MiniMig: One Random CRAZY Thought.

[EDanaII]

So far, I've stayed (mostly) quiet about the minimig situation. Don't get me wrong, I think it's fantastic what Dennis has achieved, and I'm curious to see where all this will lead, and I have one thought on this matter that I have no idea has been explored or not, so apologies if it has.

Why a minimig "board?" Or, more specifically, why JUST a minimig running with an m68k supporting only legacy games? Why not a minimig graphics card? In other words, forget keyboards, serial ports and all that jazz and instead create a MODERN graphics card using what minimig has learned to support UAE, AROS, MorphOS and OS4.0? Leave the keyboard, mouse, serial and even USB to UAE and the like, and use minimig to support the legacy software?

Like I said, just a random crazy thought. I'm no expert in this matter, but it seems feasible, and practical, to me to use what we have already today with what minimig can bring tomorrow to make a better Amiga, if only an emulated one.

Two cents.

Ed.

[EDanaII]

To be clear, guys, I'm not talking about a "computer on a card" like the Inside-out. I'm talking about using the lessons learned from Dennis' project to create a graphics card with legacy support.

But, as McVenco points out, there are still some sound issues, so maybe it shouldn't be JUST a graphics card. The point here, however, is to create some kind of card that help supports the legacy issues while supporting all other modern hardware solutions with modern hardware.

So, what I mean is legacy support, but no CPU. The best you can hope for a modern CPU is an m68060 and that running at, maybe, 75mhz. And THAT, even in this day and age, is still not cheap. Let's leave it, as well as any other currently supported hardware options, to modern hardware.

And, of course, who's talking emulation? We are talking about supporting ALL of the currently available options by providing a little legacy support. You need a catweazel to if you want legacy floppy support. Why not a graphics card or audio card for legacy video/audio support?

The modern computer is modular in design. Why shouldn't the current Amiga options also be modular?

And creating a hardware solution that supports ALL of the current options has a better market than creating a minimig which is an island unto itself. (To be sure, I'm not dissing minimig, merely pointing out the advantage of cross solution support. Also, to be clear, I doubt we're talking about a potentially viable market here, but... what the hell. :-) )

Two more cents.

Ed.

[EDanaII]

@ AJCopland,

You mean something like an FPGA based graphics card that implemented the necessary parts of the Alice and Lisa (for AGA) or Denise and Agnus (for OCS/ECS) to reproduce the Amigas graphics in hardware.

Essentially, yes. :-) But a card designed in FPGA, somebody correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't have to stay in FPGA. Just a thought.

I think that'd probably be harder than doing the MiniMig as you'd effectively be pulling out and exposing the raw interchip interfaces and then trying to put a clean interface over them so that they could be called from the "other" OS over some kind of bus. PCI/PCIe most likely.

Of course. I've never stated otherwise.

Consider, though, that some people on this thread, and elsewhere I'm sure, have been advocating an open-sourced Amiga. What's amusing for me about all this, thanks to Dennis and AROS, is that we already HAVE an open-sourced Amiga. :-) And all I'm doing is advocating one of the directions that it should take.

Ed.

[EDanaII]

@ freqmax

freqmax wrote:
I think what's sought after by the OP is essentially an Amiga graphics card that can be used on modern hardware. There is already a project that may be altered for that purpose:
Open Graphics Project

Yep, that's essentially what I'm arguing.

Nice link, BTW, I had no idea such a project existed, but I'm not surprised either. :-)

Ed.

[EDanaII]

Of course it's expensive, koafter. Welcome to the Wonderful World of Amiga. :-) Even the MiniMig is going to be _relatively_ expensive for what it has to offer.

My point in arguing this has to do with modularity. It has to do with the direction I think this should go. If this takes off, rather than developing an A1200 and AGA -- not that I'm against this -- I simply would like to see it used in a modular fashion that parallels the state of computers today.

Ed.