Any REAL collectors?

[lordv]

By the way, does anybody know if there are still unsold amiga (a1200) chipsets available somewhere? Is there any verilog/whatsoever description of amiga chipset? The amiga (with its hardware) must live forever, but what we have - will die sooner or later. It would be possible to re-create full amiga chipset within some modern FPGA's.

[lordv]

@Castellen:

what 'no'?

No unsold source of amiga chipsets or - impossible to re-create amiga chipset from descriptions, if there are some?
Other ways are of course impossible.

..otherwise, the amiga would die forever.

[lordv]

@bloodline

You had better read the thread.
Forget about the custom chips.

errrm... I've read that even before posting here. The only useful statement there is that the original schematics of amiga custom chips is PROBABLY lost.

[lordv]

@Holley

Amigas will live forever - with MinitITX boards mounted in A500 cases running UAE

...and why miniITX and not ordinary PC? Anyway, this is like the life after death for you. =)

[lordv]

@bloodline

No, the Most useful statement is that even if the designs were still around, they would be useless. The Amiga chips were laid out by hand at the transistor level, for a chip fab technology that was old even in the early '90s.

You cannot just sit and make a whole new chip on a transistor level. You need first to have description either on language or just in logic gates/etc. AFAIK the first amiga chips were even made as a big bunch of boards full of logic ICs.

The only way you could build those chips now would be in an FPGA, and that would need to use a chip spec language like Verilog or something. That would have to be worked out from scratch using the technical specifications of the chips (The original designes would be useless).

OK, have you ever seen the specifications for the aga chipset? I only saw a poor descriptions of aga/ecs registers together with some copper-blitter documentation 'how to use it'-styled.

Secondly once you had built the Chipset (you probably fit the whole lot in one FPGA), it would take a large amount of logic just to interface with the original boards/chips, as the electrical specification of modern FPGAs (current, voltage timings, skew, jitter etc, etc...) are very different from the specs of chips/board built 15-20 years ago.

brrr! Newly remade amiga chipset means a newly made CPU board - either coldfire (VERY doubtful) or PPC ( emulating or jit-emulating - probably the best). Just the another reincarnation within modern technology.

Turn on your PC, download WinUAE... run it... enjoy

Hmm, have you ever used winuae? (joke . It's like a piece of sh... damn, just terrible!

[lordv]

@bloodline:

Hmm, have you ever used winuae? (joke . It's like a piece of sh... damn, just terrible!

In what way?

In EVERY way. Old good and nice 50fps games jerks in winuae. Sound also jerks sometimes. Screen resolution does not switch automatically when it changes in emulated amiga. And more, more, more.

[lordv]

@bloodline

Odd, you must be using a different version of WinUAE to me then

0.9.92

It is impossible to have:
1. smooth movement in games (and even smooth movement of mouse pointer - see it at real amiga!) unless the frame rate of CRT monitor (TFT here SUCK!) will be exactly 50Hz and the emulation will be perfectly synchronized to the vertical beam movement. EVERY other case - even the frame rate of 100, 150, etc. Hz WILL suck.

2. simultaneous perfect sound AND constantly smooth movement (if all conditions of 1 are observed), unless we have sound and video systems clocked from SINGLE source (which is obviously wrong in case of separate video and sound cards).

All abovementioned statements are obvious by nature - provided you're familiar enough why do you see really smooth movement in old amiga games, in amiga mouse pointer, in SOME tv programs, in SOME LED running lines, etc. =)

[lordv]

@Trezzer

Try then ordinary winuae 0.9.92 with ordinary 3.1 roms. At least games should mostly run. And don't hesitate to experiment with it's configuration =)

[lordv]

@bloodline

I don't want to say you are wrong, but I have my main machine running at 75Hz, and all games run beautifully in WinUAE... Silky smooth, tell me how Shadow of the Beast 1, 2 or 3 run.

AFAIR sotb aren't 50fps game, so it's a bad example.

Anyway, 75fps is even worse than 100 - some amiga frames are displayed for 1 monitor scan, others for 2 scans.

I honestly think you are making this up, As long as 50 frames are displayed per second it will look like the Amgia original... if the PC's frame rate is higher than 50, WinUAE will be able to generate 50fps... it will look great. IT DOES LOOK GREAT!!!

As long as 100 frames per second are displayed with two of them being the same, you'll see a jerking sprite. If you can't understand what I tell about, just take a good 50 fps TV with the real amiga and compare games and old demos - with winuae at 100 fps display mode. The thing is: for the really smooth-looking EVERY next frame must differ - in every other case there WILL be jerking.

I even doubt now you really had a real amiga and saw real oldskool 50fps demos there and played 50 fps games =))))