A project I'd like to see from Jens...

[wawrzon]

I think Jens should produce something that every Amiga lover buys

simple: universal turboboard for every amiga multiple times faster than any existing accelerator and that for affordable money. am i right or am i right?

[wawrzon]

I thought that was already planned with Majsta's next accelerator for the 500/2000/1000 and using the Apollo core .

sounds like majsta run into problems:

project was put on hold since imagine I didn't had A500 keyboard to perform some tests I wanted
Problem was with IDE controller and it seems to me that I didn't design it properly in hardware part

http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=68459&page=2

however jens has actually proposed help with the project (in therms of hardware i guess), if it turns out genuine, even though remaining rather aggressively sceptical for the time being:

http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?t=44199

i dont know if and how it progressed since.

also thor is supporting the case (within limits):

http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?t=44678

[wawrzon]

@nova
i agree. also i dont see much necessity to speed up any particular tasks by dedicated but otherwise limited hardware. general purpose accel is all im interested in so far. im also fine with living with amiga chipset bottlenecks. one can circumnavigate it with rtg solutions as an option.

[wawrzon]

Hi Matt,

our new Cyclone 5 accelerator cards are done already.

Cheers
Gunnar

for what system? a 600?

[wawrzon]

so is it designed or is the prototype already fabricated?

[wawrzon]

good luck and keep us posted.

[wawrzon]

For a second I thought that said CD32 and I almost died. The A500 will be happy and I will certainly appreciate your effort.

 I know better than to ask for CD32 support to be added

i think the range of devices gunnar mentioned is a sensible choice, if its really possible to support them all with a single board. these are pre-aga models but contrary to a600 rather popular which should secure a good crowd for testing and debugging. after that the aga models could be supported with a a more extended model, like double ram amount or whatever occurs reasonable while testing the previous one.

[wawrzon]

aha. the card is supposed to go into the cpu socket.  too simple for me to figure out..

[wawrzon]

the big showstopper i see for fpgaarcade as well as natami was exactly adapting amiga chipset softcore to the particular hardware. such task can take years, there is always more quirks to take care of and this is effectively delaying release forever. in another five years we will still be waiting for such projects to complete.

a turboboard for existing hardware removes at least half of the problems if not the most, and therefore i always hammered on that as the furst thing to do, also as i still visited natami forums. gunnar and others may remember..

[wawrzon]

and one other thing i wanted to mention due to it is a popular mistake around here. this project as well as any similar will be (if they continuues) work in progress for years to come. same as aros is. same as os4, fpga arcade or whatever else is. it will not be fully completed any soon at least not to the point of total satisfaction for the whole audience. therefore the audience needs to be involved. also thats where the fun is. testing, submitting reports, reading what commits have been submitted day by day. discussing issues.

to succeed the project needs to be as open as it gets.

[wawrzon]

*bow to you*

didnt intended to lecture anyone. just feel pity, because the project taking another course could be much further by now and sustain itself the motivation of the developers and the interest of te audience.

[wawrzon]

of course thomas had a different goal, namely to build a complete system, but i was speaking of the "softcore" part of team.

what happens just now, could have happened in parallel to developing natami board, so to say in different thread to be eventually merged back in. im not saying the softcore team has lost any time, but there might be more buzz around it and therefore more motivation and more dynamics.

lets take majstas vampire project as example. the board doesnt seem technically superior to other similar solutions like fpgaarcade, tobiflex his own experimental de2 (?) accelerator, mist (or how the other fpga board is named?). it is middle range, someone else could have done it if attempted, but none did, and a lot of people argumented against. what is good about that (and apparently intentionally) is that the development happened in open. it met and has proven interest, and kicked others in to contribute. thats pretty an achivement in my eyes.

[wawrzon]

Actually this is exactly how the Softcore is tested/developed.

but since it happens in some closed circle the general public doesnt get involved and cannot even observe the progress and thus may easily come to conclusion that there is no progress.

again as my favourite example: aros. even though not taking part in development one can read the developer ml to know where its aiming at and also you can observe what commits been done day by day. lets admit im a complete noob and am annoying people most of the time for no reason, surely creating unnecessary noise from developer perspective. now, even though i submitted a pfs3 problem report few days ago along with a log and i immediately see a fix submitted by toni another day, now i checked back today and can confirm the bug is gone, my a1200 booting fine all the way to aros-wanderer. i think it is quite rewarding to see and be able to support the development in what ever ways one is able to. sure it has handicaps too, as said noise generated by the noobs and unnecessary discussions, but lets face it, the community is at a point where noobs are probably in majority, but the game has to go on anyway, we have to find ways to take advantage of just any resource available.

[wawrzon]

@nicholas

I do not think that this would be cheaper than this solution. Here you can use a off-the-shelf solution and create a connector, for your solution you would need a custom board and that makes it expensive again. Or do I understand something wrong?

there was some person on this board thinking along and also there was discussion about such alternative. quite a lenghty one but i dont remember where.

however it appears nothing came out of that so better to support ongoing projects. as stated jens apparently is in favour of emulating cpu, but not on x86 but on mips, also it seems he is in favour of complete new system instead of an add on, which is probably partly due to easier servicing and warranty, which is likely quite important element from his perspective.

[wawrzon]

i think its this one that is taken into consideration:
http://www.broadcom.com/products/Processors/Enterprise/BCM53003