Natami and FPGAArcade

[mikej]

They are more than welcome if they wish to.

The FPGAArcade Amiga core will be enhanced and supported by me. With the patch daughter card it is possible to quickly wire up the original custom chips and check the behavior of the soft cores. We are doing this with the 68K soft core to start with, and I am building a 68030 onto the patch card as well to verify future 32 bit processor cores.

My Atari chips are cycle accurate, and hopefully we can get the open source Amiga core to the same state.

/Mike

[mikej]

The hardware 68030 is to verify the accuracy of the softcore.

It won't be needed to run up the system. The optional daughter board will contain Ethernet and USB interfaces instead. If performance becomes an issue we might add an SRAM onto the expansion board (there are 120 odd pins to the FPGA) so the platform is expandable. The patchboards are also available so people can add other interfaces if they wish to.


/Mike

[mikej]

I should also add that the aim is to get this out as soon as possible. The time taken so far has been developing the hardware. Also, although this is an Amiga group, the aim is to also run other platforms such as the arcade games, Atari ST etc.

I have also ordered a 800x480 resolution 4.3" LCD with touch screen which will sit on the top board. I thought it would be fun, I always wanted a true portable Amiga - and software emulation doesn't count

Four prototype systems are in existence and have/will be shipped to developers who are working in this area.

Another 10 or so will be built next month.

/Mike

[mikej]

The aim is to be shipping by early summer.
The only license issues are with the C64 SID at the moment but this will be resolved.

Target price is 200Euro. Early samples might be slightly more, depends if a PCB respin is required or not. Volume production is possible at a much lower price.

/Mike

[mikej]

The NatAmi project looks very interesting. We are going in a slightly different direction - they are making a more powerful Amiga, while I wish to clone the original machines as accurately as possible for a low cost.

I can add some new features such as high screen resolutions and interfaces, but I don't plan a 3D engine etc

I'll have a chat to the guys.

My C64 code is based on Peter's design (same codebase as used in C-one) however the SID is not available. I had some code from another party but I can't open source that either, so I decided to write my own. There is some pretty detailed documentation from the die scans now. Frederic, if you wish to share your code I would be more than happy to come to some deal. Mail me directly.

Best,
Mike.

[mikej]

Yeah, it took me a while to find a suitable small switch.
It is eswitch ra tl1105-rf100q digikey EG1837-ND fits.

I prefer to use offset maths for DSP work, it is easier to see in the simulator.
Say your input is 8 bit 0 to 255.

This could mean the signal is -128 to 127 if the value 128 is taken as 0.

If you want to use signed numbers you can still use std_logic_vector (in VHDL) - just remember that the number is signed so invert and add one where appropriate.

It's just wires, so it's how you treat the value which matters.
/Mike

[mikej]

I haven't checked Peter's latest release. In the last version of the code I ported the SID wasn't present due to some license issues. I asked Peter if things would change and he is working on it. In the meantime I can't redistribute that code, and I don't believe in releasing binaries.

/Mike

[mikej]

I had a number of email conversations with George before he died. He was very proud of his SID, and we had an agreement I could release the code when it was finished. Sadly this never happened.

This is why I never released Peter's C64 code (which was missing a SID at the time) on my website, and why I have started to look at it again for the new board.

/Mike

[mikej]

I've no idea what happened to George, he just stopped writing me emails one day

I'm an idiot, I have the part numbers the wrong way round in the BOM. That would confuse the production people.

The correct part number is
mountain switch 102-1261-ev. Digikey EG1837-ND fits the footprint.

Best,
Mike.

[mikej]

I put up some more (fuzzy) pictures of the processor daughter board.
http://www.fpgaarcade.com
/MikeJ