Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: orb85750 on October 07, 2010, 10:36:23 PM
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Does the Natami concept satisfy the hardcore Classic Amiga enthusiast? We've heard many on this board say that all this PowerPC stuff -- and AROS too -- are not true Amiga, and that the only real Amigas are the classic machines. But is the Natami concept the exception?? I want to know what you think about it. (Yes, I know that Natami is not available for purchase at this point and there is no certainty that it will be, but that's beside the point.)
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Seems and interesting an fun project, though I wonder if suffers from runaway feature creep.
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Concepts do not satisfy! Cold, hard, erm, hardware does!
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Being one of those hardcore Amiga fanatics, I can honestly say that the Natami from what I have read about it, could in my books qualify as true modern Amiga if it lives up to the hype that's written about, I'm actually more interested in the Natami now than the X1000, but it's a case of wait and see... :)
(never thought I'd actually admit to that !!!)
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Put it on sale and I'll tell you then ;)
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All it would take for me is the feature set of an A1200 plus a much faster 68k CPU and PCI/PCI-e.
Beyond that it's all fluff.
I think the developers forget that people like myself mostly want our old software, but with up to date hardware and that they can't write an OS in a reasonable amount of time.
Edit: thats not a dig a Aros, they are doing a terrific job. But look at the history of Amiga OS's, they take decades with the manpower available.
My point was that whatever hardware is made needs supporting software so it pretty much requires our old apps and OS to work out of the box.
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I used to want to make games for the Natami, but I have never cared about making games for a non-Amiga system so the Natami was something I was really looking forward to for a while.
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I can answer this because I'm the kind of person that Natami should be aimed at (eg x-classic modded 1200 owner and not a NG Amiga owner).
In theory it would be the perfect machine to satisfy the classic retro urge but until the thing is actually available to buy its all just wishful thinking. If they'd just gone for something more basic (eg a MiniMig update) then I think most of us classic users would have been more than happy.
And with the FPGAArcade coming along nicely, it looks like they may miss the boat entirely.
It also seems that Jens hasn't given up on CloneA yet which would be yet more 'competition' for team Natami. How come in the tiny Amiga market, everyone has to compete with each other and nobody works together (classic and NG!) ;)
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Does the Natami concept satisfy the hardcore Classic Amiga enthusiast?
Yes! The 68k is so much easier to use than PPC. It's too bad it was prematurely killed off for marketing reasons. I really like the Natami openness compared to the attitudes of the AmigaOS 4.x bunch. It's not that I dislike PPC so much as some of the attitudes. Good compatibility is always a plus too. You should have made this a poll question.
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yes sounds good alright but x1000 good too just diffrent markets
for running old amiga software hope it whould be good, but then when the orginal amiga 1200 come out alot old games didnt run well 1.3 stuff because the chache and aga etc cfo slot always going have some people un happy .
way look at x1000 for new amiga os 4 software no didfrent to ps3 not ruuning some
ps2 titles . just buy a old psx2 whats the problem or amiga case use emulator
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I guess it would have to exist before it satisfied anything. I'm stickler for picky details, I know.
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All it would take for me is the feature set of an A1200 plus a much faster 68k CPU and PCI/PCI-e.
Beyond that it's all fluff.
I think the developers forget that people like myself mostly want our old software, but with up to date hardware and that they can't write an OS in a reasonable amount of time.
Yep you're right, the lack of OS support for any 'enhanced' features is the biggest issue here. Someone could come up with an awesome AGA+++ FPGA design with an 200Mhz 68060 softcore but what OS are you going to use it with?
Basically the more you enhance AGA, the more trouble you're going to have running classic software.
The best (looking/functionality) you could hope for is a patched OS3.9 install (think AmiKit) which would mean the FPGA would have to feature an emulated RTG (some kind of WinUAE type monitor driver hack) and have decent AHI support.
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I think the Natami or the FPGArcade would both be a great machines for classic Amiga fans. For me, I'm leaning toward the FPGArcade, because it would be a good learning platform for VHDL. My main interest in things Amiga at this point is running old software. UAE works fine for this, even on my Athlon XP $5 pc. I still like the idea of dedicated hardware.
If you're looking at using an Amiga flavored modern desktop, which I admit is an appealing idea, I think AROS on gerneric hardware is more sensible. Much as I wish AEon well, that A1X1000 is just going to be too expensive. It's going to have the same problem as AROS- lack of moden software that can use all that power.
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If you're soley looking for classic Amiga performance, stick to a Minimig. If you're looking for classic performance with a few tweaks and performance enhancements, wait for an fpgaarcade. If you're a classic enthusiast that wants all the features that Commodore SHOULD have put into an Amiga 5000+, then wait for the Natami. Of course the Natami should also be able to approximate a stock A500 or A2000 with the right core too, although it is much more capable. The Natami dev team has painstakingly preserved backward compatibility with hardware-banging classic apps while extending and adding new features such as high speed DMA, new AGA and chunky modes, as well as a processor core that's superior to any 68060 made by Motorola, etc.....Clock speed will also be in the triple digits as well.
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yes sounds good alright but x1000 good too just different markets for running old amiga software hope it would be good, but then when the original amiga 1200 come out alot old games didnt run well 1.3 stuff because the cache and aga etc cfo slot always going have some people un happy .
The N680x0 CPU should handle the cache problem. I believe it will sniff the memory for self modifying code and auto-magically "handle" it. The problem of poorly written early OCS/ECS games can't really be fixed. Also some games will likely run way too fast. Most of the later games programmers learned though. The Natami CAN do certain things with the fpga chipset and CPU to increase compatibility.
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It does satisfy me (when released), since they say you can bag the hardware it will be interesting to program for it, be nice to get back into programing. FPGA Arcade and Natami are the 2 system i want to buy the most and when i buy a FPGA Arcade machine i will still want to buy a Natami and for that matter a CloneA as well.
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If I were going strictly by the word "Classic", I would suggest that means Commodore-Amiga and that PowerPC had nothing to do with Commodore's Amiga at all nor was it planned. In fact Commodore were looking at HP as their next gen chips. So do I think PowerPC had anything to do with "classic" Amiga, that's a BIG NO..
Some AGA/AA Amigas had problems with OCS/ECS games too, so I'd suggest that we live now in a time where adjustments for this kind of things is possible.
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I think it will if its ever for sale. At this point, I'm less than optimistic about when or if they will ever sell the boards. Maybe its just that I've had high hopes and been burnt by many others promising something similar and never delivering.
I hope they start selling boards someday, But how many times are they going to change the design and then start backpedaling on release dates?
I stopped watching the site.
Steven
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Seems and interesting an fun project, though I wonder if suffers from runaway feature creep.
I concur.
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It also seems that Jens hasn't given up on CloneA yet which would be yet more 'competition' for team Natami. How come in the tiny Amiga market, everyone has to compete with each other and nobody works together (classic and NG!) ;)
Long time, Nova. Did you hear anything from Jens about the CloneA? He's been quiet about it for about a year now and last I heard, he was having issues with the ROMS, due to licensing. :confused:
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I'll buy a Natami board the moment they are released if they have an ethernet port and an easy means to getting it networked and on the internet. Would be a stellar BBS host if it runs all the old SW just fine. The PPC OS 4 solutions just don't run such BBS SW well enough to use unless you use emulation, and if I have to do that I might as well continue running a BBS on a UAE'd PC.
Without onboard networking, it's a doorstop to me at any price. Hope they also offer these as just motherboards so I would not be forced into buying some overpriced fully built PC full of cheap 2 year old asian components like the x1000.
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Never heard of it... But then I'm not that much of an Amiga nutter.
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I used to want to make games for the Natami, but I have never cared about making games for a non-Amiga system so the Natami was something I was really looking forward to for a while.
I'm sorry things didn't work out for you being a member of the NatAmi team. I think that the whole team may rupture if they don't come out with some useful hardware soon.
Feel free to contact me by PM or email if you want some more help learning to write code. It doesn't matter to me whether you want to write code for Amiga or otherwise. I'll help you either way. Thanks to Chris Handley, PortablE may work reasonably on Windows as well as AROS and MorphOS and the rest.
@Thread
I'm a lot more likely to get a NatAmi than I am to get another OS 4 box. OS 4 is nice but their hardware is always overpriced. If I want performance, I'll write a compiler to program the FPGA directly as an alternate core.
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Long time, Nova. Did you hear anything from Jens about the CloneA? He's been quiet about it for about a year now and last I heard, he was having issues with the ROMS, due to licensing. :confused:
Yep he refered to CloneA recently over on EAB as still being 'alive' in one form or another.
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I'll buy one if they come out, or a clone A if Jens beats 'em to it. Maybe I'll even buy them both but until it's on the slab it's all just theory.
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The Natami is like a pipe dream. It looks good, but its protoype development is crawling. It is also the fault of goals that are being added as the project makes some progress.
I really wish they could deliver something to the average Amiga user, but with moving targets, I know they never will. It is not about being against the Natami, it is about being realistic. No one will ever witness mass production of the Natami in the next following years. It is just that it takes a lot of time and dedicated/professional effort for a completely working prototype to reach mass market, and the Natami prototype is not even complete.
For me, a better choice and much more reasonable is the FPGArcade/Minimig AGA/Retro Replay board.
My ideal Classic 68k specimen, would be something like a seriously redesigned and greatly enhanced motherboard of an AGA Amiga, following the concept behind the superb design Georg Brown did with his GB A1000 project.
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Yep he refered to CloneA recently over on EAB as still being 'alive' in one form or another.
For anyone searching, heres a linky (http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=700025&postcount=64).
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It sounded good when they were doing an 060 based AGA Amiga with 3D enhancements. It would have been like the next step in classic Amiga and nice to program on.
Now I haven't got a clue what they are doing... it sounds like a fun project for the team, but they shouldn't claim that it will be a mass produced Amiga ready within a year and a bit and be faster with every new FPGA tech.
If they ever finish it no one will care but them.
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What makes me laugh, is that a single guy create the MiniMig and then open sourced the project. How hard would it have been for someone with some money to have updated it (eg ACube, AmigaKit) and sold it as a classic replacement in a branded MiniITX case.
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It's what, two years out of when they said they'd have dev machines released?
Ah well it's not like they're doing pre-sales or anything, can't pick on 'em TOO much. :)
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What makes me laugh, is that a single guy create the MiniMig and then open sourced the project. How hard would it have been for someone with some money to have updated it (eg ACube, AmigaKit) and sold it as a classic replacement in a branded MiniITX case.
Yea, but I think it needs more than 68000+ECS to be interesting. The MiniMig with 68020+AGA and a low price could sell in the thousands. Heck, if they were under a couple of hundred bucks, I would buy some for Christmas presents :). I think this price is possible for a simple fpga produced in the thousands. I think this would leave room for power users wanting the Natami or CloneA too. It would all be good for bringing back interest in the classic Amiga and expanding the user base even if many are just gamers. Enough of these gamers and there would be a few more new games. That's how it restarts.
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Everything gets delayed in Amiga land. I think it's a law.
I'm interested in all of the FPGA amiga clone projects, and I'm hopeful that there will be something available in the near future that can fully replace any and all classic amigas.
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Since they aren't taking anyones money, I can't find much fault with their approach. If it sees the light of day, I'll buy one definately. I like the spirit of their project: Not to create some sort of theoretical mainstream computer but a fun "what if" amiga machine.
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Everything in Amiga Land is also so confused. A myriad of independent projects are currently running, baffling potential customers.
Personally, I`m on standby. Will be using my old classic A1200 till the myst clears up!!