NatAmi 68070 design draft

[bloodline]

wawrzon wrote:
@bloodline: what kind of amiga compatible i need, you ask?
accidentally just that kind the natami specs state, even up to genlocking (overlay) possibility, because that is what i tehnically use them mostly for.

I did not ask what you wanted. I asked what you actually needed from your Amiga. Do you need an Amiga Compatible or some kind of SuperAmiga that might not be so compatible.

i wouldnt complain about some extra computing speed but thats not the primary issue for me.

So what you need is an Amiga compatible... So something like a bugfixed MiniMig or CloneA would suit your needs?

i can use pc for most computing tasks. up till now i mostly used amigas as simple, reliable, cheap, idiot-proof (no shutdown needed, just pull the power cord) controllers for my "video" installations.

Right, so you have software that you currently use on Amiga systems that you need to use in your video installations. That's fine, and when all the original Amiga hardware dies, having a supply of new Amiga Compatible hardware would be good for you... but your software can't use and doesn't need the extra features of NATAMI... So why add complexity (increasing cost and debugging time) to the Amiga Clone by having SuperAGA features?

i do not estimate too that every extra feature introduced to the amiga compatible will narrow the interested user base as long as it doesnt contradict an existing one. it even possibly  will become part of some future standard.

The Amiga chipset has already defined its standard... 16 years of unchanged hardware have defined that standard. Any changes are not compatible and never will be.

i sense you see no future for anything connected to amiga either way since you have already placed it in sentimental past and want to conserve this as such. im fine with it.

No, I want effort to be directed in directions that make sense. The Amiga Hardware has no future, it never had a future, it was a product of the 80's computing environment. It solved problems that technology has surpassed and which simply don't exist any more.

We all here have software that we use, for some reson (it doesn't matter why), that needs an Amiga to run... Amiga hadware has a limted life an we need to develop solutions to account for that... CloneA, Minimig and TobiFlex68k (I personally also include AROS in this list) are all vital in preserving the Amiga... but NATAMI seems like feature bloat and without good reason, except as a private hoby project where it is a good learning tool for someone... and N68070 is just a waste of everyone's time, it can never be as powerful or as complex as a modern CPU, and frankly any software that need a 68k does not need anything better than 68030... really...
 

[bloodline]

tiffers wrote:
@bloodline

I was just quoting what Gunnar/biggun has said in other threads, on other forums.

You (and others here) certainly seem to have much greater knowledge than I, about the specific technologies being discussed.

The technlogies are publically documented, a little bit of time spent of Google and a few Emails to the companies that sell this technology will give you a good idea what is possible and how much it costs... Also there are plenty of people on these forums who work with this stuff everyday who can explain this stuff.

First thing I do when someone makes a claim that seems too good to be true... Google... :-)

I was just trying to show that NatAmi (according to Gunnar) is really placed to be cheaper than the MiniMig (in the CPU + chipset + Coldfire all-in-one configuration) and more compatible than the MiniMig in it's current state, and thus shouldn't be slammed too hard on the 'incompatible and expensive' claims.

But I really can't see:

a) How it can be cheaper than the MiniMIG with the feature bloat of the SuperAGA and even a CPU core on there, we are talking about a HUGE FGA.

b) How it can be as compatible as the MiniMIG, which is already a very mature beta product, and still full of bugs. The added complexity of SuperAGA is going to increase Debug time. The added features of the SuperAGA Chipset will decrease compatibility, unless they are kept away from the AGA emualtion (i.e. moded out)... and then what is the point of them, no existing Amiga software can use them, and if you are writing new software... use a new machine.

c) How can the coldfire really make much sense in this situation... Hell, even I as someone who dislikes the PPC, can see it's a better fit in this situation for wide range of technical and cost reasons...

d) that all the problem which plague the idea of SuperAGA apply to the N68070... Who wants a not very 68k compatible CPU that runs faster than a 68k at several orders of magnitude the cost of an modern CPU?

Sub-$100 NatAmi And another

The proof, as I have heard said, will be in the pudding.

tiffers.

That's true... but at the moment we don't have any pudding... just some vague recipies and expensive ingredients...

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AJCopland wrote:
All fair points but I don't want to discourage the Natami guys or believe that they should be discouraged.

No. I quite agree here. NATAMI is a brilliant hobby research project for the people involved and would be happy to read about it and see it in action... it's the motivations/long term goals that is suspect!

Look at the argument for the natami as the argument for the DS over the GBA, or the GBA over the GB. Many years between them, lack of straight compatibility (not entirely true of GBA->DS but for the sake of argument...). They're simply upgraded with newer designs but no less '80s/early '90s in their implementations.

Come come now!!! You and I both know the GB is a totally bad example! That is a product for which software development never stopped and had a massive installed user base which needed to maintain backward compatibility with old software... The market for which the GB served was never overtaken by other systems, the technology for mobile devices has only in the past few years really started to catch up with desktop...

The Amiga, perhaps 10 years ago, would have had some software that other systems couldn't really match... but now, the very concept of Amiga software for anything other than a small group of hobbyists is laughable.

The GB is not a good argument for "SuperAGA".

Now the Natami with a 68060 or even ColdFire+SuperAGA ASIC (yes yes yes I know they'll never do that one) is not going to be a handheld suitable one. However the design is simply damned interesting and even with a 060 would be faster than the PSone.

Errr.. well, ok... but the PSone is, what, 14 years old... And the NATAMI would be expensive, limited and buggy compared to a cheap off the shelf GFX chip...

If they did go for a ColdFire based option then it'd be up within the speed range of a PSP/PS2.

I'm not really sure how you are making this comparison... I simply don't know where the information for such a conclusion could have come from?

So mostly it's interesting in it's own right, perhaps only as an extended hobbyist project but it's still fascinating and judging by the interest in it there are people who want it.

Which is what the NATAMI is interesting for! I don't understand, why people want to big it up into something it isn't... when it already has a decent reason.

[bloodline]

HenryCase wrote:

bloodline wrote:
How it can be as compatible as the MiniMIG, which is already a very mature beta product, and still full of bugs. The added complexity of SuperAGA is going to increase Debug time. The added features of the SuperAGA Chipset will decrease compatibility, unless they are kept away from the AGA emualtion (i.e. moded out)... and then what is the point of them, no existing Amiga software can use them, and if you are writing new software... use a new machine.

Personally I see the Natami, Minimig and CloneA as all complementary products. Bloodline it seems to me you are seperating out the Natami from this group because you don't believe it will be as compatible as the Minimig or CloneA.

No, I separate out the NATAMI because unlike the MiniMIG and the CloneA, the motivation behind it don't make any sense, or at least seem very unrealistic!

Whilst I fully expect CloneA to be the most compatible of the three, I don't see where you get the idea that Natami will be less compatible than the Minimig. The Minimig is not cycle exact, neither is the Natami, they are both in the same boat.

The MiniMIG is just trying to be Amiga compatible... that is the motivation... that is what everyone working on it is trying to achieve. It doesn't matter what the MiniMIG devs have to do, they can do anything to improve the compatibility.

NATAMI seems to have some crazy idea about making a better Amiga, for no discernible reason...

Also, whilst I hugely admire Dennis for what he has done, the Natami project has been going for far longer than the Minimig has (Minimig started around 2005, Natami started before 2003 IIRC). Thus, even with the added complexity of the Natami design it is feasible that Thomas Hirsch (designer of the Natami) would have removed most if not all of the bugs in the design.

So Dennis got the MiniMIG from idea to shipping product in 2 years... and I understand that he took a break between finishing the design and releasing it... and the NATAMI has been in process for 5 years and is not even out of the development phase... does that not start alarm bells ringing?

The cycle exact thing is oversold anyway. If you can run most OCS games on an AGA A1200 (with WHDLoad and other tools) why would you expect the SuperAGA to be a compatibility killer?

Every extra feature takes time  and silicon away from debugging the standard AGA features... Plus somethings I have read about the "Super" features would be incompatible by design... anyway that isn't the point, why bother with these new features, no existing software can use them!

Why not wait and see the Natami in action to see how well it runs old Amiga software? Better to do that than claim it won't work without proof.

I don't care how well it works, I just don't understand the project motivations or perhaps really I don't understand what benefits this has over MiniMIG and CloneA as a commercial product... but I can see disadvantages...

[bloodline]

wawrzon wrote:
@bloodline: please, everybody has realized perfectly already that it doesnt pay to develop anything in any way resembling amiga.

Actually it does... the MiniMIG proved that. The motivations behind the MiniMIG were clearly defined and well thought out.

just let the people do things they like to do, cause nobodys life really depends on that so we have nothing to loose except of time

I would be nice if it didn't turn the Amiga name into even more of a joke in the process...

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Atheist wrote:
I state unequivocally; that probably only 1% of the people here realize the true power of the 1985 Amiga computer!!!!

And it's those one percent (who may remain unnamed*), who understand that, THAT multiplied by 100 is MINDSHATTERING!

So, they will get the NatAmi60.

EOL.


* DoomMaster is one who shall not remain unnamed. :laughing:

Well done... I guess your remedial tutors are very proud of you for learning how to use a keyboard..

[bloodline]

HenryCase wrote:

bloodline wrote:
No, I separate out the NATAMI because unlike the MiniMIG and the CloneA, the motivation behind it don't make any sense, or at least seem very unrealistic!

The motivation is unrealistic/suspect? The ideas behind the commercialisation of the Natami only started recently (probably around the time bbrv offered to help with getting it running Coldfire, which we know now was not the path to take), and you've said yourself that you see it as an interesting hobby project, yet the motivation behind the Natami is suspect?

Are you questioning Thomas Hirsch's motives or the motives of the other people interested in the Natami?

The motives of the others around the project. I've not had any contact with the devs, but there are suggestions on the main project site that are cause for concern!

The Natami doesn't need to be flying off the shelves in shops to be a success, maybe you think it does? Cue Garth:

"It's like people only do these things because they can get paid. And that's just really sad."

The MiniMIG is just trying to be Amiga compatible... that is the motivation... that is what everyone working on it is trying to achieve. It doesn't matter what the MiniMIG devs have to do, they can do anything to improve the compatibility.

The Minimig is open source, any one can build what they like with it. If I had the time (and skill) to implement the AAA chipset on the Minimig your argument falls apart, as the AAA is Amiga technology and something that (the majority of) Minimig fans would not shun.

AAA never worked. No one will ever know what AAA would have been like or even how it would have worked if C= had ever got it to work.

NATAMI seems to have some crazy idea about making a better Amiga, for no discernible reason...

Why is that such a bad idea? If a company were releasing the Natami I would probably class them as 'brave', it doesn't have enough mass appeal for today's market, but to those who are interested in it it is a huge deal, and providing Amiga developers embrace it too it could be a very interesting retro platform for a good number of computer fans from different computing 'cults'.

It's fine, but it's not a commercial idea. It's a hobby idea, it's not $20 ASICs and $100 dev boards... it is these claims that irritate me.

So Dennis got the MiniMIG from idea to shipping product in 2 years... and I understand that he took a break between finishing the design and releasing it... and the NATAMI has been in process for 5 years and is not even out of the development phase... does that not start alarm bells ringing?

You're clutching at straws here, why would that bother me? It's clear that the Natami consists of a more complex design than the Minimig, more complexity = longer development time.

The more complex the design the more worried I get... I never make a project more complex than it has to be to achieve the required task! If the NATAMI is a great AGA clone and runs AGA software really well, but is going to take 20 years to develop... just because of extra feature that 98.4% of the time simply won't be used, then the project has little value!

Every extra feature takes time and silicon away from debugging the standard AGA features... Plus somethings I have read about the "Super" features would be incompatible by design... anyway that isn't the point, why bother with these new features, no existing software can use them!

According to the Natami team the development process for SuperAGA is close to complete, including AGA compatibility.

What does that mean? Feature compete? Alpha stage, beta phase... RC?!?! People are getting excited based on little information...

 I'm so glad that this chipset was developed (largely) in secret so we didn't have to go through the painful 'will they let us down' phase. Of course the Natami60 hasn't been released yet, but I'm confident we'll see some progress on that soon.

Yes, that word that has plagued the Amiga for the past 15 years... Soon...

 Yes the SuperAGA features are mostly useful for new software development, but there may be one or two features I've heard of that will be of use to standard Amiga software.

And the crux of my concern... why waste all that dev time and silicon for one or two features...

I don't care how well it works, I just don't understand the project motivations or perhaps really I don't understand what benefits this has over MiniMIG and CloneA as a commercial product... but I can see disadvantages...

You're argument is baffling.

Then I'm not explaining myself clearly... where does my argument fall down?

 Any product sold, whether that be to Amiga hobbyists or any other group, is a commercial product.

The Minimig (in its preassembled form) is a commercial product, it is selling to those who are interested in it, the Natami will do the same. If someone is willing to pay money for something then it has the potential to be a commercial product. Some of us (myself included) may get a little carried away with dreaming what the Natami could do, but that doesn't give you an excuse to knock the technology, which is the issue at hand here.

As a hobby project, the price doesn't really matter, the time scales don't matter, protecting the IP doesn't matter (so release the source code), Success doesn't matter... Open the project up let everyone have a play and learn... is any of this true with NATAMI?

If the SuperAGA was shown to be highly compatible with AGA, became open sourced, and was developed for a future Minimig revision, would you still shun it then?

No of course not. I would love a cheap Replacement board for my A1200, based around an FPGA... But nothing I've read or heard about the NATAMI project suggests that it will offer me this.

[bloodline]

Atheist wrote:

JUST the CPU has moved from a 7.16 MHz sixteen/thirty two bit design to 3.0 GHZ with 2 Megs of L2 cache, and yet it's MORE FRUSTRATING to use it! It's too slow! (I only have ever had this 1 core 2.26 GHz P IV with 1 Gig ram. No exp. with 2 or 4 cores yet.)

Unfortunately you've not been able to advance at the same rate as Technology.

I find my A500 frustrating to use compared to my MacBook Pro...

[bloodline]

HenryCase wrote:
@bloodline

AAA never worked. No one will ever know what AAA would have been like or even how it would have worked if C= had ever got it to work.

...and yet there would still be interest in it if it was finished (as close as possible to the design specs) for the Minimig.

We have all wondered what it would be like... but I see my friend's Machine with the latest 9800GX2 Nvidia GFX card on the latest Quad Core Intel CPU... (a system that cost less to put together than An A500 + 1 Meg RAM and HD cost in 1990)  and I simply can't get excited about 16 year old technology..

 I don't see that happening, especially now we have SuperAGA, but my point is that those involved in open source development are free to choose the direction they take, you shouldn't dictate to people what they should and shouldn't want to see.

Everyone here, the old timers at least will know my views of OpenSource... Why we even have closed source hardware/software in the Amiga community is a mystery to me...

It's fine, but it's not a commercial idea. It's a hobby idea, it's not $20 ASICs and $100 dev boards... it is these claims that irritate me.

Those are the claims made with dream mode:on, everyone knows they are very ambitious goals, but the project would be a success even if we don't reach the pricing goals (as long as the Natami60 is released).

They are not ambitious claims, they are false claims! and they make a joke out of the Amiga and the NATAMI project.

The more complex the design the more worried I get... I never make a project more complex than it has to be to achieve the required task! If the NATAMI is a great AGA clone and runs AGA software really well, but is going to take 20 years to develop... just because of extra feature that 98.4% of the time simply won't be used, then the project has little value!

According to the Natami devs the SuperAGA development period is close to completion (I have even seen it described as complete). No 20 year wait, so no problem here.

My use of 20 years was an obvious exaggeration to show my point! Every second longer than needed is a second wasted.

What does that mean? Feature compete? Alpha stage, beta phase... RC?!?! People are getting excited based on little information...

According to the devs the SuperAGA is complete enough for them to start designing the Natam60 dev boards, make of that what you will.

That suggests that pin routing is at least done... But given that the IO is pretty simple that can be decided quite early on...

Yes, that word that has plagued the Amiga for the past 15 years... Soon...

You don't seem that interested in the Natami, so why worry about how long it takes to complete?

If it is going to give me a cheap board to replace my A1200... then I want it yesterday...

And the crux of my concern... why waste all that dev time and silicon for one or two features...

You misunderstand me, but that's okay as I didn't really elaborate on this point. As I said most of the SuperAGA functions will support new software, but let's take a look at one feature that is being considered that would help all Amiga sofware, which is the integration of Scale2x support into the hardware. You can read about Scale2x here:
http://scale2x.sourceforge.net/
Here's the discussion from the Natami forums:
http://www.natami.net/knowledge.php?b=2¬e=214

Ugh... This really offers nothing :-(

And proves my point for a commercial project...

As a hobby project, the price doesn't really matter, the time scales don't matter, protecting the IP doesn't matter (so release the source code), Success doesn't matter... Open the project up let everyone have a play and learn... is any of this true with NATAMI?

The Natami team aren't fully against open sourcing the work they've done, it's just that they want to keep their options open at this stage, which is sensible I think. You can read a discussion about open sourcing Natami here:
http://www.natami.net/knowledge.php?b=2¬e=486

Hmmm, Sensible to keep their option open... but not sensible enough to avoid associating with the people who make outrageous claims...

No of course not. I would love a cheap Replacement board for my A1200, based around an FPGA... But nothing I've read or heard about the NATAMI project suggests that it will offer me this.

So your main objection to the Natami is the potential cost, right?

No, it's the weirdoes who are make this project a joke.

[bloodline]

HenryCase wrote:
@bloodline

We have all wondered what it would be like... but I see my friend's Machine with the latest 9800GX2 Nvidia GFX card on the latest Quad Core Intel CPU... (a system that cost less to put together than An A500 + 1 Meg RAM and HD cost in 1990) and I simply can't get excited about 16 year old technology..

Fair enough. However there are some people who still enjoy coding for classic Amigas, do you understand why they might be excited about the Natami?

I would say that half of my time spent coding on the Amiga was spent pouring over technical books and other people's source code trying to figure out how to overcome the limitations of the hardware...

I remember once writing a game that like lemmings needed lots of little animated characters... But the Blitter code I was using clipped to the 20 pixels wide of the animated characters... which was horribly slow (since Every BOB operation took at least 3 blits)... so to try and up the frame rate, I used a dual playfield, display (which halved my background colour palette), and then all animated object were drawn to the front playfield and since that was transparent I only needed one blit and one clear... then I increased the bitting to width to 32bits, which was much faster than 20bits...

Anyway... I took ages to figure all this out... now all this crap doesn't matter on modern hardware... I can pretty much do what I want... With OpenGL almost everything about the display is handled in hardware...

Do I want to return to those days... not really...

Everyone here, the old timers at least will know my views of OpenSource... Why we even have closed source hardware/software in the Amiga community is a mystery to me...

I know that you are a fan of AROS,

To say the least :-)

I was certainly not questioning your belief in open source, my point was geared around the statement you made about Minimig only being a pure classic Amiga clone while, thanks to the power of open source, it can be anything the devs want it to be.

NATAMI isn't opensource... so this is a moot point...

They are not ambitious claims, they are false claims! and they make a joke out of the Amiga and the NATAMI project.

They are not false claims, they are unlikely claims.

I refer back to my German Supermodel... False or unlikely? I don't think it really matters... do you?

 Let's say I won the lottery on the weekend, I'd probably fund a Natami ASIC.

You could probably fund the first stages of the HDL to ASIC work... And that assuming the FPGA version has been bug fixed... Or would you fund the bug fix work? I doubt there is a lottery big enough for you to do what you want to do... :-(

The chances of me winning the lottery are slim, but fingers crossed eh!

Indeed!

The dev boards were described as being 'close to A1 prices', don't know where you got that $100 figure from.

Just quoting from the thread... The A1 was horribly over priced anyway, and far beyond anything reasonable.

In any case, the advances in semiconductor fabrication has meant that prices of FPGAs are falling (while processing power increases). In 2-3 years maybe we will be able to buy an FPGA capable of running SuperAGA for around $100?

I wonder how many of us will be around in 3 years... I wonder where technology will be in 3 years... I never imagined anything as amazing as the iPhone 3 years ago...

My use of 20 years was an obvious exaggeration to show my point! Every second longer than needed is a second wasted.

Translation: Every second spent developing features I do not want is a second wasted.

Features not "needed" is time wasted, the only features "needed" are those to run Amiga software.

No, it's the weirdoes who are make this project a joke.

What does that matter, either you like the idea of the Natami (beefed up classic Amiga hardware) or you don't. I don't mind if you think of me as a weirdo, I know I've done more than most to keep this project from falling foul to crazy hype, and to misplaced negativity.

Want to avoid negativity? Keep it real :-)

[bloodline]

biggun wrote:

bloodline wrote:

It's fine, but it's not a commercial idea. It's a hobby idea, it's not $20 ASICs and $100 dev boards... it is these claims that irritate me.

They are not ambitious claims, they are false claims! and they make a joke out of the Amiga and the NATAMI project.

Do you  have a problem reading or do lie on purpose?

I appreciate this thread is big and probably unreadable now.
But I suggest you ask me questions directly, before accusing me of anything.

The Natami team NEVER promised, that we will sell the Chip for $20 !

I never said you did!
But there are supporters of the project that do claim that NATAMI will have a full AGA compatibility + SuperAGA + 200Mhz CPU (of indeterminate ISA) on a single FPGA for $20...

It is claims like these that I feel make a joke out of the NATAMI project.

You would do well to distance yourself from them.

 

We clearly stated that our long term goal is to develop the HDL code for SuperAGA Chipset and including a CPU, which altogether could be made into an ASIC.
This Asic would then be a AMIGA in a single chip.

Let's keep this at the "could" stage... Because I have no problem with this idea. Infact, I am hoping for single Chip A1200.

The ramp up cost for a Altera Hardcopy are 250,000 quit.
A piece price for a hardcopy ASIC of < $20 is a correct statement.  

But the initial investment is too massive. There is no way anyone could raise enough money to start that off! What I would suggest trying to get an FPGA version into the afordable region... If the unit can emualate multiple Retro architectures then there starts to be a significant potential...

We never claimed that we have the money to invest.
What we said is that we want to bring the chip design
to functional state that this could be done.
Our goal obviously is to find people interested to make new inexpensive classic Amigas happen again.

This is a perfectly reasonable goal, but there are many on the Amiga boards who don't understand how much work or money it would take to take an FPGA design to an ASIC and be able to produce it in quantity and at a low cost! These people then turn the whole thing into pointless dream that is unrealistic and stuipd!

I find it rather unfair of you to misquote us here,
and to call us liers based on your misunderstanding of the whole.

I would refer you back to my earlier posts, I have not called you a liar. I would prefer you not to call me one either. I have tried to discount the absurd claims of those with no technological understading or even a grounding in the real world...

[bloodline]

wawrzon wrote:
@bloodline:

frankly, you actually never directly attacked the natami team,

I have nothing against what they are doing. Why would I attack them?

but you have accused the technical ideas behind the project to be a joke and insult to the name of amiga, while basing ur criticism mostly on statements made by so called "supporters".

The "supporters" seem to think that NATAMI will be the best thing since sliced silicon. That companies will be lining up to buy this design. They won't. The only people interested in this are people like me, and I want something that I can afford and will run my old software.
 

if i was a serious dev whose project is criticized like that, i would sure get nasty with u.

If you were a serious Dev, you would have a better understanding of the technical issues involved.

so called "amiga comunity" is full of infantile enthusiasts so if you regard urself as something better just do not waste ur time discussing their mistakes.

No I don't consider myself better. That is why I am astounded by the level of stupidity and lack of ability to Google demonstrated by people here...

[bloodline]

Atheist wrote:

JJ wrote:
@Atheist

And you are stumping up  the half million dollars are you. I mean its penauts according to you.

And think you are missing a few parts of the cost there

Hi JJ,

Doh, I know it's a ~550 dollar (add $135) MB, I'm only talking about the difficulty in obtaining the one key component.

Regardless... you are asking 2500 people to put $550 into a project. That's serious investment capital... I don't have that that sort of cash that I'm prepared to throw into a project which might not actually work out... how many of those 10000 ASICs will be DOA... after assembly how many boards will be DOA... how long will the Testing and debuging phase be on the ASIC... what do we do if there is a bug in the design... as Jerri found in the C64 ASIC... throw away the first batch and do another run... we don't have that sort of money... There will never be that sort of money for such an antiquated design.

[bloodline]

wawrzon wrote:

If you were a serious Dev, you would have a better understanding of the technical issues involved.

no im not a dev so i stand back on technical issues, but even as visual artist i rely on logic to the same extent as on feeling at least.

My statement was not intended as an insult, but only as an observation.

@atheist: please, thats reallly highly unrealistic, ur just confusing people. i think natami devs have already much more mature plans, as what to do with their research, so let them speak for themselves if u will.

Atheist represents the extreme end of the Amiga community spectrum. If he is unaware of the technical details involved there are many many others who also do not know.

[bloodline]

Atheist wrote:
Hi bloodline,

The people like me are the guinea pigs buying a NatAmi60 for ~1200, the one with the FPGA, that is going to be, over the course of ~1 year, be tested, and tested, and tested again.

The NatAmi60 is a very reasonable idea, and certainly the most sensible I have seen from this project. But unfortuatelly it is slightly outside my scope of interest. Since I like it, but I am not interested in buying it (Should I be given one, I'd be very happy :-)), I have not commented upon it.

No ASIC is being made until the FPGA version, the NatAmi60, is taken around the block way more than a few times.

The ASIC design and the FPGA although related are two very different things. As I mentioned, Jerri's C64 clone worked fine, but when she got the ASICs back they had an unforseen problem... which required a rework of the mainboards... these problems can be swallowed by a big company with a couple of million to invest in a product they expect to make at least 4 times their money back with. A hobby project is better suited to FPGs where problems can more often than not be fixed in software, with the obvious disadvantage is that the PPU is higher and the chip has to run slower.

[bloodline]

wawrzon wrote:
@bloodline:
as far as i understood biggun if he ever spoke of asic, then only as an option in case some bigger company had an interest to use future natami-technik in a device like sort of pda.

Certainly once one has the HDL of the chip, an ASIC could be made. Indeed, in the next 20 yearsit might become possible to make ASICs of the required complexity for a tiny fraction of the cost they are now...

But unfortunately I must refer back to my German supermodel argument... While it's possible that I might be dating one this time next year... it's VERY unlikely, so unlikely I may as well consider it impossible...

There is no technical reason why any company would chose anything related to the Amiga hardware for their own designs... it simply does not make any sense for any company to do so.

in that case something related to amiga technik might again appear on the market. whatever consequences it might have to amiga community i dare not foresee. the asic natami computers could be probably constructed to smaller quantities in this case, so to say "by the way".

If a comapny is going to produce these chips it's highly likely they would sell them with a markup to help lower their own costs... but like the German supermodel, who has no reason to date me... no company as any reason to use NATAMI... there are modern, cheaper, better supported designs that they can buy.

edit: the failure of similar past ideas like setup boxes based on amiga-technology would indicate that one couldnt rely much on such possibility.

Yes, that's painfully true. I think even in the late 90s the idea of using the AGA chipset in a comercial product was a very shakey idea... it did offer some advantages, like Genlocking and TV resolution support... but still it was old, power hungry and required a lot of silicon...

@atheist:
no 2000 people are going to gather around a risky project with uncertain outcome to donate each 500-1000$. face it. even a single sponsor is more likely

He is not alone in his beliefs though.