FPGA Replay Board

[AJCopland]

Thread bump!

Just wondering if there's any progress to report?

[AJCopland]

You are
I am still in moving hell, but unpacked the boards yesterday.
/MikeJ

Any news on if/when they'll be mass produced? Have you been able to do any deals with AmigaKit/ACube/Vesalia etc?

Andy

[AJCopland]

@Freqmax
If you don't mind me asking how much does land cost in the states?
That area you have cleared is at least 5 times larger than my house + gardens takes up! I can't imagine how much that would cost... you could buy the Amiga rights + anme for that!

@MikeJ
Good luck with it Mike, I'm really hoping you pull this off nevermind what you decide to do with it in future versions. I'd like a buy one as soon as it's released.. depending on me getting a new job!

Andy

[AJCopland]

Depends on location. Some places land is insanely cheap, just you may not want to live there...

the square states generally cost less....

Hmm, well yes ok that was a poorly phrased question on my part. I could have bought a house in Middlesbrough back when I was a student for a out £15,000... wouldn't have been worth it really granted the time since they're still only selling for a out £18,000 whereas my house which is the same size is worth quite a bit more

Difference between Middlesbrough town centre and a nice leafy village in the country I guess

Ok, but question still stands, it's scary how much land in the US costs compared to the UK

[AJCopland]

Where did you get the idea that I have cleared land at all?

Anyway real estate pricing tend to be in parity with job oppertunities so it's usually the same more or less when considering the quota between living cost vs salary.

Sorry dude, wasn't meaning to be rude just curious. From the photo you posted it just looked like a huge piece of land and I was really surprised. Not that you could afford such a huge piece of land just, kinda... wow.

Anyway, nevermind, I apologise if it bothered you.

Andy

[AJCopland]

Darrin is the one who posted the pic.

Ah ha! That'd be the 4 bottles of Leffe and 1 pint of Cider effecting my judgement then. Possibly a good time to bow out of further posting before I'm too pissed to spell

[AJCopland]

How can it be vapourware when quite a few of us have working models?

That hasn't stopped anyone saying it about Natami either There's 7 of those at last count.

However I agree, MikeJ has put a huge amount of work into the FPGAArcade and is just doing his fulltime job and being duly diligent in getting this labour of love right.

People don't appreciate how much effort it takes to do something like this when it's just one person doing all aspects of the work.

Andy

[AJCopland]

Some good news. All the components are in place now and I'm paying the bill.
The last parts should join the PCBs within two weeks, and I am hoping they can get them built before the China spring festival holiday. I should get boards by end Feb.

This is a big step forward as I can now remotely order and build as many as I want. This will also mean the daughterboard can go directly into volume production.
/MikeJ

Woohoo! Congratulations Mike
Well done on getting it all into production!

[AJCopland]

I thought the N050/N070 cores were started from scratch and didn't use the TG68 core.

It was from scratch.

[AJCopland]

Not sure if it is what you guys are talking about but i remember Thomas(?) mentioning using an ARM chip for the Natami that will allow it to perform multiple instruction sets using the same clock speed*.

*Please don't ask me to explain it - i'm already confused...

No, there was to be a physical 68060 on a daughterboard.
Any ARM cpu on the board was for configuration loading/setup/whatever-else.

In theory you could run non-Natami configurations on the FPGA with their own softcores, or mount another type of CPU/FPGA on a custom daughterboard. Those were just ideas that were discussed on the forums though, not something Thomas ever showed interest in.

Andy

[AJCopland]

Just got back from China. Boards look great, are shipping now out of China following me.

This is actually pretty HUGE news dude!
You should be shouting about it more Mike

[AJCopland]

UPS tried to deliver 20Kg of Replay boards today, unfortunately I was out
/MikeJ

I think I speak for everyone when I say... gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme gimme

[AJCopland]

So yeah it is going to cost me 825 dollars...

That's is an insanely terrible deal.

Buy the FPGAArcade from MikeJ - immediately financially better for MikeJ since you're not going through Vesalia.

Then buy the rest of the components locally, or at least from your own country, and avoid all of the other costs, taxes, and currency conversions etc.

You can then spend the money you save on the accelerator whenever it gets released.

What country are you in?

[AJCopland]

The pictures on MikeJ's site show it in an ITX (mini-ITX) case and I think he's said that the mounting holes are right for that. Yes I think you can use the X500 case.

[AJCopland]

Yep, I check in everyday hoping for release news

[AJCopland]

Sorry guys, appreciate the patience. I have had some hassle with the day job, but still moving forward....

Don't worry, it's not a complaint
I spent all day almost gnawing my hands off in frustration that I couldn't get home and hack on one of my "spare time" projects so I understand.