FPGA Replay Board

[Louis Dias]

I think Natami just ceased to become relevant....


Modern (fast memory) + a 100Mhz 060 would run OS 3.9 at a 'reasonable' speed I reckon.


If this comes off, even some (would-be) NG Amiga user's might change their mind

I think you need to do more research.   This is not Natami's target level of performance.

Congrats to this project.  This will be the ultimate retro hardware (simu/emu)lator.
Since it's going to be capable of emulating all retro hardware, what is the incentive to upgrade it further in future revisions thereby negating any future price drops?  Also, the cost of this '060 board should be easier to pin down, are they known?  '060's are not cheap regardless if they are going on a Natami or a Replay board.

[Louis Dias]

You can buy an 060 for about $40.

It's my understanding that the higher-clocked ones can be pricey.  Where as 50Mhz ones are cheap(er).

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/prod_summary.jsp?code=MC68060&tab=Buy_Parametric_Tab&fromSearch=false

[Louis Dias]

That argument sounds really sound to me. Use the Replay board to run other (less boring) software.
This '060 daughter card really makes the system attractive. Frankly, I don't think I'm going to want to pay out the nose for a Natami.
A nice, low cost '060 powered Amiga clone sounds cool though.

Unless the '060 is used, you'll pay out the nose.
Natami is aiming for more performance and an '050 on the fpga.  Hence it will *probably* cost less than a Replay with a *new* 060 and daughter card.

The Natami is still a step ahead in performance as an Amiga...and that's not an insult to the Replay.  All you have to look at is the fpga used and the memory used.
However, the Natami will not be user-reprogrammable to run alternate platforms and that's where the Replay comes into its own market.

The Replay is going to be a great alternative to the Frankenstein method of accelerating classic Amigas...and run older alternate platforms.  There is no ill will between the two teams.

FPGA technology is advancing the 68k platform.  Minimig, Replay, Natami offer us NEW hardware at the performance and budget of your liking.  This is a win for Amigans everwhere.

[Louis Dias]

Surely any core the Natami uses in FPGA (and thus performance) could also be used by the bare FPGA Arcade?

Already it has a working 680x0 core in FPGA capable of running WB3.x and running at insane speeds.  As it looks like the 68060 will be running at 100MHz or more, I have to wonder whether the Natami '050 softcore will be able to keep up with a real 68060 at that speed.

It is going to be interesting to compare both machines.

From a pure "Amiga" point of view, I still see the Natami and FPGA Arcade as I used to view the A2000 and the A500 (or A4000 and A1200).  The Natami seems destined for a nice big case, full of expansions and which never has the top fitted because you're always adding to it while the FPGA Arcade is going into a tiny case where you never have to mess with it.  

NATAMI's fpga is larger and faster than Replay's so unless the team licenses only the SAGA core, that will not be possible.

The target for the '050 is in the 100-150 MHz range and it will have many advances like a larger cache and code-fusing.  Many instuctions will be executed in 1 cycle.

For users, the Natami will not be offered with an '060 card but with a core running the N050.  While the '060 may be considered an upgrade for the Replay, this is not the case with Natami and only serves to get the Natami in developer's hands (expensively) until the cpu core is finalized.

As a CD32+SX1 owner, either board is a serious upgrade in performance for me.

With NEW upgraded affordable hardware in the field, I hope software rises to take advantage of it.

As I understand it, the latest 'core' of Replay is achieving '040-like performance which is great!

[Louis Dias]

Ah, cheers for the info.  Is the Natami FPGA vastly more expensive as a result?  I certainly wasn't expecting the Natami to be priced around the EUR250-350 mark.

MikeJ has said on the Natami forum that his basic board (not including the 060+daughter card) will be 200-220 euros.  In that configuration it can achieve '040 like performance...from what I've seen.

I can't speak for the Natami team on pricing but the essential difference is you get alot of what's on the daughter card of the Replay and an '050 and a faster fpga and 512MB of memory in total.  Both boards are 6 layers so the costs are basically the same but you are getting and paying for more components on the Natami without the need for the daughter card.  Only developers will get the '060 card to get the ball rolling.

But again, I stress that there seems to be an fpga Amiga for everyone's budget and target performance.

The advantages of the Replay are multi-platform emulation.  This is something the Natami will not do other than thru software apps.

1) Minimig
2) Replay (040ish)
3) Replay + '060 card (expensive)
4) Natami + '060 card (expensive)
near future:
5) Natami (050)
future:
6) Natami (070)

Replay will come to market first for sure.

On the Natami forums, the Atari Firebee team are keen on using Natami as a future Atari platform as well.  They aren't completely happy with the Firebee hardware in the long run...it seems.  But that could just be a vocal minority.  The time for competition is at an end.  Co-operation is the future, imho.

[Louis Dias]

Having a physical 060 connected leaves more space in the FPGA for interesting things

The 060 will never get any faster, but in time as the fpga(s) get bigger(not physically) and faster that hard cpu will be an anchor.

Even MikeJ as postulated that in another maybe 2 years an even faster version of his board will exist because of this.

This is quite good.  We are no longer limited to ancient 80's and 90's hardware.

[Louis Dias]

Well that would be good for the production run as the more units produced in a batch = lower cost per unit.

This is a handy feature of the FPGA as Mike will not be selling them just to the Amiga community, it will also make a great board for people developing other cores.

Well the Firebee is based on a 266Mhz Coldfire cpu.  So an '060 based system feels like going backwards for them since they'd still be limited to ~100Mhz.  They also want a roadmap forward and not just replacing failing classic hardware with modestly improved new hardware.

[Louis Dias]

But we are in a better situation as we have the sources of TOS (Atari TOS & EmuTOS) and MiNT, what makes it possible at all to use a coldfire processor.

Neat!  How did you get the sources?

[Louis Dias]

So why in the world do I keep seeing posts related to the ROM size limitations of specific Amiga models?

Some Amiga models didn't support Kickstart ROM's bigger than 512kb.  Most do.  FPGA-based ones will as well.  This forced someone to make a Zune-lite (aka Workbook) to make the ROM image smaller. IIRC

[Louis Dias]

Ah cool! I noticed lou_dias used that name in this thread, but I didn't realise Jason was working on it, good times. :-) Just found a screenshot of Workbook (clearly WIP):
http://download.aros3d.org/pictures/workbook.jpg

Yeah, I forgot Zune = MUI and Wanderer = Workbench in AROS land.  I meant Wanderer.  And Wanderer-lite = Workbook

[Louis Dias]

@deadwood, What's the difference between these files?
aros-amiga-m68k-rom.bin
aros-amiga-m68k-ext.bin

The ROM is the first 512K, the EXT is the "extended rom" which is the 2nd 512K.

The CD32 always used 2 roms.

You'll notice in WinUAE you can map a 2nd "extended" rom file.

[Louis Dias]

yeah they are elitist every time I mention fpga replay on there forums or anything they feel is competition to themselves they delete the posts

Actually, if you are who I think you are, your posts were trollish.
The Natami team members have spoken with MikeJ quite amicably.  When I posted about Arcade Replay being "done", it was well recieved there and Gunnar even mentioned in retrospect the the projects had some overlap and could have collaborated more but from the original intentions he didn't see much.

I think this thread best describes NATAMI's "openness" best:
http://www.natami.net/knowledge.php?b=2¬e=38307

Much like MikeJ's board is OT there, so is NATAMI here.  I just dislike misinformation.

[Louis Dias]

I smell an investor...Amigakit???