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Author Topic: TiNA - Another A500 FPGA Project  (Read 5183 times)

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Offline rdoloresTopic starter

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TiNA - Another A500 FPGA Project
« on: May 13, 2013, 06:02:35 PM »
Just found out about this new FGPA A500 project.  Seems to pick up where NATAMI stopped:

http://www.tinaproject.it/about.html

It quite interesting.  It will have 3 FPGA's instead of one.  Hope they get further than the NATAMI.
A1000 - 2 Floppies, 2 MB RAM, OS 1.0-1.3
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Offline trekiej

Re: TiNA - Another A500 FPGA Project
« Reply #1 on: May 13, 2013, 06:58:41 PM »
Good luck, I hope to buy one some day.
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Offline nicholas

Re: TiNA - Another A500 FPGA Project
« Reply #2 on: May 13, 2013, 08:05:30 PM »
Whatever happened to Jens' FPGA re-implementation of the Amiga chipset?
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Offline Hattig

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Re: TiNA - Another A500 FPGA Project
« Reply #3 on: May 13, 2013, 09:59:05 PM »
I wish them the best, but they must be warned that a lot of people will express scepticism about their project because of the history of such projects, Minimig and FPGAArcade aside.

It's really early for them to announce anything, so to write about 400MHz CPUs executing two instructions per second on the FPGA is a bit presumptuous! I hope they achieve it, but years and years of optimising existing 68k VHDL cores (TG68, etc) has only resulted in a 68020 compatible core with around half the IPC (judging from the Vampire 600 benchmarks) of a standard 68020 (luckily able to run a lot faster, to make up for the implementation shortcomings).

What is good is that the company they work for needs the boards for its in-house projects, and thus the boards will exist eventually, it "only" needs the Amiga custom cores to be implemented. I presume there is a base board, and there will need to be an Amiga I/O board that plugs into it to provide the Amiga ports (joystick, audio, etc).
 

Offline NovaCoder

Re: TiNA - Another A500 FPGA Project
« Reply #4 on: May 14, 2013, 01:58:19 AM »
Quote from: nicholas;734759
Whatever happened to Jens' FPGA re-implementation of the Amiga chipset?

Apparently it's finished and locked in a cupboard somewhere in Germany.

Parts of it have actually been released already and can be found in a lot of Amiga's in use today.

I think the main reason he hasn't released it as a complete 'computer' is that he can't figure out how to make any money out of it, the other reason is that he's too busy.
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Offline Heiroglyph

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Re: TiNA - Another A500 FPGA Project
« Reply #5 on: May 14, 2013, 04:05:13 AM »
I wish anyone luck that wants to try one of these projects.  They are WAY harder than they look.

I do think there is something to be said for quietly working rather than publicising though.  That seems to end in tears and hostility most of the time.

I would add Majsta's Vampire 500/600 projects to the list of successes though.  He publicised from the planning stages and learned from scratch on the project.  That takes some serious dedication.  His cards may not be shipping yet, but he has clearly succeeded.
 

Offline majsta

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Re: TiNA - Another A500 FPGA Project
« Reply #6 on: May 14, 2013, 10:22:25 AM »
Thank you, but in other hand Amiga community is tired of waiting and promises of projects that never happened, schematics diagrams published but never finalized. Years and years of promises but few of the projects are finished. So Amiga community learned somehow to not trust anyone. Now on the various websites I see that I started little revolution because there are lot of websites on many languages people are turning to Amiga FPGA. Maybe they just needed some kind of prove that it is possible to create something like that and those who understand technology better than me will continue and create something spectacular. But in my point of view it would be hard to create anything at 400Mhz inside FPGA because most of the cores break at around 150Mhz and at higher speeds we would need to add more and more wait states and that can't result increasing performance. On their design I see lot of wasting of space and devices and then again we will see.
 

Offline trekiej

Re: TiNA - Another A500 FPGA Project
« Reply #7 on: May 14, 2013, 07:40:28 PM »
I hope to see a picture of the board soon.
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Offline yakumo9275

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Re: TiNA - Another A500 FPGA Project
« Reply #8 on: May 14, 2013, 10:08:59 PM »
thats quite a lot to jam into a single cyclone 4 chip..
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Offline nicholas

Re: TiNA - Another A500 FPGA Project
« Reply #9 on: May 16, 2013, 05:43:32 PM »
Quote from: NovaCoder;734810
Apparently it's finished and locked in a cupboard somewhere in Germany.

Parts of it have actually been released already and can be found in a lot of Amiga's in use today.

I think the main reason he hasn't released it as a complete 'computer' is that he can't figure out how to make any money out of it, the other reason is that he's too busy.


Maybe now he has a license for 3.1 he might have a full computer in the pipeline.

We can but dream! :)
“Een rezhim-i eshghalgar-i Quds bayad az sahneh-i ruzgar mahv shaved.” - Imam Ayatollah Sayyed  Ruhollah Khomeini
 

Offline danbeaver

Re: TiNA - Another A500 FPGA Project
« Reply #10 on: May 22, 2013, 09:58:08 PM »
Quote from: nicholas;734759
Whatever happened to Jens' FPGA re-implementation of the Amiga chipset?
Seems someone has one for the Minimig that also works in the Chameleon.
 

Offline danbeaver

Re: TiNA - Another A500 FPGA Project
« Reply #11 on: May 22, 2013, 09:59:43 PM »
Quote from: majsta;734877
Thank you, but in other hand Amiga community is tired of waiting and promises of projects that never happened, schematics diagrams published but never finalized. Years and years of promises but few of the projects are finished. So Amiga community learned somehow to not trust anyone. Now on the various websites I see that I started little revolution because there are lot of websites on many languages people are turning to Amiga FPGA. Maybe they just needed some kind of prove that it is possible to create something like that and those who understand technology better than me will continue and create something spectacular. But in my point of view it would be hard to create anything at 400Mhz inside FPGA because most of the cores break at around 150Mhz and at higher speeds we would need to add more and more wait states and that can't result increasing performance. On their design I see lot of wasting of space and devices and then again we will see.

Technology is not static, nor are FPGA's.
 

Offline Lord Aga

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Re: TiNA - Another A500 FPGA Project
« Reply #12 on: June 30, 2013, 07:59:14 PM »
Any news about TiNA board ?
Maybe some of the devs lurking here can say something :)
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Offline alphadec

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Re: TiNA - Another A500 FPGA Project
« Reply #13 on: November 11, 2014, 09:05:06 PM »
is this also dead. ?
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ChuckT

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Re: TiNA - Another A500 FPGA Project
« Reply #14 on: November 11, 2014, 09:12:30 PM »
Quote from: Lord Aga;739351
Any news about TiNA board ?
Maybe some of the devs lurking here can say something :)


I don't know anything about the project.

What I know it is hard for any CPU project to be completed.