Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => Amiga Hardware Issues and discussion => Topic started by: AmiDelf on January 27, 2004, 01:14:02 AM
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A new custom based Amiga. I know it sounds crazy, but I think people love Amiga as it is with custom chips. Sure AmigaONE is a nice goal, but lots of people have waited loong time for the next "real" Amiga.
I am webmaster of amigaworld.org and would love to get a custom based Amiga back on the track.
How about, Amiga 5500, Amiga 6000, Amiga 6200 and further. Based on ColdFire cpu
New Amiga could be like this:
Amiga 6000 for example:
AAA+ custom chips
3D customable chip
ColdFireV4 220MHz
Kickstart 4.0
USB 2.0 as standard
PCI
AGP
SD-RAM
New 92 keys Amiga keyboard
Would you like to get into such thing like this? I would be so glad, and lots of other Amigans too.
Would someone of you help out financing such project and is there any interest at all?
I know lots of people wich have been waiting for the next "real Amiga". And not everyone agrees on AmigaOne or Pegasos II++ Some of you wants a new custom based Amiga. Its something else to have a new Amiga computer, than a PC motherboad with PPC on it.
Please answere with respect and give the will and write your thoughts and dont think cheap ways. AmigaONE, Pegasos II++ is all cheap. People have forgotten how nice custom based computers was. We all waited for over 5 years. But nothing!
Now its the time to think new. People starts to think how borring Windows is, how borring PC is. People is jumping over to Mac because of their difference.
Regards,
Michal,
www.amigaworld.org (http://www.amigaworld.org)
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@AmiDelf
I, for one, would love such a project. In fact, I've been designing my own custom chipset for several years, but it's a hobby project more for my own self satisfaction than anything. It also is not compatible with the Amiga's chipset, a lot of the elements from the Amiga's design are undesirable in a modern system.
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AAA+ custom chips
I hope you are very wealthy. :-(
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I would not invest money in such a project as there has been to many vaporware events. However, if someone came up with a replacement mobo for the A1200 - ie coldfire with onboard GraphX, sound etc. . . I would buy one if it has bang for the buck. :-D
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I don't see how your machine is any different from an AmigaOne or Pegasos. They all have AGP and PCI, and USB, and SDRAM. The one exception is that their processors are about 1,000 times faster than the coldfire you've suggested.
Assuming you're implying an integrated graphics and audio chipset(where you've listed AAA+ custom chips, I assume you are well aware that AAA+ was never finished, and would be horribly out of date by todays standards), who out there is going to be able to compete with Nvidia, ATI, and Creative Labs for top of the line graphics and sound?
PC's ARE broken up into seperate cntrollers these days too! You have a completely seperate graphics controller, and a completely seperate audio controller, and a completely seperate bus controller, and a completely seperate memory controller (usually done as a northbridge and southbridge).
Operating systems are what determine the feel of modern computers. When people don't like Windows, they move to Mac, or Linux, or something else, but a Mac isn't really all that different from a PC these days when it comes to hardware, sure it's a closed platform so there's less variety, but the OS is what makes people move to it.
Amiga will have to do the same. If it can't compete as an OS, then there's no point, but a "custom based" machine is only going to provide a piece of hardware that will take another five years to come out due to all of the design work involved, and it will be overpriced and underpowered compared to current machines.
Also, there's absolutely no point in making a new "Amiga" keyboard if it's going to support USB. You might as well just buy an OEM USB keyboard, and have some different keycaps put on it for the Amiga keys.
The truth is, there's not really any difference between what you've described, and an AmigaOne with onboard video and audio, except yours has a much slower processor, would cost an extraordinarily large amount of money and time to develop, and wouldn't be able to compete with whatever modern graphics and audio cards were currently available when it debuted.
EDIT - Added...
What we would really need, is a whole new idea or paradigm for the hardware to work with. Something radical and different. The Amiga custom chipsets are not radical and different by todays standards. They are EXTREMELY efficient at what they do, but they are incredibly old news. The reason Amiga worked so well was because of it's very different (at the time) design.
If there is to be a new machine that grabs people like the Amiga did, it will once again have to have a new design concept, and not be part of this "Let's up the speed and throughput club."
Hardware isn't that important these days (as every Amigan should know), it's how that hardware is handled.
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Hi AmiDelf,
Amiga 6000 for example:
AAA+ custom chips
3D customable chip
ColdFireV4 220MHz
Kickstart 4.0
USB 2.0 as standard
PCI
AGP
SD-RAM
New 92 keys Amiga keyboard
Please answere with respect and give the will and write your thoughts and
dont think cheap ways. AmigaONE, Pegasos II++ is all cheap. People have
forgotten how nice custom based computers was. We all waited for over 5
years. But nothing!
I can't speak for the AmigaONE (having not ever examined the board in person),
but the construction quality of the Pegasos is not something I would associate
with "cheap", it's certainly far beyond anything I ever bought from Commodore.
If you mean cheap in the sense of "off the shelf", I don't think it's necessary
(or finacially prudent) to continually "re-invent the wheel"...especially when
ATI - for example - will still do it better..
People have forgotten how nice custom based computers was. We all waited for over 5
years. But nothing!
Well, I agree to an extent...it was nice back in '89, when the Amiga's specs were
still (somewhat) on paar with other platforms...it was definately a capable
machine, no doubts. But a custom design that also happens to have *inferior* specs
from the rest of the market may be a hard sell in 2004 (as in '94). And speaking
of, who would you sell it to? You need a large customer/developer base in order to
sustain ANY platform...who will design the chips? who will make them? who will write
the OS? And the cost of designing and producing the type of system that you're proposing
is going to far exceed the amount most will be willing to pay..
Personally...I like being able to choose exactly what hardware to buy or not, I love
the Cooler Master and Radeon I just bought!! :D
From an "enthusiasts" perspective, I would much rather continue to just toy
around with my old Amigas from time to time if I feel the need...and save the
Pegasos for a "reasonably" up-to-date hobby/fun system.
But if you're REALLY going to follow through with something like his...I wish
you good luck...and at least consider some better specs. The Coldfire and SD-RAM
would make it an automatic "strike" on my field.
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@AmiDelf
Whatcha' been smokin'??
(http://home.hawaii.rr.com/kihoalu/images/hulagirls.gif)
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Only if it was 100% a500/a600 compitable.. I need a classic amiga for classic games, demos and such..
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Keyboards - Yes!
The rest, no. If it's a classic upgrade you want, it would probably make more sense to pool resources with the Coldfire project. Or to upgrade buster to improve transfer speeds - a few people have theorized this is possible.
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I would not support such a project.
However I would support renaming the AmigaONE, Amiga 5000, if that helps.
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:lol:
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@AmiDelf
I'm not knocking your suggestion in any way ... :-)
Personally, I would rather see something a bit more like the following:
G3/G4/G5 PPC processor
1 GB RAM
on-board bootable flash drive with AmigaOS (or equivalent)
on-board Radeon graphics system
on-board sound system
on-board 10/100 ethernet LAN interface (NIC)
on-board 802.11b wireless networking interface
on-board USB 2.0 as standard
If such a board was small enough, it could be packaged as a tablet-style computer with detached full-sized keyboard and mouse, or as a laptop or as a small footprint system box with keyboard and mouse.
Of course, such a system would not be upgradable unless there was some sort of expansion slot ... but it would be a fun machine for awhile.
---------------
redfox
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A new custom based Amiga. I know it sounds crazy, but I think people love Amiga as it is with custom chips.
There’s nothing special about Amiga’s custom chip when you have various modern PCs that are equipped with VPU/GPU/APU/SPP/DSP/IGP supporting processors.
PS; 'Crappy' PCs are equipped with less supporting processors.
PC BIOS and OS abstraction layers has basically shielded it’s users from different PC hardware designs that is available in the mainstream market.
Its something else to have a new Amiga computer, than a PC motherboard with PPC on it.
Does Marvell’s NB supports X86 processors?
Note that you mentioned some mainstream PC based technologies i.e.
USB 2.0, PCI, AGP, SD-RAM
Compare your specs to AmigaOne (plus add-ons)
-------------------------------
AAA+ custom chips
3D customable chip
ColdFireV4 220MHz
Kickstart 4.0
USB 2.0 as standard
PCI
AGP
SD-RAM
-------------------------------
MAI logic’s Articia S.
ATI Radeon 9100 VPU (with programmable shaders).
PowerPC G4 1Ghz
UBoot BIOS
USB 1.1
AGP
SD-RAM
-------------------------------
One could write tons of paper on the differences between nForce2 vs i865/875 vs VIA KT600 and 'etc', but its the PC’s abstracting layers makes them 'feel' similar.
To illustrate my point,
1. AMD K7 Athlon’s bus is based on a non-X86 DEC’s Alpha EV6 bus architecture yet it 'feels' similar to Intel's offerings.
2. Intel Pentium IV’s RAMBUS architecture is based from yet earlier designs from SGI's RAMBUS architecture, yet it 'feels' like similar to AMD's offerings.
Both X86 vendors has assimilated key technologies that once powered the mighty performance machines of the early 1990s ('Cut & Paste ' engineering is X86’s best friend) …
It's just too bad that Motorola didn't "Athlon'ed" the 68K with post-RISC core (high performance RISC core with HW emulator/translator) and assimilated some early 90s high performance bus designs.
Can Amiga’s AAA architecture compete with technologies that were used to power the yesterday’s expensive RISC machines? (Remember Amiga Computing’s article on post-AAA Amiga machines i.e. pointed to RISC machine future?)
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MarkTime wrote:
I would not support such a project.
However I would support renaming the AmigaONE, Amiga 5000, if that helps.
:-D I like it.
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Frankly, I'd like to have a new line of Amiga style cases developed instead of a new motherboard.
I'm getting an AmigaOne Lite (when they come out) and I don't like ANY of the case I've seen. They are awful (like 99% of all Windows PC cases) compared to what Commodore gave us.
Micro-ATX and Mini-ITX formats. And it we be cool if we could stack'em. So that I could plug a small Linksys KVM between the Pegasus and an AmigaOne. The Amiga 3000 could be a starting point for some ideas. It's the prettiest case of all Amiga computers.
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New Amiga could be like this:
What's the point if it runs Workbench just like any other hardware? Or do you expect such software to be hard-coded, thus preventing any forwards mobility?
AAA+ custom chips
To do what? Operate timers? Control floppy drives and IDE? Play sound? Today's PC chipsets are very much like what AGA used to be: hardware and bus controllers with integrated GFX and audio.
The only really nice thing about the Amiga was Exec, so a real-mode CPU crash gave you debug output, much like a protected-mode crash. Today's PC's still just lock up or explode randomly and you never know if it's bad software or an overclock problem. :-)
3D customable chip
Today's 3D chips already do just about eveything. A custom RAMDAC with a *proper* sprite engine would be nice, though. That would get rid of flicker for good if objects don't quite sync with frame buffer swaps. :-)
USB 2.0 as standard
Well, that's one thing the AmigaOne doesn't have. :-)
New 92 keys Amiga keyboard
It amazes me how few computers have dedicated undo/redo buttons. A method for overtyping would be nice, too, so you can use a keyboard like a typewriter. For example, why bring up a character mapper to find the (é) symbol, when you can just type (e), backspace, and then overtype the (e) with the appropriate inflection?
Still, most of that can be done in software using custom keys and remapping. You hardly need a custom keyboard so much as a "rebadged" keyboard.
Now its the time to think new.
PC's don't sell in the tens of thousands, anymore. They sell in the hundreds of millions. You have to believe that hardware standards evolved the way they did for a reason, even if Windows doesn't make much sense.
Of course, this is strictly in terms of hardware. For software, I don't think it makes any sense to make a brand new OS and then make it work just like Windows, UNIX, or whatever. If you're going through that much trouble, you might as well try to fix all the bad points and keep the good stuff.
It's easy to do that with software. Hardware is just a means to an end.
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Frankly, I'd like to have a new line of Amiga style cases developed instead of a new motherboard.
Yeah, why is it the overclockers get all the different stuff, which basicly is neon and colored cases with LCD front panels?
What ever happened to the *real* inspiration behind the iMac: reducing cable clutter, reducing noise, taking less desk space, going wireless, abolishing the bulky "tower" configuration...
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No, it's too little too late.
UAE on my AMD 2200 processor, is probably faster.
Instead, write an Amiga OS package that will work on a Sony Playstation 2. They're design is sorta like an old Amiga. (CD32/CDTV) And there's 50 million potential customers!
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It could be fun as a hobby machine with a a4k-compatible ATX-mobo, however there would be too much work and too little gain. By the time it would be finished, emulation would be a better alternative.
The keyboards sounds interesting though...
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AAA and Coldfire are the only differences with a modern board...
The OS doesn't run on coldfire and a coldfire sucks compared to a G4... even running 68k code.
We are running PPC native apps and do you want to slow down everything with a coldfire?
I would use a powerpc instead of a coldfire. Come on, OS4 and MOS runs on ppc, not on Coldfires. There's no coldfire software out and it would only be SLOWER.
AAA isn't finished and even if it was finished it would be a waste of time compared to companies that work only doing chipsets. You can't compete with them in features or price.
We no longer need AGA compatibility, we have get rid of it. If you want to run AGA apps, run UAE or use the real Amiga. If you insist on thinking that AGA is something wonderfull put a xilinx on a pci card and start programming it. But I can't see the point in investing money in being AGA compatible. AGA is dead. AAA isn't finished.
And using a coldfire is a waste of money.
I would use PPC or x86, that's all. The OS already runs on PPC. If I wanted other cpu I would use x86.
BTW
The Amiga mice/keyboard/case is a good idea.
And if somebody released a PCI card with an Altera it would sell well too
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I, for one, would love such a project. In fact, I've been designing my own custom chipset for several years, but it's a hobby project more for my
We need a new Amiga! Its time to think this now, and not in 2-3 years, when the Amiga feeling is lost.
Please contact me at:
mberg@broadpark.no
amigaworld.org would love to help out annyone out there going for such project.
Amiga lives on! I want the Amiga feeling back. Dont you? And.. someone here just dosent read my comment. I also included 3D custom chips, intergrated into a custom based Amiga computer.
With this new Amiga, the Amigascene could come back. AmigaOne is doing something, but not ennough I feel.
Regards,
Michal, www.amigaworld.org
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AmiDelf wrote:
I, for one, would love such a project. In fact, I've been designing my own custom chipset for several years, but it's a hobby project more for my
We need a new Amiga! Its time to think this now, and not in 2-3 years, when the Amiga feeling is lost.
Please contact me at:
mberg@broadpark.no
amigaworld.org would love to help out annyone out there going for such project.
Amiga lives on! I want the Amiga feeling back. Dont you? And.. someone here just dosent read my comment. I also included 3D custom chips, intergrated into a custom based Amiga computer.
With this new Amiga, the Amigascene could come back. AmigaOne is doing something, but not ennough I feel.
Regards,
Michal, www.amigaworld.org
Send an Email to Dammy, he might be able to help you.
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Hi Amidelf :-)
Your project sounds like a revamped boxer mobo ;-)
But it would be nice with some things more :
- A1200/4000 motherboard form factor models, as direct replacement for such,
- exchangeable processor daughterbord so you can take the one you want (coldfire, ppc, whatever...)
-pci AND zorro III/IV slots (dreaming ;-) )
- flashrom kickstart,
- 100% backward compatible with ECS/AGA
--- :-)
Amigalement,
Jean-François, Amiga ONLY since 1985.
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i simply dont see this as viable at all , i would love to mess with AAA and all that but i know why commodore and amiga + escom + gateway + tulip didnt go further into it , as it costs money!! and alot of it!.
we surely need something special in the next gen amiga's but i would say that instead of thinking about AAA (which is infact dated compared to the saturn's 2d and the playstation 1's 3d) we should instead ask ati/matrox/nvidia to do an AMIGA styled gfx chip/customs, they have the expertise and they are the ones who make the new standards, and as we all know everything in the pc world theese days ages rapidly.
Gc/xbox and ps2 got their own custom designs based on well known designs from the time they where built and improved , making new stuff from scratch would (i guess) make the consoles even expensiver + would put the creators in an money issue over time..
dont get me wrong, i am a big fan of amiga and its custom chips and i would love to see an AGA on PCI card or simmilar ways but thats just about as long as i would go for now.
Amiga needs money, amiga needs an os and most of all Amiga needs to rise in its potential market before we can dream about a new custom design.
we all know what happened to the A/box , BOXER and so on, diffrent designs i would love to have but as time went on it showed how hard it would be and most of all the kind of an budget you would need.
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lempkee wrote:
Amiga needs money, amiga needs an os and most of all Amiga needs to rise in its potential market before we can dream about a new custom design.
we all know what happened to the A/box , BOXER and so on, diffrent designs i would love to have but as time went on it showed how hard it would be and most of all the kind of an budget you would need.
Custom designs are a thing of the past, Wain is right when he speaks of a new technology... I see Hypertrasport and it's offspring to deliver that new idea. It allows the use of CPU's and other hardware in ways that haven't been tried before.
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The thing here is, that BoXeR could be something good, but it failed.
This project is aimed at getting a project complete.
Regards,
Michal, www.amigaworld.org
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amidelf:i doubt that mr.thinker (mr.tinker?) or any of the others would be interested to continue on their projects, we all know what it led to in the end..
and most of all the boxer was cool in 99 but by todays standard it would be crap compared to lets say an (allready old) AmigaOne .
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amidelf: btw since u suggested Coldfire and its 2xx mhz model, would you please tell me (and others) how fast that is compared to ...lets say an 060 /50 mhz cpu and most of all the compability it has regarding the 68k family , i know the answer but i suspect someone else on here doesnt!
and another problem is that coldfire needs its own kernel and os code, it is compatible to some extent but you will need special sw to "make use of" the coldfire cpu.
i know i will invest in the coldfire board that OLIVER is making, but i do that mostly because i want it in my cd32! and i dont expect it to run os4.
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(http://www.amiga-hardware.com/c4kt1.gif)
This new Amiga, would be THE Amiga for everyone who knows what Amiga is.
Yes! a 220MHz ColdFireV4 cpu, is way faster than 060 offcourse.
If not AmigaOS4 will run on it, AROS could for example, or something else.
When I buy a Amiga, I want to buy a real Amiga, and not a PPC motherboard with a PC modified case wich a reseller puts tougether for you. Thats not an Amiga and I know that there is lots of people wich agree with me. But its TABU to say something else today, than going the cheapest way.
Sorry for beeing so harsh, but Amiga 6000 would be a great computer. But its just to hard for people to think custom. But it can be done!
Look how beutifull the Amiga 4000T case from Commodore was and all the things wich was with it. Both SCSI and IDE controllers on motherboard++ Thats the cream of the cake in Amiga world. And A6000 would go even further.
I want AmigaOne, but I also want the real Amiga feeling back. So do others and if we can get tougether and show and support such project. This can be done. Its all about will,.. the will to challenge the world we live in now.
Regards,
Michal, www.amigaworld.org
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It's a great idea IMHO, but although Coldfire would be a great upgrade solution for classic users, it doesn't make any sense now that we're migrating to PPC. Nor can I see the point of resurrecting AAA after over a decade. Such technologies would be viewed as an anachronism today and an expensive one at that.
I'd personally like to see something a little more imaginative and radical than the existing ATX PPC designs, preferably with industry standard interfaces (eg ATX, PCI etc) but with a thorough rethink more in line with the traditional Amiga way of doing things (for example, I don't want to see an ugly BIOS screen when starting my machine). The point made earlier about it not necessarily being about how powerful the hardware is but how it's used is valid and I believe there's space in the market for such a solution today, provided it can compete on cost grounds.
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Would you support this project?
Certainly not, the Amigaone is just to expensive for what little it offers, this custom idea would cost the buyer to much money and only a obsessed Amiga fan would buy one.
587 for a A1 is just idiotic, so for a custom job you want it would be like a grand per board what would be a museum piece compared to the rest of the computing world.
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Thats so wrong of you ....
Amiga 500, Amiga 600, Amiga 1200 was all custom based Amigas and they didnt cost too much at all.
So I doubt its soooo much more expensive this times to create something new.
And to the AAA+ point:
Well, what I am talking about. I a next generation 2D/3D custom graphic chipset. Based on how AGA was made, but offcourse fully 32bit+ 32mb chip RAM++
Regards,
Michal, www.amigaworld.org
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Yes! a 220MHz ColdFireV4 cpu, is way faster than 060 offcourse.
Except that it isn't, at least if you want to run existing m68k code.
If not AmigaOS4 will run on it, AROS could for example, or something else.
What something else?
When I buy a Amiga, I want to buy a real Amiga, and not a PPC motherboard with a PC modified case wich a reseller puts tougether for you. Thats not an Amiga and I know that there is lots of people wich agree with me. But its TABU to say something else today, than going the cheapest way.
I disagree with you.
Sorry for beeing so harsh, but Amiga 6000 would be a great computer. But its just to hard for people to think custom. But it can be done!
Look how beutifull the Amiga 4000T case from Commodore was and all the things wich was with it. Both SCSI and IDE controllers on motherboard++ Thats the cream of the cake in Amiga world. And A6000 would go even further.
I want AmigaOne, but I also want the real Amiga feeling back. So do others and if we can get tougether and show and support such project. This can be done. Its all about will,.. the will to challenge the world we live in now.
Again, I hate to piss on someone's parade, but:
Have you ever realized how much money such project would require? It would be at LEAST 10x what developing a new system using standard parts would be (AmigeONE or Pegasos). I am sorry to wake you up from your daydream, but it takes much more than willpower. It takes money and resources, which just aren't there.
I also find it disgusting you spin this non-existing and totally unrealistic "project" using "Amiga feeling" and pictures of old amigas. Classic Amiga has nothing to do with this. This is not real Amiga, either.
This thing you're planning would not be able to run AmigaOS or Amiga applications any faster then current 060 Amigas, anyway.
This is my personal opinion of the matter.
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You dont read... you just dont...
Regards,
Michal, www.amigaworld.org
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You dont read... you just dont...
I read the original post. You asked for opinions of such project, and I gave mine.
My opinion is that I find it unrealistic and not feasible at all. I would not like to get into project like this. I would not like to help finance the project, either.
Please note that I didn't even bite your obvious flamebait about "cheapness" of some other projects.
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I am webmaster of amigaworld.org and would love to get a custom based Amiga back on the track.
Are you also a millionaire with lots of millionaire friends to buy it? :)
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Hello
IMO the project need massive capital and may become other failed platform.You will need massive advertisement, lots of programmers for porting various applications, support etc. To become profitable you should sell at least several million units.
For CPU perhaps it's better to use Transmeta or other X86 CPU with fast 68K emulation. For chipset perhaps it's better to modify existing "all in one" chipset: Sis, Nforce etc.
There is lack of Coldfire promotion and support from Motorola. They refused to sell small quantity / prototype of V5e, V6e CF. The V4 220 MHz CPU does not have any floating point support inside the CPU. They cannot increase the speed to multi GHz.
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wowwww is great AAA rulez! in this page are pretty with very info of AAA =)
http://www.titan.co.nz/amigaak/AA020710.htm
The coldfire is available with 333mhz too =) (800mhz from motorola too, see the official motorola home page) or you can ask oliver from cdtv.org, is working on this too
Is pretty an amiga with coldfire+AAA =) A5000 is a great name with monica, linda, andrea and mary customs chips =)
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Well, what I am talking about. I a next generation 2D/3D custom graphic chipset. Based on how AGA was made, but offcourse fully 32bit+
But AGA was comparatively expensive to make. A bespoke chipset is a great idea in theory, but will cost the earth to design, engineer and manufacture. This in turn drives up the cost. Who'd buy a 220Mhz, bespoke AAA system in 2004 for a not inconsiderable cost penalty when you can buy a high end PC for under £500?
An off the shelf chipset with custom drivers is a much more cost effective solution. Unless we're talking about selling our Amiga in PS2 volumes of course... That way development costs are spread over a large production run.
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Thats so wrong of you ....
I am allowed to have my opinions which you wanted, i just do not live in the past and certainly do not want to buy expensive hardware what is not even slightly on par with current offerings.
The OS is all i am interested in not some glorified expensive slow hardware with names for every chip which just costs a small fortune for the pleasure.
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AmiDelf wrote:
Thats so wrong of you ....
Amiga 500, Amiga 600, Amiga 1200 was all custom based Amigas and they didnt cost too much at all.
So I doubt its soooo much more expensive this times to create something new.
And to the AAA+ point:
Well, what I am talking about. I a next generation 2D/3D custom graphic chipset. Based on how AGA was made, but offcourse fully 32bit+ 32mb chip RAM++
Regards,
Michal, www.amigaworld.org
You forget that Commodore had it's own fabs and the Amiga chips set was "ready designed" (4 years of wok had already been put in) when they bought it.
The AGA chipset was designed as a simple upgrade to the OCS, it did not require any serious rethinking, and they had 6 years to design it!!!
The Technology in AGA was 10 years old before it even hit the shelves... it is far too old to be useful now :-(
Even the cheapest most pathetic VGA cards can out perform the AGA chpset in terms of graphics and video, and lets not even go near the state of the AGA audio.
The only thing I miss from the AGA chipset is the copper, but even that has limited usefullness with a modern 3D chip around.
There does need to be a shake up of Technology, but the Amiga Chips set is not going to be the basis for it :-(
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I think your goal to produce another amiga mother board is admirable, but unrealistic. I would love to see a coldfire amiga, but by the time you worked out the design it would probably be to expensive and too far behind the performace of PPC systems to be viable. What if you could work on a PPC system of your own? A small integrated PPC system with it's own custom cases. That could be profitable and in the spirit and fun of amiga for me too. I would even like to help work on a system like that.
Plaz
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I don't know what is a coldfire but i doubt that it can compete with a PowerPC G5 which less expansive than the Motorola G4 (almost dead).
An Amiga 5500/6000 with G5 would sound nice for me ;)
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This Amiga with go on like this
1. Getting financial support from Motorola
2. Getting Shiftec to contribute with A4000T alike case
3. Talking with those hardware people with NuOS and Oliver
4. Intergrate some sort of MediatorPCI technology into this, + adding SD-RAM and AGP
5. Getting OS support from Hyperion in the end
We need Amigas now,.. ! This could work, but then its up to people also. Dont be negative and its not that expensive.
Regards,
Michal, www.amigaworld.org
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Hmmmmmmmmmmmm........Yeah i think you`re away with the mixer mate,keep dreaming......Amiga one,pegasos and the classics are all fine to me and i dont see your point at all as its actually stupid.....
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You're right we need new Amiga computers but with a modern motherboard (AGP 8x, DDR, Radeon 9800, etc ...) and a case which doesn't looks like a PC case. Apple is able to make very nice looking case, why not the Amiga. It would distinguish the platform from other computers.
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Its not that ppl are being negative its just you wont listen to the truth they tell you...
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by Melaure on 2004/1/27 14:46:54
Yes! Thats what I am talking about.
Amiga should be something different. Not just a PC motherboard with PPC on it.
Regards,
Michal, www.amigaworld.org
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1. Getting financial support from Motorola
...who have discussed offloading their semi-conductor operation in the past, and who are preferential to Apple who have a much larger market...
Don't mean to whizz on anyone's parade, but it's a topic up for discussion and that was my opinion.
2. Getting Shiftec to contribute with A4000T alike case
Now that's a great idea... I like the sound of a range of bespoke, official Amiga cases to fit new and existing hardware. Plus a proper Amiga keyboard too.
3. Talking with those hardware people with NuOS and Oliver
I liked the look of that OS, plus Oliver's Coldfire project deserves success. It's just that it simply doesn't make sense as a flagship CPU when there's the much more powerful and supported PPC around. However, if a Coldfire based Accelerator card was available for my A1200 I'd buy one tomorrow :-D
Hardware people? How about ATI? A supported chipset which is already having Amiga native 3d drivers written would give a head start, plus ATI are very 3rd party friendly and open with their documentation.
4. Intergrate some sort of MediatorPCI technology into this, + adding SD-RAM and AGP
If there's AGP then there's no need for an onboard chipset except for a lead-in base model with limited expansion capabilities.
5. Getting OS support from Hyperion in the end
Which would be far easier with a PPC based solution...
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True, the PC is boring. But it is darned fast and dirt cheap! The common user dont care about the actual hardware, they care about the actual software, how the beast looks and the very important price.
What the Amiga needs is cool software not found on other platforms and cool software found on other platforms. An idea could be to port OpenOffice 1.1 or 2.0 to OS4, since it would provide a whole host of features to the platform it so sorely needs.
A new set of expensive custom hardware? I don't think it is worth the investment. A custom design of the casing? Definitly
A custom keyboard? Oh, yes. (it is darn easy)
ColdFire? Oh, no! Use Intel-architecture (it is dirt cheap, mass produced and darn fast (yeah, I know this one aint popular))
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Give me a totally new miggy with a custom 3d graphics chipset alike the PS2 (but then faster than anything else atm) and some razor sharp, smooth and colourfull 2d graphics built-in and a revision of the copper and a super-slick and extremely easy, fast and yet incredibly versatile OS, and some great versatile software, like a new version of WordPerfect office and so. And of course great games like Thief (IV?), and a game that combines the gameplay of Stunts (with a track-editor of course) and the top-down and competitive gameplay of Supercars. And with that a 3D-version of Action Supercross.
my dream...
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a nice dream :) and some of it could be reality if people wanted to.
Its a shorter way to a new Amiga, than landing a person on Mars.
Regards,
Michal, www.amigaworld.org
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AmiDelf wrote:
Thats so wrong of you ....
Amiga 500, Amiga 600, Amiga 1200 was all custom based Amigas and they didnt cost too much at all.
OCS sold in millions, ECS was just a minor update, AGA was a medicore updated
the sold in 100.000s ..... how many new Amigas are you planning to sell to recoup
dev-costs ?
And don't forget that developing cutting-edge stuff was much much cheaper in the
1980s (budgets in a few millions) as it is today (100 million or more budgets).
The only halfway realistic approach would be doing it with programmable chips,
like the C=One, but that also means you will be atleast 4 years behind when compared
to "real" chips.
And it would still costs lots of money&time (how long has the C=One-project been going ?),
and would result in a system that is underpowerde by factor 10-20 both in GFX and CPU,
costing atleast 3 times as much (only mobo) as "normal" PCs.
Don't get me wrong, I would like such a system, but only as a toy, and there is a limit
to money I'm prepared to spend on such a toy.
Getting big companies into such a project is offcourse nothing other than an insane
daydream, so why don't YOU just start doing it in your past-time ?
Or are you just another one of those that rant&rave with lunatic ideas, but can't do
sh## themselves ?
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AmiDelf wrote:
This Amiga with go on like this
1. Getting financial support from Motorola
2. Getting Shiftec to contribute with A4000T alike case
3. Talking with those hardware people with NuOS and Oliver
4. Intergrate some sort of MediatorPCI technology into this, + adding SD-RAM and AGP
5. Getting OS support from Hyperion in the end
We need Amigas now,.. ! This could work, but then its up to people also. Dont be negative and its not that expensive.
Methinks you should get your dose of 'real life'-medicine...
Seriously, the idea is unworkable. Not because of a single factor, like for example money, or enthusiasm, but because of the combination of everything you can think of. For example: 'getting financial support from Motorola'. Why Motorola? What's in it for them? How much money do you think you need? How much money do you think you are going to make?
Another example: 'integrating some Mediator PCI-technology in this plus adding SD-RAM and AGP'. How much time do you envisage this is going to take? Why would you need AGP if that bus is solely used for graphics cards your system won't need anyway? (You already have AAA+++ or whatever, right?) Come to think of it, why have PCI? A lot of stuff in your system was customised, so what would you need PCI for?
Final example: 'Getting OS support from Hyperion in the end.' Great. Hyperion has been working full-time on AmigaOS 4 for... three years now? And that was with the original Kickstart-source code at hand. How do you plan on convincing them they should support your system? How long do you think it will take them? How much money do you think it will cost? Don't you think it is a bit of wasted effort to use an operating system with a hardware abstraction layer for your custom Amiga? (In other words, what is the difference from the end-user's PoV between an AmigaOne with your AAA+++ on a card and your 'Amiga' with AAA+++ built-in?)
Then I miss: applications, applications and more applications. People will want browsers, email-clients, various graphics tools, developer tools, play music and much more. Do you plan on writing them yourself? Please do not answer with 'We will use OpenSource!' because that is a sure sign you are not familiar with the vast problems of porting Unix-programs to a non-Unix environment.
My $0.02.
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if a 200mhz coldfire is faster than a 060/50 in dooing amigaos 3.x then i am the tooth ferry (lol not the boat) ..
do some research before you state that the 200mhz is faster, and btw u would need a helluva lot faster cpu if you want to do m68k emulation.
but then again i guess u want to ask hyperion or whom ever to do an port of the os for it, but then remeber thats where you are at the rock bottom again, as you need coldfire software!!! or else you will have to emulate m68k and the 200mhz is NOT! i repeat NOT! faster than an 060/50 under emulating.
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@Speelgoedmannetje
Why "like" the PS2's chipset? Sony sells the chipset independently ya know.
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Why "like" the PS2's chipset? Sony sells the chipset independently ya know.
That PS2 was an example I was going to use.... So they sell it independently? Hmmmmmm....
:-)
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All this time spend on starting something from 0, is counter-productive. The solutions mentioned, as the custom case/KB, is a nice idea that could be applied on the new Amiga mobos, and reestablish the lost trademark (we all remember our beloved modells with their distinctive cases).
It took too much time to be where we are at the present, and I think that all these resources (time/money/work) should be invested on the present Amiga solutions, in order to enhance and improve what we already have.
Hyperion should dedicate its time on games and Amiga OS develpoment, and the ColdFire guys just do what they do (there are plenty of amiga users that are looking forward to upgrading their old 68K hardware).
The last years we have been behind in h/w and s/w, and it's hard to keep up with the hardware advancement. Now is the oportunity to get even!
And last but not least, the software: this is what a platform really needs! It's useless even if it has the best OS on the world, if you can't do anything with it... (applications, drivers, games).
________
Lesbian movies (http://www.fucktube.com/categories/26/lesbian/videos/1)
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@PMC
Pinky, are you thinking what I'm thinking?
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Pinky, are you thinking what I'm thinking?
As in wouldn't it be great to license the PS2 chipset so we have a ready made competitive GFX / Audio solution that can cope with being connected to both VGA and standard SCART TVs?????
My God man! You're telepathic!
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Somehow "You must be nuts" isn`t enough to express the thoughts that hit me while reading this. Hey we are 2004 now, not 1994.
You say we need Amigas now.... well how long do you think the design of such a machine would take, my guess is 2-3 Years, if you have a hell of a lot of money to pay enough engineers.
The only thing I want to see (like most of the others) is a custom case.
Despite many hated it back then I think today the case of the Walker could be nice for the MicroA1, especially if you keep in mind that the MicroA1 is designed to work as a Point of sales/Information system.
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@Lemmink
The development cycle today is actually better than it was in 1984. I, being 1 man, working in my spare time, developed a system control chipset incl audio and 3d accelerated video, in 7 years. That's 1 man, working an average of 10 hours a week and having taken all of last year off from development.
And I have 350 more man-hours till it will be finished, conservative estimate.
Wanna know why?
The migration from schematical entries to hardware description languages combined with the arrival of inexpensive FPGA's that are useful for testing out a design in a real-world situation. Most of the old development-cycle has been supplanted. Then add in licensable cores, and the development time is now months.
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I like this project, but i prefer PPC to the old Coldfire, and an ATI Radeon coprocessor (AAA is too old :-))
An AmigaOne Lite but custom
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Well, thats an option. To go for PPC, rather than ColdFire..
Regards,
Michal, www.amigaworld.org
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Hi,
I think its a great idea in principle, but there are so many insurmountable barriers...
Also, don't forget that, rightly or wrongly, much of the Amiga's success was down to all the games available. Sure it was a great MM machine, but it was the games that shifted all those A500s
When I think of a cool system, with great built in gfx and sound, that can be connected to a TV, is reasonably cheap and has lots and lots of good games to help it sell, I think of one thing....PS2 - Oh, I almost forgot, AND the case looks cool (IMO)
Now if it was some kind of custom solution (maybe a kit? Amiga users tend to be technologically savvy copmared to most computer users) that involved taking the innards
out of the PS2, with an Amiga keyboard, an OS that booted off CD and could be installed to HD etc.
(AFAIK its already possible to run linux on a PS2, why not UAE?)
Now this is a project I would definitely devote time and maybe even money to.....
Or, I could just buy a PS2 and get UAE running on it.... :-)
Anyway, it is a nice idea, and I don't think people are being constructive by completely slagging it off, but I do agree that you have to face up to some hard facts.
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Doesn't the Commodore 1 use a standard SVGA chipset plus a "middle man" to control it? Why couldn't something similar be done in this case? Instead of custom designing the chips, you use off the shelf stuff, with logic in the middle that helps mimic the older stuff.
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Boy, for a thread about an architecture that has no chance for success, there sure are a lot of people jumping on board. :-)
1. Getting financial support from Motorola
Why would they be interested? Hey, Motorola! Yeah, YOU! Give us money!
2. Getting Shiftec to contribute with A4000T alike case
Why such a big case? Do you plan on putting twelve hard drives in it? Such a big box for such a puny CPU! ;-)
Oh, I get it. You want a massively parallel system! Let's put 4... no, 8 CPUs in there. It might actaully best a single, pathetic x86 CPU by then -- if your OS is properly designed, that is.
3. Talking with those hardware people with NuOS and Oliver
Who are probably the only people writing a unique OS for that processor.
4. Intergrate some sort of MediatorPCI technology into this, + adding SD-RAM and AGP
Why not go the whole hog and go PCI-X? AGP is just an accerlerated PCI.
Oh, yeah... nobody makes video cards for PCI-X. I guess that means we'd have to have a proprietary solution and manufacture it ourselves.
5. Getting OS support from Hyperion in the end
I'll refrain from commenting on this, since they haven't released their first OS yet. Of course, please keep in mind how long it's taken to get OS4 on the market. Or, did you think OS design is as easy, fast, and cheap as hardware design?
We need Amigas now,.. ! This could work, but then its up to people also. Dont be negative and its not that expensive.
"Now", meaning after this new wonder-chipset has been fully designed, tested, debugged, and goes gold... and by then, fab processes should have shrunken by 2-3 generations and everything would have to be redesigned all over again.
Why not take a Transmeta approach?
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i'd love it, a Real amiga yeah!
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Going PPC is self defeating. AmigaOne and Pegasos has been there, done that, unless you are talking something slower and cheaper like a 603 processor.
If you are going to go G3/4 PPC, well those options are already available with more coming.
:-o
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The main reason for this project, is to get the Amiga feeling back. Maybe even Eyetech is interested in the end.
I see a splitted community as I've got lots of mails supporting me, and here and also people wich dosent believe in such project and talks about dreaming. Yes, it is a dream, and it is a big dream for most of Amigans, to get the thing we all had before back.
PS2 is a good example on how Amiga could envolve yes.
Come up with ideas and I write them down,.. I also understand those wich thinks this idea is totally waste of time.
There is Amigans out there with knowledge of this things. Oliver, ApexSoftware, ELBOX, ++
A 3D-AGA chip like in PS2 in the new Amiga would boost it. It would give programers time and resources they never get anywhere else. I mean,.. all this new AGP gfx cards allways comes in new shapes. They give programers new standards and this results in more bugs in programs.
I dont say that a GeForce 4 TI 4200 card is bad or something, is just that programers should have the hardware to program for, and be good/better.
I'll give this going to Monday 09.00cet. Then starts working on this project for real. Getting companies interested. It wont be a easy task/job, but I love my Amiga 4000 and I would love to see a new Amiga. I will offcourse support AmigaOne, but its not the "real thing". It misses something... and Amiga Inc' dosent have any Amiga spirit left.
There is no advertising, the OS release is just never going to happend, and if it happends, only Amiga people will know of it.
Its better to try, than just do nothing at all!
Regards,
Michal, www.amigaworld.org
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Like I have already said, I support the sentiment 100%
What about all the people who will sit on the sidelines and, just for fun, just say "It'll fail, It'll fail!" These people are common, especially in the UK where I am from, where people seem to LOVE to see others fail.
What about all the trolls, all the self-destructive back-biting that has torn the community apart. They'd love to jump on any idea you might put forward and kill that too...
Like I said, I like the idea in principle!
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@downmix:
I would really like to hear more about your project. It sounds very interesting to say the least.
/Patrik
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I'd like to see this succeed. But it won't.
Now prove me wrong, please. :-)
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>Amiga 6000 for example:
>AAA+ custom chips
Who will make them? How much will they cost? How poorly/favorably will they compare to current PC chips from ATI or NVidia? If Radeon/Nvidia/Audigy/etc. chips are currently failing to meet your requirements, what needs changed to make you happy?
>3D customable chip
Who will make them? How much will they cost? How poorly/favorably will they compare to current PC chips from ATI/NVidia?If Radeon/Nvidia chips are currently failing to meet your requirements, what needs changed to make you happy?
>ColdFireV4 220MHz
Already slow compared to shipping AmigaOnes or Pegasoses.
>USB 2.0 as standard
>PCI
>AGP
>SD-RAM
I thought you wanted a custom based Amiga?? What does AGP here give you that your AAA+ and custom 3d chip don't?? Considering that now, is there a real need for the AAA+/3d custom chips??
>New 92 keys Amiga keyboard
How much will it cost? Is this really better than just getting Amiga keycaps printed for an existing PC keyboard?
At this point, I'm not really interested in such a custom thing. Why? it'll be a lot more expensive than even AmigaOne or Pegasos are, which already cost more than a PC where the only real difference to you are me is the type of processor being PowerPC instead of x86.
Now, the AmigaOne and Pegasos can both be bought and shipped right now, right? Considering how long we've all waited for a new Amiga, do you really think I'm willing to wait for your custom machine, with a friend of mine being an AmigaOne dealer, and able to sell me one of those a few months ago??
My job is designing programmable system-on-chip microchips, and others with desks nearby here do ASIC chip design for a variety of customers. Having an AAA+ chipset or custom 3d chipset is EXPENSIVE. ATI, NVidia, SIS/VIA/Intel/etc. do it because they sell zillions of the things. If you would limit your chipset to Amiga users, perhaps currently a few thousand, perhaps even 10 thousand, but I'm not sure there are significantly more than that if even that many, selling your motherboard would be outrageously expensive and you'd only sell maybe one or two to only the most wealthy and royally obsessed weirdos here. Commodore got a deal for a while because they owned the chip fab, and they still went bust.
You say people are jumping over to Mac because of their difference. How truely different are they? They have a PowerPC CPU, sure. They have PCI slots, and an AGP slot. They take standard memory sticks. They have ATI Radeon cards, and perhaps some have NVidia cards. They have USB ports, and perhaps Firewire. They don't have custom sound or video chips, they don't require weird non-standard SVGA monitors anymore, so other than the CPU not being x86, where is the special custom difference??
You know, this special different Mac that everyone is jumping for sounds an awful lot like what the AmigaOne and Pegasos offer right now...
It's just hardware at this point. There's no significant difference in what the Macs, AmigaOnes and Pegasos offer in hardware right now. Some have Firewire on board, some would need a PCI card. Some have network on board, some might not. Some take DDR, some take SDR memory, some take G3 or G4, some take G5 CPU. But these differences are small, and the only common special difference from PC hardware is PowerPC compared to x86 CPU.
Now, think about why people might want to change to Mac, is it because they want to escape x86? I don't think many people care about that, as that doesn't really matter for the user experience. What they experience is the software. The OS. The apps. The games. Will AAA+ or custom 3d chip improve this for them compared to the same experience using Radeon or Nvidia chips, or Audigy2 sound? Not without waiting a few years for chip development and some extremely serious price differences.
It's the OS that makes a difference. In the good old days, no one else made hardware that AmigaOS would shine on, and the price situation allowed it to happen for the number of units Commodore shipped at the time. After a while, other chips caught up, and the custom jobs were no longer "special". They allowed the OS to do what it did when nothing else did, but then got very old and pale in comparison to PC chips. The PC chipsets are now quite able to let AmigaOS shine, and let AmigaOS do things better than the now ancient custom chips ever could. And there's no way that a custom chipset only available for Amiga users will even begin to hope to catch up to the current big chip guys like ATI, NVidia, Creative Labs, etc. let alone surpass them. You don't have the hundreds of millions of dollars that they do for development, or the hundreds of millions of customers that they do to pay for it.
At this point, I consider ATI to be the supplier of my "custom" graphics chip. Either Creative Labs or whoever makes the chip on hte M-Audio Revolution card is the supplier for my "custom" sound chip. MAI and Via are the suppliers for my "custom" Gary/Agnus/Buster/etc. chipset. I'm currently content with that, because you can't do much better. Some will argue the MAI one has been done better by Marvell or whatever they're called, and they're fine to do that. But it's already been done... These companies will improve their products much faster than you can start from scratch, catch up and surpass them, and they can do it far far cheaper because they aren't limiting themselves to Amiga users and no one else.
Give me my AmigaOS. I don't much care what the hardware looks like anymore, or who else it may be available to. As long as it can compare to current standards and doesn't cost 10 times a smuch like stuff for my 4000T does, I'll be happy with it. I don't need "custom" chips, nor do you. The software experience is the only difference you'll notice compared to running Windows or Linux or MacOS or AmigaOS, and you don't need any special hardware for these software differences to happen. That's why Mac dumped Nubus and has PCI and AGP now. That's why Dave Haynie was dumping Zorro for PCI. That's why I don't care that my chipsets are available to Mac/PC/embedded systems users. AmigaOS/MorphOS can have already have been made to run on these things, the software experience is pretty much ready for me. Why should I need something much more expensive just to be more different, where the software experience really wouldn't change anyway??
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that's true, a good project, with all the right components, usb good graphics etc, but based on the wrong thing IMO
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>When I buy a Amiga, I want to buy a real Amiga, and not a PPC motherboard with a PC modified case wich a
>reseller puts tougether for you. Thats not an Amiga and I know that there is lots of people wich agree with me. But
>its TABU to say something else today, than going the cheapest way.
What's wrong with being less expensive? I hated paying $550 for my PicassoIV, equivalent to a $50 PCI card with same gfx chip/memory at the time...
Also, please explain how custom and thus more expensive hardware can make the software user experience so different and so very much better that what AmigaOne/Pegasos/Amithlon do now. Where do Radeon, Audigy2, etc. fail so miserably that you do not want them at all? Specifically what things do you want to improve on that will be so much better than those PC chips? What specifications will be so much better that ATI/Creative Labs/etc. are not already working on for their future products?
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>plus ATI are very 3rd party friendly and open with their documentation.
Haa haa, aaah aaah aaah, haa haa, ohhh, he he, uh, cough, cough, ahem. Sorry.
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>I will offcourse support AmigaOne, but its not the "real thing". It misses something... and Amiga Inc' dosent have
>any Amiga spirit left.
I've read through this thread, seen various people agree or disagree with you, but still no one has yet said WHAT is missing. Please, this one single detail seems very far out of my reach.
>There is no advertising, the OS release is just never going to happend, and if it happends, only Amiga
>people will know of it.
Same for Pegasos, Oliver's Coldfire board, Boxer, AGA, AAA, Zorro, and probably same for your board too. Do you really intend to market this thing to the masses in PC land?
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I'm still reading this because it's fun to harass idealists. :-D
The main reason for this project, is to get the Amiga feeling back. Maybe even Eyetech is interested in the end.
I think the only Amiga "feel" was because of how people programmed it. You put a disk in, and the program took over. That's unlike a lot of PC's these days, but not really unlike any game console. The only thing that could get that "feel" back is to be able to run software without installing it. Only game developers would really go for that. (Hmm... games... didn't the Amiga have something to do with that?)
Ah, but Kickstart early options, Guru Meditation, Workbench... these are the things that made the Amiga special.
Oh, and why ColdFire? Does that CPU magically offer more Amiga "feel" than any other processor?
I see a splitted community as I've got lots of mails supporting me, and here and also people wich dosent believe in such project and talks about dreaming. Yes, it is a dream, and it is a big dream for most of Amigans, to get the thing we all had before back.
Well, it's good to have a solid goal, but theorizing alone doesn't get you anywhere. Why do you think Apple gave up on their own core OS and adopted BSD Unix?
PS2 is a good example on how Amiga could envolve yes.
Do you know how much money it cost to develop the PS2 chips? Are you aware that console manufacturers lose money on hardware and require licensing fees on each game to stay in business? Did you know the core of the Emotion Engine is an embedded MIPS chip? Did you know the PS2 divides GFX processing between two different chips, which is one of the reasons it's difficult to program?
Come up with ideas and I write them down,.. I also understand those wich thinks this idea is totally waste of time.
My advice is to focus less on the hardware and more on the form factor, and the software interface.
A 3D-AGA chip like in PS2 in the new Amiga would boost it. It would give programers time and resources they never get anywhere else. I mean,.. all this new AGP gfx cards allways comes in new shapes. They give programers new standards and this results in more bugs in programs.
You'd have to have a good set of development tools to go with it. One of the big reasons Direct3D and OpenGL caught on wasn't to boost performance or make software work with all video cards. These kinds of APIs make programming easier, so programmers don't HAVE to do everything themselves. It's like comparing assembly to C. Assembly is faster and more reliable, but why go through all that trouble? The 3DFX Glide and S3 MeTaL API's didn't catch on because they were too hardware specific (Glide was, however, a stipped-down OpenGL, I've heard).
Abstraction and metadata is really making software bloat these days. If you just program intelligently, compatibility and performance falls into place without using highly proprietary hardware.
I dont say that a GeForce 4 TI 4200 card is bad or something, is just that programers should have the hardware to program for, and be good/better.
You *CAN* hard-code a GeForce 4 if you want to. If you think it's possible to make a new GFX architecture that puts nVidia to shame, and throw away programming tools to get that extra "edge"... feel free to try. :-)
I'll give this going to Monday 09.00cet. Then starts working on this project for real. Getting companies interested. It wont be a easy task/job, but I love my Amiga 4000 and I would love to see a new Amiga. I will offcourse support AmigaOne, but its not the "real thing". It misses something... and Amiga Inc' dosent have any Amiga spirit left.
I don't think anyone has ever defined the "spirit" of Amiga, and I don't think anyone ever will.
Instead, why not define, in detail, EXACTLY what disappoints you about each PC component that's already off-the-shelf? Like, what is it about the memory management capabilities of the GeForce 4 you don't like? Why do you like the PS2 Graphics Synthesizer, instead?
There is no advertising, the OS release is just never going to happend, and if it happends, only Amiga people will know of it.
No OS? Who will make software for it? If you make hardware without a specific software in mind, chances are it will just end up being a Linux box. :-)
Its better to try, than just do nothing at all!
Good for you. Start trying by writing an essay on what's wrong with the industry, how you intend to fix each problem, and try to collect as much talent as you can. Politics and human nature tend to be much more difficult problems to resolve than technical issues.
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OK, I realize my comments here have sounded very critical, and for that I appologize. I do applaud the fact that you have a dream, but there are realities that doesn't sound like you have seriously considered. It sounds like something that the market cannot bear financially. You want us to start thinking about a true new Amiga today, but it will take a couple years to complete this thing - you have to design and then test and then bugfix and then test and then produce the chips. You have to then design and test and bugfix and then test and then product the board. You have to then get the software working on it all. Considering you feel PCI/AGP to be important, what is your reason for this? Surely PCI/AGP cards will be advanced and marketed faster than your chispet, and thus soon be a suitable replacement, like Voodoo3 now replaces ECS Denise on my A3000?
I'd just like to see the people wanting custom chips to think about WHY they want that, and exactly what it is about standard PCI/AGP products already available and already in the upgrade phase at rich specialist companies that fails to deliver for you. What exactly is this special Amiga feeling that AmigaOne or Pegasos lack, why exactly do they lack it, and what exactly do you think needs changed to get that feeling back? How does the AmigaOS experience fail to be the AmigaOS experience? How does the look and feel of the software interface look and feel different on an AmigaOne than an A4000T? What exactly is wrong with the AmigaOne/AmigaOS4 product? What exactly is wrong with the Pegasos/Morphos product? What do you intend to do to make AmigaOS work "right" to you or me as a user on your board that it cannot do on AmigaOne or that Morphos cannot do on Pegasos? How will this be more "right" than how AmigaOS looks and feels on a bog-standard PC running Amithlon, and what exactly it is about Amithlon on a PC looks and feels "wrong" to you or me as a user?
I think there are a few important questions in that pile of mush for your project. I hope you think about these topics and can come up with good, specific answers. If you can, then perhaps your special chipset has a true purpose. If you cannot narrow things doen to very concise, specific reasons "why" things would be so different to me as an end user, or my grandmother, or your grandmother, as an end user comparing your product to the AmigaOne, Pegasos, or Amithlon options, then perhaps there is a chance that these other options aren't really so grossly and negligently lacking in something as you seem to think.
Do you know how much a mask set costs for a single chip to be fabbed? Or how long it takes for a blank wafer to have testable chips etched onto it? Or how many respins are realistic to get your design working properly in silicon, costing you new masks to fix problems? There's other important things you need to find out before you assume there will be customers to pay for everything. If it still all adds up in your mind, then I'd love to see how things turn out for you and your product. I just fear you have not yet looked into development times, realistic financial requirements, realistic selling prices, and what your market will look like when you are ready to sell the finished product.
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92 key keyboard? Which 2-4 keys are you planning to drop?
:-P
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1. Getting financial support from Motorola
That's the kind of talk I like, support from Moto
for PPC and, custom cases (but better than the old ones).
You might want to add the next obvious player in
the PPC game to the contact list... IBM
IBM is all over linux as the next best thing. If you
convience them that amiga is the perfect desktop
companion to linux severs, then we are back in business!
PlaZ
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Hello
Perhaps in the future, if fast, cheap "reconfigurable computer" using FPGA or other technology is available, such project may be possible.
The RC CPU can emulate X86, PowerPC, 68K or other CPU. Perhaps it will use WISC / Writable Instruction Set Computing.
The major players are Altera, Xilinx, Starbridges.
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The first goal for this project, is set. The AGA replacement is choosen. Now its up to the company to wanting creating such set-up. Yes, thats right. Sony. Getting in contact with them will be hard, but with some help, this can be done. Remember, this is a project. And it can fail, but for me. I want it to work out.
The new Amiga, will be based oppon Emotion Engine. It wont be a easy task. This is just the hardware part and partners needs to be talked too and more. Including this, AmigaOS would be rewritten a bit to handle Emotion Engine.
More updates for this project will come later.
Regards,
Michal, www.amigaworld.org
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AmiDelf wrote:
The first goal for this project, is set. The AGA replacement is choosen. Now its up to the company to wanting creating such set-up. Yes, thats right. Sony. Getting in contact with them will be hard, but with some help, this can be done. Remember, this is a project. And it can fail, but for me. I want it to work out.
The new Amiga, will be based oppon Emotion Engine. It wont be a easy task. This is just the hardware part and partners needs to be talked too and more. Including this, AmigaOS would be rewritten a bit to handle Emotion Engine.
More updates for this project will come later.
Regards,
Michal, www.amigaworld.org
Hang on? The Emotion Engine, that's the PS2's CPU, I thought you had chosen the Coldfire (A CPU much better suited to the Nuron project than your project). I think you mean the Graphics Synthesizer.
With all due respect what use is the Graphics Synthesizer without the "Emotion Engine", They need each other to work.
Anyway, The PS2 is no more powerful, in fact less so than my TNT2 in my old Athlon 600 Box. A cheap Bottom spec Duron with Mobo and a Geforce two can all be picked up as a package for around £100 now... You cannot compete with that!
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"The main reason for this project, is to get the Amiga feeling back."
As massive a step forward as Pegasos/AOne both are, they do lack the distinct 'Amiganess' with which we all identify. It's more than having an Amiga-like OS, it's down to the machine's character. Somehow an ATX mobo with PPC and BIOS doesn't hit the spot for me personally, but they deserve success all the same.
"I see a splitted community as I've got lots of mails supporting me, and here and also people wich dosent believe in such project and talks about dreaming. Yes, it is a dream, and it is a big dream for most of Amigans, to get the thing we all had before back."
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea. However, I see the realities being insurmountable. In an ideal world of course we'd all have our dream machine that kicks ass and happens to have a Boing Ball logo on it somewhere... :-D
"PS2 is a good example on how Amiga could envolve yes. "
Agreed.
"Come up with ideas and I write them down,.. I also understand those wich thinks this idea is totally waste of time. "
There's nothing wrong with dreaming, but everyone has their own point of view. What surprised me is how many realists there are out there who continue to support this platform.
"There is Amigans out there with knowledge of this things. Oliver, ApexSoftware, ELBOX, ++ "
Designing add on hardware is a whole different anvenue to designing a complete system and bespoke OS to go with it.
"A 3D-AGA chip like in PS2 in the new Amiga would boost it. .. all this new AGP gfx cards allways comes in new shapes. They give programers new standards and this results in more bugs in programs. "
A PS2 style graphics chipset would be nice. However why not stick with someone like ATI to ensure some legacy compatability?
"I'll give this going to Monday 09.00cet. Then starts working on this project for real. Getting companies interested. It wont be a easy task/job, but I love my Amiga 4000 and I would love to see a new Amiga. I will offcourse support AmigaOne, but its not the "real thing". It misses something... and Amiga Inc' dosent have any Amiga spirit left."
This is the sort of thing we need here, so I say good luck to you with all sincerety. :-)
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Amidelf: At this point your stuff sounds way too much like daydreaming.. People like me need a lot more tanglible projects before it's considered real and worth of support.
For quick comparision.. See http://www.iti.fi/iti5200.php
It's not a new Amiga nor has it never been intented to be one, but it is real existing hardware and it's having specs quite comparable to your dreams.
This demonstration/development board is about 10*10cm (4*4inch) is now available for evaluations and I belive it could be quite nice basis for portable/low-end Amigalike machine, *if* any of OS makers would be interested on making a port. Final board design could well be smaller, or contain some usefull additions. For example: this CPU has direct IDE/ATA interface in it.. it was not necessary on our design, but for making small (inexpesive) desktop system it would be quite usefull feature, also it's Ram controller has DDR-mode, at this board it's used on SDR...
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So what we really want is a BIOS-less A1 with a PS2 chipset, a PPC-CPU, pun into a CD32-like case, bundled with a wireless Amiga keyboard and mouse. Right?
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@ AmiDelf
I wrote this in another thread (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=6072):
The Amiga was traditionally very strong on Video/TV production. It worked both on PAL and NTSC, and in several resolutions. The custom graphics chips could be synced from an external source, so it was very popular to use it with genlocks. The custom hardware made things very smooth and flicker free, without heavy CPU usage.
Both the BoXeR and the Commodore One (http://c64upgra.de/c-one/s_specs.htm) uses/would use FPGA's to accomplish solutions very similar to the Amiga custom chips, with coppers, blitters, hardware sprites, etc (of course, the C-1 also has to take the C64 in account).
Both the Pegasos and the A1 hardware goes the mainstream PC/Mac way, with all standard components. That is great for a cost/price POV, but it does not make the hardware stand out.
I would like to see a new "Amiga" custom chipset. It could be made with FPGA's, fast and easy (ehrm, sort of at least). The features of the Xilinx Virtex-II Pro FPGA's (http://www.xilinx.com/xlnx/xil_prodcat_landingpage.jsp?title=Virtex-II+Pro+FPGAs) looks kind of interesting IMO, as an option they can even include PPC CPU cores on the chip (up to four of them).
Forget about advanced 3D, there is no way (and no reason) to compete with the 3D chips developers. This is about powerful 2D with consumer TV's and video production in mind, with improved custom chips features. Perhaps some basic 3D functionality that can be used for 2D planes manipulation (for zooming, twisting, rotating, picture in picture, etc). It should be flexible and powerful in screen resolutions and modes (all VGA/SVGA resolutions/modes included, all TV modes, and it should go as far as HDTV), it should use 32 bit graphic (alpha channel in hardware), it should offer multiple displays, it should have a blitter, a copper, "windowing mode" (smooth HW scrolling of a small view of a much bigger screen), etc. It should offer HW antialiasing. It should offer at least one video in channel, with built in genlocking functionality.
As a start you could produce a graphic card with this chipset (or with sound too, a "media" card) in PCI/AGP. This could be used outside the Amiga world too, in PC's and Mac's for video editing/broadcast solutions. It should offer high quality video output, multiple displays, lots of connector options (including component video connectors). If the chipset has a built in CPU (like the virtex), it could run an OS internally (AROS with custom low level, hardware banging drivers in asm?) which handles everything internally "the Amiga way", independent of the OS on the main board.
This chipset could also be used in STB's and other consumer electronics/home entertainment products.
A new "Amiga" motherboard with a new custom chipset would be great too. It should be PPC of course, and it would also have PCI/AGP for expansions (and 3D cards for the ones who wants one of these).
But I'm just dreaming away here! :-D
It will be interesting to see what (if anything) may come out of your plans.
As I said, I was just dreaming away (like you are), but you could check that thread out. There were some interesting responses and comments made there. :-)
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imaboringperson:i dont know when u used an real amiga last but :) , i am pretty sure amiga is "92" :) .. but then again i belive u where just messing :=)
anyway
amidelf:good luck with sony , best chance u have is to step into their office in oslo or use any of the big developer teams in norway to reach them (Hp/Dell etc) and this i say because i had to do the same some time ago , there is an "question form on the sony website , diffrent to which sections you use" or was anyway.
anyway if i had 3 billion ukp in my account i might have tried this, but first of all i would have decided everything and made sure it was waterproof! (ie no mishapps or changes as you go (which killed COMMODORE and many more)
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I want to go further than just daydreaming. I want a new Amiga now! So, I will go for the project from Monday on. Promoting it! Getting people involved and more.
I have to learn more about Emotion Engine, how it works and more. Its the decission now, but in the end it could be something else.
Regards,
Michal, www.amigaworld.org
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A Motherboard with Graphics and Sound On-Board and an OS who is optimised to this hardware would be great.
I think thats what makes the PS2 or the XBOX so powerfull. The hardware itself is actually pretty lowend.
I don't think it matters that much wich chips will be used. They're more or less the same. Just don't reinvent the wheel.
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AmiDelf wrote:
I want to go further than just daydreaming. I want a new Amiga now! So, I will go for the project from Monday on. Promoting it! Getting people involved and more.
Before you embark on your journey, answer this simple question. It has popped up in the discussion a few times, and you haven't answered it yet. And even if you think the majority of us here are cynical old bastards without a single spark of imagination and idealism, you really should think very hard about the answer. Not as much for us, but far more for yourself.
The question: What do you feel or think constitutes the 'Amiga feeling' you are trying to recreate with your new setup? Or, put in different words: What do you feel or think is currently lacking from the hardware we can purchase today---something so vital and unique that it is absolutely necessary to develop it yourself?
Right now, you are without a shadow of a doubt acting on impulse and a strong desire to 'get something going'. You select a few chipsets at random and pray to the good spirits that it will all, somehow, magically, come together. It doesn't work that way. Think before you leap: it will save you a lot of trouble later on.
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The new Amiga, will be based oppon Emotion Engine.
Uhm, that is not going to happen. Sony wont give their valuable technology for free and they do not operate with
individuals. To make it happen you must establish a partnership with Sony but since you don't own Amiga and you don't
control OS there is no chance.
Sorry m8.
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The finished idea will be published on
www.amigaworld.org on Monday
Regards,
Michal, www.amigaworld.org (http://www.amigaworld.org)
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@patrik
It's not at a point I feel comfortable demonstrating it. The basics are pretty straightforward, it is a 2-chip solution that covers audio, I/O and video in a system. A copper-like solution combined with a GPU and DSP, a little more difficult to program than the Amiga but you can do more with it.
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@bloodline
Actually you can put the EE w/ graphics system as a subsystem of a computer rather than as the heart.
In fact, a similar manner to how the Hombre was to work.
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lempkee wrote:
imaboringperson:i dont know when u used an real amiga last but :) , i am pretty sure amiga is "92" :) .. but then again i belive u where just messing :=)
Err, my Amiga 1200 has 97 keys...
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that_punk_guy wrote:
lempkee wrote:
imaboringperson:i dont know when u used an real amiga last but :) , i am pretty sure amiga is "92" :) .. but then again i belive u where just messing :=)
Err, my Amiga 1200 has 97 keys...
He probably wasn't counting the magic invisible troll keys...
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Are you aware that IF your project will be successfull, you would split even more the Amiga community? We are already divided into two communities, one supporting the A1 and the other the Pegasos, which I find highly unneccessary... you would really like to create a new, even smaller "Amiga" community?
Instead, why don't you support the AmigaOne and/or the Pegasos? Both they need coders to port new software, to make new demos... Why don't you focus on this, which is really needed by the community NOW?
The Amiga feeling was made at most by its os and software! You don't like the hardware? Many people at the time also complained for the architecture of some of the classic amigas, like the a600 or the a4000 with its crippled memory bus and the slow performance of the AGA chipset. There's no computer that would satisfy everyone, so let's work with what we already have!
And about that Amiga feeling... well I guess it's about time it gets 'upgraded" to today's standards.
Varthall
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I think a computer built like the Amiga would work incredibly well even today. I mean, there's a reason why consoles are so popular. People like custom hardware, and making a custom computer with the option of adding extra hardware could do incredibly fine.
And why would the custom chips be so incredibly outdated? I mean, the PS2 has custom chips developed by Sony, and that wasn't exactly outdated when the console was released. Even after all this time, some games look better than anything on the market. If you could get developers to develop for the custom chips, which I think they would do at least the first couple of years and then move forward to the extra hardware added to the computer.
I would ABSOLUTELY support such a project, especially if it would be an Amiga, and was backwards compatible. And I don't think adding the AGA chipsets would work fine, like how the PS2 have a PSone included. And no, the PS2 doesn't EMULATE a PSone if anyone wondered.
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I would not support it. You have 2 great machines already.. Pegasos and a AmigaOne.
To me, the hardware is not what made the Amiga "feeling", or what I "identified" with. Just because a new piece of hardware (a machine) comes out doesnt mean you're going to recapture what was in the past.
What gave me that "feeling" or "identity" you're talking about was the software, the comradierie (sp) of the Amiga community as a whole. With software you were able to see what your system could do, and were impressed..thats what gave me the good feeling.
Give it time...its too early to brush off a Pegasos or A1...once MORE software is developed (games, utilities etc) the feeling will come back.
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>I mean, there's a reason why consoles are so popular. People like custom hardware
I bought my Xbox to play Halo and Extreme Beach Volleyball, not because it was custom hardware. I would buy a PSX2 to play Grand Tourismo 3 and perhaps a couple other specific games, but because it has custom hardware. I can't think of any Game Cube games that I'm interested in right now, and I sure as heck won't be buying that custom hardware that I don't have a good game for just because it's custom hardware.
Consoles are so popular because people want to play videogames they like, not because the thing is different than a PC computer.
>I mean, the PS2 has custom chips developed by Sony, and that wasn't exactly outdated when the console was released.
Sony also sell millions of the things to pay for the chip development and manufacturing.
Please, explain exactly what features or characteristics or whatever it is you guys see lacking in off the shelf parts that make them not have this mystical "Amiga feel" to them. If you don't know exactly what it is, how can you hope to make sure it appears in your AAA+/custom 3d chipset implementation to finally make you happy?? What if you only have a vague idea of what is missing, will you then only implement half of this special Amiga feeling to your chips and still be unhappy? What exctly is the void needing filled, and what exactly needs to be done to fill it?
I'd like my curiosity satisfied as to what is missing from AmigaOne/Pegasos and standard PCI/AGP cards, and being able to explain it to us "doubters" will also help define your product so that you can properly design and implement what you are talking about to your own satisfaction for the final product... For the moment I've given up trying to understand the obsession with expensive hardware (the remaining Amiga market is so small there's no way in heck it'll be as cheap as a PSX2 chipset from Sony), but I would like to encourage you guys to think about what exactly needs done to make you happy. Being able to explain it will help you understand how and what to design for your project.
To the guy that spent 7 years designing a chipset and the original poster, and others who want custom hardware, does this almost finished thing he made satisfy this special Amiga feeling? If not, what needs changed to make it fit this need?
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This Amiga wont be splitting Amiga community at all. It will just follow the path of Commodore. Amiga was a computer, and it still should be.
As for now:
Amiga 5200 will be the prototype. To this stage. It will take about 4-5 months to the end product. If it goes well and people will be interested in buying it. Lets bring it out.
Amiga 5600 is just a dream in the future. But it would contain some sort of "new" custom gfx chipset.
Amiga 6000 is planned as beeing the final product.
----
Amiga 5200 specs:
- Virtua3D gfx custom chipset (as seen in Dreamcast)
- PPC G3 600MHz (We've left ColdFire atm)
- Kickstart v4.0
- AGP slot
- PCI slots
- Zorro slots
- 2x SD-RAM slots
- Amiga joystick and mouse ports
- USB 2.0
- USB Amiga keyboard
This Amiga will be aimed at home and entertain marked. It will also be a nice multimedia computer for shopping centers, infochannels for Shopping centers and more. You will be able to watch DivX on it, play Amiga games and be supported.
Remember that this is a project and it is a dream. I want it to go thru, with some help, it can be done.
I want the Amiga back, so others too. AmigaOne will be a nice alternative offcourse and we aim at AmigaOS4 or something else.
Regards,
Michal, www.amigaworld.org
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It will take about 4-5 months to the end product.
HELLOOOOOOOOoooooo
Is there anybody out there ?
Even a a full-fledged and experienced HW-dev-team would take more than that for
a simple mobo, and it would take years for a dedicated hobby-crew.
Honestly, I would say that people like you harrasing companies with nutcase-ideas
are doing much harm for anything "Amiga" (and they are certainly doing nothing good).
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@Kronos
C'mon, did he mentioned Amiga Inc. in this? No, so? :-P
Coder
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@Coder
I have absolute 0.0 tolerance for people demanding gigantic
projects to be taken (both SW and HW) without having the slightest clue how much
work it is, what it will cost, and how to get these going.
I have for example no problem with Oli and his CF, even if I have some strong
doubts about it, and I really like stuff like this Nueron, where someone just starts
doing something, and doesn't make the slightest fuss about it until he has something
real to show.
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- PPC G3 600MHz (We've left ColdFire atm)
- AGP slot
- PCI slots
- 2x SD-RAM slots
If you upgrade SDRAM slots to DDR you could use Marvell's Discovery II chips...
Plus you get an integrated gigabit ethernet ports. It is not custom design chip
but letting a standard chip to handle standard slots is not that bad.
I recall there was a computer using Discovery II chip, but can't remember its name right now 8-)
Marvell (http://www.marvell.com)
:-D
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@AmiDelf:
My thinking is that it wouldnt be much of a difference between this computer and an AmigaOne/Pegasos equipped with a AGP-card containing a Virtua3D chipset.
The graphics core of the Virtua3D chipset found in the Dreamcast is actually a Power VR Series II graphics processor. To give a little hint - the Power VR Series III was used in the Kyro1 and Kyro2 graphic cards.
So if you stuck a Kyro1 or a Kyro2 graphic card in an AmigaOne/Pegasos you have quite the same machine as the one you intended... a bit better performing minus the Zorro slots and Amiga/Atari/C64/etc joyports.
/Patrik
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amigabill wrote:
>I mean, there's a reason why consoles are so
popular. People like custom hardware
Consoles are so popular because people want to play videogames they like, not because the thing is different than a PC computer.
Actually, consoles are populare because of both these reasons. The simplicity of the consoles and not having to mess around with PC-specs and stuff is what makes them so irresistable. And I know even more people loves the Xbox because it has up-to-date games AND because it can be hacked very easily. You don't HAVE to do anything with the hardware, but you CAN if you WANT to. That's a strong selling point in my opinion.
I don't think I'd buy the PS2 if it was just an alternative to PC, Mac or Amiga. If these consoles were all just alternative computers without any custom sets, I doubt a very few people would care about getting all of them. Even though the amiga was very ahead of it's time when it arrived, the PC didn't have custom chips and the Amiga was more popular. And I don't think it was JUST because it was superiour to the PC and such, but because it was easy to use. I think computers like the classic Amiga would work perfectly fine today. If it even had a DVD-drive that worked the same way as the classic amiga diskdrive (just pop in the disk and it'll play), with every single DVD having their own startup-sequence like the disks had, then it would be a killer machine. Just like the classic amiga, but with todays technology.
And I know that Sony have the money to create custom chips, but I never said anything about the project being cheap. But if a large company bought up the Amiga brand, and made something like this, I think it would be a huge hit. Computers are popular, consoles have popular. Amiga had all the advantages of both, and I believe many MANY people would be happy to buy something like this.
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AmiDelf wrote:
This Amiga wont be splitting Amiga community at all. It will just follow the path of Commodore. Amiga was a computer, and it still should be.
If it wont split the community, it should be compatible with the existing ppc Amiga mobos, a difficult task as initially you planned to use a different cpu. But as I can see now...
Amiga 5200 specs:
- Virtua3D gfx custom chipset (as seen in Dreamcast)
- PPC G3 600MHz (We've left ColdFire atm)
- Kickstart v4.0
- AGP slot
- PCI slots
- Zorro slots
- 2x SD-RAM slots
- Amiga joystick and mouse ports
- USB 2.0
- USB Amiga keyboard
... it looks like a cross between an A1 and a Pegasos, with the joystick and mouse port integrated (a bit like an integrated catweasel).
Are you planning for an official license by Amiga Inc.,
so that it would run AmigaOS4?
Varthall
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This is just craazy ppl. Ever thought about this??
There is nothing stopping HW makers, designers etc, to make us specific GRAPHICS cards. ATI, NVIDA both sell their GPUs to people. What's stopping someone equivelent to say the people who made Cyberstorm PPC cards to make a Graphics card with ATI 3D or whatever AS well as some sort of CLASSIC hardware implimentation for AGA compatibility or even AAA if they want, if you want and slap it on a nice FAST AGP bus??
Thing is, A1 motherboard is going to be just great, and there's noting stopping development of any manner of cards Specific to AMIGA being developed by whoever! and doing it on standard PCI or AGP standards!! Even CPU 68/coldfire Emulation cards, whatever!. This is the spirit of AMIGA, being able to put your imagination into relaity, use the PC for what you want it to do. The sky is no longer a limit.
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Good luck, you'll need it!
Have you any idea how long it takes to design a motherboard? For such a system as you proposed, from scratch would take upto 3,000 hours excluding any programmable logic.
The Emotion engine cost Sony, 500 Milllion US Dollars and 2 years to develop. Think you can still design your own chip?
AGP will be obsolete by the end of this year. Take a look at PCI Express, that is the replacement bus for graphics stuff. If you are serious, get some NDAs with IBM and look at the PPC970.
Unless you are going to sell 10,000 units a week, Nvidia or ATI will not talk to you.
Designing the system is maybe 30-40% of the work, the rest is the verification of the system, bear this in mind.
I'm not trying to completely dismiss your idea, just provide an insight into the amount of time and effort it takes to develop cutting edge electronics. I develop cutting edge computer systems for a living, it costs millions to develop such a system, it puts hairs on your chest, as you pull them out of your head in frustration at times.
Still you've got to dream.
Ian
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You people keep talking about hardware. The OS will be the core of the machine. The hardware can be great or not so great, but if the OS sucks it doesn't matter. Look at winblows!
Impressive hardware and a crappy OS.
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I'd still like to see a cooper equivalent wiich is something that doesn't exist AFAIK...