New project for the benefit of all classic computing!

[ChaosLord]

We need an 060 card with 1GB+ ram soldered on.   If u can't get 1GB cheaply then 2GB is 100% ok.  Thank u.

[ChaosLord]

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.

[ChaosLord]

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.

[ChaosLord]

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.

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:

[ChaosLord]

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.

[ChaosLord]

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.

[ChaosLord]

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?

[ChaosLord]

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.

[ChaosLord]

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.

[ChaosLord]

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.

[ChaosLord]

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.

[ChaosLord]

@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.

[ChaosLord]

Talking mechanical switches eh

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

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.

[ChaosLord]

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?  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:

[ChaosLord]

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