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Author Topic: New x86 "accelerator" for Classic Amiga?  (Read 8562 times)

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Offline Zac67

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Re: New x86 "accelerator" for Classic Amiga?
« on: December 12, 2007, 07:34:44 AM »
Sorry, I completely fail to see the point.

Why not use WinUAE as a start, so in addition to the fantastic speed you'd get a great RTG card for free - and wouldn't have to rewrite all your software to enable the graphical client/server idea.

The more you develop this idea of yours, the more you end up with an Amiga on a PCI board sitting in a Wintel PC. Actually, most / all Amiga hardware can be emulated by software at higher speed, so you'd optimize the PCI card to nothing. Then you end up with WinUAE.

The point is, there's no rational in using physical Amiga hardware. It's the fun of it.
 

Offline Zac67

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Re: New x86 "accelerator" for Classic Amiga?
« Reply #1 on: December 12, 2007, 06:49:04 PM »
AFAIK the framework needed for a modern x86 CPU is a major pain in the *ss. You'll need lots of stuff like a north bridge (RAM controller, interfaces) and high performance power regulation. To make the north bridge work, you'll have to license a complete PC BIOS, which in turn requires more peripherals, so you end up with 3/4 of a PC mainboard.

The easiest way would be to take a small (µATX, mini ITX) mainboard and build a PCI <-> Zorro III or CPU-fast-slot bridge and just connect the mobo to the Amiga, just like in Ratte's link - would even give you an upgrade path, so you might consider using PCIe instead in the first place.

Again, this is pretty much an Amiga on a PCI card. If you also use the x86 side's graphics hardware through RTG and the sound through AHI, there's actually not much left of the original hardware, so you could also use UAE with Keyrah and Catweazle.