CloneA).

That doesn't mean it can not be considered a real Amiga.

What is a real Amiga?

Is a real Amiga anything that has an Amiga name printed on it?

Is a real Amiga anything that bears the Commodore name on it?

Is a real Amiga any portable device that says Amiga on it?

Is an Amiga a device powered by just the Amiga OS?

Would you call a pc an Amiga if it was running Amiga OS?

If Commodore were still around (not bust and etc.) and they released the Minimig or the Natami under the Amiga 550 and Amiga 7000 names and they didn't tell you these new machines were using FPGA, would we still be here discussing if they are REAL Amigas or not?

If Amiga Inc. had licensed the name to the Minimig and Natami creators what would you call them?

Nonsense.

[bloodline]

TheDaddy wrote:
>>In the case of both MiniMig and Natami, their creators do (I've never heard of CloneA).

That doesn't mean it can not be considered a real Amiga.

What is a real Amiga?

Is a real Amiga anything that has an Amiga name printed on it?

Is a real Amiga anything that bears the Commodore name on it?

Is a real Amiga any portable device that says Amiga on it?

Is an Amiga a device powered by just the Amiga OS?

Would you call a pc an Amiga if it was running Amiga OS?

If Commodore were still around (not bust and etc.) and they released the Minimig or the Natami under the Amiga 550 and Amiga 7000 names and they didn't tell you these new machines were using FPGA, would we still be here discussing it they are REAL Amigas or not?

If Amiga Inc. had licensed the name to the Minimig and Natami creators what would you call them?

Nonsense.

Amiga Hardware is hardware based on the designs of the Original Amiga chipset.

The FPGA projects are new circuit designs which look to software like the Original Amiga chips... In much the same way as an Emulator looks like Amiga Hardware to Amiga Software.

-Edit- CloneA would be the closest to the real Amiga chips since that actually try to get the Amiga Chip timing right as well, and thus would look like Amiga Hardware to other Amiga hardware.

[TheDaddy]

>>Amiga Hardware is hardware based on the designs of the Original Amiga chipset.
The FPGA projects are new circuit designs which look to software like the Original Amiga chips... In much the same way as an Emulator looks like Amiga Hardware to Amiga Software.

So what?
It's the year 2005 Commodore are still around and they are planning a small, Amiga 500/600 compatible machine with PS/2, SD-Card, VGA support and they name it the Amiga 550.

It is released using fpga technology because it makes economic sense.

So we have the Amiga 550 (Minimig) by Commodore. Is this a "real" Amiga?

[mikej]

"By no definition I know of (given their respective creators words on the matter if nothing else), could these two projects be called "real" amigas, since everything is being done by an emulator coded into an fpga."

It's not really an "emulator" in the sense of UAE at least, which is software running a close approximation to the original hardware on another cpu. The FPGA designs are actually copies of the original hardware.An FPGA is a big bunch of gates which have the same function as the original chips in the Amiga. The firmware wires these up to create hardware which could be identical to the original design (assuming no bugs). Electrically, in theory, you couldn't tell the difference between the original Amiga and a perfect FPGA copy - it would be the same design.

Sometimes when we design custom chips nowadays we take the source design that will be made into the chip and run it up on a really big FPGA to find any problems before we make it. The FPGA and the custom chip are the same design - ok, the FPGA is a lot more expensive and runs slower. Technology has moved forward so much since the Amiga was made we can now put all the original hardware in a modern FPGA and run it much faster and add extra features. It will be possible to run the 68000 softcore much faster than the original, how fast I don't know yet, but 50MHz plus should be no problem.

Mike.
www.fpgaarcade.com