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

[OlafS3]

Rasberry Pi can only emulate basic A500 because pi operates at the speed of 200...300Mhz Pentium PC.


Other than that...
>I think it would be really cool to create a bridgeboard that plugs into the raspberry PI...

Absolutely futile.
But there are already implementations where RPi simulates A500 FDD or ethernet card.
A lot of stuff can be done with simple RPi-A500 adaptation. No Jens needed, just DIY soldering + load of SW work.

>Maybe even emulate a powerpc chip.

RPi should be able to emulate PowerPC @ 20Mhz speed or so.

For ARM deviced, AEROS or ARIX for 1.7Ghz ODROID might be damn usefull.


For Jens to do:
-FPGA card (PCIe client) to do AGA+more emulation
-FPGA card (PCIe host) to do 68k+more emulation
-Passive backplane to house those two and perhaps to provide a few more PCIe slots
-parts to built that into ATX or DTX case

thanks to the development of new options for FPGA and ARM we today have a lot of new options and I see it fairly optimistic. Hopefully Jens and Gunnar will work together in future.

[OlafS3]

Is the Amiga chipset so complex that it can't be replicated directly rather than via an FPGA? I have limited knowledge of hardware engineering - but I imagine with modern manufacturing methods it would easily be possible to build the AGA chipset into a single chip. However, this would likely require extensive knowledge of transistors and to have it manufactured it'd probably need to be ordered in bulk to be cost-effective. I imagine this is why FPGAs are used rather than actually doing it like this.

The 68k CPUs however should not be difficult to get at all - cannibalizing old 68k macs would be quite cost-effective as there are probably millions in old US educational warehouses - I was able at one point to get over 500 computers used in a school system in Petersburg, Virginia for the cost of hauling it away - sold it to a computer recycler for scrap metal and made a decent killing on it. Lots of 68k and PowerPC macs I had in that stock.

I am no hardware engineer either but...

AGA is not easy to emulate. Doing it in transistors is possible but also costly if you do not produce millions of devices. FPGA is more flexible and you can add features (difficult in transistors I imagine). And you cannot use used processors (still in old computers) for new devices. And even if they would still be 68060 at 60 MHz. If the processor is in the FPGA it will become automatic faster with every FPGA generation.

[OlafS3]

Why can't you cannibalize old processors for new devices - They did it for the Treamcast ( Cloned version of the Dreamcast, but portable ) they cannibalized the hardware and reengineered it. Not saying its cost effective, but I doubt 68040s and 68060s are still produced, unless I'm wrong...

they are rather exotic. I think for FPGA Arcade they sourced some in china (but not cheap, kind of spare parts of oldtimer). I do not know how much it would cost to get old devices and get the processors from there but I guess it would be not cheap either. The only realistic option is to have the processor in the FPGA from my point of view.

[OlafS3]

It can be bought now? The website doesn't show any way of buying one and I've been on the list to get an FPGA Replay for ...a couple of years now I think.

I know that Replay isn't a Natami mess/situation but it's taking a really long time from our perspective.

Ideally this could be an upgrade board for the Replay instead of the '060 board it might one day have. FPGA chipset and modern board + FPGA CPU card.

Andy

I have the impression that there were more news about FPGA Arcade + Amiga when the Natami project still was a threat. But perhaps I am wrong there...

@thread

I think the new accellerator card will have advantages and disadvantages compared to FPGA Arcade. It is not reimplementing AGA/ECS chipset, not adding more chip memory or similar like FPGA Arcade. It is a accellerator card with more memory at a very affordable price adding RTG and a high-speed 68k. When not using RTG you get a fast Amiga with 128 MB but you can only use the chipset that is on your Amiga. I think it is a good compromise adding a new playground for developers like Novacoder and replaces many aging and expensive extensions, at the same time it is affordable (on eab 150 EUR were mentioned) that really everyone can afford it (in opposite f.e. to Natami what would have been much more expensive). So it is partly if not fully replacing FPGA Arcade if used in a A1200 (which is also promised to be supported in future) and cheaper. So Mike should hurry up a little with his project :-). I know that FPGA Arcade is supporting more than Amiga but I assume that most Amigans here are mostly interested in the Amiga core. And there are not many news in recent years (at least what I have heard about).

I hope that Aros 68k (+Roms) will run on it and that developers use the new capabilities (expecially regarding true color modes in RTG).

[OlafS3]

Hi Olaf,

Lets be totally open and very honest about the project.
Who we are, where we are and where we are heading.

Today there is the Vampire600.
The Vampire600 has 64 MB fastmem and an FPGA which you can load a new fast 68K CPU into it.


The next card, the new Cyclone5 card is in production right now.
The Cyclone 5 card offers
* Faster FPGA  = about twice as fast CPU compared to the Vampire600
* 128 MB Ram
* Video out HDMI
* SDcard / IDE
* Network

As soon as the Cyclone 5 card is fully tested and we see that all works without yellow wire
and as soon as the sales/distribution is set up - it will be sold and
we will offer the CPU upgrade file for the Vampire600 owners to speed up their CPU as free download.

Then Vampire600 owners will then get a CPU comparable to 68060 in speed for free.

If the A500 card runs fine we will make card for A1200,A4000 all other models etc.
We as team have recently bought several A1200 and have already stocked up mostly every made AMIGA here for testing the cards: E.g  A500,A1000,A2000,A3000,A4000,A1200,CD32

Lets be honest:
The APOLLO CPU is an envolvement of the 68050 CPU done for the Natami project.
The RTG Chunky/truecolor display is basically a steal from the SAGA/Super-AGA chunky stuff we prepared for the NATAMI.


You don't need to be an Einstein to see that you can also take the CPU card out of your A500, and if you add a Joyport to it - and you basically have a new NATAMI - for little money.

To be clear: I'm not promising anything here.
This is not a market announcement.

The post was started as question whether we need help to design a new CPU card - and the answer to it is "No" we have designed it already and the above is our current status....

As I said when used in a AGA machine like A1200 I do not see many advantages for the FPGA Arcade anymore (as someone mostly interested in Amiga). I also hope that people will use the added RTG/Truecolor capabilities that will work on any supported system. It is the first time in recent years I see a realistic way to go and not just dreaming or overambitious projects that are doomed to fail.

[OlafS3]

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

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

*bow to you*

We see on the failed or delayed projects that it is too complex to emulate the amiga chipsets. Better make a clean start and adding new features and motivate developers to use them.

[OlafS3]

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

It had different goals and was basically done by one developer primarly because of personal interest. Too ambitious and finally too expensive (if ever completed).

[OlafS3]

I said x86 only because it's cheap, easy to get hold of and faster than anything else available at the same price point.

Regarding the endian issues, an x86 JIT emulating a 68k is currently faster than a PPC JIT emulating a 68k so it's not really a issue.  See WinUAE vs E-UAE-JIT for OS4/MorphOS.

ARM would also be cheap and easy to get hold of but not as fast as x86 at the same price point.  The power consumption would be the major selling point here.

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

[OlafS3]

Why bother with a hard drive at all? Stick on a USB host port or even a SD card port and boot away.....

From Gunnars post:

Card specs are:

 * very fast 68K CPU
 * 128 MB DDR3 Fast-memory
 * SD-card usable/bootable as IDE-device
 * Network interface
 * RTG Graphics Card (chunky/Hicolor/truecolor) with HDMI out

and for all amiga systems

this is the hardware. The team is busy with getting it run with AmigaOS, testing, writing drivers and so on. It shall be available very soon so there will be certainly no changes at the configuration. I am already looking forward to it, first time to have new amiga hardware with a modern specification for many years. I accidently found the Natami project years ago and regained interest and was disappointed when it stopped and now I am happy that finally there will be something for the community.

[OlafS3]

S-ATA is the way to go these days. Because the ATA interface has evolved to have some technical decency and it's the option with reasonable prices. SAS (serial SCSI) cost a fortune in comparision.

Regarding the 68060. To compete with the real thing any CPU would have to be as fast as 68060 @ 75 MHz. And then one has to make the decision if one should skip those instructions that Motorola did. Not doing it may cause incompabilities but it may actually be a better processor. So perhaps an configuration option would be suitable.

I hope my posting I just made answers your question. The hardware will not be changed, they want it out soon and if they would start to make changes because of every additional wish the project would end like many others before.