X-Surf 100, Zorro Network Card 100 MBit

[nicholas]

Very nice indeed.

Will be interesting to see how much faster this performs compared to USB Ethernet via a Deneb in a Zorro III slot.

[nicholas]

Very cool.. A new design, warranty, and half the price of most used X-Surf cards that have appeared on eBay and Amibay in recent times.

Now please do something to replace the Deneb.

I'm dreaming of new 060 accelerators from Jens.

Either that or an FPGA that is faster than an 060. Majsta maybe?

[nicholas]

I think this has been discussed before.  He didn't want to make new cards due to lack of available 060's, and didn't want to produce a bare card (i.e. for people to pull their own 060's and put them on) because it would be impossible to warranty.  Or something like that.  I think that was the same reason he was also no longer producing any of the 56MHz 030 cards for A1200's.  *sigh*

But you're right - there's always FPGA!  

FPGA ftw!

An x86 on a card running an emulated 68k that appears to the Amiga as a real 68k CPU is a fantasy I've often dreamed of too. Theoretically it would be faster than any current FPGA tech.

Ah we can but dream eh?

[nicholas]

Why dream? It is dead easy to accomplish, in fact I have already done it

I bought and ebox for about $150 (It is a very tiny PC), and set up a Windows XP + Winuae enviroment, then hid all the Windows stuff, so the ebox would seem like an Amiga. I connected it thru ethernet to my DraCo (You can use your own Amiga instead) and then used VNC. The DraCo was the client and the Winuae PC was the server.

I am not at home right now, if not I could show you the setup. Anyway, it is dead easy. You can also use, instead of VNC, RDP, or even X (all of them have been ported to the Amiga).

That's cool but not as cool as a card that fits in the CPU slot of my A3000 would be.

[nicholas]

If you just want that, then just build a dummy CPU slot card, that could even provide the power to the ebox. The ebox can easily fit inside the dummy card as it is very small (aprox 10x10cm). The maximun size for a big box Amiga CPU slot card should be 11x33cm according to CBM specs (If I remember correctly).

How would the A3000/A4000 see this dummy card as an 68k CPU without a whole lot of electrical engineering and firmware magic?

[nicholas]

But in order to get some good speedy one, you usually have to have a rather large cooler.
But it could be nice in any case.

Probably, but would be nice to have a real Amiga that could run stuff as fast as Amithlon did.

Personally, what I hope he will create next, is a new Zorro based graphics card, its crazy what 20+ years cards sells for.

What GPU tech is out there that is available for licencing in new products?

[nicholas]

true, but may be an ARM acting as a 68k would be better.

In what way?

[nicholas]

I think someone at A1K.org did this quite some time ago with an A1000. They replaced the 68K with a whole bunch of wires and other logic hooked up to a PC. Cool proof of concept. Something more practical and self-contained could probably be done nowadays (probably with ARM, as another post mentions).

Very cool, I wasn't aware of that before. I'll have to try and find the thread on A1K via google translate.