FPGA Replay Board

[amigadave]

They are shipping now, just slowly as I work through the pre-orders.
It takes a lot of time to hand assemble and test each board.
Now I have FCC and CE approval I'm going ahead with mass production.
/Mike

Going ahead with "mass production"!  That is great news Mike.  Would you care to share what "Mass Production" means?  How many boards are going to be manufactured and assembled in the next production run?

Glad to see that you worked out the last few obstacles that were delaying this day from happening.  The FPGA Arcade Replay board is a great project and I think it has good potential for future expansion and enhancements in both speed and features.

Please let us know all the details that you can.  One of the best things about the FPGA Arcade Replay board is that you have been so open and have shared every step with us about what has been going on behind the scenes without all the silly secrecy that happens with almost every other Amiga related project.  Your open communication has been a breath of fresh air in this community.

Great work and good luck with your plans (what ever they are) to sell hundreds of these boards, if not thousands.  There are so many possibilities for this project and where you take it in the future.

[amigadave]

Asfaik, send it in or compliance testing, expect failure and then correction, repeat until you fixed all demands. That gives you a paper you can shove the EMC inquisition. Cost approximate 20-30k USD per test.

If MikeJ has just spent $20k to $30k on getting the FPGA Arcade Replay board certified, he must have some serious plans for mass production and sales to recoup that amount of investment.

Hopefully there is a cheaper method of obtaining those certifications for small scale inventors, or many small projects would never see the light of day (if these certifications are required to make them available for sale to the public).

I think it would be a great thing for public awareness about the Amiga and all of the great old games that were available for it, if MikeJ's Replay board ends up for sale in large retail outlets and sells in the ten's of thousands of units, but some how I don't think that is MikeJ's plan.  Unless he has been quietly working on such plans behind the scenes for a long time and has an investment partner with a marketing plan that includes advertising and packaging, including a case w/PSU and pre-installed AmigaForever with Amiga ROMs & lots of games and applications.  (I am not even sure that Colanto's license would allow such pre-installation of their product)

Any product that raises Amiga awareness and brings a few former Amiga users back to using this, or looking at other developments in the world of Amiga today, is a positive thing.  Any Amiga related product that can be successfully marketed in mass numbers will be a good for all other parts of the Amiga community as a whole.  With a little bit of luck and the right marketing, packaging and investment backing, the Replay board could maybe be successful in selling many thousand units (not just to Amiga fans, but Arcade fans as well), and with a little more luck, could even break into the realm of selling a few ten's of thousands of units, but it would not be easy and could be a risky investment if sales turned out to be not so good and too much stock was produced.  Packaging and marketing would be two critical items that will control how much success it can achieve.  That plus MikeJ's desire of how big he wants this product to be.  He might prefer to keep it small and completely under his control, without any influence from outside partners.

[amigadave]

Please spam protect the email ..

@mikej, How can one find work piece and have your stuff for yourself in a bar?

Yes, Firedawg, please edit your post to protect MikeJ's email address from spam-bots that crawl the web looking for email addresses.

If it does not get edited soon, can one of the Moderators here please edit it to make it more spam-bot proof?

[amigadave]

Without reading all 73 other pages, are these available now? If so, how much are they?

I think the price is 229 euros for the version without the composite output RCA jack, and 249 euros with composite output, but check MikeJ's website for the latest info.

The current batch has most likely already been spoken for, but send MikeJ an email asking for him to add you to the list of potential buyers and he will contact you when more are ready for delivery, or if he has any left that are ready to ship from the current batch.  He stated that he is very close to being ready for mass production, so what ever his definition of "Mass Production" means, will probably be explained soon and he will tell us how many boards he is going to produce next (last batch was 48, or 50, so next batch is sure to be more than that).

I think that Mike is going to have more, or all of the assembly work for the next batch done by another company in China, so there should not be as long of a delay, between the time he has the PCB's produced, and the completion of the boards for testing and ready for shipment, as there was for the last 48 to 50 boards that he hand assembled and tested by himself.

(all of the above is to the best of my memory, and subject to corrections by other members here, or MikeJ himself, as time permits)

[amigadave]

My version of Jakub's core is now up and running - I've been adding some customisation for the Replay board etc. Not totally finished yet but getting close. This will beta while Jakub and I figure out to merge back. He is focusing more on RTG graphics and the 68060 at the moment.

I've finished testing another 5 boards today which will ship.

I'm also working on the daughter board, still aiming for mid-late April PCB production, depending on how long it takes to get the new firmware released.

/Mike

Your progress on the daughter board does not mean that the PCB production you are aiming for in mid-late April is for more daughter boards, does it?  I thought your earlier posts indicated that you were almost ready for a "large" production run for the regular FPGA Arcade Replay boards.  Is that correct?  Or do you have a planned production run of more daughter boards for mid-late April?

Are the next batch of boards going to be assembled more by the plant that is doing the surface mounted part soldering, so that the boards you receive will be ready to test and ship, or are you staying with the same partial assembly by the Chinese with you doing the through hole components soldering yourself, then the testing, before they are ready to ship out?

I already have mine, but I think these questions when answered, will prevent some of the confusion that might exist regarding your next plans.

Congrats on getting closer to being ready to sell more of your boards.  I am looking forward to the updated firmware and also eventually for the daughter boards to become available.

[amigadave]

Thank you.  I hope to share some pictures of my completed "Computer Room" when it is done.  3 Walls will consist of a large U shaped desk where I can hopefully set up all of my working machines.  In the center of the room will be a large "project" table for the machines that are in pieces.

I still get the feeling that I'll run out of space and it will end up looking like a junk yard.  

Sounds like my room, with what used to be used as a pool table, except I don't have the U shaped desk, only an L shape.

I have not been able to play a game of pool/billiards for many months, as it is covered with computer parts and computers that are partially disassembled.

I am hoping to get things straightened out a little so I can invite a half dozen Amiga users over for a weekend meeting some time before the end of the year.

I was hoping to see some news about the FPGA Replay Board when I saw this thread at the top of the forum list.  Sorry Mike, for contributing to the off topic discussion.

[amigadave]

If 68060s are turning into rocking horse poo then I'm sure some of us would be happy with a 68040 on the daughterboard.

I already have a 68060/50MHz (RC version with MMU & FPU, IIRC, not XC version), but it is not the last mask revision that can be over-clocked to 100MHz or more and might not be able to run any faster than 60MHz and will require active cooling to do that.  I was hoping that MikeJ could find some of the faster 060's that are capable of easily running at 100MHz, or faster, so I could get one of his daughter boards with the 060 installed and working reliably at the 100MHz or faster speed, directly from MikeJ, but if that is not possible, I am happy to get an "Unpopulated" daughter board and install my own 68060 into the socket, and choose which clock crystal to use myself.  If I can find one of the now rare "FAST" 68060's at a later date, I will install it into the daughter board and remove my slower 68060.

I just hope that the daughter boards will begin to be released by MikeJ soon, with the extra RAM, USB ports and Ethernet port, all working and ready to go.  That is going to be one "Sweet!" small footprint A1200 Amiga, in a Micro ITX case.  

I wonder if it will be possible to get a USB wireless NIC supported under AmigaOS3.9 in the near future?  I actually bought one that uses the Prism2 chipset, but Neil Cafferkey told me that he has not written USB support for any of his Prism2 drivers, so it is unlikely that my USB Prism2 wireless NIC will ever be supported.  I also doubt that MikeJ will ever be adding a PCMCIA slot to the FPGA Arcade Replay board, or it's daughter board to let us use our wireless NIC cards from our A600's, or A1200's.

[amigadave]

I see the following options :

7.14 MHz 68000 (cycle accurate with original CPU and chipset)
14.28 MHz 68020 (")

xxx MHz enhanced 68020 FPGA mode - single cycle as much as possible, cache, ~100MHz
xxx MHz 68060 (>100MHz) or until it blows up.
??
/MikeJ

p.s. I'm in Beijing but I'm told a whole load of chips for Replay production just landed at my place

FPGA chips, or are the chips that just arrived 68060 chips for the daughter boards?

I need to find me one of those last revision 68060 chips that is capable of being pushed up to and some times beyond 100MHz, because the only spare 68060 chip I have is only capable of 50MHz to 60MHz.

I hope a new firmware file is available soon that will allow us all to run AROS 68k on our FPGA Arcade Replay boards.  Any news regarding a firmware update MikeJ?