Who currently owns the rights

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adolescent wrote:
I think the Amiga is still too complex to cheaply emulate in a single chip.  But, with the Sega Mega Drive PlayTV out it looks like they're getting closer (I haven't seen if there's a real 68000 and/or Z80 in there or if they've shrunk it down to a single custom chip).

Nah, The XScale CPU can run UAE without much trouble.

The Amiga hardware is totally out of date, the technology can't even be FAB'ed any more, and it would cost a fortune to rework it for modern technology. The problem with Amiga custom chip tech is that you can't simply miniturise it and put it all on one chip, the chip designs simply won't work anymore.

Your cheapest option is to get one of the 500Mhz ARM chips (XScale) and run an emulation on it.

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minator wrote:

the technology can't even be FAB'ed any more

Any modern fab should easily be able to manufacture the Amiga chipset, they would need modified for the different silicon process but that's nothing spectacular.

The problem with Amiga custom chip tech is that you can't simply miniturise it and put it all on one chip, the chip designs simply won't work anymore.

You wouldn't "just shrink" them (doesn't work over more than a few generations), they would need to be re-synthesized but they are simple chips by todays standards so that'd hardly be a problem.

The most difficult bit is probably getting the original CAD models and finding something which can handle them today.

If the gate level designs still exist in a CAD package there's plenty of companies who can produce a semi-custom "Amiga on a chip" for the right price (with optional 24bit Gfx and 16 bit sound).


I actually think it's a good business proposition.

I recall that the actual chips designs were lost during the Commodore break up... only the patents still exist.

I don't think it would be worth it to rehash the old tech anymore anyway. Too expensive just to do what Emulation would give you.

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itix wrote:
Collect some money and buy rights for Amiga HW from Gateway. Easy peacy ;-)

But one problem still exists. You would need Kickstart ROMs too. Not that easy I think.

what are you talking about?

Just compile AROS for the 68k :-D

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CatHerder wrote:
The BoXer was a computer, with PCI slots, usb, etc. I'm talking stand-alone retro gaming, not a new computer. The one thing the boXer showed was that you could indeed shove  the Amiga chipset into one small chip...

No, the Boxer was Chipset emulation on an FPGA, it did not use the original design, but was a new chip to the same specifications, which is a much better idea and a lot cheaper than trying to rework old chip designs.

Also, I think no one would buy it or a C64 "game unit". but if you used an XScale with software emulation, that could emulate an Amiga, an Atari, a C64 etc... in a single box... that would sell to the retro gamer. As mentioned, I have no idea how you would emulate the functionality of the floppy based games in a user friendly way.

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@CatHerder

Minaturize - package - sell. Anyone that says it won't be prifitable is not in tune with reality. Same goes with the Amiga - I'm sure it will cost more to minaturize it, but think of the spin-off products that could result.

I think you should actually find out how the amiga works (and no, it's nothing like a C64). Then find out about the technology involved, Minaturising the Amiga Chipset would cost millions! It would be far cheaper to build an emulation on an existing platform. And without any decent market research I can't see where you draw your "profitable" line from.

P.S. you have contradictred yourself ina few comments.

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Samuar wrote:
Miniturization sounds like a great idea - i'm all for it.
But do we have a problem related to the custom amiga chips (for graphics and sound etc) - i.e. the very thing that made Amigas much better than any other 68K based machines.

Remember that these chips, which were revolutionary in 1986... are now far outperformed by a chip that costs $5.

If we dont have the schematics, or if we do and we dont have the rights to use them, then surely we are stuck.

But even if we did have the schematics the cost to rework them for modern silicon and then miniturise them (which is a massive task in itself), would make the whole project prohibitivly expensive, and all you would end up with is a chip that is out performed by any gfx/sound chip you could buy off the shelf.

BTW I do have an Amiga Handheld... my iPaq 4150 running UAE :-)

-Edit-

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CatHerder wrote:

bloodline wrote:
I think you should actually find out how the amiga works (and no, it's nothing like a C64). Then find out about the technology involved, Minaturising the Amiga Chipset would cost millions! It would be far cheaper to build an emulation on an existing platform. And without any decent market research I can't see where you draw your "profitable" line from.

P.S. you have contradictred yourself ina few comments.

Which comments, feel free to list them - I've been thinking out loud in this thread...

I think you should find out how this antiquated technology works instead of living in a fantasy world. There's nothing earth shattering in an Amiga (not today, sorry). It was "wow amazing" in 1985-1990 but soon as 91 hit, the Amiga was no longer "wow amazing".

All I've seen since 1995 is a bunch of attempts at building PC's and Mac clones that run Amiga emulators. A few faster accelerators here, a few cards allowing you to use PC parts there, etc... No new technology, just a bunch of altering existing PC tech to work with 12 year old Amiga hardware.

You can bash on people all you want Bloodline, including me - fact remains you're wrong about this idea. People are making millions off of realistic products (retro game units), nobody in their right mind is going to invest millions on a computer that is targeted at 10,000 users (that's being generous) world-wide. But smart people will certainly invest a couple million to get a retro gamer out the door that millions of consumers (who couldn't care less what an Amiga is) will scoop up like hotcakes -- all for the games.

But keep up the good trolling.

Since I know what I'm talking about, and I have researched the subject of the custom chip technology myself many years ago (1999), I feel I am well placed to point out the flaws in your idea. BEAUSE the technology is old it means there are very few FABs that can build the chips. Modern chips use a very technology to old one, you can't even use the same gate layouts anymore due to different capacitances! If you read what I'm trying to say, you will realise I have nothing against the idea, but your flaw is in the implementation.

If you see my £250 iPaq running a Beta version of UAE you will see where I'm coming from.

Another problem that crops up is the legal rights to the games... Atari, Nintendo etc, not only made the hardware... they also published the games... this means they can resell them without any legal issues... Commodore published very few Amiga/C64 games, which makes these things much more messy.

I'm not trolling.

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Cheers Martyn, I thought I was going mad :crazy: :-D

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Samuar wrote:
So, whats the solution?

I am guessing the question is "how do we make a very cheap amiga 'clone'(?) that can be purchased on masse and run old games on TVs etc?"

If you want to do it, then the best idea is probably to build the whole thing (CPU and all) in an FPGA, with a simple RF tuner + some DACs + a rom (witha kickstart + a simple workbench and ADF loader). Then have a CF or SD slot for ADFs.

Wouldn't be cheap though.

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Samuar wrote:
i presume, that attempting this with an older, less complicated amiga would be easier than with a new model. I.e, a 500 rather than a 1200?

Or is the internal difference between the two only speed?

Samuar

It wouldn't make much difference. THe A1200 has a more advacned Chipset, but that just extends the capibilites of the old chipset rather than adds any new features.

The A1200's CPU is a crippled 68020 which isn't much better than a 68000...

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dbalaski wrote:
Fogive me not knowing the Petro reference  (remember, I am recently rediscovering my roots  so to speak ) .

It just seems to me that sitting on the Patents and designs is foolish -- every day it is becoming a more depreciated captial asset.
but I am digressing

The Patents have expired and the designs are valueless :-(

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CatHerder wrote:

Thellenbow wrote:
@Catherder

I see your point, but you are talking to a lot of techies here and not business people. The buzz word is Mass Marketing. It's like pop music, you only need one hit CD and you can retire. Coming up with a product that aunt Mary will buy is the way to go.

Exactly...

I'm saying one thing, and most of the people here are thinking "new Amiga". I'm not talking about a new Amiga. I'm talking about an Amiga RetroGamer or TVGamer. I already know every single game can be licenced without an issue (excluding the ones that have no known IP holder). There is not a game company in the world that would not lisence their old stuff. It's smart business sense.

And what do you project they would ask as a licence fee? a one off payment of $100000 or 3% of sales or 10%? whatever it's not going to be cheap.

I couldn't care less what software Commodore or Amiga International owned, it makes no difference. I couldn't care less about productivity software and applications, they don't even factor in to it.

No one has said anything about productivity software and applications...!

I couldn't care less how an OLD Amiga chip was manufactured - I don't want to make one. I care how it was designed - and if this means simply emulating, or reverse-engineering each chip to come up with a new single chip encompassing the entire Amiga (lets just stick with an A500 for now) so be it. It's not a hard thing to do - this is 18 year old technology we're talking about. Any off-the-shelf integrated RF modulator would work with this, a cost of production of $0.72 per unit, and there's already 3 to pick from that are used in other retro devices.

First you say you don't care how the new machine is made... then at the bottom you ask who own the IP (Gateway)... but unless you are using the actual Chipset design (which we have already established is useless) you don't need to know who own the IP. You show no understanding here.

Why do you keep going on about the age of the technology? It's 18year old technology, but it was totally custom, it's age does not make it easier to recreate, but harder. Unless you go the Emulation route in which case the IP holder does not need to be involved.

72 cents for what?

I couldn't care less about expansions, networking, hard drives, floppy drives, or anything remotely related to a real computer - I want to make hand-held stand-alone game units that contain 10 games. (Or one that has a propritary cartridge slot that allows you to plug in various game sets).

Hmmm, 10 games... at an average of 2.5 disks per game that's about 25meg + another 2meg for the OS + another 2meg for your emulation software + 1 meg for your firmware... so you'll need a 32meg ROM (maybe more depending on which games you want to use)... which isn't going to be cheap.

The Amiga never used cartridges, so you are totally on your own... how do you get these catridges to boot? How much do the cartridges cost to manufacture? How do you deal with multiple disks on one cartridge?

and what about cool, era defining games like "Monkey Island 2" - a game the always brings up the topic of Amiga... every one I know played MI2 on an A500... that has 12 disks alone! I wouldn't buy a box just to play MI2... it would have to have other stuff as well.

And yes, I do know a bit about manufacturing computer products and I have worked with a few overseas firms getting designs fabricated. (I was head of IT/IS at AST Computers). I also have a pretty solid Amiga background -- I do know what I'm talking about.

You haven't demonstrated any insight into the task you are suggesting :-(

I also know that with just liscence agreements from EA alone I could pump out 2 different Amiga TVGamers that had 10 quality games on each one -- I also know that one agreement would get the rights to all Hewson and Epyx titles, and one agreement with Atari would get another eleven game companys IP. I'm not just talking out my arse...

I never said you were talking out of your arse, I simple said that you have not shown that you fully understand what is requried to pull this off.

Though this does highllight soem more problems... some amiga ames used mouse input... some used joystick... others used Keyboard... quite a few used both... then some games wanted the joystick in Port 1 most wanted it in port port2... how the hell do you deal with that? Not to mention copy protections...

Remember that the source code to these games probably doesn't exist any more!

The only thing holding this back is: who owns the IP rights to the Amiga chipsets. That's all I want to know. :-)

And why do you need that? At best you need the Amiga Name... no one really knows who owns that, though it seems a company called KMOS owns it today. At worst you'll need the Amiga name and the rights to use the OS (assuming you don't use AROS), I think the best place to go would be cloanto and buy it from them.

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CatHerder wrote:

bloodline wrote:

Since I know what I'm talking about, and I have researched the subject of the custom chip technology myself many years ago (1999), I feel I am well placed to point out the flaws in your idea. BEAUSE the technology is old it means there are very few FABs that can build the chips. Modern chips use a very technology to old one, you can't even use the same gate layouts anymore due to different capacitances! If you read what I'm trying to say, you will realise I have nothing against the idea, but your flaw is in the implementation.

Why would you want to fabricate chips to old specs? That's just a bad idea. You want the IP from those chips to fabricate new chips using current design parameters. It's not a difficult thing to do. Why would you want to do any of what you mention above is beyond me.

You don't need the IP for the design specs, the harware is well documented, and ther are several emulators which fully implement the hardware spec. In fact what's left of the IP probably wouldn't give you enough information to build any hardware anymore.

Where did I say "build the old chips" ?? I think you've assumed something I've never intended to do.

Then you don't need the IP, you can just go to your engineering team and get them to knock a design together, based on freely available documents on the web and looking at Emualtor source code.

I said I want to get the IP from the old chips and make a single new chip that does everything that those chips did with the targeted end result being the ability to run Amiga games on your TV screen for $19.95 per package.

!!!!AGAIN, THE IP IS WORTHLESS FOR THIS TASK!!!!

If you can bring it in for $19.99 that would rock, but I doubt it, there are just too many factors to consider.

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If the IP holder doesn't matter - why does Cloanto exist and retain the lone rights to the ROMS, and make a profit selling their keyed ROMs?

Cloanto have a licence to sell the ROM images. And as I keep sayign unless you use AROS you will have to licence that too. This is a non issue, I don't know why you keep bringing it up.

Again, do you have any concept of what IP is? Why isn't AUE or Amiga in a Box sold as a retail product? (Because it can't legally be sold as such.)

It's because you can't sell GPL'ed IP... I thought you understood about IP?

You can include UAE in a retail product (as long as you provide the source code), as Amiga forever show.

Somehow Tulip has been manufacturing C64 ROMS, CPUs and other chips from old technology. Yes, I realize it's different tech - but its also 5-10 years older... so how the hell did somebody produce those? A time machine? No, they just found the right fab.

No, they either used a 6502 compatible microcontroler, or use an ARM runing an emulation. Though, looking at the Nintendo and other units, they seem to be recreations of the games, i.e. recoded just using the old graphics and audio. And running on modern, cheap, hardware.

The Amiga games never came on ADFs and they weren't bought on my PC's 200GB hard drive formatted in NTFS yet they still load and play in my Amiga emulator. I can put the same games on a single 32MB USB ram "cartridge" and still load them in my emulator and so can you (you show that you have a mobile emulating device already so WTF is your point here other than to argue for the sake of trolling).

No, my point about ADFs is that you will need a special loader on your hardwareto handle loading the ADF's either onto your machine or into the emulator you choose... and there is the issue of disk swaping... some thing that the user doesn't want to be bothered with... that will require a simple and powerful loader + a nice pretty menu...

IF - IF - an Amiga RetroGamer was designed with the idea of selling one base unit with the ability to buy game cartridges that contained various compillations, all you need to do is build in the ability to boot any of those games from that storage device (the cartridge). I said proprietary cardridge for a reason - its called piracy. You wouldn't want to make these devices and just use USB ram cards (which retail for about $10 for a 32MB btw), otherwise you'd sell one device and never sell another single expansion product again.

The reason why you wouldn't use USB Cartridge is not for piracy concerns, but because adding USB host support to your device would cost a lot!
But then adding any kind of Cartridge support to the design is going to cost you...

I still say you're responding just for the sake of trolling. You haven't brought up a really good counter argument to why this is a bad idea, or why it would be impossible.

What, other than the countless post I and others have made on this topic?

I'm not saying it's a bad idea or impossible, I just don't think you have a clear idea of what is actually involved!

I couldnt give a damn what you think when you don't offer any valuable opinions other than knee jerk comments that aren't gounded in reality. You certainly haven't shown me anything of value whatsoever in this discussion. All I see is an embittered Amiga user who dreams that his 1994 technology still rocks...

Hey don't insult the Amiga users here :-x
At no point have I said that the Amgia technology "rocks", in fact I have been making an argument against using it, and using modern hardware instead... (Anyone on this forum will tell you that I'm no advocate of Amiga technology ;-))

I'll tell you what I think rocks... my iPAQ running UAE

You only offer games that use a joystick. Wow, what a concept. Think that one through. I mean sure, that will limit the selection to a mere 10,000 titles, but I'm sure there's 10 or 20 worth picking in there. . .

Ahh that ok then... I though you'd want to include Lemmings and Worms + the countless RPG's that Amiga users spent most of their time playing, and made the Amiga famous.

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dmac721 wrote:

  Figures, I mentioned this whole idea months ago and got zero positive response ?

Well, I don't think much has changed in a few months...

Best anyone can do is build a technology demonstrator, if they can get the prototype in and working, for under $100 then you know that this idea is real and doable.

Once it's technologicaly proven, then an only then can anyone start taking licences and actually selling the thing. Until then it is just a pipe dream.

I would rather someone proved me wrong with a real device than sat here telling me and others that we are just trolling.