Scanning the original chips

[freqmax]

Anyone tried to scan the original Amiga chips in any way to recreate the logic matrix?

NMOS, but what nm process and die size has been used for OCS Agnus, Denise, Paula etc?

(This also means that even broken chips are worth keeping!)

[freqmax]

You'd probably have a hard time finding someone still manufacturing in this process... The inner workings are pretty well known and have been replicated in UAE and Minimig.

There's absolutely no need for anyone to manufacture in the original process. The process size matters for the scanning procedure.

What is known about the inner workings of these chips is a reverse engineering work process, it's very good. But it's not perfect.

This begs the question if you committed to producing at least a million units minimum how much it would cost per unit to produce a working 100% compatible classic Amiga motherboard of A500 and A1200 specs?

The PCB has already been done. So for the chips you seem to need 100k - 200k USD in addition each chip maybe cost 1 USD per chip?
Btw, have a look att EFF DES cracker.

I am far more interested in the continuing polygonization (is that a word?) of the 68K - which I am working on.

How does the polygonization work, and is it reliable in determining the logic function?
Being able to use nitric acid, photograph (using microscope?), and then use algorithms to transform pictures into HDL-code seems really nice.

Is the 68k compatibility a huge issue?, 68000 + 68020?, maybe more critical than the custom chips?

[freqmax]

How many people are there willing to pay for working Amiga hardware really?

I know it's hard to find hard numbers. But a educated guess based on statistical data?

[freqmax]

Chips that need remanufacturing on the motherboard is M68k, ROM, Agnus, Denise, Paula, Gary, CIA. The rest is quite standard chips. So lets assume the circuit board with components cost 200 USD. Each mentioned chip will likely require 100k USD each. So the first amiga is likely to cost 700 200 USD. Divided by 10 000 sold units gives a unit price of 70 USD. Double chip cost and 1000 sold units gives a 1400 USD/unit price. etc..

So price estimate:
Unit price USD = (200 + 7*100 000) / (units)

[freqmax]

And what about tax and wages etc. etc. etc?

Where is the tax and wages for Minimig?
So it would be impossible for a more ambitious project to do the same at circuit level?

There is absolutely no point doing it that way these days.

Ask @Digiman for the point of the exercise

It'd be far, far cheaper to cost reduce the minimig and do a bigger run of these.

I'd rather cost reduce FPGA Arcade

Something more like Jeri's C64 in a joystick is much more likely to work and most importantly - actually sell in good numbers.

These play joysticks are nice but quite limited.

[freqmax]

Regarding the real purpose of this thread I found a photograph of the Motorola MC68020RC16 CPU die from a blog:



And from cpu-world.com Motorla 68000 die can be found. Neither of above photos are enough for decoding thoe.


FujiFilm S5100 (4.0 Mpix) with reversed Canon FD 50mm f1.4 lens on homemade macro stage, auto-focus mode, manual exposure, 2-second shutter delay

FujiFilm S6000fd (6.3 MPix) with macrolens Raynox M-250, camera settings same as above.

Some hints on photography and examples of various really microscopic objects.