FPGA Replay Board

[Darrin]

Water proof concrete?

Low density concrete.  It floats.  

[Darrin]

can the Replay Board read CD images and run as a CD32?

Well you can try using WHDLoad to run CD32 games.

[Darrin]

Vaporware? Like NatAmi?

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

It is a fact that Jakub is working on the daughterboard and I have absolutely no doubt that Mike has the parts for the next release of the boards.  One thing I can tell you about Mike is that he is a perfectionist and those boards will not be sent out until he has tested them and updated the new core to his satisfaction.  Couple this with the fact that making FPGA Arcades is not his primary job, and you can understand why weeks (and sometimes months) go by without an update.

Hang in there.  It isn't Xmas yet.  

[Darrin]

?

!

[Darrin]

Yes Xc3s1600.
I am shipping one for to Daddy for the x500 case.
I am having problems getting enough 68060s of the correct mask set for the daughterboard. I am going to have to screen at the supplier, many of the chips are re-printed.
/Mike

If 68060s are turning into rocking horse poo then I'm sure some of us would be happy with a 68040 on the daughterboard.

[Darrin]

I have no problem getting 68060's at a good price, just not the correct mask set.
I have 20 "fake" ones
So, plan is to get a tester down at the disti in shenzhen and screen every device.

I am looking at an adapter board which will fit in the pins of the 68060 daughter board and carry either a 680x0 or a much faster Virtex7 class FPGA running a soft CPU.

Full speed ahead chaps ....

Cheers for the update Mike.

Don't forget to release the new core to us betatesters.  

[Darrin]

The TG68 is still being developed, I am also running some tests.
I have my own core which is smaller and faster, but I have not had time to work on it for a while. These are both 68020 (lacking MMU and FPU) but can run faster than a 68060.

/Mike

That would be nice!

[Darrin]

I'm loving the idea of a stonkingly fast 020 softcore (further down the road at least).

I guess it'd make upgrades easier when new fpgas become available?

Would it be technically possible for this approach to provide more fast ram too (not that I need it)?

The daughterboard contains extra RAM (128MB IIRC) which will add to what we already have on the main board.

[Darrin]

I also was involved with demos on the Atari, and the idea is to be 100%cycle accurate for both cores. A1200 with 020 initially, then overclocked/060 mode.

It will not lose sync as the hardware is very close to the original hardware.
It remains to be seen if we can bend the timing from the original chipset to work with DVI without breaking it - or adding a frame delay which is not ideal. The high-res outputs have customized timing and work well with DVI/HDMI.
/Mike

If that is the case, I guess in theory we could have several Amiga cores loaded on the SD card which could be selected at boot time.  One that is 100% accurate and another that takes advantage of additional features, but might have a few issues with certain software.

[Darrin]

-MCC-216: Can be bought, but it's a scam, using outdated Minimig core with it's sources closed. It's compatible with something near 40% of Amiga 500-era software. Materials are awfull and aesthetically it's horrible. Avoidable device at all cost. It's developers have been promising a closed-source 68K implementation to make it more compatible, since...2010. Yeah. It's sure to happen next century.

This explains why I don't see any reviews of it.  I wasn't even sure that it was an actual product despite seeing it advertised.

-Turbo Chameleon64: has a good Minimig port, thanks to the efforts of MMrobinsonb5, but it's still having a lot of compatibility issues due to the TG68 implementation.

I hope we'll see it able to access the joystick ports of the C64 host as some point.  I don't have the extender board and I don't want to keep unplugging it from the back of my C64C.  I use the IR CDTV remote control as a joystick.

-The original Minimig 1.1 board, designed by Dennis van Weeren and mass-produced by Acube Systems, is the best Amiga I ever had, even if it's limited in so many ways as having "only" 4MB of RAM. Real 68K on-board guarantees an almost perfect compatibility rate. Clear winner here, thanks again to the extra work by Yaqube, Boing4000 and MMrobinsonb5 towards a perfect custom chipset implementation.

As an OCS/ECS gaming machine it is fantastic and the turbo charged real processor does zip along nicely.

If the soft CPU is going to be an issue for the FPGA Arcade then pehaps a basic expansion board just containing a real 68020/68030 CPU might be a better solution for gamers who do not want the full 68060 daughterboard with all of the bells and whistles.

It will be interesting to see how the new core performs when it is released.

[Darrin]

Uhm... I'll take that board offered way back when now :-)

It would be great to have you developing for the FPGA Arcade, especially if it is using Poseidon.

[Darrin]

What's holding it back? I'm not in a hurry or anything, but I thought it was imminent two weeks ago.

In Amiga terms, "imminent" can mean up to two YEARS.  

[Darrin]

Yeah, but still where can I get the board?

Seems AmigaKit have sold out.

If you do find some in stock then make sure you get the 4MB upgrade.  Personally I'd just wait for the FPGA Aracde at this point.

[Darrin]

I've had the ST/BBC B and most of the arcade games running on it.

Drool

[Darrin]

The solutions are just as good now as they were then & I don't recall people refusing to buy 68060 boards back then.

And if a game doesn't want to run correctly on the FPGA Arcade with the 68060 then it could always be run using the soft core CPU.

[Darrin]

or possibly WHDLOAD.

and that too