Tricky wrote:
Building an Amiga from scratch... how does that sound?
Sounds great! We'd all like new Amigas! While you're implementing the custom chips in FPGAs, how about adding some higher resolutions and a native chunky screenmode or two?! :-D
Seriously though, I think the Amiga's ageing custom hardware is best off being emulated in software these days and the effort (not to mention the expense) of re-implementing it as FPGAs on a new motherboard is likely to be considerable.
It'd still be nice to have a non-mainstream hobbyist machine built with and capable of using modern hardware, and I guess that's what has been attempted with the AmigaOne, apart from one thing - the prohibitive cost...
It's a shame the current owners of OS4 decided to restrict development of the OS to an expensive PPC-based product, rather than doing it for x86 hardware. Imagine a Mini-ITX x86-based AmigaOne at a fraction of the cost? Then again, piracy of the OS on an x86 platform would be a problem, as Apple is now finding out!
- Ali
