Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: Gulliver on September 08, 2007, 01:42:35 AM
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On the Amiga platform we have managed to replace nearly every subsystem, update them andenhance them:
Processor -> we made accelerators
ram -> we made ram expansions
graphics chipset -> we made GFX cards
paula audio -> we made sound cards
serial, parallel, keyboard, joystick and mouse expansions -> we made USB adapters & IO xtenders
kickstart ->we made autobooting flash kickstarts
zorro expansion -> we made busboard adapters
IDE/SCSI -> we made faster compatible ide and scsi devices
So what do we need to accomplish the dump of our stock Amigas at this point?
It seems at this stage our amigas are like a very old dongle!
I wish it was possible to create a minimal cost, lets say, a semi-dumb, i guess zorro II busboard, in which we could just plug in all those subsystem cards and run workbench without a real Amiga. Of course we wont have AGA/ECS/OCS, but we could rely on Retargetable systems much like the Macrosystem´s Draco, once did.
In the end, is it too complicated to build such board? I mean what would be the minimum requirements be?
I think we will probably need to patch kickstart code to do it, but then it doesnt sound like a pipe dream.
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What's the point?
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The point is:
-Relying on an old motherboard, more than 14 years old to hold expensive expansions
-Shortage of some Amiga models
-Difficulty to get a decent repair service on old motherboards
-Having fun!
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Gulliver wrote:
The point is:
-Relying on an old motherboard, more than 14 years old to hold expensive expansions
-Shortage of some Amiga models
-Difficulty to get a decent repair service on old motherboards
-Having fun!
Sounds like you need to keep an eye on the Clone-A project.
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I am keeping an eye on that, but then, no release date yet, and still a closed platform!
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having fun??? Amiga's are always fun.
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Yes they are! But when you realize that for example your system doesnt respond, and you cant locate a proper replacement for that part, then it is not that fun i want. Or even worst, having a guy selling you that chip for a huge $$$ is no fun either.
Anyway, i meant fun, as in the process of recreating an amiga clone!
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It's a dead platform which it's hardware is eventually going to die!
It's never going to happen!
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Well okay then, but could someone please answe my question from a technical point of view, Could it be easy to make?
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Depends what you mean by 'easy'..
At the very least you'll need to add the CIAs and make a register compatible interrupt controller too to retain software compatibility.
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Thank you @Doobrey!
So the CIAs, what else could you suggest?
Anyway, it could be better if someone could tell me, what chips does an Amiga requires to boot.
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what chips does an Amiga requires to boot
Short answer... almost all of them.
I would keep an eye (or lend a hand) to future Minimig development. It's already replicating the OCS chip set and sights are set on ECS and AGA chip sets for future versions. If technical advances can contiue on minimig, it wouldn't be such a far stretch to think about also replicating the buss allowing you to tag on some ZII or ZIII slots for vintage cards. If it gets that far, I don't know that we could call it 'mini' any more though. It's pretty much a clone by then.
Well I'm off to check on the Clone-A site to see if they have more to say yet.....
Plaz
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Without hacking the kickstart, pretty much all of them.
It wont boot without chip ram, needs the cias for timers, gayle/gary for controlling motherboard accesses, buster for Zorro control, paula for interrupts etc..
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Amigas -> we got kickass Linux systems
The Amiga was a fantastic computer, and I really wish Commodore had kept afloat and been able to establish Amiga as a long term platform.
That didn't happen.
I love my Amiga. I will keep a working Amiga system for as long as I can. Its a great hobby machine and fun for playing old games and demos. I love my Amiga for what it was. I don't expect it to be something it wasn't, though it could have been and should have been. That wasn't to be though.
I'm all for people trying to build nonstandard computers independent of PC/Mac technology. Some of them may end up being pretty cool.
They won't be Amigas, though.
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Thanks again!
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The Minimig is kinda cool in that it is replicating the original hardware (more or less) rather than trying to build some new system as a "next generation Amiga." For people like me who only want to use Amigas as a vintage machine, the Minimig has potential to replace the Amigas when all the original machines become unmaintainable.
That said I will resist switching to non-Amiga hardware for as many years as possible. Hopefully we're talking decades. But its good to know it exists, and for some people it may be an excellent option.
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I am on your side and I own a LOT of classic machines, but what you describe reminds me a lot of UAE. It is FAST, uses current technology, runs the OS just fine, ect. It doesn't have the same "feel" as a real classic machine to me though and probably doesn't behave well with older games.
Just food for thought. I'm not trolling:-D I am watching the Minimig and Clone-A projects too. I just figured I would let the Minimig projects stabalize a little more before I figure out how to order up.
Jeff
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Well I'm off to check on the Clone-A site to see if they have more to say yet.....
Plaz
Speaking of Clone-A, I know we're all excited about the Minimig, but whatever happened to Clone-A?
Last I heard it had been demonstrated this spring, so what's holding it up? I didn't find any recent news except for the demo event news.
Fester
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Gulliver wrote:
On the Amiga platform we have managed to replace nearly every subsystem, update them andenhance them:
Processor -> we made accelerators
ram -> we made ram expansions
graphics chipset -> we made GFX cards
paula audio -> we made sound cards
serial, parallel, keyboard, joystick and mouse expansions -> we made USB adapters & IO xtenders
kickstart ->we made autobooting flash kickstarts
zorro expansion -> we made busboard adapters
IDE/SCSI -> we made faster compatible ide and scsi devices
So what do we need to accomplish the dump of our stock Amigas at this point?
It seems at this stage our amigas are like a very old dongle!
I wish it was possible to create a minimal cost, lets say, a semi-dumb, i guess zorro II busboard, in which we could just plug in all those subsystem cards and run workbench without a real Amiga. Of course we wont have AGA/ECS/OCS, but we could rely on Retargetable systems much like the Macrosystem´s Draco, once did.
In the end, is it too complicated to build such board? I mean what would be the minimum requirements be?
I think we will probably need to patch kickstart code to do it, but then it doesnt sound like a pipe dream.
Or you could just buy a pc.
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i think someone should turn the table around.... amiga on a pci card. where the amiga pci card utilize the power of the new pc's... thats the way to go!
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A1260 wrote:
i think someone should turn the table around.... amiga on a pci card. where the amiga pci card utilize the power of the new pc's... thats the way to go!
Or you could just use uae.
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koaftder wrote:
A1260 wrote:
i think someone should turn the table around.... amiga on a pci card. where the amiga pci card utilize the power of the new pc's... thats the way to go!
Or you could just use uae.
When I first started browsing the web I can remember a webpage by Siamese Systems that was proposing an Amiga and 060 on a PCI card. I droolled at that but, yeah, UAE makes better sense if you gonna use a PC.
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real hw is always better than emulated... and your dragged down with only having emulated 040 horsepowers.. no no no no nothing beating real hw!
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golem wrote:
When I first started browsing the web I can remember a webpage by Siamese Systems that was proposing an Amiga and 060 on a PCI card. I droolled at that but, yeah, UAE makes better sense if you gonna use a PC.
Do you mean the Inside Out (http://amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=41) by Index Information?
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An amiga on a pci card would be cool as hell, no amiga geek could diss that. I think that UAE would probably give you some advantage in the compatibility department though, and it is faster than any amiga ever was.
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@Doobrey
I really wanted one of those. I remember waiting for it to come out, but sadly it went the way of the Boxer.
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@Jeff
I always wanted Index's Access (http://amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=39) but the last time one came up on Ebay, I had to work away from home and had no net access :boohoo:
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@Doobrey
Regarding the Access, they actually made a few of those I think. I wish I has purchased one when I had the chance. Now even if "The" broken one comes up on ebay it would go for an insane amount:-D I wonder if anyone finally fixed it?
The PCI card was dropped before a single production unit was even made as I recall. We'll never find one of those.
Jeff
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Gulliver wrote:
but then it doesnt sound like a pipe dream.
Amithlon essentially did this, although it used an emulated 68K processor rather than a real one.
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Do you mean the Inside Out (http://amiga-hardware.com/showhardware.cgi?HARDID=41) by Index Information?
Oh that would have been nice.
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real hw is always better than emulated... and your dragged down with only having emulated 040 horsepowers.. no no no no nothing beating real hw!
the thing I like about UAE is.. if the real thing breaks, it'll cost alot of $$ to fix it if its major. Another thing I like is.. what if you only have a A2000..but want to play some AGA game or use something that requires a Cybergraphix card?? Go out and bid on ebay? Or use UAE and emulate ? My system FLIES w/EUAE.. saves $ in the long run and still fun to run workbench @ 1400 x 1280 or so..
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I never really got the whole "expanded uber-Amiga" thing?
It seemed too much a case of diminishing returns; expansion being inversely proportionate to software compatibility. That, combined with high expense and poor availability...
Small wonder that the uber-Amiga platform was a technological dead end.
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I never really got the whole "expanded uber-Amiga" thing?
It works well enough for me. It's a nice compliment sitting side-by-side with Windows.
Just seeing Windows by itself, Windows seems sufficient, but with an uber-Amiga next to it, the functionality Windows lacks is pretty well magnified and offset by the uber-Amiga.
It's also trivial to fall back to a more compatible mode for the old stuff.
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Back in the day, I had a semi-beefed up A1200 sitting beside my win98 work box...
Lack of desk space, huge improvements in emulation and a host of "other" events soon led to natural selection taking its course.
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A1260 wrote:
and your dragged down with only having emulated 040 horsepowers..
You're kidding, right? An emulated 68k on a somewhat modern PC is several dozen times faster than an '060.
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There's something I dislike about emulation in the manner of UAE or Fellow ... probably the host OS getting in the way.
It seems that the CPU emulation is very good, and running a virtual 500MHz 68k on a modern system is great, and for Workbench mode and CPU speed aware 3D games it is great. However the chipset emulation, although good, isn't the same as the real hardware. This makes game emulation and demos (in particular) not feel right.
Hence MiniMig for classic Amiga hardware replication. Whilst I don't think AGA will occur (entirely) on the current hardware design, it could occur on a later hardware design in a year or so. No harm in owning both! MiniMig will be the way to play old games and demos directly on the hardware.
As for the OS side of things, making it run on a standard PC seems the sensible option to me. At least make it run on old PowerPC Macs in the current iteration, and leave the x86-64 version for the next major release.
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I'm all for people trying to build nonstandard computers independent of PC/Mac technology. Some of them may end up being pretty cool.
They won't be Amigas, though.
Exactly. Minimig is a good option for retro gaming. For Amiga desktop experience, go with common hardware. Amiga was a magnificent achievement back in the days when the chipset had to be multiple chips since the technology would not support a single chip. That was 25+ years ago, let's get with reality. If you want PPC, the only real option is either an old Mac or buy EFIKA. Or go x86/x86_64 route like ASUS EEE PC. I like to see the day when ARM based portables will be a real option.
It's about the OS, hardware is just hardware.
Dammy
TeamAROS (http://www.teamaros.org)
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If you want PPC, the only real option is either an old Mac or buy EFIKA.
Is there any word on when MorphOS 2 will be ready? (Aside from "When it's done," that is.) ;-)
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Is there any word on when MorphOS 2 will be ready? (Aside from "When it's done," that is.)
No clue on MOS. AROS for EFIKA should be done this year, perhaps sooner then later. Before Tigger left for his vacation, he said he was making advancement in the porting for this bounty (http://thenostromo.com/teamaros2/?number=46).
Dammy
TeamAROS (http://www.teamaros.org)
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Speaking of Clone-A, I know we're all excited about the Minimig, but whatever happened to Clone-A?
Last I heard it had been demonstrated this spring, so what's holding it up? I didn't find any recent news except for the demo event news.
I am more excited about clone-a, for this sounds like something that might actually get produced in the future.
I am not sure if i want to solder up the MiniMIG myself. I am already challenged by normal soldering, but the SMD parts on the Minimig board say a big "no" for me soldering it up myself.
So, i am looking forward to any news about the Clone-A.
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Steril707 wrote:
I am more excited about clone-a, for this sounds like something that might actually get produced in the future.
I am not sure if i want to solder up the MiniMIG myself.
I'm nervous about the DIY soldering too. Clone-a was demonstrated in April. I wonder what's holding it up at this point.
Fester
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@Fester
The Clone-A demo was an A500 motherboard with separate FPGAs plugged into each chip socket. I guess they're busy now integrating it into a single chip and a new board.
Also, Jens has said several times that he's busy with work that doesn't involve the Amiga.
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....but is still working on Clone-A in his spare time. :-D
It's interesting to me that this thread is showing a noticable divide on the emulation/hardware choice we all have. I prefer real hardware to be honest, it's part of the whole experience to me, right down to hitting the "off" button with no shutdown procedure. In UAE you still gotta shutdown Windows et al. after you've shut down your Amiga.
At the end of the day however, it's still a choice and choice is good.
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Ahh...
Thanks for the update Doobrey & Tripitaka. I was under the impression they were further along. That explains it.
Fester
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I guess, the real goal for me would be a highly revved up AGA machine, with VGA and PS/2 or even USB connectors.
Give this to the crowd who's paying these insane amounts of money for 10 year old accelerator hardware, and you are sure gonna sell a lot.
It pwould be like having a maxed out classic Amiga, and probably for an 'okayish' price. Count me in. :-)
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What happened to Clone-A anyway? Is Herr Jens alive?