Why no FPGA accelerator cards?

[Belial6]

Or maybe an accelerator card that has video, CPU, an SD card, memory, PS2 Keyboard/Mouse, and joystick ports.  Since the only think left from the original Amiga is the power supply, maybe we could get that running from a normal power connector.

[Belial6]

It seems to me that the comment about the wedge case being more valuable than the hardware inside holds some truth.  Since that is the case, it would make more sense to make an FPGA based motherboard replacement.

I know, not enough market.  BUT since the FPGA based systems are so much smaller, the answer isn't to make a custom Amiga format board.  The solution is to make an adapter.  That is what I did with the MiniMig case I am finishing up now.  I picked out my case, which happened to be an external USB DVD/Harddrive case.  I installed all of my ports in the case with cables to the actual ports on the MiniMig.  The only barer to putting an existing MiniMig in an Amiga wedge case is the placement of the SD card, which I was advised not to try and cable out, and the fact that the mouse and keyboard are PS2.

While they would take SOME effort, the mouse and keyboard should not be too much of a technical feat to get past.

Using this I don't see any reason that the MiniMig, or ReplayArcade could not be put in an original Amiga case.

[Belial6]

Hey, now THAT's a great idea.  MiniMigAGA form factor re-worked for existing models!  Me likey!

All of the extra real estate could be used for additional RAM slots, etc.  Mmmm...

The idea isn't to make a MiniMig that was in an Amiga motherboard form factor.  There simply isn't even close to enough people to have that make sense.  The idea is to have adapter cables that will allow you to put a MiniMig that ISN'T in an Amiga form factor inside of an Amiga case.  If someone figured out the keyboard connector, and figured out a way to get the SD card up to disk drive, there is no reason that a current MiniMig couldn't be installed in an Amiga case.  I'm kind of surprised that no one has made a kit for that, and for installation in a standard PC case.

With a market as small as this, being able to use the same board in multiple form factors with only a couple of adapters can mean the difference between doable and not doable.

Today, it would probably make more sense to make adapters for the RetroReplay since it will already be set up for a PC.

[Belial6]

Why even bother posting stats like that? Never going to happen.
Compatibility with the OCS core is getting much better thanks to Yaqube's hard work but lots of subtle undocumented "features" must be implemented. Not to mention similar things for AGA. High compatibility can be aimed for... but in the short term.... you'll have to live with gfx & sound glitches and crashes not present on the real Amiga.

Plus when you go "faster" in a system like the Amiga you're going to lower compatibility. There is no getting around it.

The 100% compatibility is likely a misstatement of "so compatibly that I cannot tell it isn't the real thing".  After all, even the real Amigas produced by Commodore were not 100% compatible with "Amiga", since each model had it's own idiosyncrasies.  At this time, a PC running WinUAE is the most compatible Amiga ever built.  There is no reason to believe that FPGAs will not eventually reach the same level of compatibility.  They might not be 100% compatible, but they will likely end up more compatible than original hardware.

You don't have to lower compatibility to increase speed.  You just have to keep all of the parts in sync.  Because of that it just means that all of the timing sensitive chips need to be inside the FPGA.