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Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Topic started by: TheRogue on November 10, 2012, 11:34:18 PM
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Hey guys,
So, here's the news. I'm currently tooling up for PCB and enclosure production. I have decided to give back to the community by offering a different sort of service. I am going to be offering on demand production of a variety of classic computing hardware. Production will start with boards, and enclosures will follow shortly. I am going to offer many different open source pieces of hardware to start with, and I may attempt recreation or cloning of certain devices as time goes on.
Products that will be available initially and as time goes on include things like IEC2SD, SIO2SD, IDE interfaces for various machines, C64/VIC RS-232 interfaces, NetUSBee, UltraSatan, MSX slot expanders, BBC SD adapters and sideways ROM expansions, Thylacine USB (redesigned to eliminate the vast amount of wasted space!), clones of out-of-production cards (will have some delaminated and mapped for cloning), high-spec power supplies for a variety of systems including discounts for sending in old enclosures, ATX adapters for various older machines including regulators for any voltages not available from an ATX2.x supply, blank prototyping cards in various form factors (Zorro half and full length, A500 bus, Apple ][, Commodore 64 cart/userport, VIC-20 cart, Atari 8-bit cart, etc), various ROMs, GALs, and the like, repair services for certain hardware, full upgrade services for certain hardware (such as a CPU, ROM, Oscillator, GAL, and Cache upgrade for a TransWarpGS), affordable IDE/SATA/CF/SD to SCSI boards, STF RAM expansions, custom cabling, full service one off boards (send a schematic or layout and a parts list, get a finished board back) and much much more. For now, I'd like to hear from you what devices you guys would like me to offer initially so I know what components to stock up on.
The inspiration for this project when ReactiveMicro (formerly GSE-Reactive) shut down a while back. I saw how stranded the Apple II community was, and I thought, why not pick up where Henry left off, but since I'm a proud user of many classic platforms I figured it should be for every classic platform what ReactiveMicro was for the Apple II.
Also, just to be clear, this is not wishful thinking, a pipe dream, or vapour. I recently lost my day job, and I have already started purchasing equipment for this venture. The ROM/PLD programmer arrived today, the EPROM eraser is on its way, the PCD equipment will be here by the end of November, the electroplating gear (for through-hole plating) is being constructed, the box break and sheetmetal equipment will be purchased in short order, the vacuum pump desoldering station is in the shop, the rework station is on its way, and so on...
Let me know what you think. Questions, comments, and suggestions requested! Let's hear what you have to say! Also, if anyone wants to help me name this venture, I'd be glad to hear your suggestions!
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Sounds really good my man. If you recieve any trolling or cynicism from anyone here just ignore it.Imo and do yer thing.
I have just recently got back into amiga and have a cdtv en route to me any day now. I personally am only interested in classic systems or clones of those systems, fpga arcde etc. Hope to buy some of your products in the future too as I want to upgrade my amigas as much as possible.
When you say 'new enclosures' do you mean full enclosures for classic amigas/computers etc?
I think a classic amiga brought to a more modern standard with a new amiga style enclosure and running AROS would be the way to go.
If such a system could be designed with long term thinking in mind and be designed so as to be relatively easy to evolve over time. an fpga core that can be built on incrementally. perhaps the fpga arcade/minimig core could be evolved if practical.
Anyways I wish you the best of luck with your venture.
names? Timeless tech? Key-Player? Excelsior computing? Silvern?
Do you know aros?http://aros.sourceforge.net/
Fpga arcade? http://www.fpgaarcade.com/
keep posting here and please keep us updated it sounds exciting.:)
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We need an 060 card with 1GB+ ram soldered on. If u can't get 1GB cheaply then 2GB is 100% ok. Thank u.
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We need an 060 card with 1GB+ ram soldered on. If u can't get 1GB cheaply then 2GB is 100% ok. Thank u.
100% agree
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We need an 060 card with 1GB+ ram soldered on. If u can't get 1GB cheaply then 2GB is 100% ok. Thank u.
A standardized form factor with the ability to adapt it to differing processor expansion slots would be awesome as well :)
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I really like the idea of an FPGA core Amiga in a new Amiga-esque enclosure. This is something I would really like to work towards. The sheetmetal equipment I am looking at would handle something like that no problem. I'm not going to promise something like that immediately when the doors open, more like something to work towards over the coming months. I also have to say I like the idea of a new accelerator, an 060 one. The idea of having a core that is adaptable for multiple systems is brilliant too. Its another thing I would love to work towards. Again, don't expect miracles, there must be time for development, even as a full time endevour. I am going to be offering what I can as soon as I can, and original hardware will follow. I am looking at having some multilayer cards delaminated and mapped to make future cloning efforts much easier. I have to say that a new PowerUp board is something I'll bet people would climb over eachother to acquire, although I don't know that its realistically possible. Certainly a clone of the older hardware is probably impossible, due to component sourcing issues, but a new board compatible with the standard may be possible farther down the line. For now though, what do you all see as the piece or pieces of hardware you would like to see clones/successors of? Like I said I will be offering the Thylacine immediately or shortly thereafter, but it will be redesigned to eliminate all the empty space to lower production costs and as such deliver you a cheaper product. You'd be surprised how much of a savings you can get when you cut down on all the dead space on that card. Anyway, keep the suggestions coming!
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I what do you all see as the piece or pieces of hardware you would like to see clones/successors of?
We want an updated board like an Apollo 060 or Blizzard 060 for A1200 but instead of being limited to a tiny little 128MB stick, make it use 1GB or 2GB. And instead of a 50Mhz 060 it could use one of those newfangled 90Mhz 060s. The 90Mhz 060s can allegedly be tuned to 100Mhz or 110Mhz. But I write 90Mhz for safety.
All Amigas throughout history have been starved of memory. They can all easily address 4GB of memory but nobody makes anything to give us a lot of high speed RAM.
And no, plugging RAM into super slow motion Zorro 2 slots does not count as "high speed RAM". :)
We need 90Mhz RAM feeding a 90Mhz CPU.
We need 1GB so we can run stuff like 7zip and any random modern web-browser.
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We need an 060 card with 1GB+ ram soldered on. If u can't get 1GB cheaply then 2GB is 100% ok. Thank u.
Hmm if it works with everything from a 1000/500 up it would be a huge seller. Add a tower case/separate keyboard and mouse kit and it would sell like hot cakes.
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We want an updated board like an Apollo 060 or Blizzard 060 for A1200 but instead of being limited to a tiny little 128MB stick, make it use 1GB or 2GB. And instead of a 50Mhz 060 it could use one of those newfangled 90Mhz 060s. The 90Mhz 060s can allegedly be tuned to 100Mhz or 110Mhz. But I write 90Mhz for safety.
All Amigas throughout history have been starved of memory. They can all easily address 4GB of memory but nobody makes anything to give us a lot of high speed RAM.
And no, plugging RAM into super slow motion Zorro 2 slots does not count as "high speed RAM". :)
We need 90Mhz RAM feeding a 90Mhz CPU.
We need 1GB so we can run stuff like 7zip and any random modern web-browser.
Ok, the people have been heard. The arrangements will be made and the project will be started as soon as possible.
I can personally comment on the new mask revisions of the 68060. I have one in my Atari Falcon and you really can successfully run them at 100MHz+. Mine has been clocked at 100MHz for ages and it runs rock solid.
Hmm if it works with everything from a 1000/500 up it would be a huge seller. Add a tower case/separate keyboard and mouse kit and it would sell like hot cakes.
I love it, love everything about it. Tower upgrade kits are something I love. I have built several of my own using all the wrong tools, and they still turned out pretty good. Using the tools I'm buying now, I think I could do something pretty cool in this department, so let's add that one to the list: Tower upgrade kits for a range of platforms including the complete line of Amigas!
Keep the suggestions coming!
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Wow, well ill sign up for a few adapters but as others said a 060 board for my 1200 with 1GB+ ram would rock ;)
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Thylacine is great!
Can you do a low cost Lan card, 10/100 RJ45... nothing fancy, zorro2 and cheap :)
Az
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Ok, the people have been heard. The arrangements will be made and the project will be started as soon as possible.
Wahoo!!!! :banana:
I will buy 2! One to use in my A1200T and 1 just to love and admire. :)
No wait! I will put the other one in my desktop A1200! Can u can make an 060 accelerator small enough to fit into a desktop A1200?
I can personally comment on the new mask revisions of the 68060. I have one in my Atari Falcon and you really can successfully run them at 100MHz+. Mine has been clocked at 100MHz for ages and it runs rock solid.
Good job!
If you can fit 2 or 3GB on the board it would be really great! It could be The Final Accelerator(tm) If u can get 3GB on it then nobody can ever make one better than yours. I know that 3 is an odd number so 2GB could be "good enuff". I donno how big 1GB and 2GB ram sticks are these days. I am just a lowly software guy.
I have been told that something like 1GB of the Amiga's address space is reserved for hardware addresses and addons and stuff. So we can only ever make use of 3GB of RAM just like Windows XP 2003.
Elbox was nice enough to make us drivers for a 256MB gfx card. It just seems silly for so many ppl to keep buying slow 030 accellerators and only using 16MB fastram or 32MB. I have an A1200T with Apollo 060 32MB and I constantly run out of ram and its freaking annoying. Once I finish my keyboard project then I am about to upgrade my Amiga to 128MB. Which is the same amount that many of my friends have had since around 1999. I would really rather upgrade to a "proper" amount of ram like 2GB or 1GB.
The Amiga has a lot of really kewl gfx software that can totally make use of 1 to 3 GB of ram. If we just had an accelerator with GBs of ram on it.
I love it, love everything about it. Tower upgrade kits are something I love. I have built several of my own using all the wrong tools, and they still turned out pretty good. Using the tools I'm buying now, I think I could do something pretty cool in this department, so let's add that one to the list: Tower upgrade kits for a range of platforms including the complete line of Amigas!
Elbox already sells a tower upgrade kit, at least for A1200. I donno if it works for A500 or not, never really looked. It is definitely approved for use with A1200 + Mediator PCI slots addon + sticking lots of cards into the PCI slots + having your accelerator plugged in.
I have an old Elbox Power Tower (I think that is what it is called). It only just barely fits my Apollo 1260 accelerator. I think the new Elbox Power Towers have more room in them but I am not 100% sure on that since I don't have one.
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It just seems silly for so many ppl to keep buying slow 030 accellerators and only using 16MB fastram or 32MB.
Not if that's all you need. Also, '030s make coding more challenging than '060s when it comes to getting things fast, and that can be fun. Don't be so quick to dismiss the '030 ;)
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Will you please consider something for the CD32, we also need some loving. :)
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A PPC card that will boot both aOS 4.x and MOS...
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November, the electroplating gear (for through-hole plating) is being constructed, the box break and sheetmetal equipment will be purchased in short order, the vacuum pump desoldering station is in the shop, the rework station is on its way, and so on...
You do of course realize that any type of high speed device requires multi-layer boards? You won't be able to fabricate boards like that unless you are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on the proper equipment. The reality is that I can't even buy the raw materials to hand make double-sided boards for what I can buy fully finished boards for! You are much better off spending your money on things that will help you and leave circuit board production to a full time production house.
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If you can fit 2 or 3GB on the board it would be really great! It could be The Final Accelerator(tm) If u can get 3GB on it then nobody can ever make one better than yours. I know that 3 is an odd number so 2GB could be "good enuff". I donno how big 1GB and 2GB ram sticks are these days. I am just a lowly software guy.
I have been told that something like 1GB of the Amiga's address space is reserved for hardware addresses and addons and stuff. So we can only ever make use of 3GB of RAM just like Windows XP 2003.
The AmigaOS 3.x has a few issues with memory over 2 GB. The most significant bit of the address is used by an OS function for something else. Some programs may have problems with memory over 2GB as this is a negative number if using signed math where it shouldn't be used for addresses. I have over 100MB of memory and I only run out when a poorly written program takes it all. I'd rather have 128MB of 1T-SRAM or RLDRAM to go with my 68060. Add a full speed PCI slot, SATA interface, 100MBit Ethernet and USB on a new motherboard or accelerator card and that's about all I need ;).
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I'm with the others calling for a new 060 card with 1 or 2GB of RAM. It would be even better if the card included a P96-compatible RTG chip with at least 4MB of graphics RAM and a fast bus to the 060 proc.
Also, the 060 accelerator should include SATA ports rather than the old 50-pin SCSIs used on the Blizzards.
Please target the A2000 in addition to the A1200 and A4000, et. al.
Sounds like a winner.
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Wish someone would build a 1ghz-3ghz 68060 workalike accellerator card that will have 1-6 gigs of ram...
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And I wish my pants were made of gold !!
Yeah highly unpraticle, but since it's never gonna happen anyways, why not go all the way ?
It's quite clear that the thread-starter doesn't fully comprehend what he is talking about.
Just have a look at some of the projects running at a1k.org (I think some similar projects run on EAB). Yep those guys are doing accel-cards, RAM-expansions and even full Amiga-replacements boards and none of them is etching their cards in te basement, the all use proffesional tooling companies (and at the prices i see quoted from time to time anything else wouldn't make sense even for the simplest of PCBs).
Well o.k. Herzi will do his prototyps "electron-cloud"-style, but thats surely not an option for stuff you plan to offer on sale.
Edit:
Mind you the projects the thread-starter mentioned would be doable basement-style (just not in a practical/reasonable way) it's more that some of the early responders carried this thread into lala-land.
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2GB of RAM would be the absolute safe limit for OS3.x, simply due to the signed pointer / size arithmetic that goes on here and there as mentioned by matthey.
Of course, the only reason to include such a large amount would be because you can and it's probably not that expensive to do so. There's not a lot of 68K software that would be able to make a serious dent in it. Sure you might be able to get away with much larger images in say ImageFX, but performing any realistic image processing on images that large on even a fast 060 isn't going to be much fun.
If you are going to integrate any sort of RTG, don't listen to the 4MB suggestion. Give it 256MB or so, so that it can handle modern resolutions and it's not likely to page BitMaps. It would also justify all that RAM, if you went for some sort of unified solution.
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The AmigaOS 3.x has a few issues with memory over 2 GB. The most significant bit of the address is used by an OS function for something else.
It is not a problem that AllocMem() can only allocate 2GB of RAM.
I hereby unilaterally declare, without U.N. approval: NewAllocMem()
NewAllocMem() allocates memory above the 2GB barrier and it uses the TLSFmem memory allocation algorithm so it is very preferable for all new programs to use this new memory allocation routine rather than the old, slow, fraggy AllocMem().
Now if we get a board with 3GB of RAM on it, not only will the 3rd GB be used by new software, it will be used more than the first 2GB since software using it will run faster and have longer uptimes.
Some programs may have problems with memory over 2GB as this is a negative number if using signed math where it shouldn't be used for addresses.
No Amiga program has ever had a problem with memory over 2GB because no Amiga program has ever been allowed to allocate memory over the 2GB barrier. :D
Any new software will work with NewAllocMem() and if it has a bug such as you outlined it will be observed and fixed.
I have over 100MB of memory and I only run out when a poorly written program takes it all.
What does that mean?
You have programs that allocate memory they don't need just for no reason?
Or you are using software ported from Linux that allocates itself a large buffer because they just assume that everyone has 1GB or more?
I'd rather have 128MB of 1T-SRAM or RLDRAM to go with my 68060. Add a full speed PCI slot, SATA interface, 100MBit Ethernet and USB on a new motherboard or accelerator card and that's about all I need ;).
The SATA interface is a really really good point. Would be nice to use modern hard drives, and be able to use them at a decent speed. That requires the SATA controller to be on the accelerator. But Thomas said that adding a SATA controller chip is very expensive or complicated or maybe it was both, I can't remember. That was why he did not put one on the Natami MB.
As to Ethernet and USB, those are good ideas too but there are already readily available solutions for the Amiga so they are of lesser importance.
I am not saying that having all those features on an Accelerator card would not be totally awesome, but I think we have completely exceeded the time and money he is willing to put into the project :juggler:
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So, here's what I'm thinking. It seems like from all over the place accelerators and RTG cards are the most in demand. Seems to me that building an accelerator with an RTG card and SATA built in would be the best idea. That way regardless of what system you use it on, from an A500 to an A4000 , you have access to RTG and SATA as well. I know that by that logic everything from ehternet to sound should also be on board but I think once you start doing that you get a project stalled by creeping featurism. Perhaaps it might be wise to include some sort of high speed expansion header to add things on at a later date.
I think I need to clear something up cause I'm getting some confusion from some people. All multilayer boards or things with superfine traces will not be fabricated in house. The equipment for things like that is out of my reach. Only the simple doublesided boards and flexible boards suitable for keyboard membranes and the like will be done in house on demand. Things like accelerators and so one will be fabricated through contractors. The point is that for simple stuff I can build it on demand with quick turn around. The electroplating gear is simple stuff for plated through holes. The boards will be produced with different methods depending on what they require. I have factored all the costs in and this is the way that works for me.
@haywirepc: That is way beyond what I'm capable of. You're not going to get speeds like that from an FPGA, that is going to the realm of having custom chips fabricated. I don't have the resources or the knowledge to design a microprocessor from scratch. The only way I could see something like that POSSIBLY being done is to use some other processor (x86, PPC, ARM) running some sort ofassembly language 060 emulation code. Even then, as matthey said, you won't be able to address more then 2GB of RAM.
@Akiko: I absolutely won't forget the CD32 either. Maybe we can look at a new CD32 accelerator/expansion system.
The tower kits from Elbox are ok, I have one for my A4000. The problem is I had to modify it to take my CSPPC/CVPPC. I would want to design one that everything fits without shoehorning. We'll see how it goes.
So to summarize: The design for a new accelerator will most likely consist of a final mask revision 060, 1-2GB RAM, an RTG 3D card, SATA, POSSIBLY USB, and an expansion header for new addons. Sound good?
In the meantime, keep the suggestions coming, and if anyone knows of any hardware for any system that has schematics/layouts and code available, I will add them to the list!
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There's not a lot of 68K software that would be able to make a serious dent in it.
If we had a 1GB RAM card we could run
Web Browser
Image FX
7zip
a game
BAM!
?Out of Memory Error
Its easy to use a smeasly 1GB of RAM.
I didn't even have to put some files into the RAM: disk in my example.
If we all had 3GB of RAM we could all use our RAM: disk to do a lot more useful things. And we could quit being stingy with our hard drive buffers. We could have our partitions set up with the amount of hard drive buffers we actually need rather than some slow cut down number that we can survive with.
etc. etc.
There are a million things we can do with 3GB of RAM.
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If we had a 1GB RAM card we could run
Web Browser
Image FX
7zip
a game
BAM!
?Out of Memory Error
Its easy to use a smeasly 1GB of RAM.
Don't get me wrong, more RAM is always good and as long as it's not a factor in the price of hardware, the more the merrier. However...
There are a million things we can do with 3GB of RAM.
You'd need to do more than write an additional allocator. The moment anything allocated above the 2GB boundary, you can't guarantee it won't end up being passed by reference off to something that will assume it can't have been and do something stupid thanks to signed 32-bit arithmetic.
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Don't get me wrong, more RAM is always good and as long as it's not a factor in the price of hardware, the more the merrier. However...
You'd need to do more than write an additional allocator. The moment anything allocated above the 2GB boundary, you can't guarantee it won't end up being passed by reference off to something that will assume it can't have been and do something stupid thanks to signed 32-bit arithmetic.
This is exactly why I said 1GB-2GB, more likely 2GB.
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If you are going to add RTG to the card then might I suggest something cheap and well documented with tons of example source code for the driver writers: The same chip that the Raspberry Pi uses.
Also you could have 3GB on the board with 2GB useable by the CPU and the 3rd GB could be used by the gfx card. Just an idea.
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The moment anything allocated above the 2GB boundary, you can't guarantee it won't end up being passed by reference off to something that will assume it can't have been and do something stupid thanks to signed 32-bit arithmetic.
What you are saying is completely true.
I am just not convinced that the potential bug you describe is anything more than an extremely rare phenomenon.
Millions of people have 32-bit computers and I have never heard of any of them having problems when they added the 3rd GB of ram.
Have you ever had a 32-bit computer start malfunctioning when adding the 3rd GB of RAM?
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2Gb is fine, I'm currently getting by on 32mb.
As I've said before, a 100Mhz 060 with modern fast memory (eg 2GB of it) coupled with 060 compiled software/OS will make things more interesting in Amiga classic land.
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What does that mean?
You have programs that allocate memory they don't need just for no reason?
You have never had a buggy program allocate all your memory? Vbbc is the only program that has ran out of memory for me on a high optimization level but it also has some bugs.
The SATA interface is a really really good point. Would be nice to use modern hard drives, and be able to use them at a decent speed. That requires the SATA controller to be on the accelerator. But Thomas said that adding a SATA controller chip is very expensive or complicated or maybe it was both, I can't remember. That was why he did not put one on the Natami MB.
As to Ethernet and USB, those are good ideas too but there are already readily available solutions for the Amiga so they are of lesser importance.
I am not saying that having all those features on an Accelerator card would not be totally awesome, but I think we have completely exceeded the time and money he is willing to put into the project :juggler:
Actually, what would be great and practical would be full speed PCI slots for GFX card, SATA, ethernet and USB. A new motherboard fitting a common tower standard with empty 68060 CPU slot, fpga for the custom chips (MiniMig code is available), PCI 5-7 full speed slots, ATX power supply connector, 2-3 1MB MAPROM flash slots (AROS kickstart needs 1MB kickstart) and 1-2 GB of ram. It should be priced $500-$1000 U.S for the motherboard.
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2GB would make for one hell of a RAM disk.
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You have never had a buggy program allocate all your memory?
Some kind of runaway Malloc() in a loop or somesuch? Nope.
Vbbc is the only program that has ran out of memory for me on a high optimization level but it also has some bugs.
Maybe it ran out of memory because you didn't have 3GB installed :)
With 128MB, you have only filled 1/32 of your memory map with actual memory. Maybe Vbcc just expects more.
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I would be happy to put support behind the UltimatePPC for the above but have a new source for USB, Ethernet, FlashROM style KS boards, SATA solutions and such. FPGA seems like a great way to integrate new hardware into Classic architecture and a more current PPC option that runs the OS 4.1 would keep me happy. Let us not forget that vintage USB solutions go for $200+, NIC's for $100+, PPC's $800 to $1,200, etc.
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Ok guys, I think some people are getting carried away and taking this in a direction that I didn't want. I can see what you guys want long-term and I will do everything I can to make it happen long term, but I need to think short-term as well. What I want from you now is what do you want NOW. What sort of thing, a realistic thing that can be done some time soon would you like produced? Think small. Don't think super-high-tech-revolutionize-way-we-use-our-Amigas, think small upgrade boards, think little projects. What's something simple that you'd like to have? Anything that's no longer in production that could be resurrected, like I am doing for the Thylacine? I promise you I will take all of your suggestions into consideration and really give a go at a fancy new accelerator or even replacement motherboard, but this is a long way away still, several months at least. Also, let me say again for those who missed it:
I AM NOT GOING TO PRODUCE COMPLEX MULTILAYER BOARDS WITH SUPERFINE TRACES IN HOUSE.
I think this has been a misunderstood issue and one that has taken away all the credibility of this project in the eyes of those who really understand PCB fabrication. I am well aware of what is involved in producing such things, and I have no desire to either spend many tens of thousands (at least) on the equipment or try and attempt to laminate my own multi-layer boards (the concept makes me shiver even thinking about it) so banish that thought. I am fully aware of how much cheaper it is to do it through a company, and I absolutely will be doing that. For simple small projects involving single or double sided boards with no internal layers, I will be doing the production myself because for single boards or small runs I have worked out I can save money and pass the savings on to you. If I get an order for 50 Thylacine boards for example, I am not going to make them all by hand, I will send them out. If I get someone who wants 1 and I have no other orders I can bundle together at the time, then I will churn it out myself because it's cheaper for me and cheaper for you.
Please don't take me as being rude, I love your suggestions and I love the ideas people have expressed, but can we please move the discussion away from the long-term and theoretical and more to the concrete short-term? I value every one of your thoughts and suggestions, but let's not get caught up on one thing and lose sight of what I'm really trying to do initially.
Thank you.
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If you are going to add RTG to the card then might I suggest something cheap and well documented with tons of example source code for the driver writers: The same chip that the Raspberry Pi uses.
Umm... The Raspberry Pi uses an SoC. That's System on a Chip in case you haven't heard the term before. It means the CPU and GPU are both on the same chip. Surely you don't want the ARM v6 processor introduced into the design, do you? Also, only the user-level registers are documented publicly for the GPU. The video BIOS for it is still a closed-source binary blob.
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What I want from you now is what do you want NOW. What sort of thing, a realistic thing that can be done some time soon would you like produced? Think small.
Some sort of USB solution for wedge Amigas ?
Keyboard membrane replacements ?
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Some sort of USB solution for wedge Amigas ?
Keyboard membrane replacements ?
A USB solution for the A500 will be no problem to offer immediately, I will do up a version of the Thylacine for the A500. The 600 and 1200 will be a bit more difficult, but I think some sort of clockport solution shouldn't be very hard to accomplish.
Keyboard membranes will be offered in short order. Someone on another forum is sending me a bunch of membranes for me to either clone outright or make functional equivalents of. My equipment can already handle keyboard style membranes with no issue, so I will keep you posted as to the progress on those.
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Whoa man you are really great :)
I'll have to find some additional jobs so I can buy everything you make :D
A USB solution for the A500 will be no problem to offer immediately, I will do up a version of the Thylacine for the A500. The 600 and 1200 will be a bit more difficult, but I think some sort of clockport solution shouldn't be very hard to accomplish.
Yes, well A600 and A1200 need it more :) I wouldn't have much use of it on my A500. But sure would on my A600 and A1200. Still, A500 will get more important as IDE interfaces on various cards start selling.
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Keyboard membrane replacements ?
Yuk, membrane keyboards :( Isn't it time our Amigas got quality mechanical keyboards with Cherry MX switches?
2GB of RAM would be the absolute safe limit for OS3.x, simply due to the signed pointer / size arithmetic that goes on here and there as mentioned by matthey.
You're kidding, right? I mean, signed pointers and signed size arithmetic? What the hell were they thinking? Makes no sense at all.
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Yuk, membrane keyboards :( Isn't it time our Amigas got quality mechanical keyboards with Cherry MX switches?
Do you mean complete new keyboards altogether ? Or to modify the existing ones ?
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Yuk, membrane keyboards :( Isn't it time our Amigas got quality mechanical keyboards with Cherry MX switches?
10000% agree!
Membrane keyboards are horrifically antiergonomical and evil. :destroy:
Certain A2000 keyboards came with Cherry Black switches. ahhhhh what a joy to type on. :knuddel:
Sadly, no A3000 or A4000 keyboards came with Cherry switches and the A3000 diabolically evil membrane keyboards in particular were prone to failure after some years.
I would like to propose as a project that you produce an AMIGA keyboard using uniform 45g Topre switches and a PS/2 interface. You could sell a lot of these to nonamiga users too because normal Topre keyboards have been rigged by the manufacturer to NOT WORK with PS/2. :pissed:
I have spent all week trying to buy a $300.00 Topre keyboard but Japan Inc. just won't sell me one. They will sell me several different models of Topre keyboards but they are all USB and have been sabotaged to not work with a PS/2 adapter.
I have had a PS/2 adapter on several of my Amigas since 1990s and I want to buy a couple of Topre keyboards for them. Grrr. Looks like I am stuck buying and trying Cherry Reds instead. I will probably end up spending $2000.00 on different keyboards since nobody will make the consumer what the consumer actually wants.
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Do you mean complete new keyboards altogether ? Or to modify the existing ones ?
New ones. Amiga keyboards suck.
Membrane keyboards are horrifically antiergonomical and evil. :destroy:
Membrane and rubber dome keyboards are a load of crap :)
I would like to propose as a project that you produce an AMIGA keyboard using uniform 45g Topre switches and a PS/2 interface.
Topre is expensive, and Cherry MX switches are fine.
Looks like I am stuck buying and trying Cherry Reds instead.
Nothing wrong with Cherry.
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New ones. Amiga keyboards suck.
That's fine with me, but they must have Amiga keys layout. No PC keyboards with stickers and adapters. If it's gonna be done, it has to be done right :)
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New ones. Amiga keyboards suck.
Yes they do, except for the ones with Cherry Black switches.
Membrane and rubber dome keyboards are a load of crap :)
True dat.
Topre is expensive, and Cherry MX switches are fine.
True dat 2. But there are so many Cherry switches. Hard to pick just one :)
Nothing wrong with Cherry.
My fingers are 1000x more sensitive than yours. I want to try both Cherry and Topre. Neither are perfect. The perfect keyboard switch has yet to be mass-produced. It is just that both Cherry and Topre are 128x better than membrane high-impact antiergonomical evil diabolical treacherous devious smash-ur-finger-into-an-immoveable-object-on-every-keypress keyboards.
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That's fine with me, but they must have Amiga keys layout. No PC keyboards with stickers and adapters. If it's gonna be done, it has to be done right :)
You can simply buy keycaps with the Amiga "A" printed on instead of that abominable M$ logo. But u hafta buy 1000+ at a time.
Or you can just buy blank keycaps without having to do anything special. And you can buy as many as u want. If the Amiga keys are blank, everyone will know what they are. Or u could put a sticker on it if a blank key bothers u.
There are many solutions.
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Well, it's not the windows/blank/sticker-ed keys that bother me the most. It's the layout. Del & Help VS 9 PC keys, too many Fs, etc.
Your solution is certainly easier, so... more power to you :) But if possible, I would like a proper Amiga keyboard some day.
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What you are saying is completely true.
I am just not convinced that the potential bug you describe is anything more than an extremely rare phenomenon.
Millions of people have 32-bit computers and I have never heard of any of them having problems when they added the 3rd GB of ram.
Have you ever had a 32-bit computer start malfunctioning when adding the 3rd GB of RAM?
It's not a bug specific to 32-bit systems per se, it's a bug resulting from the inconsistent interpretation of 32-bit address values (when performing arithmetic on them )within different parts of AmigaOS and software that runs on it. Other operating systems may not be affected.
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@LordAGA
I don't care about the specific layout too terribly much. But I do require a Scroll Lock key because my KVM switch uses it to switch between my Amiga and bgcpc.
Since thousands of ppl use KVM switches to link 1 Amiga + 1 pc to 1 single monitor the keyboard needs all standard pc keys.... so u see, its just easier to make a keyboard in a more-or-less standard pc layout because other KVM switches may use other strange pc keys.
But the main thing is that the keys should have springs in them so that they don't cause Nerve Damage, RSI, Tendonitis, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome, RSD, CRPS, etc.
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Talking mechanical switches eh :D
Well I would LOVE a replacement keyboard with Cherry BLUE switches for my A1200 ;) Yepp you heard right BLUE clicking switches is my thing.
Well I would be happy enough with a empty board and ill fit what ever switches I want myself.
But something a lot of people would like is replacement keys to replace their yellowed ones!
Would rock if we could get our hands on replacement keys and a big bonus would be to get new keys without crappy pad printing, I would love to see keys with a good dye method like dye sub or double shot or atleast laser etching would be nice to have :)
If some people pitch in we could get replacement keys by filling a big enough order, I would pitch in for this to happen :)
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Talking mechanical switches eh :D
Well I would LOVE a replacement keyboard with Cherry BLUE switches for my A1200 ;) Yepp you heard right BLUE clicking switches is my thing.
I love all cherry switches. I just love some more than others :D
Well I would be happy enough with a empty board and ill fit what ever switches I want myself.
Does any such a board exist???
Don't you hafta solder the switches on?
It would be nice to have Snap-On Cherry switches. That would just totally rawkout!
But something a lot of people would like is replacement keys to replace their yellowed ones!
Would rock if we could get our hands on replacement keys and a big bonus would be to get new keys without crappy pad printing, I would love to see keys with a good dye method like dye sub or double shot or atleast laser etching would be nice to have :)
I think we can just give up on doubleshot right off the bat. :)
I would be totally happy with Dye-Sublimation printing. The quality is fantastic! Laser-etching is cheaper and great for you but not so great for me. I really need smoooooooth keycaps.
We could get cheap-O pad printed Amiga keys and then give the user 2 extra keys with their keyboard so they can replace their Amiga keys every few years.
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I love all cherry switches. I just love some more than others :D
Me 2, I like all cherry switches and blue are my favorite :)
Does any such a board exist???
Don't you hafta solder the switches on?
It would be nice to have Snap-On Cherry switches. That would just totally rawkout!
No it do not exist yet, but I would love to have it made ;)
I think we can just give up on doubleshot right off the bat. :)
I would be totally happy with Dye-Sublimation printing. The quality is fantastic! Laser-etching is cheaper and great for you but not so great for me. I really need smoooooooth keycaps.
We could get cheap-O pad printed Amiga keys and then give the user 2 extra keys with their keyboard so they can replace their Amiga keys every few years.
Yeah, I would be happy with any replacement keys, but I can always dream ;)
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If some people pitch in we could get replacement keys by filling a big enough order, I would pitch in for this to happen :)
I don't know how that would work.
Every Amiga keyboard uses a different type of switch and a different type of keycap.
Are you saying you want replacement keycaps for a desktop A1200?
1. Why, man? :D Get urself a detached keyboard. :)
2. There are loads of broken A1200s that u can take the keys off of, right?
I have a broken A1200 sitting in my closet. The keyboard controller is broken so its completely useless. But there is nothing wrong with the keys themselves. I also have 2 broken A3000 keyboards. I used to have 3 or broken A500s with perfectly working keyboards stashed at my Dad's house but my evil stepmom threw them away. :( All those beautiful Amiga Keycaps gone :cry:
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I don't know how that would work.
Every Amiga keyboard uses a different type of switch and a different type of keycap.
Yes, we need loads of people pitching for the Amiga replacement keys they want ^^
WOuld require quite the amount of cash tho :(
Are you saying you want replacement keycaps for a desktop A1200?
1. Why, man? :D Get urself a detached keyboard. :)
I love to have the wedge keyboard intact on my A1200, now I was lucky enough to get my hands on a NOS keyboard recently, but as me we are many Amiga users world wide that want other keyboard layouts then US/UK etc, the NOS keyboard I got has Norwegian layout but it is nearly identical to the Swedish one.
But I am thinking of getting a extra QPAD keyboard with blue switches, I guess ill get the one I have now, it's a PS/2 keyboard and no limits on simultaneous keypresses :D
But the layout is important to many people and depending on what layout you use it can be a pain to get your hands on replacements.
2. There are loads of broken A1200s that u can take the keys off of, right?
I have a broken A1200 sitting in my closet. The keyboard controller is broken so its completely useless. But there is nothing wrong with the keys themselves. I also have 2 broken A3000 keyboards. I used to have 3 or broken A500s with perfectly working keyboards stashed at my Dad's house but my evil stepmom threw them away. :( All those beautiful Amiga Keycaps gone :cry:
Yepp but you do not have my keyboard layout and where I live it's rare to find replacements :(
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Yepp but you do not have my keyboard layout and where I live it's rare to find replacements :(
Do you type a lot of texts in the Secret Proprietary Encrypted Language of the Kingdom of Swedonia? :)
I ask because all Swedonians seem to be expert English writers and any Amiga keyboard can type any weird (and kewl) Swedish chars. Its just a matter of how easy or hard it is.
A US Amiga keyboard using US Layout and US Keyboard driver can type all Swedish chars but it requires typing "special key combos". Of course u probably already knew this :)
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It's not a bug specific to 32-bit systems per se, it's a bug resulting from the inconsistent interpretation of 32-bit address values (when performing arithmetic on them )within different parts of AmigaOS and software that runs on it. Other operating systems may not be affected.
It's the same kind of bull as those ridiculous BCPL pointers. This kind of stuff makes no sense at all. People who write software like that should not even look at computers.
I don't care about the specific layout too terribly much.
PC layout is the best. One of these days I'm just going to get a PS2 mechanical for my Amiga and be done with it. Windows keys or not.
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Here is my wish list for the Commodore Plus/4 & C16:
* blank cartridges for the projects like this: http://inchocks.co.uk/commodore/Diag264/HTMLManual/Diag264.htm
* cartridge cases
* 64k memory expansions. People would love to buy Jurek's 64k expansions, but they are not available anymore. Great product. I was lucky to get one before they were sold out. The Commodore16.com shop was the only place selling them: http://www.commodore16.com/index.php/component/content/article/46-general/242-site-shop.html
* keyboard cables for the Plus/4
* keyboard caps for the Plus/4
* a replacement CPU for the Plus/4 & C16 based on an FPGA
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Actually, what would be great and practical would be full speed PCI slots for GFX card, SATA, ethernet and USB. A new motherboard fitting a common tower standard with empty 68060 CPU slot, fpga for the custom chips (MiniMig code is available), PCI 5-7 full speed slots, ATX power supply connector, 2-3 1MB MAPROM flash slots (AROS kickstart needs 1MB kickstart) and 1-2 GB of ram. It should be priced $500-$1000 U.S for the motherboard.
+1
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Do you type a lot of texts in the Secret Proprietary Encrypted Language of the Kingdom of Swedonia? :)
I ask because all Swedonians seem to be expert English writers and any Amiga keyboard can type any weird (and kewl) Swedish chars. Its just a matter of how easy or hard it is.
A US Amiga keyboard using US Layout and US Keyboard driver can type all Swedish chars but it requires typing "special key combos". Of course u probably already knew this :)
I don't care about the last letters in the Swedish alphabet (I never use them on the Amiga since I only write in English on it anyways) or the different locations of special characters since I know the locations by heart.
But since I live in Sweden and my Amiga is sold and bought in Sweden I like to have Swedish layout on the keyboard.
Also there is quite a lot of difference between US and Swedish layout so I set my Miggys up with swedish layout no matter what the keyboard shows and when using some characters that I do not use to often it can become quite annoying pressing buttons untill you find them.
English layout:
(http://ascii-table.com/img/keyboard-103P.png)
Swedish layout:
(http://ascii-table.com/img/keyboard-153.png)
The left/right angled bracket, colon/semi colon and the question mark is the most annoying part, the rest is fairly quick to get used to.
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1) An RTG solution for the A1200. maybe a small pcb that fits between the mobo and the accelerator board.
2) A cheap USB solution for the clockport.
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@som99
11 of your keys have 3 symbols on them!!!!
WTF?!?! Why don't US keyboards get 11 keys with 3 symbols on them?!? Or how about 20 keys with 3 symbols on them? That is much much more useful! That way you can actually type out kewl symbols without having to memorize complicated key combos!!! I feel so cheated now. :(
p.s. u have no Amiga keys in your layout diagram. I can't live without my Amiga keys. :)
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1) An RTG solution for the A1200. maybe a small pcb that fits between the mobo and the accelerator board.
2) A cheap USB solution for the clockport.
I second this, but for the A2000 as well. A USB card would be very useful for users of A500, A600, A2000, and A3000. That may be where you want to start. Zorro ethernet cards will also be in demand.
First preference would be the following:
1) A new 60860 accelerator with 1 or 2 gigs of RAM and an integrated P96-compatable RTG card with > 4 megs of RAM with a fast bus to the proc.
...if that is not possible, the following would be nice:
2) A new 68060 accelerator with 1 or 2 gigs of RAM.
3) New Zorro II and Zorro III RTG cards with > 4 megs of RAM.
...the end goal should be to give classic Amigas enough power to browse the web, hence the push for 060 accelerators and RTG cards. These expansions are in demand and often sell for hundreds of dollars online, so there is an incentive in creating them. Also, the Amiga community should fund a bounty for a native port of Netsurf. Again, the goal is to get classic Amigas surfing the web and at higher colors and resolutions.
If you do take a stab at creating a new motherboard, please target the layouts of the original systems and not new PC cases. Much of the joy of owning a classic Amiga is in keeping the old girls up and running for as long as possible. An new motherboard in a new case is a new machine.
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An new motherboard in a new case is a new machine.
I would kill for new A1200 motherboards :o
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@som99
11 of your keys have 3 symbols on them!!!!
WTF?!?! Why don't US keyboards get 11 keys with 3 symbols on them?!? Or how about 20 keys with 3 symbols on them? That is much much more useful! That way you can actually type out kewl symbols without having to memorize complicated key combos!!! I feel so cheated now. :(
p.s. u have no Amiga keys in your layout diagram. I can't live without my Amiga keys. :)
I like the 3 symbols setup, helps a lot when programming and such :)
Then how about this keyboard layout ;)
(http://www.underground-gamer.com/imagebucket/a1200.jpeg)
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* new joystick in the style of the konix speedking... (yes I know I am dreaming)
* cheap USB solution for all Amiga models (specially A1200)
* cheap adapter to plug USB whell mouse
* cheap PS1/2/3 joypad adapter
* cheap Scandoubler/FickerFixer or something equivalent so that we could use these damned LCD without blur
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First preference would be the following:
1) A new 60860 accelerator with 1 or 2 gigs of RAM and an integrated P96-compatable RTG card with > 4 megs of RAM with a fast bus to the proc.
I am all for it... but... by adding an RTG card onto the accelerator the project suddenly becomes 10x more complicated. I believe it will be complicated enough that he will just keep delaying and delaying and delaying it and then... it never happens.
...if that is not possible, the following would be nice:
2) A new 68060 accelerator with 1 or 2 gigs of RAM.
That sounds 10x easier. And I would rather have a real 060 card with 2GB of RAM on it than a theoretical version with RTG on it that doesn't exist and has no drivers.
Elbox will happily sell you a Mediator board with PCI slots on it and a 256MB PCI gfx card with drivers for Amiga computers today.
I don't see any compelling reason for him to just duplicate what Elbox already did for us. Duplicating Elbox does not advance the Amiga community. Elbox has a website. They will accept your money. They will give you a working product. I have a Mediator that is around 13 years old and still works great.
If he tries to add RTG onto the board then he will right away spend 200 hours shopping around for a gfx chip to put on the board, reading comments about it, looking at source code of drivers, trying to find a good price, etc. etc. then he has to work out how to control access to the RAM since the gfx chip and the 060 will be fighting each other for access. It becomes real hard work and will take forever.
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@som99
I luv ur naked keyboard. It soooooo beautiful :knuddel:
Wow! You have 4 symbols on some of your keys! :banana:
Reminds me of the old 8-bit days when keyboards had real character (pun not intended) :D
My only complaints are:
1. I don't like the return key.
2. I don't like that there is no scroll lock key so my KVM switch won't work on it :(
KVM switch saves me the cost of another monitor. And saves me a ton of space in my small humble abode.
p.s. Never mind! There is a Scroll Lock key on the numpad! Silly me!
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What I want from you now is what do you want NOW
Can you do replacement pal/gal chips for 3640/040 cards? Lots of those out there that need repair.
Matter of fact, the schematics for the 3640 are available. Could be a cheap start to a cpu card project, Though there are a lot of reasons it's not a well performing card, it's still a nice bump up from stock.
Plaz
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* cheap adapter to plug USB whell mouse
* cheap PS1/2/3 joypad adapter
* cheap Scandoubler/FickerFixer or something equivalent so that we could use these damned LCD without blur
The solutions already on the market and publicly available for sale today are as cheap as you are going to get.
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I like the 3 symbols setup, helps a lot when programming and such :)
Then how about this keyboard layout ;)
(http://www.underground-gamer.com/imagebucket/a1200.jpeg)
Same keyboard on my a1200 =)
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@som99
I luv ur naked keyboard. It soooooo beautiful :knuddel:
Wow! You have 4 symbols on some of your keys! :banana:
Reminds me of the old 8-bit days when keyboards had real character (pun not intended) :D
My only complaints are:
1. I don't like the return key.
2. I don't like that there is no scroll lock key so my KVM switch won't work on it :(
KVM switch saves me the cost of another monitor. And saves me a ton of space in my small humble abode.
p.s. Never mind! There is a Scroll Lock key on the numpad! Silly me!
Yepp, was taking a photo to show you well here they are :P
(http://www.underground-gamer.com/imagebucket/20121112_192654.jpeg)
Same keyboard on my a1200 =)
Wohoo :D
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Can you do replacement pal/gal chips for 3640/040 cards? Lots of those out there that need repair.
Matter of fact, the schematics for the 3640 are available. Could be a cheap start to a cpu card project, Though there are a lot of reasons it's not a well performing card, it's still a nice bump up from stock.
Plaz
I will absolutely see about doing replacement PALs for this. I already have a programmer that handles PLDs, and I will see if I can get the JEDEC files. Any PLDs that people need I will be happy to program.
I love the idea of some sort of replacement keyboard with tactile switches. Perhaps it could even be worked out as a replacement assembly for the current models of Amiga keyboards, so people can keep the original look with a much better feel to it. Sorry I don't have much time today to reply, I am really running around. Back tomorrow with full responses to everything! In the meantime, keep those comments and suggestions coming!
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I'm going to throw my bid in with the Accelerator plus a few gigs. of ram. We have enough solutions for all the other ideas but there are some real shortages in the Accel. department...
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I will see if I can get the JEDEC files.
I have them somewhere if you'd like to give it a try. Looked at doing some myself but would have had to upgrade or replace my burner to handle them.
Plaz
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I am all for it... but... by adding an RTG card onto the accelerator the project suddenly becomes 10x more complicated. I believe it will be complicated enough that he will just keep delaying and delaying and delaying it and then... it never happens.
That sounds 10x easier. And I would rather have a real 060 card with 2GB of RAM on it than a theoretical version with RTG on it that doesn't exist and has no drivers.
Elbox will happily sell you a Mediator board with PCI slots on it and a 256MB PCI gfx card with drivers for Amiga computers today.
I don't see any compelling reason for him to just duplicate what Elbox already did for us. Duplicating Elbox does not advance the Amiga community. Elbox has a website. They will accept your money. They will give you a working product. I have a Mediator that is around 13 years old and still works great.
If he tries to add RTG onto the board then he will right away spend 200 hours shopping around for a gfx chip to put on the board, reading comments about it, looking at source code of drivers, trying to find a good price, etc. etc. then he has to work out how to control access to the RAM since the gfx chip and the 060 will be fighting each other for access. It becomes real hard work and will take forever.
I know you're right, but it would be really brilliant to have a new 060/graphics card combo all in the 1200 case (I'm not a fan of towers).
Personally I don't mind waiting for something truly amazing. I mean, what's the rush? If this chap can really do this, then lets do it proper and have a real think about it. Without a super graphics capability, I don't see the need for all that RAM.
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I don't mind waiting for something truly amazing.
Paul I'm not picking on your post at all, just referencing to add my point.....
I'd much rather see some smaller doable projects get done first, then build up to larger things if possible. I've lost count of the times we've all waited on some lofty hardware only to endlessly bash each other over the details, then watch it all end in tears yeeeears later with no product. Absolutely no offense to Rouge, but at this time I'd think the best authority on a 060 type card would be Jens. There must be good reasons he's not tackled one yet.
Rouge do you have any tangible game plan for an 060 design or starting out here from scratch?
Plaz
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@Plaz
Jens Schoenfeld has never made an 060 card that I have ever heard about.
However 2 other persons in the Amiga community have recently made 060 cards:
Thomas Hirsch made 5 working 060 cards for the Natami prototypes.
That FPGAreplay guy (I forgot his name) has made at least 1 or 2 060 cards for the replay and will probably start cranking them out en masse before long. But his 060 card only has 128MB RAM which is like exactly what I (and various friends) already have. So if I buy one its a sidegrade, not an upgrade. :/
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Just saying based on past performance and products Jens would be well qualified to do such a card if he wanted. So far he hasn't. I hadn't followed FPGAreplay lately and didn't know about its 060. I hope it happens, but yeah it's a tad short on memory. A gig or maybe even just 512kb would be nice.
I'd read that the "Natami" version of the project was over with though Thomas is continuing the hardware project at his own pace. Unless there's been some other recent news, I don't know that I'd count on those cards making it out of beta for a while.
Personally I was rooting for the UltimatePPC card, but that may still have lots of development yet to go too.
Plaz
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maybe even just 512kb would be nice.
Plaz
Ow, I would never buy a 512 kilobit 060 card (or anyone else for that matter) not much to do with 64KB memory ;)
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Opps, should have been 512MB not K. In my defense, it is well past my bed time. (http://www.amiga.org/forums/images/smilies/smile.gif)
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Opps, should have been 512MB not K. In my defense, it is well past my bed time. (http://www.amiga.org/forums/images/smilies/smile.gif)
Accepted ;) I should go to bed also but I got work in 1h ^^
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That FPGAreplay guy (I forgot his name) has made at least 1 or 2 060 cards for the replay and will probably start cranking them out en masse before long. But his 060 card only has 128MB RAM which is like exactly what I (and various friends) already have. So if I buy one its a sidegrade, not an upgrade. :/
Except that the modern memory is likely up to 2x as fast as SIMMs in the old accelerators and the 060 should support full overclocking. That's up to a 4x performance increase over an older 50MHz 060 accelerator when using a newer revision 060. I think the performance would seem more like 2x as fast overall most of the time but that is still pretty good. The one thing the fpga Arcade lacks is a PCI bus for fast RTG including 3D.
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Paul I'm not picking on your post at all, just referencing to add my point.....
I'd much rather see some smaller doable projects get done first, then build up to larger things if possible. I've lost count of the times we've all waited on some lofty hardware only to endlessly bash each other over the details, then watch it all end in tears yeeeears later with no product. Absolutely no offense to Rouge, but at this time I'd think the best authority on a 060 type card would be Jens. There must be good reasons he's not tackled one yet.
Rouge do you have any tangible game plan for an 060 design or starting out here from scratch?
Plaz
First of all, it's Rogue (as in highwayman), not Rouge (as in makeup) :roflmao: No harm done and please don't take that as an insult, I've just never heard that one before! :)
Anyway, as for a tangible game plan, I only have some simple block diagrams I drew up when talk of the accelerator came up, I have been busy running down all sorts of designs for other computers, looking into PAL/GAL decapping and board delaminating services, and getting information from owners of hardware and so forth to try and get something small and tangible available as soon as possible for as many different communities as possible. Basically I was drawing up just simple block diagrams for possible ways of putting the hardware together. I am at my inlaws house right now, but when I get home I can scan them for you if you want. Here is one that I did electronically:
(http://img836.imageshack.us/img836/1610/blockdiagram060accelera.png)
This is the extent of the planning that I have done on the accelerator as of yet. Like I said, it's still very early in the game to have something more then this. I think this accurately represents what people are looking for though, so at least it's a place to go from.
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Oh my god.. this card would be a dream come true.. i will buy if it come, i suppose tower only? I
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@Plaz
Jens Schoenfeld has never made an 060 card that I have ever heard about.
However 2 other persons in the Amiga community have recently made 060 cards:
Thomas Hirsch made 5 working 060 cards for the Natami prototypes.
That FPGAreplay guy (I forgot his name) has made at least 1 or 2 060 cards for the replay and will probably start cranking them out en masse before long. But his 060 card only has 128MB RAM which is like exactly what I (and various friends) already have. So if I buy one its a sidegrade, not an upgrade. :/
Well actually Georg Braun who made GBA1000 mobo also made a 060 accellerator that plugs into a 030 cpu socket. I personally think this is way way cool, and could potentially give, every one who has a 030 in a socket, a 060 board.
And actually if you take a look at his rev 5 of the GBA, it has a 68060 directly mounted on the motherboard.
Maybe it could be wise to contact him.
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It just seems silly for so many ppl to keep buying slow 030 accellerators and only using 16MB fastram or 32MB.
Sillier than what aspect of the Amiga scene, exactly..?
I'm not trying to deflate your idea, (a lot of RAM would be cool) but maybe the Amiga scene isn't for you if you can't stand the idea of people using outdated hardware. You could extend your notion to include any classic hardware; it's silly not to use top-of-the-line PCs when all classic Amigas are decades behind no matter what you put in the expansion port.
No, not really, unless you come at it from a pure performance perspective.
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@TheRogue
Holy Crap!(tm) If you can make something like your block diagram that is just
Freaking Awesome!
About your "expansion area". What is easier for you hardware guys to add these days? An oldsk00l PCI slot or a newfangled PCI Express x1 slot?
I bought a Gb Ethernet card 1000/100/10 for a PCI Express x1 slot the other day for like $40.00. I did not check if they make combo cards with Gb Ethernet and USB all in 1 card.
In any case if the card had some sort of way to plug in an off the shelf Gb Ethernet and off the shelf USB solution then that would be really really great and would solve a whole lot of problems all in 1 go.
I am not personally a fan of USB 1.1 to 2.0. I can't stand it really :) But I respect that other people need it for stuff. But I do love USB 3.0 :knuddel:
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First of all, it's Rogue (as in highwayman), not Rouge (as in makeup) :roflmao:
Boy is his face RED!!!! Bwahahahahahahaha *breath* Bwahahahahahahah
Get?! RED! His face is... you know, the Rouge is a shade of.. and you put it on your...
...
Laugh, dang it! It's funny and I'm a moderator!!!
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Well actually Georg Braun who made GBA1000 mobo also made a 060 accellerator that plugs into a 030 cpu socket. I personally think this is way way cool, and could potentially give, every one who has a 030 in a socket, a 060 board.
I respect his invention. It is very clever.
But I just looked over all my AGA Amigas that I currently own + all the ones I gave away and none of them has an 030 in a socket.
So I looked over all my current ECS Amigas + reviewed all the ECS Amigas I gave away and none of them has an 030 in a socket. I currently own 2 Amiga A3000s with 25Mhz 030s but they are soldered onto the motherboard.
So I fear that his invention will be of limited usefulness to Amiga users.
But hopefully he learned some secret trix for making 060 cards that maybe he would be willing to share with TheRogue?
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re: discussing memory speed of "Modern" ram vs. "Oldskool" ram.
Except that the modern memory is likely up to 2x as fast as SIMMs in the old accelerators
I think that the Apollo 1260 and Blizzard 1260 both accessed memory 32-bits at at a time.
But Replay and Natami access memory 16-bits at a time.
So I would not be all that surprised if the memory access speeds of an old Apollo 060 were the around the same as for one of the newfangled fpga systems.
All I am saying is that someone would have to do timing tests to see which one is really faster. New memory chips can be a lot faster but it is not a guaranteed thing.
It is a lot of complicated work to try to get "modern" memory to actually go fast. It is very very hard and complex work that requires a lot of thought and cleverness. This is something that TheRogue will be forced to come to terms with when building his DDR3 2GB 060 card. If you just use the free memory controller software that comes with FPGA chips then you get, how shall I say this... "slow" or "sad" memory speeds. Other people might use other words that start with "s" :D
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this thread is too promissing to be true. allow me to stand back till anything, just anything, is confirmed and released, then i ll applaud..
in the meantime if you are serious - the homepage of georg braun who created gba1k and consorts is here:
http://www.gb97816.homepage.t-online.de/
he has released documentation what concerns at least part of his projects, i dont know how much exactly. but you can contact him.
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this thread is too promissing to be true. allow me to stand back till anything, just anything, is confirmed and released, then i ll applaud..
in the meantime if you are serious - the homepage of georg braun who created gba1k and consorts is here:
http://www.gb97816.homepage.t-online.de/
he has released documentation what concerns at least part of his projects, i dont know how much exactly. but you can contact him.
I absolutely, COMPLETELY understand that. Lots of people love to talk out of their hat and discuss things they have no chance of accomplishing, especially it seems in the classic computing world, and ESPECIALLY in the Amiga world. Your reaction is totally natural and completely understandable. I have been sidetracked a bit, but I'll finish the redesign of the Thylacine today most likely today. I will post the layout as soon as it is finished. Maybe something more tangible then a block diagram will allow you to have hope in this project.
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Holy Crap!(tm) If you can make something like your block diagram that is just
Freaking Awesome!
That block diagram seems to almost describe a complete computer. Why even bother with the Amiga part?
I've always asked myself the question: Why? Add a graphics card and a sound card, and you've got a PC with a 680x0 CPU. Not cool :(
Keep it Amiga, guys :)
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That block diagram seems to almost describe a complete computer. Why even bother with the Amiga part?
I've always asked myself the question: Why? Add a graphics card and a sound card, and you've got a PC with a 680x0 CPU. Not cool :(
Keep it Amiga, guys :)
Dont worry are just fantasies, people starts with accelerator cards and ends with another more "amiga friendly" system.
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That block diagram seems to almost describe a complete computer. Why even bother with the Amiga part?
I've always asked myself the question: Why? Add a graphics card and a sound card, and you've got a PC with a 680x0 CPU. Not cool :(
Keep it Amiga, guys :)
That does bring up a good point. It would be nice if the original system could be productively used as much as possible.
@TheRouge:
Given that the Zorro buses on the old machines are locked at a certain Mhz, is there any way around the bandwidth limitation by on-the-fly compression and decompression of the bits sent over the bus?
Say a new accelerator is introduced and it want's to communicate with a new RTG card on the old Zorro III bus. Would it be possible for both the new accelerator and the new RTG card to have a chip which very quickly encodes and decodes data, in effect increasing the amount of information carried over the bus per-bit? Perhaps something like this would allow the bus to handle more traffic?
Sorry if this is elementary or the way things already work. I'm sure someone else has already done something like this, but I'm not sure if its been applied to the older Amigas...
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I've always asked myself the question: Why? Add a graphics card and a sound card, and you've got a PC with a 680x0 CPU. Not cool :(
Keep it Amiga, guys :)
That is an interesting subject.
Take a 'virgin' A1200, ok it's a nice retro computer but you can't really do much with it so you and some FASTRAM then a faster CPU, CF hard drive and an Indivision AGA with a chunky graphcis mode etc etc.
How far do you take it before it's no longer a retro classic Amiga?
Mediators fall in this category for me, stick a 1200 into a tower and add PCI video/sound cards and it becomes a slow PC that can't run PC software.
Personally, I'm happy that my 1200 is a classic as long as it is still in the original case, uses a 68k CPU (even if it's FPGA based) and can natively run classic software.
PPC cards for classics are also a waste of time because (apart from the lack of software) that much power is pointless when tied to the original chipset.
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That block diagram seems to almost describe a complete computer. Why even bother with the Amiga part?
I've always asked myself the question: Why? Add a graphics card and a sound card, and you've got a PC with a 680x0 CPU. Not cool :(
Keep it Amiga, guys :)
As the former manager of Delmar Company (which sold computers that WERE pretty much just that) I'm vaguely insulted.
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One thing that Thomas and the Natami team did uncover while they were still working together, the later '060s without a built in math co-processor were very overclockable.
100MHz easy with some able to pull 120.
Why not develop a software math library and try to use these (they're cheap btw)?
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That does bring up a good point. It would be nice if the original system could be productively used as much as possible.
@TheRouge:
Given that the Zorro buses on the old machines are locked at a certain Mhz, is there any way around the bandwidth limitation by on-the-fly compression and decompression of the bits sent over the bus?
Say a new accelerator is introduced and it want's to communicate with a new RTG card on the old Zorro III bus. Would it be possible for both the new accelerator and the new RTG card to have a chip which very quickly encodes and decodes data, in effect increasing the amount of information carried over the bus per-bit? Perhaps something like this would allow the bus to handle more traffic?
Sorry if this is elementary or the way things already work. I'm sure someone else has already done something like this, but I'm not sure if its been applied to the older Amigas...
From my understanding of Zorro III, this would not be possible. Communication between the CPU card and something on the Zorro bus would have to be relayed through the Buster, which has a practical limitation of ~20MBps. From my understanding of things (While I do have experience with hardware development, I have never attempted an Amiga accelerator before) the only way you could boost the speed of Zorro communication would be to design a replacement for the Buster chip. While this is theoretically possible to do using an FPGA and a plug-in adapter, I'm not going to commit to something like that without a real good reason.
That block diagram seems to almost describe a complete computer. Why even bother with the Amiga part?
I've always asked myself the question: Why? Add a graphics card and a sound card, and you've got a PC with a 680x0 CPU. Not cool
Keep it Amiga, guys :)
The point would be to allow more demanding software to run on the Amiga platform while keeping close to full backwards compatibility with older software and hardware. I would not consider high-end graphics, large amounts of memory, some PCI-e lanes, and a fast processor attached to an OCS/ECS/AGA chipset to be a PC or close to it. I consider it to be an Amiga with high-end graphics and sound capabilities and an upgrade path (4 PCI-e 1x lanes) that is more future-proof then what is currently available. By your definition a CSPPC+CVPPC+128MB is a complete computer as well and therefor pointless. I'm not trying to be antagonistic or anything, you are totally entitled to your opinion and I can absolutely see your point of view, I just think that as long as you are running a real 680X0 on a machine with a real Amiga custom chipset, it's still an Amiga, the rest is just gravy. You can still put an Amiga floppy disk into the drive and boot an Amiga game without any sort of emulation taking place. I actually find the idea that OS4 Classic uses JIT instead of the real 060 makes me unhappy. I fully understand that it was done for a good reason and I am by no means criticizing the developers, I'm just making a point. I know some purists would say a design like what has been proposed in this thread is absolute heresy, but I also think a lot of people will be very happy to have it.
Dont worry are just fantasies, people starts with accelerator cards and ends with another more "amiga friendly" system.
I absolutely understand your skepticism and I take no offence from it. I hope you will not take offence when I say that I look forward to proving you wrong.
@TheRogue
Holy Crap!(tm) If you can make something like your block diagram that is just
Freaking Awesome!
About your "expansion area". What is easier for you hardware guys to add these days? An oldsk00l PCI slot or a newfangled PCI Express x1 slot?
I bought a Gb Ethernet card 1000/100/10 for a PCI Express x1 slot the other day for like $40.00. I did not check if they make combo cards with Gb Ethernet and USB all in 1 card.
In any case if the card had some sort of way to plug in an off the shelf Gb Ethernet and off the shelf USB solution then that would be really really great and would solve a whole lot of problems all in 1 go.
I am not personally a fan of USB 1.1 to 2.0. I can't stand it really But I respect that other people need it for stuff. But I do love USB 3.0
Thank you for your enthusiasm! To answer your question, as long as your hardware can support the speed PCI-e is easier due to it's serial nature. PCI is a parallel bus which means more traces, more I/O pins tied up, etc. I think it would be best to implement a header with 4 1x PCI-e signalling lines that could either be connected to a bus-board for connecting full size PCI-e cards for a tower configuration, or small board that plugs directly to the header and passes through the remaining PCI-e lanes to another header for use in tighter cases. It would obviously be smart to implement the newest version of the USB standard instead of the older versions at least in my opinion.
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I absolutely understand your skepticism and I take no offence from it. I hope you will not take offence when I say that I look forward to proving you wrong.
My words are without offence, same as yours... will be a pleasure to be wrong.
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Just wanted to let everyone know the 1st version of the Thylacine redesign is almost done. I'm just putting the finishing touches on it now. This version has not moved much around, just removed the huge excess of wasted space at the end and moved a couple of caps just to save a few centimeters but it has already almost halved the length of the card. Right now its about the size of a Catweasel ZII, but I think I can get it down to the size of a Deneb (roughly) with a more thorough redesign. Don't forget, the smaller it is, the cheaper it is, so wish me luck!
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Just wanted to let everyone know the 1st version of the Thylacine redesign is almost done. I'm just putting the finishing touches on it now. This version has not moved much around, just removed the huge excess of wasted space at the end and moved a couple of caps just to save a few centimeters but it has already almost halved the length of the card. Right now its about the size of a Catweasel ZII, but I think I can get it down to the size of a Deneb (roughly) with a more thorough redesign. Don't forget, the smaller it is, the cheaper it is, so wish me luck!
Have you think about a triangle form factor, like the Delfina Zorro 2 ?
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I hadn't thought of doing that way, but I don't think it will be necessary. I can easily supply a backplate with a ribbon cable connecting it to the card, so half length doesn't really matter much. The Thylacine is a super simple design with a very low component count, condensing it is easy. There is a lot of space used very inefficiently on it, but I have a feeling it was done that way specifically to pad it out to full length. Anyway, I'm just away from my computer now but I will post the first revision as soon as I get back to it.
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Ok everyone, here as promised is the first redux of the Thylacine. Only two caps moved, but almost half the card cut away as wasted space. First off, here is the layout of the Thylacine as it was released:
(http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/905/thylacineasreleased.png)
Now, here is my first redraft:
(http://img829.imageshack.us/img829/1538/thylacinefirstredraft.png)
I plan on doing more to it, I just wanted to show you guys that I'm not just sitting here with my thumb in. :)
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Nice work.. is this a zorro card?
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Nice work.. is this a zorro card?
Yes sir it is, a Zorro II USB controller. I will be doing up an A500 version shortly, just so the A500 can have a USB solution that doesn't require a clockport or adapter. Thanks for the kind words!
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would it be possible to ad an USB hub to the card, so you have 4 USB ports on the card?
Maybe 3 external and 1 internal.
take a look at http://www.gb97816.homepage.t-online.de/projekte.htm, his rev 5 of the GBA has a 060 soldered directly to the mobo.
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When I read the thread title, I couldn't help but think of Borat...
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two things:
there is an improved redesign of thylacine underway already:
http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?t=34299
and another batch of subways is going to hit the stores:
http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?t=33342
sorry forums in english you will have to use translation services.
btw, why replicate the thylacine 1:1? you just waste the board space, and it costs, try to make it as small as possible.
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also here limited batch of redesigned gba1000 with 060:
http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?t=33085
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also here limited batch of redesigned gba1000 with 060:
http://www.a1k.org/forum/showthread.php?t=33085
I have one of these boards and have never gotten around to assembling it. Any idea of how many of these projects ever got completed?
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I have one of these boards and have never gotten around to assembling it. Any idea of how many of these projects ever got completed?
no. a rather small precentage of people who bought such board will be realistically able to build a working system around it. think of technical expertise and equipment necessary. thats likely the reason why georg doesnt want to release bigger batches. because the amount of work and support after the release is not to handle by single person and beyond that generates no return. i have doubts if just a single of the few existing gba1k has been assembled working without extensive help from georg.
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@Plaz
Jens Schoenfeld has never made an 060 card that I have ever heard about.
Do you know Amiga Phoenix project? AFAIK Jens helped the author with the 060 SDRAM memory controller
http://www.gb97816.homepage.t-online.de/projekte.htm
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Do you know Amiga Phoenix project?
Yes, I am also the proud owner of a partially complete GBA1000. :)
Plaz
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I have the tools to assembly such a board.
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would it be possible to ad an USB hub to the card, so you have 4 USB ports on the card?
Maybe 3 external and 1 internal.
Or better yet, do like the RaspberryPi and use a lan9512 USB hub chip that has built in Ethernet!! :)
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Yes sir it is, a Zorro II USB controller. I will be doing up an A500 version shortly, just so the A500 can have a USB solution that doesn't require a clockport or adapter. Thanks for the kind words!
Now you have my attention!
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I have the tools to assembly such a board.
Thanks, but spare time and interest are what lacking these days. On tools I'm fine. Just remembered too... I'm the one that translated the english version of the GBA1000 manual. Uhg, so many projects so little time. Off to the next one.
Plaz
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One thing that Thomas and the Natami team did uncover while they were still working together, the later '060s without a built in math co-processor were very overclockable.
100MHz easy with some able to pull 120MHz.
Why not develop a software math library and try to use these (they're cheap btw)?
Not sure why you guys didn't find that interesting, but for God's sake... 120MHz.
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Not sure why you guys didn't find that interesting, but for God's sake... 120MHz.
What do you even need that for? Crappy bloatware ports?
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I just want to stick my oar in here.
This thread has some great ideas, but for goodness sake - keep it simple. Don't start off doing an accelerator and then add so many things it never gets finished. Asking on an Amiga forum is always risky when you want ideas, because you'll see what happened with NatAmi (and look what happened there) - Feature Creep City.
Set your sights on a simple thing to start. Do that - gain experience, not just of the hardware, but of the market. Then work on something else. Don't start work on an 060 card and get carried away designing USB, SATA, SCSI, Firewire and everything else.
Let's get the most simple thing done first - just make a simple board. Proof of concept. Then worry about making things more complicated. It worries me that the thread started talking about just manufacturing open source designs of other people, and now people are talking about designing super-fast CPU accelerators with modern RAM and USB and stuff.
Let's not try and run before we can walk, otherwise we'll all fall over.
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Re the Thylacine card redesign....
Now you've made the card much shorter, how will it attach to the back of the Amiga ? That is after all why the card was this shape in the first place.... (An honest question, I'm not trying to do you down - I think it's great you're doing this)
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because you'll see what happened with NatAmi (and look what happened there) - Feature Creep City.
I think the Natami have some ennemies...
I have ennemies me too, and Amigamen : crazy guys are everywhere...
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Or better yet, do like the RaspberryPi and use a lan9512 USB hub chip that has built in Ethernet!! :)
That would indeed be better :)
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how will it attach to the back of the Amiga ?
For smaller cards you can always put the USB connectors on a slot cover via cable connector. Some thing like...
http://www.shaxon.com/part_images/9/USBAA1-XKIT.jpg
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@ The Rogue
I was wondering if you have bio posted somewhere?
Thanks.
Keep up the good work.
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For smaller cards you can always put the USB connectors on a slot cover via cable connector. Some thing like...
http://www.shaxon.com/part_images/9/USBAA1-XKIT.jpg
Agreed. There are so many add-ons for the Amiga and the such that having something like this would make it more flexible and easier to fit in with other hardware.
I can see this working MUCH better with something like the Mediator which rises higher in my A4000T. If I wanted to use a card like this, I'd have to buy a riser and would most likely have a port or to covered because of the offset.
Getting back to the 060 Accel. idea of the Original poster, I totally agree that a CPU and memory solution only would be quicker, easier and therefore more likely to become reality. As other have mentioned, there are other solutions out there for what people are proposing as additions so keeping it simple would not only make it more likely to work, but be cheaper...
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Hi guys, sorry I didn't pop by for a short time, I am working on projects for other systems as well so I figured my time would be better spent working on things then following the threads for a short time. Anyway, in regards to what some people are saying about starting out slow and small, I am absolutely going to do this. An accelerator project is a long term goal, something to work towards, not something that will be popped out ASAP. I have a lot to learn before staring on a project that complicated.
The Thylacine will absolutely be supplied with a backplate. It's much cheaper for me to make it way shorter and supply a backplate then to waste so much PCB stock to make it reach the back of the case. I am going to try and build a hub onto the card, and I will absolutely look into the chip that contains a built-in ethernet controller. This way it's two things in one, not to mention when I do the A500 version it will be the first standalone USB/Ethernet solution for the A500. ;) Once that is done, I am going to try and build my first original Amiga-specific device. Let's for now put aside the accelerator and decide what the first piece of original hardware I design should be. So everybody complete this sentence: The piece of Amiga hardware I want the most, besides an accelerator is ________.
@trekiej: To answer your question, I don't have a bio posted anywhere, but if you want I'll tell you a little about myself. My name is Conrad and I live in Vancouver, BC, Canada. When I was 2 years old my father started teaching me the basics of computers on our 386, and by 3 I was operating the computer independently and slowly learning how to program. When I turned 5 my father gave me his Commodore 64 so I could have a computer of my own, and I was hooked on classic computers from then on. I decided soon after that some day I would start a computer museum, and I started collecting computers from anywhere I could get them. My parents were very supportive of this and drove me hours away to pick up free machines and paid lots of money when people were selling what I wanted. Through my whole childhood and teenage years to the present I amassed a huge collection of classic machines of every flavour, with my collection currently numbering about 300-400 unique models, if you're counting duplicates I don't even want to venture a guess. Anyway, somewhere along the line I decided that I would try to collect the best of every line of classic computers and to expand them as far as they could go. As a teenager I had a bit of a rough patch in my life, but with the help of my family I was ok and stronger for the experience. After secondary school I did an education consisting of electronics, computer hardware, networking, security, and system design. One thing that I have always found frustrating is that there always seems to be hardware that everyone wants and no one wants to produce. Finally after losing my job due to a dip in the economy, I decided to make classic computers my job. I figured that this venture may allow me to start a computer museum down the road, and if not, well at least I will have had a load of fun along the way! That about brings it up to now. I can go into more detail if you want later, but for now there is a nice abridged bio!
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The piece of Amiga hardware I want the most, besides an accelerator is ________.
Lack of network connectivity options is the main reason my miggys don't get used lately. USB+Ethernet would be tops and wireless ethernet even better.
Plaz
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Hi, I want to design a couple boards for the amiga, any hardware doc resources out there?
I am thinking a ram and sata card, I could add blutooth as well, I have designed boards with blutooth on other projects.
Its the interfacing curcuits with the existing amiga I really need.
Thanks
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Hi, I want to design a couple boards for the amiga, any hardware doc resources out there?
I am thinking a ram and sata card, I could add blutooth as well, I have designed boards with blutooth on other projects.
Its the interfacing curcuits with the existing amiga I really need.
Thanks
Considering how small Bluetooth modules are, couldn't you just design the adapter?
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Sorry for not jumping the wagon. But as Amiga history showed us, promises made but no actual delivery.
As soon as the products are shown in amigakit, then I will be all giddy.
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Sorry for not jumping the wagon. But as Amiga history showed us, promises made but no actual delivery.
As soon as the products are shown in amigakit, then I will be all giddy.
Amiga history.
We usually get what were promised under MorphOS (except for Qbox).
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Sorry for not jumping the wagon. But as Amiga history showed us, promises made but no actual delivery.
As soon as the products are shown in amigakit, then I will be all giddy.
Like I have said to others, your skepticism is 100% understandable. I hope you won't take offence when I say I look forward to proving you wrong. Although, I will probably be offering products through my own online store and not Amigakit;). No, just kidding, of course I will offer products to resellers!
Seriously though, as I have said to many others many times, don't expect miracles and a giant fountain of Amiga products to explode out of my house and rain products down on the masses. I will be starting small and working my way up. I am thinking my first original product should be an 802.11g card in various flavours for different Amigas. How does that sound to everyone? A nice simple start but a very useful product.
EDIT: I think this module might be a good place to start. It seems to be very simple to interface to and provides exactly what people are looking for, a wireless networking solution for the Amiga. I'm going to start looking into it immediately. http://shop.wiznettechnology.com/Sub_Modules/en/product/detail_page.asp?cateid=52&pid=1020
EDIT2: Whoops made a mistake thought that one had interfaces that it doesn't. Oh well, time to keep looking
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I think the ultimate Amiga expansion card would be a be something like this plugged into a Zorro slot http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/OpenEP3C16-B-EP3C16-ALTERA-Cyclone-III-FPGA-Development-Board-17-Modules-Kits-/261030259214?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cc69daa0e
Also how about making A500 Zorro adaptors with pass-through
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Amiga history.
Like I have said to others, your skepticism is 100% understandable. I hope you won't take offence when I say I look forward to proving you wrong. Although, I will probably be offering products through my own online store and not Amigakit;). No, just kidding, of course I will offer products to resellers!
I want you to prove me wrong. Please, make a fool out of me! What we reallly seriously need right now as a mass production for the Amiga are the following:
1) An WiFi card for the Amiga 1200/4000 that does support WPA/WPA 2 security and works 100% without any hacking and difficulties.
2) An expansion card that support if possible 100 Mhz+ with more than 512 MB of RAM.
What would be nice is give A500 in original case ability to access internet, but that is for fun.
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@ The Rogue
Thanks for the bio.
I sent a PM and again look forward to seeing how this goes.
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Sorry I haven't dropped by in a short while. I have been working on a project on the Apple II front. I decided to 'put up or shut up' as some might say, and produce something of high complexity so that everyone will know I'm serious. I determined that this project is what I can get out fast enough (looking at shipping in late January-early February), so I decided to focus on this and get it done so people can see I'm serious. So for all the Apple IIGS users out there, I am proud to bring you a reverse engineered clone of the TransWarp IIGS Accelerator! The card will ship around the time I quoted or possibly sooner. It will come stock clocked at 12MHz with 32k of cache. Price is targeted roughly at CAD$150-CAD$175 although there may be a small shift in either direction depending on certain factors. Yes I know its not Amiga, but I have had so many people tell me to produce something of high complexity that does not have schematics or Gerber files available for it to prove that I'm not a troll and do actually know what I'm doing. This is what I determined that I can make available in the shortest time, so this is the first project.
On the Amiga front the Thylacine redesign continues incorporating a 4 port hub and ethernet (the hub chip contains built in ethernet). A wifi board is in the works already, with every feature you mentioned planned. An accelerator is still a ways off yet, but as soon as I'm able to do so, I plan to produce one. I would like to produce some sort of FPGA-on-Zorro-Card development platform, like Carte Blanche for the Apple II. I will look into it for sure! So stay tuned! Any AIIGS fans out there feel free to PM me with preorders for the TransWarpGS!
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I own an apple iigs. Can you make an FPGA card where I can watch video on it or run up to system 9?
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I have a box that will let you do that in front of me. Its called a beige G4 mac. :P I'm just joking and not trying to make fun of you at all, just making a joke. Seriously though although the IIGS shares some superficial characteristics with the early Macs, it it a completely different architecture. The Macintosh line was based on the 68k processor, the same as the Classic Amiga, but for system 8.5 and beyond they switched to the PowerPC processor, same as used in the CSPPC and the new AmigaOS4 based machines. The IIGS on the other hand is based on the 65816 processor, a 16-bit extension of the 6502, the processor used in the Commodore 64, and the Apple II/II+/IIe/IIc/IIc+. The IIGS was fully compatible with the other machines in the Apple II line thanks to the 65C02 compatibility mode of the 65816, but was also a significant extension to it with a full color GUI (the first available from Apple) and full 16-bit software, it was also the first machine to feature ADB. Despite these superficial similarities however, it is a totally different machine and will never run MacOS or Mac software. Furthermore, an FPGA would not be fast or large or complex enough to run a full PowerPC Mac core, which is what would be required to run OS9 on a IIGS. Sorry, its not a request I can grant.
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That is an interesting subject.
Take a 'virgin' A1200, ok it's a nice retro computer but you can't really do much with it so you and some FASTRAM then a faster CPU, CF hard drive and an Indivision AGA with a chunky graphcis mode etc etc.
How far do you take it before it's no longer a retro classic Amiga?
Mediators fall in this category for me, stick a 1200 into a tower and add PCI video/sound cards and it becomes a slow PC that can't run PC software.
Personally, I'm happy that my 1200 is a classic as long as it is still in the original case, uses a 68k CPU (even if it's FPGA based) and can natively run classic software.
PPC cards for classics are also a waste of time because (apart from the lack of software) that much power is pointless when tied to the original chipset.
+2
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I have a box that will let you do that in front of me. Its called a beige G4 mac. :P I'm just joking and not trying to make fun of you at all, just making a joke. Seriously though although the IIGS shares some superficial characteristics with the early Macs, it it a completely different architecture. The Macintosh line was based on the 68k processor, the same as the Classic Amiga, but for system 8.5 and beyond they switched to the PowerPC processor, same as used in the CSPPC and the new AmigaOS4 based machines. The IIGS on the other hand is based on the 65816 processor, a 16-bit extension of the 6502, the processor used in the Commodore 64, and the Apple II/II+/IIe/IIc/IIc+. The IIGS was fully compatible with the other machines in the Apple II line thanks to the 65C02 compatibility mode of the 65816, but was also a significant extension to it with a full color GUI (the first available from Apple) and full 16-bit software, it was also the first machine to feature ADB. Despite these superficial similarities however, it is a totally different machine and will never run MacOS or Mac software. Furthermore, an FPGA would not be fast or large or complex enough to run a full PowerPC Mac core, which is what would be required to run OS9 on a IIGS. Sorry, its not a request I can grant.
Good point. What about a card that can can switch to a different 8 bit system such as Commodore 64, MSX, and so on emulated by the FPGA hardware? The card also have ports to use the pepherials of that system such as disk drive, joystick etc. The video and audio output also comes from the card for better performance. This way we have ALL the 8 bit system in one and in the case of the AIIGS.
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Good point. What about a card that can can switch to a different 8 bit system such as Commodore 64, MSX, and so on emulated by the FPGA hardware? The card also have ports to use the pepherials of that system such as disk drive, joystick etc. The video and audio output also comes from the card for better performance. This way we have ALL the 8 bit system in one and in the case of the AIIGS.
This is the ultimate aim of the Replay platform. C64, MSX, Spectrum, BBC B and various others are all more or less working and waiting for the system software to be stable.
The daughterboards concept allows for anybody to design a peripheral - I have some with just 0.1" patch available, and 3V3 protection buffers.
/Mike
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In the meantime, keep the suggestions coming, and if anyone knows of any hardware for any system that has schematics/layouts and code available, I will add them to the list!
Hi TheRogue,
I have a few ideas and some very collectable hardware, including c64 , amiga and atari ste as well as cd32.
Can you drop me a private message wouldn't mind bouncing some ideas with you.
I have a few contacts for rare graphics boards for the Atari STE, as well as some vintage Amiga hardware, sound cards and graphics cards.. as well as FMV and developer boards for the cd32. I'd be very interested in doing a partnership with you and even using my company to rekindle old rare Amiga games.. I know that indivision are doing a wonderful job in creating new accelerator cards and flickerfixers, but from my experience they suppliers are always sold out hard enough to get an X1000 let alone an accelerator card with a good speed.
Any support I think is a good one, so lets get this ball rolling!
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Good point. What about a card that can can switch to a different 8 bit system such as Commodore 64, MSX, and so on emulated by the FPGA hardware? The card also have ports to use the pepherials of that system such as disk drive, joystick etc. The video and audio output also comes from the card for better performance. This way we have ALL the 8 bit system in one and in the case of the AIIGS.
FPGA open platform already been developed.
http://www.fpgaarcade.com/dev/drupal/
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use
http://www.fpgaarcade.com
the drupal website is under development still
/Mike
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WOW!! I LOVE THIS HARDWARE!! If I order this hardware would it come with a case? Can I use a HD and a real floppy disk?
How do I upgrade it in the future to support newer system and how do I switch between these systems?
IN the future I am considering buying this? It would reunite ALL THE SYSTEM in one motherboard WHICH WOULD KICK ANY EMULATOR in the butt.
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use
http://www.fpgaarcade.com
the drupal website is under development still
/Mike
Thanks Mike!, nice to know :)
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WOW!! I LOVE THIS HARDWARE!! If I order this hardware would it come with a case? Can I use a HD and a real floppy disk?
How do I upgrade it in the future to support newer system and how do I switch between these systems?
IN the future I am considering buying this? It would reunite ALL THE SYSTEM in one motherboard WHICH WOULD KICK ANY EMULATOR in the butt.
Loriano' aka the daddy' has made an amiga style' case for the fpga arcade.
It looks sweet. send a mail to amigarulez
Im getting mine with the fpga arcade already fitted inside the x500 case.
there will be a daughterboard add-on for the fpga arcade later too.
i think you just re-flash the relevant softcore to the fpga to change between different computer systems
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It IS an emulator....
WOW!! I LOVE THIS HARDWARE!! If I order this hardware would it come with a case? Can I use a HD and a real floppy disk?
How do I upgrade it in the future to support newer system and how do I switch between these systems?
IN the future I am considering buying this? It would reunite ALL THE SYSTEM in one motherboard WHICH WOULD KICK ANY EMULATOR in the butt.
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@TheRogue
New Project for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Amiga
I hereby request an 060 card with 32GB of RAM.
32GB is the Amiga's hard limit. My brand new bgcpc came with 10GB in it. Its just not right for my windoze box to have more ram than my Amiga box.
Any other limits are BS nonsense that can be worked around with some simple patches. There are tons of Amiga programmers who can, and have, patched a zillion things in AmigaOS. Making a few new patches to make use of the whole 32GB is no problem and the programmers will go crazy and jump for joy. :knuddel:
You will be the most loved person since Jay Miner.
I figure by the time you get around to actually making the card, you won't be able to buy less than 32GB at a time anyway :p
I wrote a msg here about how old ancient never to be updated software can make use of 32GB. I know you don't have time to read the whole thread about 128MB Amigas so here is the 1 important message:
How to use more than 2GB of RAM with old Amiga software that wasn't designed for it (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showpost.php?p=716519&postcount=38)
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It IS an emulator....
Oooh.......-_____________-
Umm...never mind.
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@Chaoslord the actual hardware limit is 4gigs... The 68k can never see more than that due to the 32 address lines maximum the architecture can support (and most Amigas only had 24 address lines = 16meg limit).
Software can be patched to use larger word sizes... Hardware can't.
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@Chaoslord the actual hardware limit is 4gigs...
No. The hardware limit of an address register is 4GB. That is because each bank has 4GB in it.
Or another way to say it is:
There is only 4GB of directly addressable RAM but 32GB of indirectly addressable RAM. You remember bank switching from the C64 and Intel days, right?
The 68k can never see more than that due to the 32 address lines maximum the
Who says there are only 32 address lines?
You are forgetting about the 3 lines that select what bank you are in.
Motorola thought waaaaaaaaaaaaaay ahead.
(and most Amigas only had 24 address lines = 16meg limit).
8 banks of 16MB actually. Of course the hardware has to be made in the correct way to support wiring the banks into actual different banks of RAM which no C= machine ever did. There was no particular reason for them too.
But the point is, the 8 banks have been there since Motorola 68000.
All the 8 banks have always been wired into the same 4GB address space.
But there is no longer any reason to do that.
We have the technology. We can go bigger, faster, stronger. :D
Software can be patched to use larger word sizes... Hardware can't.
I don't know what this comment means. I think it has no relevance.
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@Chaoslord. What could you possibly do with 32Gb's of ram on an Amiga? I have 8Gb on my pc and it is more than enough. I'm sure whatever it is it would be because of inefficient use of resources.
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@Chaoslord.
I have 8Gb on my pc and it is more than enough.
Then why did you buy it?
If 8GB is too much for you then why didn't you stay at 1GB?
Why do you get to buy 8GB of ram for your pc but I don't get to buy 8GB of ram for my Amiga?
Discrimination! :insane:
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No. The hardware limit of an address register is 4GB. That is because each bank has 4GB in it.
Or another way to say it is:
There is only 4GB of directly addressable RAM but 32GB of indirectly addressable RAM. You remember bank switching from the C64 and Intel days, right?
Who says there are only 32 address lines?
You are forgetting about the 3 lines that select what bank you are in.
Motorola thought waaaaaaaaaaaaaay ahead.
Wait, are you referring to FC0-FC2 function code pinouts? They aren't for "banks" in any conventional sense, they are used to indicate to any external hardware that cares (eg external MMU) what class of memory access is being made.
From the 68K documentation:
0 0 0 (Undefined, Reserved) *
0 0 1 User Data Space
0 1 0 User Program Space
0 1 1 (Undefined, Reserved) *
1 0 0 (Undefined, Reserved) *
1 0 1 Supervisor Data Space
1 1 0 Supervisor Program Space
1 1 1 CPU Space
* Address space 3 is reserved for user definition
I don't think you can arbitrarily hijack them for your own nefarious bank select *especially* on processors where the MMU is already on board.
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It IS an emulator....
It's a hardware implementation, not a software emulator.
Since most people understand "emulator" as "software emulator" (ie a software running on top of a native OS emulating other hardware), FPGA implementations are NOT emulators: they run on reconfigurable hardware (programmable logic gate arrays).
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Wait, are you referring to FC0-FC2 function code pinouts?
That is what they seem to be labeled. I had always assumed that these "banks" were on 020+ but when I went back and reread the book it said 68000 and I didn't believe it until I looked up a Pin diagram of a 68000 and there were the pins. :eek:
They aren't for "banks" in any conventional sense,
I had figured that out. It seems they work differently from good old C64 banking out the ROM to get at the RAM underneath. But nevertheless my documentation says they are usable.
they are used to indicate to any external hardware that cares (eg external MMU) what class of memory access is being made.
From the 68K documentation:
0 0 0 (Undefined, Reserved) *
0 0 1 User Data Space
0 1 0 User Program Space
0 1 1 (Undefined, Reserved) *
1 0 0 (Undefined, Reserved) *
1 0 1 Supervisor Data Space
1 1 0 Supervisor Program Space
1 1 1 CPU Space
* Address space 3 is reserved for user definition
I don't think you can arbitrarily hijack them for your own nefarious bank select *especially* on processors where the MMU is already on board.
I see what u mean. The internal MMU could conflict with this idea.
More research needed.
I can say one thing tho. A 68060/040 that has no MMU does still have an MMU. Its just not the super fancy one. It is real basic and coarse. Anyway maybe that could make a difference in all this. or not :)
All I know is, the first 680x0 Asm book I ever bought (1985?) described this as separate usable banks of RAM that could be wired separately to literal different banks of RAM. But it says you can't use all 8 banks (don't know why, maybe because they were "reserved").
I reread it a few hours ago. Its all in there. It is of course possible that he did not word things quite right or that I am misunderstanding something....
But what is the purpose of the pins on 68000. u r saying they are like for an external MMU to write protect the CODE bank and that would be about it.
I say if the pins exist on an 060 then they can be wired up on the ram card as extra address lines. And the MMU could still do its thing. I don't see any reason why one must conflict with the other.
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But what is the purpose of the pins on 68000. u r saying they are like for an external MMU to write protect the CODE bank and that would be about it.
Well, I believe the 68551 can be interfaced to the 68000 (but requires software support, it's designed for 020*). I'm not sure if it actually uses these lines, but it would seem obvious that the CPU telling the outside world what kind of bus access it is attempting would make a lot of sense for any external hardware trying to map the address to some particular physical memory ranges. But I imagine there are all sorts of other external peripheral devices that might care too.
I say if the pins exist on an 060 then they can be wired up on the ram card as extra address lines. And the MMU could still do its thing. I don't see any reason why one must conflict with the other.
I really don't think it's that simple. Consider the implications. First of all, the internal MMU might use those bits to determine which address translation tables to look up. Even if it didn't, depending on which side of the MMU the CPU's caches are (and it's different between 020/030 and 040/060 IIRC), when flushing a cache line, it would probably just go to whatever bank was last asserted by fiddling with the FC bits via the (privileged) moves instruction. Same with reads. I'm pretty sure that isn't desirable and the only alternative would be to run with caches disabled.
*Note that the FC0-FC2 pins are present on the 020 too, of course.
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I can't find those special pins on any 040 diagram. Either they renamed them, deleted them or I went blind. Not sure which :)
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We will never know if it works because they took the pins off the 68060. :( Why would they put pins of awesomeness on 68000 and chop them off on 68060? :(
Or did they just rename them?
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We will never know if it works because they took the pins off the 68060. :( Why would they put pins of awesomeness on 68000 and chop them off on 68060? :(
Or did they just rename them?
So just do it like we did in the old Atari 800 days... I had a whopping 256K in my 800XL. Just map some I/O port into a spare address and use it for bank switching. So what if the only thing that extra ram was used for was a ramdisk.... it was still cool. ;-)
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@ChaosLord I'm pretty sure Karlos is right here... F0-F2 are flags for memory management, you can't arbitrarily use them as bank selects. The documentation describes their function clearly.
The 040 and 060 doesn't need to flag memory management to the outside world as it has a built in MMU :)
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Then why did you buy it?
If 8GB is too much for you then why didn't you stay at 1GB?
Why do you get to buy 8GB of ram for your pc but I don't get to buy 8GB of ram for my Amiga?
Discrimination! :insane:
I have always been below ram spec in all my laptops so this time i deliberately went over spec so to see what it felt like to be ahead :razz:
You didn't answer my question. Why do you need 32Gb of ram for an Amiga? Amigas are optimised for resource efficiency. You are going against Amiga kudos here. Hell, with 32Gb you could even use the internet.
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damn, with 32GB, you could BE the internet. ... or aminet at anyrate...
just my 2 pence worth regarding the thread topic. I would love to see a gigabit Ethernet zorro 3 card. maybe even a PCI express daughter card for the A3/4k machines...
or an A500 sidecar that has IDE, ram, usb, and Ethernet, maybe even a graphics chip...
sorry, i'll stop dreaming...
(seriously, I bet there is a market for an Ethernet card that can bolt into the GVP HD8+ and A530...) :)
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We will never know if it works because they took the pins off the 68060. :( Why would they put pins of awesomeness on 68000 and chop them off on 68060? :(
Or did they just rename them?
I suspect once they added internal MMUs, their intended use was superceeded.
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Let me know what you think. Questions, comments, and suggestions requested! Let's hear what you have to say! Also, if anyone wants to help me name this venture, I'd be glad to hear your suggestions!
I have some ideas for commercial venture. I have some commercial ideas. I would like to talk. Please email me here.
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My idea of a project is fairly simple - an ATX sized break-out-board for amiga mother boards, that one can mount in the "window" of ATX cabinets, and with connectors to which one can attach cables that plugs into the motherboards, pluss a few extras, like VGA, HDMI, USB and ethernet. I neeed at least three of them :)
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I'd like something very simple; a 25pin serial to USB cable to connect my Amiga to a modern computer.
This already kind of exists as two separate cables with a USB<->RS232 adapter in the middle, but I'd rather get something more elegant.
This is something that could easily use the same plastic shell as a parallel<->USB printer adapter, (so there's no need to make any expensive new injection molds), and an existing (and well supported) USB<->RS232 chip.
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Hardware emulators rather than software emulators....
It's a hardware implementation, not a software emulator.
Since most people understand "emulator" as "software emulator" (ie a software running on top of a native OS emulating other hardware), FPGA implementations are NOT emulators: they run on reconfigurable hardware (programmable logic gate arrays).
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Hey guys, just a short post as I am busy like crazy with things on this end. I will reply to everyone's messages and comments tomorrow perhaps. For now, I just wanted to announce the blog for this project. You can check it out here:
http://retrologycomputing.blogspot.ca/
If you want to post a comment or two there, feel free!
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Bookmarked! I watch with interest to see what you come up with.
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I don't know if this has been suggested already, but could you offer a walker style case for those who want to rehouse their A1200, with an 030 card it could offer a taste of what the walker might have been.
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Just curious but what are the chances of a Micronik style Zorro Busboard for the Amiga 1200, complete with an accelerator slot so people may install Cyberstorm cards into their towerized Amiga 1200s?
I'd also be very much interested in an Amiga tower kit.
Oh yea. And an accelerator board that isn't a freaking 030 or 020. Someone ought to give us new 040s and 060s, if Jens is unable/unwilling to do so.
PS: Had a look on your site and don't really know what to say other than that you strike me as the grandson of Jay Miner. Very talented :)
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That is what they seem to be labeled. I had always assumed that these "banks" were on 020+ but when I went back and reread the book it said 68000 and I didn't believe it until I looked up a Pin diagram of a 68000 and there were the pins. :eek:
I had figured that out. It seems they work differently from good old C64 banking out the ROM to get at the RAM underneath. But nevertheless my documentation says they are usable.
All I know is, the first 680x0 Asm book I ever bought (1985?) described this as separate usable banks of RAM that could be wired separately to literal different banks of RAM. But it says you can't use all 8 banks (don't know why, maybe because they were "reserved").
I reread it a few hours ago. Its all in there. It is of course possible that he did not word things quite right or that I am misunderstanding something....
But what is the purpose of the pins on 68000. u r saying they are like for an external MMU to write protect the CODE bank and that would be about it.
I say if the pins exist on an 060 then they can be wired up on the ram card as extra address lines. And the MMU could still do its thing. I don't see any reason why one must conflict with the other.
FC0-FC2 are used for systems that separate user data, user instruction, supervisor data and supervisor instruction into separate memory banks. In theory this expands your capacity and could prevent buffer overflow attacks somewhat like DEP on newer x86.
It's not user accessible though, it's fully controlled by the CPU involuntarily. When it fetches an instruction, those pins would bank select the user instruction bank, then when it fetches the data for that instruction, they toggle to the user data bank. In supervisor mode, it selects the supervisor banks instead.
These are just set by the CPU along with the address strobe, no user intervention is even possible, so the hardware and operating system have to be designed from the beginning to work this way or ignore them and have one big chunk of memory.
By the time the 060 was made it was pretty clear nobody was using them so they just went away.
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FC0-FC2 are used for systems that separate user data, user instruction, supervisor data and supervisor instruction into separate memory banks. In theory this expands your capacity and could prevent buffer overflow attacks somewhat like DEP on newer x86.
It's not user accessible though, it's fully controlled by the CPU involuntarily. When it fetches an instruction, those pins would bank select the user instruction bank, then when it fetches the data for that instruction, they toggle to the user data bank. In supervisor mode, it selects the supervisor banks instead.
So how do you load a program from disk then ? Because during load the CPU considers it as data but during execution as instructions.
So I think you external DMA hardware that is then also aware of the user data/instruction data split.
greets,
Staf.
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So how do you load a program from disk then ? Because during load the CPU considers it as data but during execution as instructions.
So I think you external DMA hardware that is then also aware of the user data/instruction data split.
Naturally. The organization would work however you want it to work, since you'd be rolling your own MMU (or adapting an existing one) in any case; all the CPU cares about is that it gets instructions when it asks for instructions, and data when it asks for data.
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Naturally. The organization would work however you want it to work, since you'd be rolling your own MMU (or adapting an existing one) in any case; all the CPU cares about is that it gets instructions when it asks for instructions, and data when it asks for data.
THOR, Phil and others will tell u that on the Amiga there is no clear delineation between code and data.
1. Any data could suddenly be run as code.
2. Any code could suddenly be used as data.
I am sort of morally opposed to #2 but oh well. Ppl do it. They say they have good reasons. C'est la vie.
Legally u can do both as long as u flush the caches correctly. That is the trick.
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Yes, but the Amiga was designed around the 68000, not the other way around.
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Anything ever come of this?
I guess not as it's been a long time. My god I remember this thread as if it were 2 years ago at most. Time flipping flies.
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And I wish my pants were made of gold !!
Yeah highly unpraticle, but since it's never gonna happen anyways, why not go all the way ?
It's quite clear that the thread-starter doesn't fully comprehend what he is talking about.
Just have a look at some of the projects running at a1k.org (I think some similar projects run on EAB). Yep those guys are doing accel-cards, RAM-expansions and even full Amiga-replacements boards and none of them is etching their cards in te basement, the all use proffesional tooling companies (and at the prices i see quoted from time to time anything else wouldn't make sense even for the simplest of PCBs).
Well o.k. Herzi will do his prototyps "electron-cloud"-style, but thats surely not an option for stuff you plan to offer on sale.
Edit:
Mind you the projects the thread-starter mentioned would be doable basement-style (just not in a practical/reasonable way) it's more that some of the early responders carried this thread into lala-land.
That had to be the funniest thing I have read in days.
I want an Amiga made of gold.
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I think if this is a serious venture that an FPGA accelerator for the A3000(T) and A4000(T) with 1GB of RAM onboard would be an amazing first start. PPC would be nice too, but I would take something with the power of the Vampire II for my A4000T.