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Author Topic: New A-EON Music Card for Classic Amigas  (Read 46395 times)

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Offline Hattig

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Re: New A-EON Sound Card for Classic Amigas
« on: October 21, 2013, 09:02:36 AM »
Here's the details of the audio processor used: http://www.vlsi.fi/en/products/vs1063.html

I wonder if it will be possible to use this to encode to MP3 the audio coming from Paula, as encoding is one of its major features.

The data transfer width (16 for Zorro, 8 for clockport) will merely affect the max bitrate that can be fed into the device.  I have no idea what the A1200 clockport can achieve, bandwidth-wise (1.75MB/s is suggested at http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=24079 - that's enough for several MP3 streams).
 

Offline Hattig

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Re: New A-EON Sound Card for Classic Amigas
« Reply #1 on: October 21, 2013, 09:10:05 AM »
Quote from: AmigaClassicRule;750629
Actually what I really wanted to see is a brand new 68k CPU upgrade. If physically possible and could be done to upgrade the CPU speed from 50 Mhz and even the avoided overclocked 100 Mhz to something like real 100 Mhz to 200 Mhz. If 68k can go as fast as 500 Mhz...it would be an awesome welcome....this way with such speed it will give a decent freedom to implement more complex and CPU consuming software and/or applications.


It's not going to happen - getting ASICs fabbed these days isn't cheap if you want 500MHz CPUs. There are ASIC sharing companies, where multiple designs are taped out at the same time onto the same masks, maybe that would be an option.

But before all that, you need a compatible CPU core. TG68 is fine for a low-end core, but would it clock up to 500MHz? There is the Apollo core, but that's very new. Maybe in a couple of years there will be FPGAs with it in that aren't horribly expensive, with ~100MHz cores.

And I guess you could then have a very fast clockport to go with it!
 

Offline Hattig

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Re: New A-EON Sound Card for Classic Amigas
« Reply #2 on: October 21, 2013, 04:28:41 PM »
Quote from: kickstart;750683

This one at what price? lets make a guess... 200-250€


We're talking about a $5 (max) audio decoder chip and a (probably cheap) CPLD to interface that chip over I2S to Zorro/Clockport. Admittedly CPLD programming and AmigaOS software drivers will be a disproportionate cost, but €200 is still going to be a bit on the high side, IMO.
 

Offline Hattig

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Re: New A-EON Sound Card for Classic Amigas
« Reply #3 on: October 21, 2013, 04:55:17 PM »
Quote from: nicholas;750691
I'm wondering if it comes with a licence from Fraunhofer for the MP3 decoding?


There's a version of the chip that excludes mp3 capability, which leads me to conclude that the mp3 licensing cost is included in the chip cost - but of course that would be passed onto purchasers.

I agree that $50/£50 would be an upper bound for reasonable cost.