3 more NatAmi's - Yippee!

[whiteb]

Cheaper than an AGA Amiga with an 060, extra mem, fast ata etc.. that's for sure. Building a decent classic 'miggy is expensive and Natami will end up being not just the better, but also cheaper option.

NATAMI Cheaper ?, I doubt it.

FPGAReplay is going to be cheaper.

[whiteb]

@ alexH

Of course I discount UAE as it's plain and simply got as much in common with "real" amiga as Amiga Forever has... (ie: sod all)

The MiniMig while a great product was never for me (took them too long to make it AGA and no AGA then no Amiga), quite simply the specs the NatAmi is offering is what I want & require from an Amiga and all the other reasons I've given before...

Minimig has *NEVER* had, nor will it ever have AGA, it simply has no room to put it in to the FPGA Bitfile.

I know people have been talking about FPGAReplay, and labeled it "Minimig AGA", but that was more built as a device to run Arcade Roms, it just so happens that because of the FPGA size, they have got a preliminary AGA chipset for the minimig core ported to it.  But again, due to the size of the Bitfile, it will NEVER fit in to the FPGA used in the Minimig, not only the size, but the number of I/O lines in the smaller FPGA chip too.

[whiteb]

Erm... afraid your wrong there... when I first heard of the NatAmi last year and visited the site 100% backwards compatibility was clearly stated on it and is the main reason why I support this project so much...

NATAMI have *NEVER* boasted 100% compatibility.  Given you are using an FPGA to mimic the chipset, you are at BEST, an APPROXIMATION of the chipset.

You can get it *CLOSE*, but if you want 100% compatibility, then use a REAL amiga.

Even Minimig, does not boast 100% compatible, and lets face it, those working on the firmware have done an EXCELLENT job, there are some titles that will *JUST NOT* run, and the same will happen with NATAMI.

Topics on Compatibility:

The NatAmi is compatible to the OCS/ECS/AGA AMIGA chipsets.

It says "Compatible", not 100%.

Like I said, Minimig is Compatible, but not 100%.

AMIGA applications, games and demos that run on classic 68060-Systems,
will run on NATAMI as long as they have not any constrains to chipset timings/limitations.

SO they have openly admitted there will be some incompatibilities, therefor, not 100%.

[whiteb]

@whiteb

There are two (equal) definitions of Minimig:

1. The physical board known as Minimig.
2. The FPGA core known as Minimig.

Both are equally correct. Therefore, it is inaccurate to say there is not a Minimig AGA, as there clearly is (using definition 2).

Yeah thats right, Definition 2 (At least the AGA version), does not run on Definition 1.

[whiteb]

...or a CloneA (if/when released).



Yes. My point is that 'Minimig AGA' is not an inaccurate name for what it is, it perfectly describes what it is. Consider this, when Dennis was writing the Verilog for the Minimig before the first Minimig PCBs were produced, he still had a Minimig when he ran the Verilog HDL in a simulator. The name belongs to the HDL core, it just so happens one of the early Minimig platforms shared its name.

Well, I have not read what methods Jens is using to reproduce the AGA chipset, you can use Technical manuals and write approximations in to VHDL, or you can use Reverse Engineering techniques, where you can use solvents to dissolve the ceramic of the chip and gain access to the core.  Either way, It is still using FPGA, but Jens is likely to have more accurate timings between the custom chips in his version..

Jens has only so far announced CloneA to implement OCS (That I can see).

I still think FPGAReplay is the one to watch.