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Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: Amiga_Nut on November 24, 2013, 12:46:55 PM
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Now this topic isn't talking about value for money or anything like that as far the x1000 goes. I was watching a video recently linked on here that talks about the new CPUs to be used and they mentioned that they will still have the Xmos on the new boards just like the x1000. Now I may not be up on the whole scene for the x1000 and what has happened to it but I don't remember hearing that anything has been done with the XMOS chip on all these machines.
My question is simple, is it not possible to program the Xmos chip to replicate the functions of Agnus/Denise/Paula (and the AGA equivalents) in the FPGA to essentially remove the requirement for UAE? Think of it as on-board minimig style board as what I am trying to explain.
I can understand that floppy drives are no longer being mass produced so there is no point talking about a replacement disk controller. I think if we could get a NG Amiga that essentially has firmware hooks to run old code that requires OCS/ECS/AGA and build it around a budget CPU (single core, given that OS4 is a single core based OS).
I think many people would consider buying such a machine given the OTT prices for some big box Amigas and it would remove a barrier that make many people feel NG Amiga is not really an Amiga at all given they use the same technique to run Rocket Ranger as a Windows PC or OS X Mac (ie UAE emulation).
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Xena can't recreate the old chipset. It's a mistery why they added that features that nobody has found a use for yet, besides lighting blinking leds.
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Now this topic isn't talking about value for money or anything like that as far the x1000 goes. I was watching a video recently linked on here that talks about the new CPUs to be used and they mentioned that they will still have the Xmos on the new boards just like the x1000. Now I may not be up on the whole scene for the x1000 and what has happened to it but I don't remember hearing that anything has been done with the XMOS chip on all these machines.
There are things going on - but nothing definite released yet as far as I know.
My question is simple, is it not possible to program the Xmos chip to replicate the functions of Agnus/Denise/Paula (and the AGA equivalents) in the FPGA to essentially remove the requirement for UAE? Think of it as on-board minimig style board as what I am trying to explain.
Which FPGA are you talking about, exactly? I don't think there is an FPGA on the X1000 is there? I know there is on the Sam boards, but not the X1000 I don't think.
You will always be tied to UAE, though, I'm afraid - there's no escaping that. The xmos could possibly be used for AGA-like functions, but it'd be of very little use because there'd be no way of using them for games (95% of which are hard-coded to use the chipset).
I think what you're wanting is to be able to boot off a game disk or maybe run WHDLoad and have it run natively.... but while that'd be rather cool it's just not possible without an emulator, as the Amiga games are too closely tied to the hardware.
I can understand that floppy drives are no longer being mass produced so there is no point talking about a replacement disk controller. I think if we could get a NG Amiga that essentially has firmware hooks to run old code that requires OCS/ECS/AGA and build it around a budget CPU (single core, given that OS4 is a single core based OS).
OS4 is in the process of migrating from single-core.
The price of the CPU is only part of the problem. Take the X1000 - it costs around £1400 + VAT for the board, of which about £600 I believe is spent on the very expensive CPU. That still leaves £800. Nobody's getting rich off the X1000 - that money is because of development costs. Even if you put a dirt-cheap CPU on a board, the development of that board is what costs the money.
I think many people would consider buying such a machine given the OTT prices for some big box Amigas and it would remove a barrier that make many people feel NG Amiga is not really an Amiga at all given they use the same technique to run Rocket Ranger as a Windows PC or OS X Mac (ie UAE emulation).
If by the big box Amigas you mean the AmigaOne and Sam machines - they're really not OTT at all - you have to factor in all the costs of development. When you mass-produce goods the development costs per unit are tiny, but on a machine you're only producing a few hundred of, they're massive (hence the cost per unit to the buyer). In fact, when you consider the usual prices of boards custom made like the X1000 board was, it's an absolute bargain (you can easily pay 10,000 Euros for a prototype board in the embedded industry). Of course you can't just decide to mass-produce, either, because that requires a massive outlay of cash, and you may well supply more than there is demand for.
The biggest problem I think, though, would be you'd end up with a machine that didn't know whether it was a next-gen Amiga or a Classic one. The next-gen element would be compromised by the use of the single-core CPU, and the classic element would never run as well as a real Amiga, and would always cost much more.
Also, even if it did run classic Amiga software natively, I think the die-hard Amiga users would still hate it anyway. For many of them, if it doesn't say "Commodore" on the box, it's not a real Amiga.
I do, however, take your point that it would be a good thing to be backward compatible. I think the best solution for this would be a Minimig-on-a-Card. Stick it in a PCI-E slot, and have it work like the bridgeboards do on the classic Amigas - let it share graphics (a simple electronic monitor switcher would do), and take the keyboard and mouse input from the host like janus.library does. Even better, much of the software development is already done by the Minimig guys (though I'm not sure what the license is). That's what I would look at, anyway.
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XMOS processors are certainly curious devices.
And no, they are not powerful enough to emulate parts of the Amiga chipset.
But I have seen one doing a pretty credible imitation of a C64's video display generator.
And, one of the ways I came to suspect the Paul Gentle had a hand in the X1000's creation (before it was announced) was the PA6T processor used and the presence of an XMOS processor.
You see, Paul's firm had already done work with the PA6T AND Paul had published an XMOS based sound card design.
Anyway, think of it as an mcu like device added to the motherboard, flexible, but not too powerful.
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That's about the size of it, yes. The only thing I would add though is that just as CPUs get faster with development, so do the XMOS chips - the current generation ones are more powerful than previous ones - and with Xena you should be able to just add a newer generation XMOS if you need one, I'd guess.
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Wow thanks for the detailed info guys.
I was just wondering if you could use the Xmos on the system at a firmware level rather than something on the OS level so as to provide some sort of unique emulation and an OS function that just remaps registers and memory virtually but everything else is executed on the XMOS. Sort of like a built in Minimig type device.
It's like how the PS3 emulates the PS1 with hardware components that using OS can be mapped into a virtual PS1 environment at the firmware level still (hence PS3 still emulates PS1 and not PS2 which was more like UAE).
I don't have a problem with the machine or the prices was just curious. I am planning on getting one of the new A-EON machines with the fastest CPU option now instead of an x1000. I might buy just a board and build me own custom 'Commodore looking' case as it would be my first NG Amiga :)
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Xena may not be able to do those things but AFAIK it does have access to the cpu, along with the Xorro slot. You could possibly use Xena as a bridge to a Xorro card that does this.
Chris
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XMOS chips are microcomputers, you program them to do things and then use them. You can put them inside robots, or SDR or other things. They are good at controlling things. They are basically stand alone simple computers.
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What's the point ? Processors are getting faster and faster. UAE is just a little app now. Plus apps are no longer that useful and have mostly been replaced now. What's the point of spending many resources having a Xena solution whrn UAE already does its job perfectly?
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Whats the point? Same reason as all the custom chips in the original, take a load off the CPU. with something like that you could run a heavy app, "Gimp" or such and still have an old good game running on another screen with little performance loss.
Chris
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The point is Amigas should not need emulators to run Amiga games ideally. Someone should put an FPGA loaded with Agnus/Denise/Paula inside it and an FDC too and map them into first 2mb :)
You can boot SF2 [or any other] DOS game on an i7 3770k PC and run it without DOSBox to compare.
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I hear a lot of similiar complaints about UAE. It's not the function, it's how you get into UAE.
Are there any preconfig or minimal install guides for it?
I'm pretty sure AROS and OS4 allow you to open your software with one click.
I'll check out how long it takes to set up and post back here.
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You can fire up UAE automatically with your Fav configuration on any supported OS.
You can also fire up UAE with that config on OS start up. You can make a Linux or Windows box go straight into Workbench and appear to be an Amiga.
You've been able to do this for years. Sorry for the off topic.
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I don't see why anyone would be confused at the utility in having on board mcus.
I use them as peripheral interfaces and controllers in some of the things I do.
That started way back with chips like the Intel 8051, but there are a lot of others now.
ARM chips from STMicro and TI.
Mips chips like the PIC32.
At least a dozen other different ROSC designs.
And plenty of conventional designs.
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The point is Amigas should not need emulators to run Amiga games ideally.
I don't see why. PS4 doesn't run PS3 games, nor PS2 games and of course no PS1 games.
Wii U doesn't run SNES games.
SNES didn't run NES games.
an Intel Mac won't run MacOS 6 apps, and even not PPC apps.
You can boot SF2 [or any other] DOS game on an i7 3770k PC and run it without DOSBox to compare.
When thoerically, you could install DOS on a modern PC, provided that:
- your PC has a BIOS
- you have a copy of DOS
- you have a way to install/run it (most modern PCs doesn't come with a floppy drive)
- you have a partition readable by DOS (there's no way to out of the box read NTFS partitions with DOS, and I'm not talking about writing, cause most games will want to write your save states, settings,... right ?)
- you have a supported soundboard by DOS (you wouldn't want to run your game without soundblaster sound, right ?)
Oh... and I'm not talking about games that will run too fast and crash.
No, actually I don't think you may easily run your DOS games on a modern PC without having to use DOSBox... And there's nothing wrong with that.
DOSBox solves every problem you may encounter above... plus you won't need to patch your game if it runs to fast, won't need to reboot on DOS each and every time you want to play your favorite game.
Really, I see no reason why developers should spend so much time playing with Xena or any FPGA to have an Amiga core running when it's so simple fast, and you get so many benefits when going the emulator way. This goes for any modern computer/console (PC/Mac, PS4/XboxOne). And I see no reason why it should be different with the Amiga.
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There are things going on - but nothing definite released yet as far as I know.
Really? Something that doesn't already have an existing and better and cheaper solution through PCIe/PCI/USB?
What may that be, if I may ask?
:confused:
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Paul had published an XMOS based sound card design.
Why? With their extreme price tags, doesn't the X1000/Cyrus have sound capabilities? And if not, doesn't it exist truckloads of sound cards for all kinds of market segments with PCIe/PCI/USB interfaces that's well tried, proven, better and cheaper?
:confused:
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The point is Amigas should not need emulators to run Amiga games ideally. Someone should put an FPGA loaded with Agnus/Denise/Paula inside it and an FDC too and map them into first 2mb :)
The whole point of the entire "Amiga NG" movement (AROS, MorphOS, OS4, A1, Pegasos, X1000, etc, etc) was to break free from that old HW that became way too limited in the early nineties already, to move on, to take Amiga into modern ages.
If you want OCS/ECS/AGA HW, then you are more into Retro stuff than NG. Look for old Amiga HW on E-bay etc, or get yourself a Minimig or similar. And there is nothing wrong with UAE on a modern computer, it adds a whole new dimension of flexibility and ease of use.
But whatever the "Xena" is meant to do (a question nobody can answer, not even Trevor), it's *not* about Amiga chipset (it can't do it, even if you wanted it). So it's off topic in this thread!
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There are things going on - but nothing definite released yet as far as I know.
I love the "yet" in there.
The real reason the XMOS chip is going to be on the new boards aswell is this: The "red guys" really suck at admitting defeat. Putting those chips on the boards doesn't cost much, and Trevor pays for the manufacturing anyway - so we're going to get completely useless XMOS chips on anything they offer from now on - BECAUSE IT WASN'T A STUPID IDEA, YOU TROLL!
OS4 is in the process of migrating from single-core.
There was a vague hint that the Friedens might be working on it, that's not the same as "in the process of migrating".
Actually, didn't Solie claim at AmiWest that only Gallium 3D was missing so they could release 4.2? That would mean multicore support is still 5-6 years off, at the very least.
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Really? Something that doesn't already have an existing and better and cheaper solution through PCIe/PCI/USB?
What may that be, if I may ask?
:confused:
The obvious one I'm tempted by is as a floppy controller, like the Catweasel which is constantly unavailable. You can already get an X1000 with a Catweasel MkII as an option, but I'd like it to be more standard than that (as I think Trevor would).
That's just an example of the sort of thing which isn't available via current cards - there are areas which the modern market just doesn't care about, but which do matter to Amiga users. The XMOS to me is a configurable interface which allows us to make our own peripherals cheaply which could never normally be done.
I do know that people have been looking at using it more, but I don't know how far they've got or anything more concrete than that, sorry.
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The XMOS community is quite active, it's a great standalone platform. http://www.xcore.com/projects (http://www.xcore.com/projects)
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- you have a supported soundboard by DOS (you wouldn't want to run your game without soundblaster sound, right ?)
I don't believe that modern graphics cards are backward compatible with all the old vga modes either.
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The whole point of the entire "Amiga NG" movement (AROS, MorphOS, OS4, A1, Pegasos, X1000, etc, etc) was to break free from that old HW that became way too limited in the early nineties already, to move on, to take Amiga into modern ages.
If you want OCS/ECS/AGA HW, then you are more into Retro stuff than NG. Look for old Amiga HW on E-bay etc, or get yourself a Minimig or similar. And there is nothing wrong with UAE on a modern computer, it adds a whole new dimension of flexibility and ease of use.
But whatever the "Xena" is meant to do (a question nobody can answer, not even Trevor), it's *not* about Amiga chipset (it can't do it, even if you wanted it). So it's off topic in this thread!
It's not an Amiga then. Who said there has to be a 'Classic' and 'NG' Amiga division anyway? So why oh why is nobody going to make a 'real Amiga' and once and for all marry up the arbitrary terms 'classic Amiga' and 'NG Amiga' because quite frankly the term 'classic Amiga' stinks as much as the renaming of Star Wars to Episode IV:A New Hope :) If I can't boot my mint condition King of Chicago disks on a machine it is not any more 'Amiga' than my DeII PeeCee running WinUAE in the startup folder is it? It's the killer app waiting in the wings for the company with the foresight to think of a way to once and for all make a single Amiga to cover ALL our needs given the technology is there to replace the costly method MOS Technology had to use in the 80s and 90s to make 'Amigas' ;)
Reason? It's called frame accurate emulation ALL OF THE TIME, something my 2ghz dual core can not manage on WindowsUAE (so I fail to see how I will get any better even on an x1000 frankly), the most well catered for OS as far as Amiga software emulation goes, and to have a ready to go back catalogue too actually, there are 100,000s of Amiga games for sale right now on ebay worldwide, and Super Stardust AGA pisses all over ALL Asteroids remakes from Atari 2600 to Playstation 3 so why re-invent the wheel or suffer a tiny catalogue of entertainment software for your chosen 'NG Amiga' when we can easily have the best version of many iconic games running natively in the same way as PCs can still run iconic games like DOOM for DOS natively with a simple bootdisk to get to the C:\ drive.
A PC user can dual boot a copy of Ultima IV on their PC...I have to find a way to transfer my saves from a real floppy onto an ADF and then run a 3rd level of software above the OS Kernal to jerkily approximate the execution of an Amiga game inside emulation.
UAE+ MOS/OS4/AROS != Amiga. This is how Macs and PCs with opposite endian CPUs play Amiga games, if it wants to have the honourable name 'Amiga' on the case (or boot screen) it should have no less difficulty loading REAL Amiga games as an i7 PC has loading an EGA copy of Rocket Ranger from original 3.5" disks to be fair no?
It's not possible to make the chips again as discrete IC's on the boards I understand BUT why is there no talk of FPGA based core being included on the motherboards to make them 'Amiga'. The cores for various FPGA chips seem to be out there and working just fine on OCS/ECS IIRC
Hell Jeri's C-One computer had FPGA plug-in modules last century to support machine compatibility properly.
Welcome to the less than satisfactory world where 'Amiga' machines and 'Amiga OS' are made by two completely isolated companies with peanuts budgets, at least if ONE company was doing both we might get the sort of machine that users are crying out for (users who don't want to p!ss away 1000s on a 200mhz A4000 kludge to play Wipeout 2097 and render Lightwave scenes faster than a snail that is) rather than something just 'nice to have in addition to my real Amiga' situation.
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I don't believe that modern graphics cards are backward compatible with all the old vga modes either.
Doesn't the emulators use overlay to scale up those old modes?
:confused:
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It's not an Amiga then. Who said there has to be a 'Classic' and 'NG' Amiga division anyway? So why oh why is nobody going to make a 'real Amiga' and once and for all marry up the arbitrary terms 'classic Amiga' and 'NG Amiga' because quite frankly the term 'classic Amiga' stinks as much as the renaming of Star Wars to Episode IV:A New Hope :)
I probably care a lot less than you about "being an Amiga", "real Amiga", "classic", "NG" and whatever. Names and definitions is not important. But you don't have to look particularly careful to see that there is still a solid Amiga Retro fan group around, entirely focused on *real* Amigas, Minimig, and UAE perhaps, and then there is also a group of people who left all that behind, and instead focus on MorphOS/AROS/OS4 running on newer HW using more modern technology standards. The first group is mostly interested in OCS/ECS/AGA, since this is what the games/apps of the time used. The second group is naturally more interested in having as efficient 2D acceleration, 3D acceleration, Overlay, etc in the driver support for the Radeon graphics cards they are using. There is nothing wrong with this, there is room for both.
BUT why is there no talk of FPGA based core being included on the motherboards to make them 'Amiga'. The cores for various FPGA chips seem to be out there and working just fine on OCS/ECS IIRC
Hell Jeri's C-One computer had FPGA plug-in modules last century to support machine compatibility properly.
But that's purely about Retro, not about 2013.
There is a ball (retro) and there is a cube (NG). What you are saying is that you want the cube, but it should be ball-shaped. That doesn't compute. If you like round things, go for the ball directly! If you somehow remodel the cube into a ball, it will no longer be a cube, and that's what the cube community is interested in. And the ball community already have plenty of options anyway, so...
:)
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@TMHG
+1 here.
The Amiga as we know it from those days isn't going to return - there'd be no point in spending thousands and thousands to replicate a 1980's computer when the 1980's computer can still do it perfectly well.
I'm in favour of compatibility with the old Amigas (i.e. reading floppies, running UAE) but compromising our much faster, newer hardware by making it run software from over 20 years ago just doesn't make much sense to me. There's no way if Commodore were still going they'd be making "Amiga"s with Paula etc. in - they'd have dropped the custom architecture years ago when it became an expensive and slower solution than using off-the-shelf parts (which wasn't the case when the Amiga was invented). The important thing isn't the hardware in the box any more - custom hardware is just too expensive these days and will always be slower - it's the OS. That's what differentiates an "Amiga" (be it AOS 4 or MOS or whatever) from a Linux/Windows/whateverOS machine.
Embrace the future by buying a NG Amiga or MOS or whatever, and enjoy the past by keeping your A1200 fighting fit. Have your cake and eat it, in other words!
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Doesn't the emulators use overlay to scale up those old modes?
This was in relation to running old software on a modern pc without using an emulator.
It's not just a case of scaling the graphics, older modes were planar and had much different layouts in memory.
I believe there are some old PC demos with effects that can't currently be duplicated on emulators.
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The important thing isn't the hardware in the box any more - custom hardware is just too expensive these days and will always be slower
Wrong, because it is to me and other people. For me, and many others, the whole point is the hardware. This is completely subjective.
Embrace the future by buying a NG Amiga or MOS or whatever
Again, completely subjective. The future for me isn't AOS4 or MorphOS, and I'm not even remotely interested in those software platforms. I'm not saying these platforms suck, just that I'm not interested ;)
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If only the cash was available to make a memristor based FPGA Amiga. It doesn't matter what the chips are when you can write them on the fly. Current FPGA is the next best thing and to my mind Xorro and Xena would have been better replaced by a large slice of FPGA cake. Natami was a great idea too but alas...
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As far as backwards compatibility is concerned with the "real Amiga or not" argument, I have but one word for you.... Mac.
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The XMOS community is quite active, it's a great standalone platform. http://www.xcore.com/projects (http://www.xcore.com/projects)
I will take a look through that lot later. I've not looked at the current state of XMOS projects for a while now.
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Wrong, because it is to me and other people. For me, and many others, the whole point is the hardware. This is completely subjective.
I know where you're coming from - and the whole essence of the so-called "Classic" Amiga is indeed the hardware. I just meant that the hardware isn't going to be developed any more - there's no future for custom chips. Luckily FPGA means that we can still have hardware solutions compatible to the Amiga, but custom fabbed ICs? Not going to happen.
Again, completely subjective. The future for me isn't AOS4 or MorphOS, and I'm not even remotely interested in those software platforms. I'm not saying these platforms suck, just that I'm not interested ;)
Nothing wrong with that. If you're happy with a platform that isn't going to be advanced any more (there won't be any more 68K AmigaOSes - though AROS covers that somewhat) then there's no need to go NG at all. Personally I like all the bells and whistles that NG OS's bring, but as always - Your Mileage May Vary. :)
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What's the point ? Processors are getting faster and faster. UAE is just a little app now. Plus apps are no longer that useful and have mostly been replaced now. What's the point of spending many resources having a Xena solution whrn UAE already does its job perfectly?
I've tried E-UAE, WinUAE and UAE, but none of them do perfect emulation. Most importantly hardware emulation in a multitasking system requires buffers for everything, which naturally makes input/output lag. It's an awful experience if you are playing games.
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The obvious one I'm tempted by is as a floppy controller, like the Catweasel which is constantly unavailable.
http://www.kryoflux.com/
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...The future for me isn't AOS4 or MorphOS, and I'm not even remotely interested in those software platforms. I'm not saying these platforms suck, just that I'm not interested ;)
Not a problem.
Personally, I'm bored stiff with Amiga legacy hardware and have been experimenting with other home brew designs.
I'd like to build a cheap '040 based system with PCI expansion.
Without legacy compatibility, this should be very cheap.
And for me, the future is MorphoS (or whatever it gets called once it morphs again into 64bit).
But then, I'd freely admit that MorphOS is not Amiga (can't be - its not cursed).
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http://www.kryoflux.com/
I know about the Kryoflux, and it seems a pretty cool piece of kit.
But I'd much rather have built-in support for reading floppies, rather than a USB dongle. It all seems a bit too hacky to be "official" with a machine, if you see what I mean. Plus the Kryoflux people have never shown any interest in the Amiga as any more than a target machine, as far as I know - they want to read Amiga disks, but not on an NG Amiga. I could be wrong on that front, but I've never seen such interest.
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I know about the Kryoflux, and it seems a pretty cool piece of kit.
But I'd much rather have built-in support for reading floppies, rather than a USB dongle. It all seems a bit too hacky to be "official" with a machine, if you see what I mean.
If you utilize on-board XMOS chip you need additional circuitry.
Plus the Kryoflux people have never shown any interest in the Amiga as any more than a target machine, as far as I know - they want to read Amiga disks, but not on an NG Amiga. I could be wrong on that front, but I've never seen such interest.
I dont understand what you mean here. There is source code and they offered help when I was about to port the software package to MorphOS. Unfortunately I never had time to do it.
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What the earlier poster suggested: People want a user-friendy Amiga OS that they can launch the old software from. They would prefer not to go near a Windows or Linux.
FPGA plus AROS 68k would fit that bill.
FPGA still needs some development. Perhaps in the future someone will make an add-in card.
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If done properly you could do it with JIT on OS4 with a proper display adapter.
a good FPGA would fit the bill well.
Chris