Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Marketplace => Topic started by: hazydave on April 10, 2011, 02:44:13 PM
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Hi All-
I've literally cleaned out my garage, and I'm working on the cellar. Avoiding the dumpster, so far, I have a number of bits of old junk, er, "unique items from the history of Commodore" (you can see why I wasn't in Marketing at Commodore), that are now up on eBay. More to come.
I have no idea if anyone will find most of this stuff of any value or not, but I'm not much of a collector... I have some things in a box to eventually put on display somewhere, and the rest is going to hopefully find a home with someone more happy to have it.
Search for "haynie's garage" or follow this link: http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=haynie%27s+garage&_sacat=See-All-Categories
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..and a collective surge of adrenaline washes over the Amiga community.
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This sort of thing always seems to happen when I have almost no funds. This spring is the worst ever!
Any one loan me enough for one .44 cal bullet?
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This sort of thing always seems to happen when I have almost no funds. This spring is the worst ever!
Any one loan me enough for one .44 cal bullet?
starting prices are $0.01.... if you get it for that i think you would have no problem. but postal prices can send you down the suicide path... who knows... maybe better to stay away from this thread, while the auctions are going on..
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starting prices are $0.01.... if you get it for that i think you would have no problem. but postal prices can send you down the suicide path... who knows... maybe better to stay away from this thread, while the auctions are going on..
This needs an update:
http://www.frogpondmedia.com/ebay_sales.html
#6
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starting prices are $0.01.... if you get it for that i think you would have no problem. but postal prices can send you down the suicide path... who knows... maybe better to stay away from this thread, while the auctions are going on..
By the time this auction ends most of you will be flat broke! Most of this stuff belongs in an Amiga Museum. I hope the lucky winner(s) will try to preserve some of it!
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Dave, thanks for sharing these stories of development at Commodore!
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Dave, thanks for sharing these stories of development at Commodore!
I second that: Dave, thanks for the stories. And thanks for your work with the Amigas.
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......
(holding my breath for what's bound to come up)
:hammer:
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This needs an update:
http://www.frogpondmedia.com/ebay_sales.html
Yeah.. eBay changed their API some time ago, but I haven't updated. In fact, that whole Frog Pond Media site could use a serious update.
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By the time this auction ends most of you will be flat broke! Most of this stuff belongs in an Amiga Museum. I hope the lucky winner(s) will try to preserve some of it!
I second that, imagine an exhibition showing Denise with Denise etc.
It would be a massive shame if these ended in a private collection, that is History right there.
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Yeah.. eBay changed their API some time ago, but I haven't updated. In fact, that whole Frog Pond Media site could use a serious update.
Please read my PM. That's all I have to say.
#6
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Awesome, thanks for the memories, Dave :)
EDIT: I think you have a mistake in the RKM description - your first exposure to the Amiga was probably in 84 not 94... fortunately for us :)
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It is just not fair.
:)
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Dave has added a AAA motherboard to the sale.
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:gulp:...
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Wow - the Nyx prototype is on. Wonder what's it'll climb up to... :nervous:
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Dave has added a AAA motherboard to the sale.
Is that blood in the water I smell? :)
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Dave has added a AAA motherboard to the sale.
I'm sure it will go for an outrageous sum. At least the rest of us will be able to experience the closest thing to AAA, the Natami. Most of the functionality of AAA, plus the CPU and FPU, are in this little board and 2 fpgas...
(http://static.reviewmylife.co.uk/2011/0322/natami-amiga-board.jpg)
It will likely include the 3x8 chunky "Hybrid" mode, 8 bit LUT "Half-Chunky", a much faster and more flexible blitter, improved copper, 16 bit audio, built in networking (Gigabit ethernet) and many other suggestions from AAA. Some people are wanting the HAM10 mode too but I think it's outdated with fast 16 bit chunky (hopefully with HW dithering), 24 bit 3x8 "Hybrid" and 32 bit chunky. Dave, you made a great look into the future with AAA! I hope we can interest you in a working Natami to replace your NYX when it's done ;). Thanks for your interesting writeups and good luck with your garage sale.
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Never thought to much on this until i clicked the link and scrolled to the bottom, WOW!
AAA proto is actualy for auction, really never thought he would part with it.
Huge slice of Amiga history rite there on what could have been.
Potential record for biggest Amiga Ebay sale on this one :)
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Dave is going to clean up on this one :)
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Thanks My Dave awsome just to see that triple A Board
ALL the best buddy and thanks for keeping the amiga flame alive
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The nyx board !!! Could I have two please ? ;-)
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The nyx board !!! Could I have two please ? ;-)
hmmm cool but without the chipset...Please Dave, give us the "AAA" chipset! :)
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Dave, at least let me X-ray that board before it gets sold :kitty:
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Wowza! It could have been a terrific piece of hardware.
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Dave has added a AAA motherboard to the sale.
I see Amigans, shreeking and fainting like teenage girls for a boyband... know what you're doing, mr. Haynie...
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AAA board does it work?
Dave H could sell a piece of his own shit on ebay and all the fanboys here would bid it up!
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I dunno about his stool, but Dave should consider selling an evening in his company at a bar or something on ebay. I reckon that might sell for even more than his kit.
I'd love to have a drink with the guy (non alcoholic in my case, of course) and hear his tales of the good (and not-so-good) old days first hand.
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Dave has added a AAA motherboard to the sale.
Oh, NOooooo.... Leaky Battery Damage!
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I have no idea if anyone will find most of this stuff of any value or not, but I'm not much of a collector... I have some things in a box to eventually put on display somewhere, and the rest is going to hopefully find a home with someone more happy to have it.
Search for "haynie's garage" or follow this link: http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=haynie%27s+garage&_sacat=See-All-Categories
Hi Dave,
Would you happen to have any datasheets for the following CIAs:
4510 and the 4502 and the 6511
Thank you,
Chuck
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Karlos
Dave is the kind of guy that u wouldnt have to pay to hang with thats absurd. He is very cool and open.. guess thats why everyone likes him.
I cant believe the bidding is at 1k for that aaa board WITHOUT the chips and NOT workin?k??
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Karlos
Dave is the kind of guy that u wouldnt have to pay to hang with thats absurd. He is very cool and open.. guess thats why everyone likes him.
It was an observation, not a suggestion.
I cant believe the bidding is at 1k for that aaa board WITHOUT the chips and NOT workin?k??
It's going so high for the same reason collectors pay large sums of money for rare artefacts of any description.
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Exactly, C65 machines even non working motherboards go for 1000s to so it's no surprise as a AAA board is even more rare.
Good luck to Dave on his auctions.
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this:
I dunno about his stool, but Dave should consider selling an evening in his company at a bar or something on ebay. I reckon that might sell for even more than his kit.
I'd love to have a drink with the guy (non alcoholic in my case, of course) and hear his tales of the good (and not-so-good) old days first hand.
...led to THIS?!
Karlos
Dave is the kind of guy that u wouldnt have to pay to hang with thats absurd. He is very cool and open.. guess thats why everyone likes him.
I cant believe the bidding is at 1k for that aaa board WITHOUT the chips and NOT workin?k??
(http://www.roflcorner.com/wp-content/gallery/facepalm/facepalmbq8dj7.jpg)
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Wow - the Nyx prototype is on. Wonder what's it'll climb up to... :nervous:
Over 9000 I guess :lol:
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$1k is, like, half a macbook pro, and there are millions of those. There are only three Nyx prototypes in the World. I would think $10k plus will be the final price.
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this:
...led to THIS?!
I can only assume the intention behind my words lost something in translation :)
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Does anybody know anything more about the chips and ROM that Dave spoke of? I read his posting that they went with the designers. Any of those pop up? I would love to look through a ROM disassembly.
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I don't think the fate of the other two Nyx boards and the few working chips is known. One system (this one?) got fried when the ROM socket shorted on 12V.
I don't think they had a working / somewhat complete ROM this early in the development phase, probably only some evaluation & testing code (AAA would have required completely functional RTG for the OS to run). The Walker was further in development and barely working.
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@matthey
HAM10 is most likely better than 16 bit chunky because it's pallete based AFAIK. 16bit is not.
In practice HAM10 would eliminate HAM artifacts almost completely (it already got better with HAM8).
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@matthey
HAM10 is most likely better than 16 bit chunky because it's pallete based AFAIK. 16bit is not.
In practice HAM10 would eliminate HAM artifacts almost completely (it already got better with HAM8).
Hmmm assuming HAM10 has 256 base colours set via bitplanes like 64 of HAM8 i think not.
HAM8's biggest improvement was being able to display 1280x512 images vs OCS HAM6 320x512 maximum.
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HAM was (is) great for static images but less than ideal for images that update frequently.
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Come to think of it, HAM8 already looks better than 16bit modes, provided the base pallete is choosen carefully.
@Karlos
"HAM was (is) great for static images...."
And, as you know, animations, cause they're precomputed.
Now check this idea, HAM10 raytraced anims for an AAA based VideoToaster back in 93, they would've taken the world. Commodore really had some corrupt management going on...
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@matthey
HAM10 is most likely better than 16 bit chunky because it's pallete based AFAIK. 16bit is not.
In practice HAM10 would eliminate HAM artifacts almost completely (it already got better with HAM8).
I think HAM10 would be able to display a nicer static picture than 16 bit chunky with dithering but 16 bit chunky is easier to work with. HAM10 probably would have made sense at the time of AAA though as memory was still expensive. Memory display bandwidth was still very expensive then also and HAM10 would have used substantially less bandwidth than 24 bit "Hybrid" mode which itself was probably created to save bandwidth over a 32 bit chunky mode. There is a good proportion of people who want Natami to have HAM10 and >8 bit planar but I think it's a waste of resources. Yea, it would be neat to see more AAA modes but it's more important to get the planned hardware 3D support for example. Another disadvantage is that all the new display formats will have to be supported in the operating system.
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WTF are you guys smoking that you think this board will sell for more than 5k?
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If there are people willing to pay $3000 for an Amiga system that there's supposed to be thousands of, chances are there's someone willing to pay twice that for a real piece of Amiga history, working or not. Really, how well could the X1000 work anyway?
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Tone
Umm.. first x1000 isnt even for sale yet! Second, its a WORKING machine..Its funny i've actually played with a working AAA box back in St Louis in 97.
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Umm.. first x1000 isnt even for sale yet!
Right, and people are lining up to pay $3000 for one. I personally feel a non-working AAA prototype board is worth more than an X1000.
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Right, and people are lining up to pay $3000 for one. I personally feel a non-working AAA prototype board is worth more than an X1000.
Maybe you do Tone, but are you buying it?
Personally, if I had the money, I'd be placing it on the operational hardware.
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I bid on it, though I stopped far short of the current bid.
However, if I was offered either the prototype or an X1000, I'd go for the prototype. X1000s, should they ever come out, will be far easier to come by.
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I bid on it, though I stopped far short of the current bid.
However, if I was offered either the prototype or an X1000, I'd go for the prototype. X1000s, should they ever come out, will be far easier to come by.
The biggest problem with the X1000 is that production will be limited to whatever PA6T processors A-eon has already secured (as the processor is out of production).
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I have a feeling that X1000 is only getting 1 run.. and users wont even get hands on the board until next year. or maybe holidays 2011. You notice there hasnt been 1 posted screenshot or shot of a working system in months?
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Yeah.. eBay changed their API some time ago, but I haven't updated. In fact, that whole Frog Pond Media site could use a serious update.
Wow, some really neat pieces of history there Dave. So where's the folder with the AGA custom chip schematics. ;^D I think some of the FPGA projects could really benefit from that one. 8^D
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I have a feeling that X1000 is only getting 1 run.. and users wont even get hands on the board until next year. or maybe holidays 2011. You notice there hasnt been 1 posted screenshot or shot of a working system in months?
Whether its one run or a few small ones, its still limited to the chips they have on hand.
Maybe now that they've assembled the first five boards (on what should be the final design) maybe we'll see a few more shots of these things running.
Still, this isn't the design that's going to re-invigorate the PPC Amiga market.
At this rate, Amiga is likely to be associated with X86 machines in the future.
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It will likely include the 3x8 chunky "Hybrid" mode, 8 bit LUT "Half-Chunky", a much faster and more flexible blitter, improved copper, 16 bit audio, built in networking (Gigabit ethernet) and many other suggestions from AAA. Some people are wanting the HAM10 mode too but I think it's outdated with fast 16 bit chunky (hopefully with HW dithering), 24 bit 3x8 "Hybrid" and 32 bit chunky. Dave, you made a great look into the future with AAA! I hope we can interest you in a working Natami to replace your NYX when it's done ;). Thanks for your interesting writeups and good luck with your garage sale.
Actually, of all the recent hardware things I've seen in the post-Amiga world, this is the only one I see as being of much value. Or, in my usual terms, "It's cool".
For one, you can claim real Amiga cred there -- doing things the Amiga way. You're not just a PC with a PowerPC CPU and some VGA chip trying to make the claim of being an Amiga. I was a little skeptical when I first heard about it, but I'm totally convinced at this point: if you want a new Amiga, this is the true way.
It's also sustainable... you can make as many of these as there's demand for. If this X1000 thing was the second coming of the A1000 (it's not, and honestly, not that interesting), it has a built-in limit, since the CPU is already discontinued.
And add to that the FPGA basis... there's some serious hacking potential there, I think. Particularly if they're not full yet :-) This isn't going to replace everyone's need for a fast PC, but then again, running original AmigaOS, you don't really need to be. As long as the cost stays in reach of the hobbyist, this could do well.
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hmmm cool but without the chipset...Please Dave, give us the "AAA" chipset! :)
You don't want it. You can of course read the specs up on http://www.thule.no/haynie. But it was never finished. We did get it doing some stuff, producing video, etc. The LUT was messed up, so you had to translate RGB colors into this weirdly random bit pattern, but that did work. The output buffers on the Andrea chip didn't tri-state properly, so we were very limited in the functions the other chips could do -- no reading is a bug problem. I had one board hacked with Quickswitch parts in an attempt to fix this, but Commodore in 1993/94 wasn't spending the kind of money to even do this right, much less fix the chips. There was also a memory bug... we had two Andreas FIBed (focused ion beam used to actually change the chip design), one fixed at DRAM, one fixed to use VRAM.
It sounds like you'll see a good deal of the AAA fun in Natami. Not sure about HAM10 or chunky HAM8. And being a video guy, I'd like to see some YUV modes....
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Whether its one run or a few small ones, its still limited to the chips they have on hand.
Yup. The only PPCs you'll ever be able to get are optimized for network switches, the sort of stuff that Motorola puts out.
Now, if someone made a complete PPC "Amiga" system, complete with AmigaOS 4.x or whatever, and sold it for $300-$400, I don't think anyone could complain too much that it doesn't meet the performance specs of a $200 x86-based Netbook (which it won't). And it doesn't really have to for hacking fun. Once you get Windows out of there, things get fast. I recently bought an Android tablet... really quick for a system with a dual core 1GHz ARM Cortex A9. But netbooks with twice the performance drag under Windows.
The one exception is the traditional Amiga pro-market stuff: graphics and video. You need all the CPU cycles you can get for that. My main machine at home is a six core AMD 1090T running at 3.2GHz. I ran an HD video render last night, something like six hours on that machine. That's probably over a week on a typical netbook, could run into many weeks for the typical embedded networking PPC chip.
Maybe now that they've assembled the first five boards (on what should be the final design) maybe we'll see a few more shots of these things running.
Still, this isn't the design that's going to re-invigorate the PPC Amiga market.
To quote Dave Grohl, "Ain't no way, D. O. A.". That's the whole problem with PPC in competition with x86. I've been shouting this from my soapbox ever since Apple stopped allowing Mac compatibles in 1997. That was the point at which the PPC was no longer viable. It's a little ironic maybe that it was actually Apple, directly that killed this off, but exactly what you'd expect. Why do they want to supply chips to any potential competitor?
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WTF are you guys smoking that you think this board will sell for more than 5k?
Honestly, I figured the AAA board could do ok. I really didn't expect the response I've seen, it's great. And it definitely validates my decision to make this stuff available to collectors.
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I'm pretty sure the Nyx will go for more than 3k. After all, it's pretty much one-of-a-kind (well, very close to) and the Amiga hardware legend.
Re Natami: it'll surely need YUV and hardware overlay support (for DVD & HD video) - maybe not in the first version but soon after.
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Honestly, I figured the AAA board could do ok. I really didn't expect the response I've seen, it's great. And it definitely validates my decision to make this stuff available to collectors.
It will do a lot more, I my self took it up against our Collector Extrodinaire for an A3500, I lost of course, but I ended up with a 3000T-040 with a CS MK III at about 1200 dollars.
A few weeks ago a complete A4000T sold for over 4900 pounds on Ebay (not mine)!
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I kind of had a feeling the stuff would sell, and sell well. I would love to get my hands on one of those custom chip stand-ins just to have in my hands what they had to make to develop the Amigas when the chips weren't ready but I have a feeling they will be out of my price range.
I have a C65, and sold a C65 motherboard for almost $500 quite a few years back (going on 10 years maybe).
I also have some Amiga artifacts. One is a blank board marked A30000 Multi FPU board ZorroII which is a Zorro board with along its length two rows of spaces for 8 large square chips (which I assume are the FPUs) giving it a total of 16 this thing would have done math at a screaming rate for the time. My favorites are a C64 cartridge gutted, a A2k motherboard power connector put where the edge connector used to be, and a wire coming out the back with a 500 style power connector obviously used to power Amiga 500s from a 2000 power supply. Second is a board marked Amiga Romcard Rev 0 which is a small board with some chips, DIP switches, and a connector that comes off the back and has an L which brings it down to the bottom of the board parallel with it. Connector is about the width of the A500 expansion edge connector and the 2 ROMs are marked 2.0 but fewer pins than the Kickstart ROMs in a 3000. along one edge there are LEDs attached in a row to the board. No idea what that board did or for what.
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Oh, almost forgot, I also have a C65 Burn in board Rev 1 which has the name on it "Fuzzy Navel"
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"A30000 Multi FPU board ZorroII" with 16x FPU????? ...whaooouhhh!!!!
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I also have some Amiga artifacts. One is a blank board marked A30000 Multi FPU board ZorroII which is a Zorro board with along its length two rows of spaces for 8 large square chips (which I assume are the FPUs) giving it a total of 16 this thing would have done math at a screaming rate for the time.
@Pwermonger - please take some pics, and upload them to one of the Amiga hardware sites! :)
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I'll do that, I did take some better pics today of it and by the way that wasn't a typo, the card does say A30000
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Actually, of all the recent hardware things I've seen in the post-Amiga world, this is the only one I see as being of much value. Or, in my usual terms, "It's cool".
For one, you can claim real Amiga cred there -- doing things the Amiga way. You're not just a PC with a PowerPC CPU and some VGA chip trying to make the claim of being an Amiga. I was a little skeptical when I first heard about it, but I'm totally convinced at this point: if you want a new Amiga, this is the true way.
On behalf of myself and the rest of the NatAmi team, thanks for your kind words! They mean a lot to us! We think you and the rest of the Amiga team are cool too!
We are planning a YUV graphics mode at the very least. Possibly some others as well depending on how much space is left on the FPGA. However, there's probably not going to be much space left for homebrew stuff and the risk of "bricking" the motherboard means we have to be cautious about what we let people put into the FPGA. BGA chips are a pain to replace, after all.
Maybe you can stop by the NatAmi homepage (http://www.natami.net/) if you have the time and inclination. We're about to give the webpage a reset to get rid of some obsolete information and make the page a little nicer.
Thanks again!
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To quote Dave Grohl, "Ain't no way, D. O. A.". That's the whole problem with PPC in competition with x86. I've been shouting this from my soapbox ever since Apple stopped allowing Mac compatibles in 1997.
We'll always appreciate the long talk you shared with us at AW in 2006:
still worth a read after all these years (http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?mode=viewtopic&topic_id=16943&forum=2&start=140&viewmode=flat&order=0)
One challenge of having such a discussion lies in having an audience willing and able to listen.
This talk was never going to lead to anything in 2006, Dave. No way...
As you probably know, Carl initiated a similar discussion later the same year:
[Poll] Carl's Definition of Amiga (http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=21002&forum=14)
and
[Poll] Carl's Amiga Test (http://amigaworld.net/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=21040&forum=14)
#6
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It sounds like you'll see a good deal of the AAA fun in Natami. Not sure about HAM10 or chunky HAM8. And being a video guy, I'd like to see some YUV modes....
Please let the Natami team know what kind of video modes and support you would like to see. We don't want weak video support in the Natami when the Amiga and video are nearly synonymous after the Video Toaster ;). One of the great things about the Natami project is how open and friendly everyone is. As SamuraiCrow has mentioned, we would be honored to have you visit and give some ideas.
http://www.natami.net/
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Yup. The only PPCs you'll ever be able to get are optimized for network switches, the sort of stuff that Motorola puts out.
Now, if someone made a complete PPC "Amiga" system, complete with AmigaOS 4.x or whatever, and sold it for $300-$400, I don't think anyone could complain too much that it doesn't meet the performance specs of a $200 x86-based Netbook (which it won't). And it doesn't really have to for hacking fun. Once you get Windows out of there, things get fast. I recently bought an Android tablet... really quick for a system with a dual core 1GHz ARM Cortex A9. But netbooks with twice the performance drag under Windows.
The one exception is the traditional Amiga pro-market stuff: graphics and video. You need all the CPU cycles you can get for that. My main machine at home is a six core AMD 1090T running at 3.2GHz. I ran an HD video render last night, something like six hours on that machine. That's probably over a week on a typical netbook, could run into many weeks for the typical embedded networking PPC chip.
Recent Windows desktop video editors includes GpGPU acceleration.
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Yup. The only PPCs you'll ever be able to get are optimized for network switches, the sort of stuff that Motorola puts out.
Now, if someone made a complete PPC "Amiga" system, complete with AmigaOS 4.x or whatever, and sold it for $300-$400, I don't think anyone could complain too much that it doesn't meet the performance specs of a $200 x86-based Netbook (which it won't). And it doesn't really have to for hacking fun. Once you get Windows out of there, things get fast. I recently bought an Android tablet... really quick for a system with a dual core 1GHz ARM Cortex A9. But netbooks with twice the performance drag under Windows.
ARM Cortex A9 is an out-of-order dual instuction issue CPU while Intel Atom is an in-order dual instuction issue.
Against Intel Atom, AMD "Bobcat" is an out-of-order dual instuction issue CPU.
PS; I have AMD C-50 APU (dual core "bobcat" CPU 1Ghz + Radeon HD 6250M iGPU) ACER Iconia W500 tablet PC/netbook hybrid. Windows 7 runs well on this tablet/netbook.
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ARM Cortex A9 is an out-of-order dual instuction issue CPU while Intel Atom is an in-order dual instuction issue.
Against Intel Atom, AMD "Bobcat" is an out-of-order dual instuction issue CPU.
PS; I have AMD C-50 APU (dual core "bobcat" CPU 1Ghz + Radeon HD 6250M iGPU) ACER Iconia W500 tablet PC/netbook hybrid. Windows 7 runs well on this tablet/netbook.
Have any links for comparisons between C-50 and D525?
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Have any links for comparisons between C-50 and D525?
What type of comparisons?
You want AMD C-50(Bobcat) @ 1.0Ghz (9 watts) vs Intel Atom D525 (Pineview) @ 1.8Ghz (13 watts)?
or
You want AMD Radeon HD 6250M vs Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 3150?
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Anyway, Cyberlink PowerDirector 9 has ATI Stream and UVD3 video decoder support.
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What type of comparisons?
You want AMD C-50 @ 1.0Ghz (9 watts) vs Intel Atom D525 @ 1.8Ghz (13 watts)?
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Anyway, Cyberlink PowerDirector 9 has ATI Stream support.
Absolutely! While the AMD processor is no more powerful than the Intel processor (they are about on par), AMD's APUs have much better graphics than the chipsets currently offered for Atom.
And AMD processors now draw LESS power than Intel.
I'm all for any non-Intel product.
Let's all go ARM, AMD, or VIA!
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Absolutely! While the AMD processor is no more powerful than the Intel processor (they are about on par), AMD's APUs have much better graphics than the chipsets currently offered for Atom.
And AMD processors now draw LESS power than Intel.
I'm all for any non-Intel product.
Let's all go ARM, AMD, or VIA!
Well, Intel has 17 watt Intel Core i5-2537M @1.4 GHz, but it's $250.
AMD's Radeon HD 6250M accelerates non-gaming workloads e.g. IE9 and FireFox 4.
I wasn't impress with my ASUS Eee PC T101MT Tablet PC's "Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 3150".
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Well, Intel has 17 watt Intel Core i5-2537M @1.4 GHz, but it's $250.
That is amazing. I haven't heard of that one yet.
What do the supporting chipsets draw?
Max Turbo Frequency
2.3 GHz!
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What type of comparisons?
You want AMD C-50(Bobcat) @ 1.0Ghz (9 watts) vs Intel Atom D525 (Pineview) @ 1.8Ghz (13 watts)?
That's the one I would love to see.
Simply amazing the tech jump from projects of C='s final days to what is now available for low end computing. One can only ponder what we would have now had C= survive and competed against that upstart company, nVidia.
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That's the one I would love to see.
Simply amazing the tech jump from projects of C='s final days to what is now available for low end computing. One can only ponder what we would have now had C= survive and competed against that upstart company, nVidia.
NVIDIA's co-founder Curtis Priem was a designer for IBM Professional Graphics Controller(PGC) and SUN GX graphics chip (1986-1993). NV1 was released sometime in ~1995.
NVIDIA was not the driving force for pre-1995 PC graphics. Also, Intel i860/i960 VLIW-RISC 3D chip was used in SGI machines.
In 1984, PGC has 640×480 with 256 colors and a refresh rate of 60 Hertz.
ATI Mach 8 was released sometime in 1991.
ATI Mach 32 was released sometime in 1992.
ATI Mach 64 was released sometime in 1994.
ATI Rage 3D was released sometime in 1995.
Can C= AGA compete against ATI Mach 32?
You then have S3 Graphics ...
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NVIDIA's co-founder Curtis Priem was a designer for IBM Professional Graphics Controller(PGC) and SUN GX graphics chip (1986-1993). NV1 was released sometime in ~1995.
NVIDIA was not the driving force for pre-1995 PC graphics. Also, Intel i860/i960 VLIW-RISC 3D chip was used in SGI machines.
In 1984, PGC has 640×480 with 256 colors and a refresh rate of 60 Hertz.
ATI Mach 8 was released sometime in 1991.
ATI Mach 32 was released sometime in 1992.
ATI Mach 64 was released sometime in 1994.
Can C= AGA compete against ATI Mach 32?
How much were those cards back then? I'm guessing a bit out of the typical consumer range...
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I've posted pics of the Multi FPU and other weird and wonderful Amiga boards I have obtained over the years on my Photobucket site:
http://s1112.photobucket.com/albums/k492/Mayhem_Mayhbe/
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That's the one I would love to see.
There's a comparison of The D525+ION and the E-350.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-e-350-atom-d525-nvidia-ion-2,2905.html
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In 1984, PGC has 640×480 with 256 colors and a refresh rate of 60 Hertz.
You don't remember things very well. It cost several thousand $s and it sucked. Nobody used it. What's your point ?
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I was just taking a look at Dave's stuff on eBay and I remembered that I have one of those blank accel boards. Can't remember if it's an 020 or 030 variety. Some one way back in the day was selling them and I bought it as a conversation piece. This was well before C= when under. Heck for all I know it was Dave that was selling them back then.
Jim
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I've posted pics of the Multi FPU and other weird and wonderful Amiga boards I have obtained over the years on my Photobucket site:
http://s1112.photobucket.com/albums/k492/Mayhem_Mayhbe/
Cool! That A30000 is a beast, would love to hear any stories about it!
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How much were those cards back then? I'm guessing a bit out of the typical consumer range...
Onlky thing I could find is this, which is actually a card released the following year, but 199
http://books.google.com/books?id=IjsEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA27&lpg=PA27&dq=what+did+ati+mach+32+cost&source=bl&ots=iuUeENyWOF&sig=BC0fjILIZ5z75Hd5kgNwP3g7xSA&hl=en&ei=8J2oTaX7HoK70QHHpNz5CA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CC4Q6AEwBDgK#v=onepage&q&f=false
Its on the middle left side, under announcements.
Hammer is suffering from a lot of amiga guilt it seems. As I explained above, any amiga talk must be accompanied by immediate proof that the amiga sucked, even though today its 2011.
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For one, you can claim real Amiga cred there -- doing things the Amiga way.
Doing everything by the processor is Amiga way.
For 20 years, since the time when some lazy morons from Commodore left a 16-bit access to the bliter. So that the AGA blitter was slower in some operations, than 68020, and much slower than 68030.
You're not just a PC with a PowerPC CPU and some VGA chip trying to make the claim of being an Amiga.
If you do not like the idea of the Amiga as a PC with a different processor than the x86, there was a time when you could change that.
Why, not in 1991 ?
You could add 16-bit (65536 colors) chunky mode to AGA, when you worked on AGA.
Since this was not done, the AGA chips were crap compared to what was in 1992 in PC, Mac, Atari.
Because the Aga chips were crap, the external graphics card based on pc chips were in Amiga absolutely necessary.
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Do not blame others for your mistakes.
Don't forget about the 8-bit Paula in the later Amiga models, that was cool in 1985 but obsolete in 1989. WTF? The AppleIIGS had better sound by then.
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Mailman2,
Do you honestly think that the engineers at Commodore were in controll of their budgets and for authorising development and production? No point in attacking Dave, you twat.
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Yup. The only PPCs you'll ever be able to get are optimized for network switches, the sort of stuff that Motorola puts out.
Freescale still produces and sells G4 (E600).
Now, if someone made a complete PPC Amiga system, complete with AmigaOS 4.x or whatever, and sold it for $300-$400, I don't think anyone could complain too much that it doesn't meet the performance specs of a $200 x86-based Netbook (which it won't).
For $ 200 you can only get a x86 notebook based on the Atom, slower than G4.
The one exception is the traditional Amiga pro-market stuff: graphics and video. You need all the CPU cycles you can get for that.
You need all the GPU cycles you can get for that.
My main machine at home is a six core AMD 1090T running at 3.2GHz. I ran an HD video render last night, something like six hours on that machine.
You should buy the software, which would benefit from the GPU. Used to processing video my 3 year old graphics card is doing circles around my Athlon.
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@mailman2
Where's all this hate and bitterness coming from? And why directed at Dave? Have you ever worked in a commercial R&D environment before? Do you know the constraints and pressure those guys were probably under? They had far less money and time than they needed, which ultimately means cutting corners, such as keeping Paula etc.
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@mailman2
Dave worked on the 8bits mostly, he had very little to do with the Amiga "big custom chips", read his posts!
You are clearly trolling as much of what you say is factually wrong.
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Mailman2,
Do you honestly think that the engineers at Commodore were in controll of their budgets and for authorising development and production? No point in attacking Dave, you twat.
Fuck off, you whore.
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Moderators, please ban that troll. Thank you.
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Well, there the Nyx goes for just over $2500 - really thought it'd fetch more...
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@mailman2
Your a twat, now piss off.
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You could add 16-bit (65536 colors) chunky mode to AGA, when you worked on AGA.
Since this was not done, the AGA chips were crap compared to what was in 1992 in PC, Mac, Atari.
Because the Aga chips were crap, the external graphics card based on pc chips were in Amiga absolutely necessary.
Read his posts. AAA was started before AGA. It would have fixed everything if it'd been brought out in a reasonable time frame.
Also while AGA might have been relatively weak compared to top end PCs of the time, even low end PCs were a *lot* more expensive than the A1200.
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That's the one I would love to see.
Simply amazing the tech jump from projects of C='s final days to what is now available for low end computing. One can only ponder what we would have now had C= survive and competed against that upstart company, nVidia.
The C64 and A1000 were cutting edge NOT low end. ie C64 had 15 char filenames....MS-DOS had 11...crap like that.
They just cost less than that x86 and Apple stuff.
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Read his posts. AAA was started before AGA. It would have fixed everything if it'd been brought out in a reasonable time frame.
Also while AGA might have been relatively weak compared to top end PCs of the time, even low end PCs were a *lot* more expensive than the A1200.
Well I had a £1200 machine and it was also the cheapest 486SX25 built in a backstreet garage type thing for the time (Autumn 92) and trust me it was shit, it could only do 1024x768 in 256 colours. Compare that with AGA 1280x512 +(overscan) in either 256 colours, 256 colours per odd scanline or HAM8.
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I'm always down on the AGA chipset due to the fact that it was nothing more than an ECS bug fix... But in '92, for the price nothing came close to the A1200... But with the £100 more Falcon available at the same time, it was clear something needed to change :)
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I don't have a problem with AGA as such, more with ECS which on the A500+ was a completely useless chipset update for the A500. wow 1280x256x4 colours at 4x slower speed, what a fantastic update for gamers!
AGA was necessary given VGA being everywhere on PC games of all types not just American snooty £40 games, but we already had Fatter Agnus 1mb chip ram and that was all the OCS ever needed time wasted on.
Jay Miner's Ranger chipset was finished and should have gone in the A3000 regardless of cost.
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The Ranger chipset? Do you have any more details?
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He posted a thread with attachments on here....
VRAM based chipset would have given top end machines a lot of respect, for A500+ too expensive unless it was cut to 256kb chipset VRAM/512kb slow DRAM true, but this [restricted memory] is nothing new in the world of consoles.
http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=52879
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Thanks for the link.
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Jay Miner's Ranger chipset was finished and should have gone in the A3000 regardless of cost.
Ranger doesn't sound that good, the specs paint it like a tweaked OCS using VRAM so it was expensive. It's about as interesting as an a2024 monitor.
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,
i don't have a problem with aga as such, more with ecs which on the a500+ was a completely useless chipset update for the a500. Wow 1280x256x4 colours at 4x slower speed, what a fantastic update for gamers!
Aga was necessary given vga being everywhere on pc games of all types not just american snooty £40 games, but we already had fatter agnus 1mb chip ram and that was all the ocs ever needed time wasted on.
Jay miner's ranger chipset was finished and should have gone in the a3000 regardless of cost.
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Since this was not done, the AGA chips were crap compared to what was in 1992 in PC, Mac, Atari.
Because the Aga chips were crap, the external graphics card based on pc chips were in Amiga absolutely necessary.
I am sure this isn´t Dave Haynie´s fault, but it was indeed a problem. Remember that Amiga had it´s place as a multimedia powerhouse in the late 80s. People knew of the great stuff you could do with it. Yet if you went to a store in 1993 you would get the impression that GFX on the PC were more advanced, because they were running slideshows with better monitors and higher image quality. They couldn´t really show something that moves, because it was still too slow, but the customer didn´t know that.
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Dave worked on the 8bits mostly, he had very little to do with the Amiga "big custom chips", read his posts!.
I probably did explain that I was never a chip designer at Commodore.. I worked on the hardware systems. We had three groups: "chips", "hardware", and "software". Chip designers design ICs, that's pretty clear. Hardware guys like me put a bunch of ICs together to create a complete computer. Software guys put the code inside a ROM that makes that hardware actually do something.
But as far as 8-bit vs. Amiga... I worked on two 8-bit projects, the TED and the C128, from October of 1983 though July of 1986. After that, it was Amigas all the way, until I left Commodore in June of 1994, a few months after the bankruptcy. That was Amiga 2000, Amiga 2620/2630, Amiga 3000, and the first AA and AAA systems. I did a little work on the A4000 too, which was based on my A3000+ prototype, but that was mostly Greg Berlin and Scott Schaeffer... I was on to AAA by then. I also designed the A4091 (SCSI controller), and a whole slew of things that Commodore never released.
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Don't forget about the 8-bit Paula in the later Amiga models, that was cool in 1985 but obsolete in 1989. WTF? The AppleIIGS had better sound by then.
ICs need money to change... millions. Commodore's problem was simple: small budget. So the things that could be done very well by hiring brilliant people who worked twice as hard, that we did well... particularly the software. Some things could be done at the system level... where I worked. Sometimes it was just fixing things.. there's a serious bug in the AA chips that I worked around at the system level (a blitter busy synchronization thing), saving time and a revision of the Alice chip.
But the big problem was money. They were paying top bosses, like Irving Gould and layer, Mehdi Ali, way too much cash. Like, one year Ali made over $3 million, the company wasn't even doing that well. The top guy at IBM that year made under a million. Same with Apple and most of the other companies. Management wasted money on useless execs, rather than spending it where it would actually help.
And sometimes, they just broke things for no good. Of course we knew that the AA chips were hardly state of the art in 2002. In fact, they were supposed to only be low-end. We started the AAA project in 1988, expecting a release hopefully in 1992. The low-end guys, particularly George Robbins (A500 designer) got nervous about being able to do anything with AAA in a $500 computer. So the "Pandora" project got started in 1990 or so, and later came to be known as AA.
I had the first AA prototype, the A3000+ (basically an A3000 with a bunch of other stuff), working first in February of 1991. AAA was already late by then -- again, due to money. AA was a good exercise, and our only option for the high-end anyway because of this. But the the main reason you didn't see the A3000+ out as a product in early '92 rather than the A4000 in late 1992 was management screwing with Engineering.
Mehdi Ali had taken the reigns of Commodore sometime in late 1990 or early 1991, and around June of 1991, he started messing with Engineering. So the A3000+, which had been on target as a real product, became a "development platform" only... in fact, we were absolutely forbidden from putting one in an A3000 case (Fish and I designed it to fit, naturally). The new guy they brought in to run Engineering, Bill Sydnes, spent his first six months killing off as many projects in-progress as possible, just to make sure that the previous management looked bad. It was total and complete insanity... I nearly quite over the whole mess.
The A3000+ fixed what I could fix. It had an AT&T DSP in it, which could control either a stereo DAC/ADC chip (CD quality stereo in and out) or a modem audio chip (mono in and out, with phase correction... in theory, capable of doing 9600 baud). We also worked with AT&T in Allentown, convinced them to sell us a large package of math routines for cheap (they thought of the DSP as replacing dedicated hardware, not the idea of it being a general purpose resource), etc. AT&T's VCOS/VCAS operating system was a near perfect match to AmigaOS. The DSP could multitask, and it shared main memory with the A3000+'s CPU card. Anyway, I wrote a paper on it for the 1991 DevCon, which you can read here: http://www.thule.no/haynie/research/a3000p/docs/a3000p.pdf.
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@Dave
:(
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http://www.thule.no/haynie/research/a3000p/docs/a3000p.pdf.
Davyboy where have you been hiding this from? Absolutely brilliant. It's a shame you put it up here for everyone to read cause you could have made a fortune on ebay if you wanted to (just kidding) :)
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Davyboy where have you been hiding this from? Absolutely brilliant. It's a shame you put it up here for everyone to read cause you could have made a fortune on ebay if you wanted to (just kidding) :)
There's a bunch of stuff up on http://www.thule.no/haynie. I didn't start this, but once I found out about it, I sent them everything else I had. This has been around since the mid-1990s or so.
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The DSP co-processor is brilliant, especially for the time.
A3000+ blows away the 4000. What were they thinking not producing this instead of the 4000?
Dave, was it simply a cost issue?
Steven
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@ hazydave
wow..thanks for the insight Dave..amazing & yet sad info
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I remember when I was in College, there a news bit somewhere that listed highest paid technology business types, and I remember at least Mehdi being there in the list above people from like IBM and Compaq.. At the time, I was thinking that was just crazy...
I mean, I loved my Amiga, but higher paid than the big guys??
Of course, I didn't realize that they were gutting engineering at the same time.
desiv
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Dave, since you're around, I have a question.
I still use my A3000D and think its a damn fine computer. However, I just have to know; who in hell designed the case? Why shrink it to such a size that you couldn't fit a Toaster (properly) or install a CD drive as you could with the A2000. Thanks if you can clue me in.
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Actually, that's pretty easy to answer: the 3000 came out (mid '90) before the Toaster (end '90) and before CDROMs began to become popular (Yellow Book is from '89). 5.25" drives & bays looked pretty obsolete at the time it was designed.
And isn't the 3k so much prettier than the 4k just as it is? ;)
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Remember, the 2000 was not designed with a 5.25" bay for a CD-ROM drive (though as with mine in the end and to now that is what it has). That bay was put there for the 5.25" floppy drive for the Bridgeboard. By this time PCs were moving to 3.5" floppy drives so even if you decided to install a bridgeboard you likely would not need the large floppy bay so it seems they decided not to let it mar the design.
PCs were getting rid of 5.25 (until optical replaced the large floppy causing the bay to stay)
The Mac II line IIRC also didn't have 5.25" bays.
Seems back then you'd be thinking they weren't that important.
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The DSP co-processor is brilliant, especially for the time.
A3000+ blows away the 4000. What were they thinking not producing this instead of the 4000?
Dave, was it simply a cost issue?
My friends, if it were ONLY a cost issue. No, it was a stupidity issue.
The A3000+ was mine, mine, all mine! Well, Randell Jesup and Eric Lavitsky (outside consultant) were integrating VCOS/VCAS (the DSP OS) into AmigaOS to go with. The DSP3210 was pretty impressive... it only did 32-bit floating point, but 5x-10x faster than the '040. Apple tapped all our hard work convincing AT&T to sell us the software cheap, a year later, in a series of Macs (Quadra AV or something like that).
The year was 1991, and Mehdi Ali had just appointed Bill Sydnes (the PC Jr. and Franklin Computer guy) head of Engineering. Sydnes first mission was basically just clobbering everything we were working on at the time. So I was basically forced to turn the A3000+ into a development-only platform (the last Rev was dubbed "AA3000" rather than "A3000+", I'll have schematics up one of these days). In fact, we were only allowed to mount these to a block of plywood, not allowed to put them in cases (mine, of course, was in a case... I did the computer graphics for the "Deathbed Vigil" on it. Didn't end well, though... while on loan to a friend, it was stolen).
The other machine we had in the worked was Joe Augenbraun's Amiga 1000+. This was probably the machine that would have really boosted the Amiga's profile. It sat squarely between the A500/A1200 and the A3000/A4000... detached keyboard, two Zorro slots, a new CPU socket, etc. The intent was to ship at around $800 in 1992, with AA chips and a 25MHz CPU (probably an EC020 or EC030, but still).
So, after killing these machines, Syndes went on to mess with the other project in the works. George Robbins was working on a project called the A300... a sub-A500 class machine. He had even worked out a super-cheap Genlock, which was probably going to be built-in.... George knew analog way better than I did at the time, and I was one of the better analog guys all told (George also designed the VIDIOT hybrid, which does the D/A conversion in the A500 and A2000, as well as the A500 and A1200). Syndes has all these changes made, still promising $50 less cost than the A500, but delivering $50 more cost. That was the A600, and as soon as it was done, they cancelled the A500, enough though it was still selling quite well.
They also tried to create a sub-A3000 machine, which was internally called the A2200, but which everyone else called the A1000jr (after the PCjr, of course). This was going to have ECS chips, not AA, and only Zorro II slots, but otherwise based around the A3000 architecture, with Augi's cheap IDE (a couple of PALs... IDE/ATA without DMA is really easy to do) replacing SCSI... that was Joe and Greg Berlin. They knew it wasn't what we wanted, but you sometimes have to listen to the boss.
Here's where the unique nature of Commodore comes in. Commodore did so well internationally because each region had their own marketing and sales company, which ran pretty independently. Sometimes, over the years, you'd see a cool prototype shown off at a CES or Comdex that never made it out. Sometimes it was Jack or some other boss killing it off, but sometimes there just weren't enough orders from the various sales companies to justify production. And that's just what happened to the A1000jr. No orders.
Greg and his team immediately began work on a machine internally dubbed the A3400, which ultimately became the A4000. It was also very A3000-based, but other than the lack of SCSI, not so bad. And it of course did use the AA (Pandora, AGA, etc) chipset, based on the work I did on the A3000+.
During the A2200 project, Greg asked Scott Schaeffer to design "the cheapest 68040 card known to mankind". Scott had done our first '040 card, which you never got to see. This was actually at the A3000 launch in 1990... we had hired Scott specifically for this... he already had '040 experience, even though it hadn't shipped yet. And in fact, we had one of the first OSs actually functional on it... so early, in fact, that was had to get official permission from Motorola to show it off. Which we got... and then the managers decided not to show it. That card was pretty big, with its own L2 cache.
The main reason it wasn't announced at the time was compatibility -- the '040 was designed to run way hotter than any chip we had used in the past; this was right before CPUs started always having heat sinks on them. There was real concern that the '040, and particularly that large module, wouldn't be kept cool enough in the A3000. So no announcement, and that card was cancelled.
So Scott's cheap '040 card was Greg's very good idea to make the A1000jr less embarrassing, at least via upgrade. When the A4000 came around, this was ready, so it became the A4000's default CPU card.
-Dave
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Dave, since you're around, I have a question.
I still use my A3000D and think its a damn fine computer. However, I just have to know; who in hell designed the case? Why shrink it to such a size that you couldn't fit a Toaster (properly) or install a CD drive as you could with the A2000. Thanks if you can clue me in.
I think Herb Mosteller designed the case. There was a very intentional decision to make it compact -- that was a thing back in the late 80s, making a slightly lower profile computer. I didn't have any problem with that, but yeah, they should have ensure the Toaster fit properly. By the time we realized this was a problem (well, hey, if NewTek had sent me a Toaster...), it was too late. We did fix that on the A3000T, which was being planned at the same time we were finishing up the A3000.
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I remember when I was in College, there a news bit somewhere that listed highest paid technology business types, and I remember at least Mehdi being there in the list above people from like IBM and Compaq.. At the time, I was thinking that was just crazy...
I mean, I loved my Amiga, but higher paid than the big guys??
Of course, I didn't realize that they were gutting engineering at the same time.
Two sides of the same coin, really... there's only so much money to go around. Commodore was spending a very low percentage of income on Engineering, compared other similar tech companies, and a crazy amount on upper level executive salaries. That is not a sustainable business, run that way.
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I'm always down on the AGA chipset due to the fact that it was nothing more than an ECS bug fix... But in '92, for the price nothing came close to the A1200... But with the £100 more Falcon available at the same time, it was clear something needed to change :)
AA was bit more than ECS with a bug fix... it did run a 32-bit, burst mode bus for video fetch. That's not to say it was enough. We were lobbying very hard for a CMOS replacement for Alice, which could at least use burst mode and add new features. In fact, the 2M/8M jumper on the A4000 was designed to allow a version of that, if it had ever been made. But again, no budget for it.
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My friends, if it were ONLY a cost issue. No, it was a stupidity issue.
-Dave
Mehdi Ali and Bill Sydnes look like egghead CEO and PHB from Dilbert Universe, so sad.
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Dave I teach at an engineering school we have an electronics program, mostly avionics and mechatronics stuff. They are doing some FPGA stuff so I brought in the MiniMIG fully loaded with WHLOAD, deluxe paint, ImageFX, basically a copy of the hard drive image I had from back in the day from my A2000
The students were impressed with what the system could do compared to what else was around at the time. They still remember windows 95 lol...They liked the speed and stability of the Amiga OS mutitasking the pull down screens, etc. The multitasking was the miost impressive stuff when the realizes how much ram was involved. Even the prof was impressed and he does a lot of NASA work.
There is interest in doing a video game cosole dev course because of this demo so the Amiga continues to inspire.
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The other machine we had in the worked was Joe Augenbraun's Amiga 1000+. This was probably the machine that would have really boosted the Amiga's profile. It sat squarely between the A500/A1200 and the A3000/A4000... detached keyboard, two Zorro slots, a new CPU socket, etc. The intent was to ship at around $800 in 1992, with AA chips and a 25MHz CPU (probably an EC020 or EC030, but still).
Sounds like the A1400 machine C= UK was planning to fill the A1200/A4000 gap. This would have sold like hotcakes in 1992 for £600ish in the EU as PCs were so cumbersome (Win 3.1+DOS) and expensive (386 16/25mhz with soundblaster about £800-900 for unbranded/cheapo brands)
But as you point out not enough profit went back into R&D AND management was clueless so it would only delay the inevitable.
Now a question I have is....was there ever a Sega Genesis/Super Famicon rivaling Amiga Incompatible machine ever thought about around 91/92? Seems half the complexity was OCS compatibility and hence costs.
Say for example the 256 color C65 chipset?
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The other machine we had in the worked was Joe Augenbraun's Amiga 1000+. This was probably the machine that would have really boosted the Amiga's profile. It sat squarely between the A500/A1200 and the A3000/A4000... detached keyboard, two Zorro slots, a new CPU socket, etc. The intent was to ship at around $800 in 1992, with AA chips and a 25MHz CPU (probably an EC020 or EC030, but still).
I have some questions :
- Is the 1000+ is planned with an harddrive as standard ?
- How many chip RAM and fast RAM would have been included as standard ?
- Is the 1000+ included an AT&T 3210 DSP ?
If i understand correctly, it don't have a DSP. I think that would have been a mistake. If the 3000+ have a DSP and the 1000+ not, the DSP would not have been used by common softwares and, of course, by games.
- how many a 1000+ with a DSP would have cost ? 1000 $ or more ? Maybe a 25 mhz DSP, not a 50 mhz.
- A CPU socket ? Is it mean the cpu would have been on a daughter board ?
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You're not just a PC with a PowerPC CPU and some VGA chip trying to make the claim of being an Amiga.
I understand that PowerPC has become very popular in networking infrastructures, at least partially because network data is big-endian and x86 would spend a lot of time byteswapping rather than processing and moving data along.
I understand some reasons that PowerPC is no longer ideal for a desktop or other personal computer general purpose machine, such as the price we'll pay for such unique and small market boards.
But I'd like to know some reasons why it is technically insufficient. I can't find the right post to quote, but I remember seeing Dave saying this somewhere. It's been over a decade since my undergrad intro to computer architecture courses, and I've not yet got to them in my Masters program, to have a really good understanding of what is good about x86 (and maybe ARM now too) that is lacking in PowerPC, particularly with QorIQ AMP e6500 cores out now.
The things many of us end users look at is speed (e6500 claims 2.5GHz, below some current, soon to come dekstop x86_64 things nearing 4GHz), memory (AMP has DDR3 controllers like AMD Bulldozer/FX does), e6500 virtual cores sound similar to my understanding of Bulldozer/FX "module", PowerPC is now multicore like x86. Altivec has returned for comparison to SIMD, though I don't know how the "update" compares to latest SIMD or what that comparison means to us. We should be able to use an AMD SB950 southbridge (which as I understand is an SB850 with different writing on the lid), as it should not be any different than hooking up an SB600 as seen on X1000. We should be able to add USB3 using the same PCI-Express chips as the PCs currently use, until it's added to southbridges.
Yes, this is comparing the not available yet AMP series to x86, at least somewhat to also not yet or just very recently released Bulldozer chips, and perhaps this is different than comparing PA Semi's chip, or the 8641/8640 or other PowerQuicc chips to x86.
Ignoring that we have to spread engineering etc. NRE costs over a thousand or so boards compared to x86 spreading same costs over hundreds of thousands of units, and other market size details tha make it difficult to get a PowerPC board onto our desks (I wish onto our laps!) What are technical things we should hope for in PowerPC if we must be restricted to that? Ignoring the market size benefit to x86, what technical features there are superior to our equivalents, which ones to we lack completely, etc.
I don't disagree that x86_64 should be considered by the AmigaOS powers that be today, I just would like to have a very technical understanding of why that is, aside from the marketing issues that are more obvious.
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I understand some reasons that PowerPC is no longer ideal for a desktop or other personal computer general purpose machine, such as the price we'll pay for such unique and small market boards.
But I'd like to know some reasons why it is technically insufficient.
I think the biggest problem with PPC right now is the lack of support. IBM doesn't really give a damn about desktops anymore, most PPC licensees are interested solely in the embedded market, and even P.A. Semiconductor is no longer doing active development on it (thank you so ******* much, Apple.) Everybody's infatuated with ARM at the moment.
I've not yet got to them in my Masters program, to have a really good understanding of what is good about x86 (and maybe ARM now too) that is lacking in PowerPC
There is nothing good about x86. It's ugly under the hood and the only reason it's got all the horsepower right now is because the entire might of the PC industry is behind it, covering the R&D costs.
PowerPC is now multicore like x86.
PowerPC's been multicore since the 970MP (G5) in 2005, almost as long as x86 has.
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I don't disagree that x86_64 should be considered by the AmigaOS powers that be today, I just would like to have a very technical understanding of why that is, aside from the marketing issues that are more obvious.
Technical reason i don't know, but surely the real reason is that market has been made by twenty years of wintel domination. But things are changing and in the next years we could see something new as pdas, smartphone, tablets and other stuff taking the place of desktop. Many people in the last years bought a pc to surf on the internet, watch videos (or download them) and listen music. Now tablets, netbooks and similia are on the right way to give those people what they want. I think at samsung and others with their arm cpu and why not ppc. But laptop, netbook and tablets are something you can't make in an hobbyst market. Such technology would be truly expensive. And even if you want make only os the majority of those things are written in fware. The market laws.:afro: