Don't email Jens - Clone-A limited beta production run.

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I have just published a few pictures of the C-One extender card. More info can be found on the C-One cores mailinglist.

Production of the extender cards will be made this coming week. You can either buy an extender card alone (proof of purchase for the C-One board is required!) for 99,- EUR, or you can buy the combo of "board with extender" for 333,- EUR. Prices do not include shipment.

Needless to say that these prices are heavily subsidised. The C-One project caused huge losses, therefore they are not available from resellers any more. No exceptions - anything C-One related must be shipped directly, with all the inconvenience that ordering from Germany may cause.

Check the website: http://www.c64upgra.de/c-one

and the mailinglist:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cone_cores/

Clone-A testing on C-One will be done internally first. No schedule available - it might take half a year until we release the first Clone-A core for this extender board. As always with the C-One: Don't buy it if it doesn't already do what you expect from it. Buy it for what it is right now, not for what it might become in the future. Our plans are "implement a Z2 memory expansion" and "make one IDE port available to the emulated Amiga". Both has not been done yet.

Another goal is to speed up the CPU. I'm expecting about twice the speed of an A600, plus anything we might gain from 2nd level caches (the FPGA on the extender is HUGE). Since there's no comparison platform, I won't risk any forecast on the actual performance.

Jens

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No need to talk about Jeri in this thread, it seems like she has left the C-One project for good. All the fame for turning the C-One into the historic piece of hardware that it is right now (world's first fully re-configurable computer) goes to Tobias Gubener, Peter Wendrich and me.

I have put more pictures of the FPGA extender card online, this time from the final production run (previous pictures were of the hand-built unit that I made last weekend). Check www.c64upgra.de/c-one and click on "pictures"!

The production of the FPGA extender is finished, the units are shipping now. If you already have a C-One (Redrumloa did sell a few through eBay, right?), you can buy the extender board alone for 99,- EUR, or you can get the bundle of C-One board, extender card, SIMM and CPU/Ram card for 333,- EUR (about 420 USD at the moment - the dollar has done well in the past few weeks!).

The boards come with all the latest modifications done (for example the BA mod that makes lots of cartridges work!), and with Newboot installed - that's the nice graphical user interface that replaces the Amstrad-look-alike startup screen that we previously had.

Jens

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tonyyeb wrote:

So how close are we to a fully working (purchasable!) Clone-A?

Far, far away. The project is growing and growing, the user interface is taking up lots of resources, and I have just put two more people on the project. It's HUGE and it's worth waiting for.

Jens

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TheDaddy wrote:
Can you quickly summarise please?

It's not that easy to do "quick" if you're talking about a totally different principle of computers.

A-Clone: what is it and its specs?

A-Clone: There is no such thing. However, I have a project called Clone-A. This is the internal summary name for the project "reverse-engineering the Amiga set of chips for inclusion in various products". I do have boards that plug into the real sockets and they work in any combination with the original chips (just as a proof that I do the exact same inter-chip-communication as the original set), but I have no plans of selling chip replacements.

Plans are to make a new machine that is living-room-compatible. Something silent (all-flash based) in a nice case that lets you play games. You can choose between various processor speeds and chipsets - not on a by-unit-basis, but on a by-game-basis, as the same machine will have it all built-in. One game works better with 68000@7MHz and OCS, another game takes advantage of the 030 command set, fastmem and AGA. Clone-A technology will provide all this.

Knowledge gained from reverse-engineering the chips and inter-chip communication has already been used on the Indivision AGA flickerfixer.

C-Clone: is this an improved C64 clone? Specs?

You probably mean "C-One". It was meant to be a "C64 on steroids", but never reached that point. Back when the board was designed, it was meant to be an 8-bit only system for running C64, Amstrad/Schneider and VIC-20 software. With the new expander board, the 8-bit limit is broken, as the Minimig port shows. The C-One with the extender card will be used for public beta testing the Clone-A technology sometime next year. The Minimig core will be released next week, maybe already this weekend.

The C64 core for C-One has reached a compatibility level that is better than many emulators already. You can plug real SID chips (up to two of them!) to the board and use both from the C64 side. Both NTSC and PAL are supported, you can switch between the video modes while the machine is running (yes, the whole timing model is being changed while the machine runs!). If you always wanted to see all the nice PAL demos, this is your chance.

C-One is an ATX board with small changes. You need to provide a case, power supply, a CF card, PS/2 mouse and keyboard, monitor and some skill, as the case needs minor modifications.
The monitor must be VGA, and if you want to watch PAL demos, it should support a vertical frequency of 50Hz (for example compatible with old Amiga-scandoublers in PAL modes - Indivision AGA is not a good test here, as it can output PAL in 62.5Hz).

Jens

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arnljot wrote:

What is a little confusing to me is what I get if I now buy a C-One with a FPGA extender.

Will it be "Clone-A capable" without the nice livingroom compliant case and formfactor, or is it a different product.

My understanding that this is a kind of "beta tester program"?

Will it be able to run the minimig core, or does it do Clone-A? Or is it something completely different?

It runs Minimig "now", and it'll run parts of Clone-A later (that is, the Amiga chipset and a 68k processor, making it a vanilla machine with a scandoubler and a harddisk). However, it will not be capable of being the final product, as the final Clone-A will have 24-bit colour, more fastmem, and an Indivision-AGA-like VGA output (always over 60Hz, no matter what screenmode).

Yes, it's kind of a betatester board, and it will be abandoned at some point in Clone-A development. However, it will still be able to run Minimig then (including enhancements that we're already working on), and you still have the possibility to run all the other cores, including the beta versions of Clone-A, the C64 core, VIC20, Amstrad/Schneider, turbo CPC and maybe more to come.

Jens

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TheDaddy wrote:
@Jens

How does it compare to the Natami?

It exists and you can buy it. I haven't seen Natami running, and neither has anyone I personally know. Also, it's a different concept: Natami wants to create a new platform, with all the problems that brings. Who is making new software for that new platform?

Would you be interested in me designing a case for it?

Sure - that case would also fit other ATX boards (C-One is "almost" ATX), so your market is huge :-)

Jens

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Darrin wrote:

Is sounds great.  How easy is it to swap between the different cores?  Do you just change an SD card or does anything need manual "reflashing"?  On the C64 side, can you connect a real floppy drive such as a 1571?

All cores can be kept on the same CF card. You have a graphical menu when you switch on the machine, and you choose the kind of machine that you want the thing to be "now". It's not re-flashing, but more like loading, as FPGAs are SRam-based chips.

Instead of one reset button, you have two kinds of reset-buttons on the C-One: The reset as you know it resets the machine that you have started. The "re-config" button brings you back into the menu where you choose which machine you want it to be.

The C64, but also the VIC20 can connect IEC devices like printers, the 1541 or the 1571 floppies. The accuracy of the C64 emulation is so good that it works with floppy speeders and track-loading demos.

However, it might be more desirable to load software from the CF card, because you have it in there anyway. Amiga stuff in ADF format can be loaded, and the C64 can be launched "with the program already loaded", so you don't have these slow loading times. The C-one combines the comfort of an emulator with the accuracy of real hardware.

Jens

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TheDaddy wrote:

so I would be delighted to make something custom for the Clone-A :-)

Oh - sorry, misunderstanding, I thought you wanted to design something for the C-One. The C-One ia "almost ATX", but Clone-A will have a custom form factor, NOT ATX.

The exact form factor is not known yet, as the project evolves.

Jens

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TheDaddy wrote:
@Jens

So timelines are:

Consumer Clone-A.........next 6 months?

I have said nothing about a timeline in this thread. Please don't try to push me into a direction where I'm not going. I already made the mistake of giving an outlook on a production date/time for the Clone-A machine that I was thinking of back in 2007, and I missed that. Now that ideas evolved even more, and the concept of the "living-room-compatible computer" is continued to a degree where I wouldn't have imagined it only a few months ago, I'm sure that I'd miss any other timeline as well.

It's done when it's done, and technical specs that I have mentioned here may change (mostly improve). Like I said, Clone-A is a HUGE project, and I have only mentioned a subset of the possibilities here. That's why the C-One hardware will at some point not be able to be Clone-A any more - the hardware is just not powerful enough to do all that. However, it's already powerful enough to outperform Minimig.

It's worth waiting for. However, I can't, and therefore will not give an outlook on how long the wait will be. It would be just another thing that we've seen too often in the Amiga market: Big announcements and nothing ever comes. I'd like to be a little bit better than that (although I do have my share of not-yet-delivered products...).

Jens