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Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: trip6 on January 21, 2009, 05:47:27 PM
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Does anybody know the status of the NatAMI project? I thought there was supposed to be a release of the first board around Christmas this year... Is the project dead? On Hold? Does anybody have any info? I am on the list but have not heard anything since the confirmation e-mail a year ago...
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It's vodka.
Absolut Vapor.
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that about sums it up.
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So another vaporware project huh? Its a shame, it sounded like a good idea...
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I believe the project is still very much going strong. They recently answered a couple questions I had about compatibility with classic software. They also updated some spelling errors on their front page about a week ago. -Dave
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trip6 wrote:
Does anybody know the status of the NatAMI project? I thought there was supposed to be a release of the first board around Christmas this year... Is the project dead? On Hold? Does anybody have any info? I am on the list but have not heard anything since the confirmation e-mail a year ago...
Christmas of this year is still another 11 months away.
Give them that time to finish something concrete and tangible. :-D
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I guess this is tangible :
Here (http://www.natami.net/knowledge.php?b=4¬e=4400)
It is real and the delay is due to:
1- Limited number of developers
2- Change in Specs
regards,
Waj
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They were supposed to release their first board in June 2008
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Last I read the first board is due in Feb.
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Well one thing that tends to kill a lot of projects as constant change of specs.
Develop one thing first and later update it.. Get some thing done, that people can actually buy.
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Do you have the links for us? Any info you can shed for us :)
orb85750 wrote:
I believe the project is still very much going strong. They recently answered a couple questions I had about compatibility with classic software. They also updated some spelling errors on their front page about a week ago. -Dave
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I just read wajdy's link in this thread. There seem to be more devs joining this highly interesting project.
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so someone somewhere has one of these whatevertheyare's and is doing star wars simulation games?
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weirdami wrote:
so someone somewhere has one of these whatevertheyare's and is doing star wars simulation games?
There is a chipset simulator that is allowing them to write software for the SuperAGA core even before it's ready. For details see Natami.net (http://www.natami.net/knowledge.php).
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You've gotta wonder what is going on. NatAmi is supposed to be a 68k Amiga clone with extensions. They have an open source program already written in the form of WinUAE and rather than taking it, adding SuperAGA functions and producing something for the community they write their own simulator which is not Amiga compatible??
Something smells fishy!
Combine that with the total technical drivel on their forums and you've gotta wonder WTF?
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They've also added some 3d graphics programmers to their team recently in order to add phong shading and alpha-blending.
As for the 3d drivel and simulator being Windows-based, I suspect that it would have been too slow if they emulated the CPU at the same time. Likewise, I think their design is adding AGA compatibility to a PC-style graphics chipset rather than the other way around.
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sdyates wrote:
Do you have the links for us? Any info you can shed for us :)
orb85750 wrote:
I believe the project is still very much going strong. They recently answered a couple questions I had about compatibility with classic software. They also updated some spelling errors on their front page about a week ago. -Dave
These were private emails. Their contact info is at their website, natami.net.
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SamuraiCrow wrote:
As for the 3d drivel and simulator being Windows-based, I suspect that it would have been too slow if they emulated the CPU at the same time.
Yeah right.. You ever seen the N64 emulators or Dreamcast emulators?
SamuraiCrow wrote:
Likewise, I think their design is adding AGA compatibility to a PC-style graphics chipset rather than the other way around.
That is not how they said SuperAGA started when NatAMI was first announced.
You've gotta face facts that the key developer never really gets involved in the forum (which is perhaps good) but those that do know a little bit about engineering and just go off on mad ideas. The 070 CPU and PCIe for example. Neither practical for todays or probably even tomorrows FPGA technology but they still spend ages droning on about how cool it would be etc. I want 16x lane PCIe... no I want PCIe 2.0 5GHZ!
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You're confusing different parts of the whole. SuperAGA is what Thomas has always said it is. The 3DCore simulator is a design for something extra to go into the unused space within the SuperAGAs FPGA to add a little bit more modern functionality in parallel.
Andy
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Check.
3DCore simulator... does it have any roots in the hardware? i.e. is it REALLY simulating hardware registers, clocks, pipelines, RAM buffers etc. ?
Or (more likely) is it just a SW renderer experimenting with little more than algorithms? (perhaps ones which may or may not be possible to easily turned into hardware)
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As close as I understand that side of it, I'm a code monkey so whilst that side of it is accessible and I've helped make some changes I don't have the experience of extrapolating that to the VHDL.
All of the interfacing with it from software is done pretty closely to hardware. I.e. registers get set - like lighting values, triangle setup are all pushed into their own registers etc, on the next "tick" the hardware takes them into the pipeline and passes them through each stage.
In the simulator things are quite different to the hardware, there's no per-stage tick for the pipeline, its just done as a series of serial functions like you would in a software rasteriser. This makes it easier for software guys like me to contribute to the graphics development with the occasional worry about using sqrtf() and pow() etc :-D
EDIT:
hardware registers, clocks, pipelines, RAM buffers etc. ?
Or (more likely) is it just a SW renderer experimenting with little more than algorithms? (perhaps ones which may or may not be possible to easily turned into hardware)
Its a bit of both, abstracted interface using registers and a tick to start off each update of the pipeline. Some ram buffer simulation and a basic pipeline, but the pipeline behaves more like a software renderer than a true simulation should I'd bet.
It's sort of a tradeoff, an attempt to get the software API and algorithms done in a hardware implementation "friendly" manner. Then a period of culling non-hardware decisions. Rinse n' repeat.
Andy
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Status appears to have left pre-vapour and moved to early-vapour...
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Something is still a little fishy. So Thomas is too busy to take pictures, which I can understand cos he probably wonders "whats all the fuss is about? Now *go away* before I throw something at you!!"
But there are soooo many "hangers on" in that project who would just love to take pictures and movies and show what everything is about.... and it isnt happening... which is strange.
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alexh wrote:
Something is still a little fishy. So Thomas is too busy to take pictures, which I can understand cos he probably wonders "whats all the fuss is about? Now *go away* before I throw something at you!!"
But there are soooo many "hangers on" in that project who would just love to take pictures and movies and show what everything is about.... and it isnt happening... which is strange.
I think there's actually a photo or two either on amiga-university of an early dev board or on AW.net's photo album or something. I've seen it, anyway (the photo). Not saying that makes this suddenly all plausible, just sayin' there are prototype photos out there.*
More recent ones show the "simulator" running on a Linux based laptop, which is far less impressive or convincing.
*=Mick tinker had MANY photos of The Boxer board and we all know that was vaporware, too, but to Natami's "credit" at least the proto boards appear to work. I still think it's all to no avail though.