NatAmi a new Amiga Clone emulating AGA on FPGA

[Raffaele]

NatAmi was a project revealed almost one year ago...

There were no news from it since two days ago, when a prototype of NatAmi was presented at german Amiga Meeting MeKa 2008.

NatAmi it is the second Amiga clone to be shown to public after the MiniMig clone, but MiniMig measures only 12x12 cm, and supports OCS Chipset. It is built to be a portable computer and its layout design and firware are Open Source and free to be distributed.

NatAmi seems to be proprietary design, full ATX form and supports also ECS and AGA!

It features also CPU Slot and PCI card slots...

It is equipped with 68030 CPU, but more CPUs will be available thru processor slot.
NatAmi has all Amiga chips emulated into an FPGA chip, not only Agnus, Paula and Denise, but also the CIAs (true AMIGA disk DMA), the bitBlitter enhanced to 32 bit capabilities and the COPPER...

It has all Paula sound capabilities and there are available new 16bit audio modes, and 24bit enhanced graphics.

NatAmi was shown to run with normal Workbench 3.x, loaded from IDE Hard Disk, and there were tested voxel and copper demos and games such as BoulderDash and "Defender of the Crown", various tools such as Diropus and Sysinfo are reported to run flawlessly!

The prototype motherboard was realized by german hardware guru Thomas Hirsch by modifying an existing motherboard, the C=ONE (C=ONE it is the C64 clone created by hardware guru Mrs. Jeri Ellsworth).

[C-ONE it is currently sold by Individual Computers, Germany.]

On Amigaworld there is the testimony from the software coder nicknamed "BigGun" who saw the NatAmi in action:

http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=25243&forum=16

http://www.amigahistory.co.uk/natami.html

[keropi]

nice!
what I am really looking forward to, is CLONE-A , by Mr. Jens... a trully amiga replacement mobo won't be far away then... imagine an ATX-form factor A4000 mobo with many enhanced capabillities!  :-o

[Homer]

2008 is looking good for us  :-D
Now, where did I leave my wallet  :lol:

[Piru]

NatAmi seems to be proprietary design, full ATX form and supports also ECS and AGA!

It features also CPU Slot and PCI card slots...

Isn't that C=1?

It is equipped with 68030 CPU

This card?

Early version running

I also find some of the comments somewhat weird, for example:

The TRUECOLOR mode is not an extra GFX card - No you open these modes just like the other orignal modes were used with the "normal" DFFxxx Amiga registers.
And the copper can fully work with those modes too!
You can drag these new screen modes down just naturally.

How exactly is this supposed to work as the OS does not have any support for these truecolor modes?

Similarily I find it a bit hard to believe this 16-bit audio would just work out of the box...

You can't just add new HW features and assume old OS to support those out of the box. You need SW support, too.

It's a nice project yes, but I think some people are loading it with too much expectations and hype.

[cv643d]

Seems like a lot of job before a finished product. But I would buy one without doubt, I was ready even when the Boxxer was 800 euro with no CPU back in 1998  :-)

[Darrin]

Poster: cv643d  Posted: 2008/1/14 11:26:56

Seems like a lot of job before a finished product. But I would buy one without doubt, I was ready even when the Boxxer was 800 euro with no CPU back in 1998

Weren't we all?   :-D

[Ral-Clan]

Now this (or something like it) is what I would buy!  I don't need a new architecture.  I just want an update to my classic Amiga (more speed, USB, PCI, more RAM + compatibility with cheap modern peripherals, on board 16-bit audio) all on one board.  Great!

[Ancalimon]

This is good. Really good

[Akiko]

Amigas by Amigians! :-)

[redrumloa]

But will an end user product see the light of day in the near future :-?

[Crom00]

This amazing and exciting, I'd buy one. Anytime a prototype is still in the "lots of wires soldered together stage" expect a Looong time before you can purchase one.

Just read the Mini-MIG threads we've been following. Still faster than any official licensees tho...  :-P

 :crazy:

[Krusher]

Although I like the AGA part and whatnot, using the C1 board is just not the way to go. I'd rather see the guy going the Minimig way with new fpga's. Obviously he does have a clue what he's doing, so why not go there? Funding issues?

[Hattig]

Well, if he already had a C=One board, I can see why he would start there.

Clearly now that the C=One board is clearly not enough to do a full Amiga of any sort he needs to consider his options, and I hope he takes a long hard look at the MiniMig as a potential platform to port to.

Of course, for AGA he'd need for video outputs - 24 bits instead of 12 bit. Also the CPU is probably a weakness for his design. Taking it to the extreme a different motherboard with a soft-68k and AGA+ is the most flexible option, but also the most expensive. Using a discrete 68k is also a very expensive option.

[Krusher]

What about a dual fpga solution? One big one for the Amiga chipset, a smaller? one for the cpu? I think that would be the most verstile way to go. That however would mean a complete new motherboard design and control logic, but why not go that way? Obviously the people are around who can do such a thing, and given the fact it took Dennis next to nothing to create Minimig timewise, this would be the next step I guess.

Then again, I don't know anything about fpga designs and development so I could be talking from my behind  :lol:

[Vlabguy1]

MMM..very nice ..I cant wait..I will buy more than one..hehe

I look fwd to reading more news about this..

Rich
ny.

www.pbase.com/richny