Natami

[dammy]

I do believe we will ALL buy one of these if they manage to make it out.

Not all of us will. If I have a real need to run an Amiga game, UAE is there and it's a lot cheaper.  Ten years ago, I may have broke down and consider buying one.  Today, there isn't the need IMO.

I wish them good luck, but I do not think the real world market is going to be there for this product when and if it goes into retail production.

[CountRaven]

Only if it goes the way of Minimig there should be a way for this product to find a place in the market. A bigger company like Acube should take it and come across the task to produce large quantities and bring the final product to the people.

[biggun]

A bigger company like Acube should take it and come across the task to produce large quantities and bring the final product to the people.

How big is ACube actually?
Does someone know how many employes they have?

[CountRaven]

Big or small they seem to have the interest to handle Amiga stuff business, unlike most hardware companies out there. Plus they have already mass-produced Minimig and Sam, so thye know how and they have proved that they can do it.

You can put any company you like in the slot of acube.

[Rob]

Not all of us will. If I have a real need to run an Amiga game, UAE is there and it's a lot cheaper.  Ten years ago, I may have broke down and consider buying one.  Today, there isn't the need IMO.

I wish them good luck, but I do not think the real world market is going to be there for this product when and if it goes into retail production.

I'm sure that if they super glue and ARM to it........

[biggun]

Big or small they seem to have the interest to handle Amiga stuff business, unlike most hardware companies out there. Plus they have already mass-produced Minimig and Sam, so thye know how and they have proved that they can do it.

You can put any company you like in the slot of acube.

I've nothing against Acube.
I think it would be nice if ACube would help to sell the NATAMI too.

Plus they have already mass-produced Minimig and Sam,

My not sure if the production volume of the MiniMig matches the term mass-production.
Producing and selling a couple hundred units is not mass-production.
The logistical issues will start if you produce batches of several thousands.


Producing and selling a few hundred units is also no problem for Thomas alone. ;-)

Cheers

[persia]

I hope there's a UAE for Haiku OS!

Not all of us will. If I have a real need to run an Amiga game, UAE is there and it's a lot cheaper.  Ten years ago, I may have broke down and consider buying one.  Today, there isn't the need IMO.

I wish them good luck, but I do not think the real world market is going to be there for this product when and if it goes into retail production.

[biggun]

I hope there's a UAE for Haiku OS!

UAE only provides a fraction of the features of the NATAMI of course.
Those who is satisfied with UAE or with the capabilities of the classic A500 does not need a NATAMI anyway.
The NATAMI is for AMIGA fans which want a real AMIGA which has more features than UAE. :-)

[Karlos]

UAE only provides a fraction of the features of the NATAMI of course.
Those who is satisfied with UAE or with the capabilities of the classic A500 does not need a NATAMI anyway.
The NATAMI is for AMIGA fans which want a real AMIGA which has more features than UAE. :-)

I dunno, UAE has some pretty nice features. On my machine, it supports modern SATA-II hard disks, DDR3 memory, gigabit network connections, high end sound and graphics. Those are pretty good features, really.

I'm not knocking natami, but the main advantage it seems to have is that it is a piece of hardware you can actually hold in your hand.

[JC]

NATAMI mainboard:  Status Done [AMIGA Check-mark]

NATAMI CPU-Card:  Status Done [AMIGA Check-mark]


Current work in progress (testing the Mainboard functionality)

Board for the people Status (coming soon)


Cheers

Well, that's great news. I will definitely be purchasing one. The specs and the compatability really sound fantastic. I for one really appreciate all the work that has went into this project.

[biggun]

I dunno, UAE has some pretty nice features. On my machine, it supports modern SATA-II hard disks, DDR3 memory, gigabit network connections, high end sound and graphics. Those are pretty good features, really.

I'm not knocking natami, but the main advantage it seems to have is that it is a piece of hardware you can actually hold in your hand.

Yes of course this is a  major advantage.
Having a small system which just boots only AMIGA, which you can turn on and off as you want - is just nice



Regarding the different between UAE and NATAMI.

First of all:
UAE is a great piece of software - I love UAE -


I think it very much depends whether you are mainly AMIGA or mainly Windows guy.

When you are a 90%-Windows/10%-AMiGA guy or gal then UAE is a gift from heaven.
You use you PC for Windows mainly and play a bit with AMIGA OS from time to time.
UAE is free - bingo.


If you are 90% AMIGA guy then having to have a huge and power hungry machine that loads gigabytes to boot up only to emulate an AMIGA is a bit of a pain. Especially if the 2 GHz and 200 Watt eating PC runs AMIGA slower than the NATAMI HW.
 

NATAMI is real HW which continues the AMIGA spirit.
To me the AMIGA spirit had a lot of elegance and efficiency.

AMIGA did had DMA based sound, DMA based Copper, DMA based Sprites, DMA based Blitter etc.
NATAMI is a real AMIGA so every is DMA based again.



On AMIGA audio was "free". It did not cost any mentionable amount of CPU time.
How much CPU time does 100% correct AMIGA audio emulation in UAE?
How much will it eat if you emulate not 4 voices but 8 or 16?

How much CPU time does 100% correct emulation of sprite and playfield collision take?
How much would it take if the screen resolution is not 320x200 but 1280x1024?

How much CPU time does emulation of the AMIGA Blitter take?
How much would it take if the NATAMI Blitter is 120 times faster?

How much CPU time will emulating of the new 3D Blitter take?


The point is UAE can emulate an old A500 or an old A4000 by brute force.
The NATAMI is to fast to be emulated by bruteforce.


Good examples to me are the new game we are working on.
For example, look at the new 194x screen shot on the NATAMI website.
The new 194x game is much to demanding for UAE.
It could not run smooth on any PC with UAE.  (At least any PC available today)


With todays fast PC you can easily emulate an A1200, that clear.
But you can not reach NATAMI performance in software emulation - not even with todays PC.
Certainly at some point you also emulate an NATAMI in software when PC are 10 times faster or so.

The NATAMI is no PC killer - of course not.
But its a faster AMIGA, much faster than the old A4000 or even UAE.

Cheers

[whabang]

I'm really excited about this one aswell. Hopefully, it'll be released soon.

[biggun]

One stupid question: How can I post a real picture here instead of a link?

[the_leander]

UAE is a great piece of software - I love UAE - But UAE is only an emulator.
NATAMI is real HW which continues the AMIGA spirit.

No, it has an FPGA which is emulating the Amiga chipset. As for "Amiga Spirit"... Sorry but that is something entirely intangible and means different things to different people.

For it to be considered "real hardware" it would have to be an ASIC.

AMIGA did had DMA based sound, DMA based Copper, DMA based Sprites, DMA based Blitter etc.
NATAMI is a real AMIGA so every is DMA based again.
Of course the SuperAGA chipset is much faster than AGA.

No, Natami is a homebrew project that runs on an FPGA, I don't mean to belittle the project, but claiming it is a "real amiga" is quite a stretch. It also ignores the fact that it is going up against systems with several orders of magnitude faster hardware on UAE.

Of everything you've claimed to be an advantage, the only one that might hold out is "SuperAGA". The question is, how this will perform against RTG, especially in terms of support software.

On AMIGA audio was "free". It did not cost any mentionable amount of CPU time.
How much CPU time does 100% correct AMIGA audio emulation in UAE?
How much will it eat if you emulate not 4 voices but 8 or 16?

How much CPU time does 100% correct emulation of sprite and playfield collision take?
How much would it take if the screen resolution is not 320x200 but 1280x1024?

How much CPU time does emulation of the AMIGA Blitter take?
How much would it take if the NATAMI Blitter is 120 times faster?

How much CPU time will emulating of the new 3D Blitter take?

Quite a bit. The flip side is that the underlying hardware is far far quicker so it can afford to do these things.

Your FPGA on the other hand is a fixed target, and accepting streamlining improvements to the code will remain as fast as it is pretty much.

For example, look at the new 194x screen shot on the NATAMI website.
The new 194x game is much to demanding for UAE.
It could not run smooth on an PC with UAE.

How much do you want to bet that it'd run quite happily on UAE with a suitable slab of silicon thrown at it?

With todays fast PC you can easily emulate an A1200, that clear.
But you can not reach NATAMI performance in software emulation - not even with todays PC.
Certainly at some point you also emulate an NATAMI in software when PC are 10 times faster or so.

I'm sorry, but what colour is the sky on your world? I can with UAE on modern hardware have multiple UAEs operating on separate cores, each one providing the emulation with more grunt then any Natami, A1, Peg, Classic or Sam could ever dream of.

Besides having a small system which just boots only AMIGA, which you can turn on and off as you want - is just nice

Now that might be a selling point.

As to the rest... Sorry, no matter how much hype you throw at it, the facts are plain as day.

Don't get me wrong, I think the Natami is a cool concept and I wish it all the success in the world. But trying to make it seem like the greatest thing since sliced bread... It ain't.

[the_leander]

One stupid question: How can I post a real picture here instead of a link?

click on the image button above the text box?

Failing that...

Code: [Select]

[img]urltoyourimage.jpg[/img]

[mr_a500]

But trying to make it seem like the greatest thing since sliced bread... It ain't.

Sliced bread sucks.

The #1 problem with WinUAE is that it requires Windows.