What would your ideal upgrade be right now for your Amiga(s)

[JimS]

The more I think of it, the thing that makes the most sense would be an adapter to fit the FPGA arcade or NatAmi into the classic Amiga case of your choice. ;-) Seriously, you're talking about duct taping a new built 68k/PPC card, graphics, SATA, networking, USB 2 board onto a 30 year old computer? When you're done you're only using the mouse & joysticks from the original Amiga....

[JimS]

@ JimS

You've just given Barry an entire production plan for his next project...

Well..... there's a difference between slapping a generic pc mobo into an amiga-like box, and slapping a fan-built Amiga clone into a real or Amiga-like box.

[JimS]

Who says they do not already fit? I know at least one that does

Hmm.... Wonder which one that would be. ;-)

But my point was that when you look at all the stuff you'd want to add to a classic Amiga to bring an old Amiga up to date, it makes more sense to start from scratch with a new motherboard.... just like y'all are doing.

[JimS]

If you're talking about my accelerator idea, then no, no graphics (and no PPC). That way you use the A1200 hardware, except the CPU and the IDE port. It would be a great board, and it would simply slide into the CPU slot, so no duct taping is needed at all.

As for 'a 30 year old computer', while true, the Amiga is quite a modern computer. Current peecees are basically the same idea (just much faster): Motherboard with stuff on it in a box; just connect it, turn the power on and go. Only tablets are more modern. Come on, Amigas aren't pre '80s machines. It's in the early '80s that computers were becoming modern, and essentially very little has changed (the big exception is performance, and performance isn't necessarily a factor when determining how modern something is).

I wasn't talking about your accellerator idea specifically, just the idea of things added on to old hardware. While I agree the Amiga is a fairly modern computer design wise, the actual hardware is between 15 and nearly 30 years old. It just seems to me that if you're going to go to the expense of designing, building and testing something, might as well start with a clean slate. I'm thinking about what I'd want to see to make me shift over to using the Amiga as a day-to-day computer again rather than some retro fun... (not that there's anything wrong with that. ;-) ) ... and when I look at all the stuff I'd want, a new motherboard would be saner.  
That's why I like the Replay, and Natami, although I'd prefer the latter to be open.

[JimS]

Okay, fair enough

To me, it's about the software, not the hardware, hence my want for accelerators with standard 680x0 CPUs and some much needed connectivity features (and a shit load of ram for the novelty value ).

I'm kinda with you on the software... Those old productivity aps like the Deluxe series, Pagestream, Videoscape and so on were pretty good. Especially for folks who weren't experts in those fields. I think sometimes I'd rather use Deluxe Paint than Photoshop. An upgraded Amiga with better graphics, networking, sound, and speed would be killer.

[JimS]

My Amiga needs tits and an ass.

Plenty of asses in Amigaland.... and not exactly a shortage of boobs either. ;-)

[JimS]

Exactly.  The Rasbarry Pi already supports USB 2.0, so we know that it can handle that.  Add the interfaces for connection to an Amiga (or other retro system) and your ready to go.

I have been thinking about something like this... maybe using the Propeller chip as controller. The trick would be connecting to the Amiga. Do the ARM chips have the old school address & data bus interface to memory, or just SPI? I suppose you could use a sort of clockport style interface and have a service routine on the ARM do the grunt work of reading it then passing it off to or from the I/O devices.