Am I really alone in wanting an Amiga AGA compatible?

[matthey]

It is literally available for sale and they will literally ship it to you immediately.

Really literally or just soon literally? Last I heard was that it would soon ship in quantity but that there were many back orders that would probably take some time to fill. That likely means "get in line and wait", literally.

1) USB
2) Network
3) Scandoubler
4) Sound blaster
5) CPU speed
6) RTG
7) RAM
Hard drive
9) Virtual disk
10) VGA port

Some of these features are on the expansion board which has not been produced and will cost more. Sound blaster though?

For 499 euro I believe it is even cheaper than classic Amiga if you  intend to expand it like crazy and still the FPGA Arcade is faster than the fasted expanded classic Amiga.

The FPGA Arcade only is about as fast as a high clocked 68030 and has no FPU or MMU. The unavailable expansion and a rare rev 6 68060 are required for "the fastest classic Amiga". The 499 Euro price includes a case and card so it is cheaper as board only (I believe closer to 300 Euros for the board only). Mist has AGA now and is currently available and cheaper (with half the memory of the FPGA Arcade) but has a different set of features. They are both competitive in price and performance with entry level AGA hardware. They are not going to beat a high end AGA Amiga in performance, yet.

[matthey]

I have only enough energy to reply to this because I know this discussion will endlessly go back and forth and I don't have this in me anymore. I am getting old, sorry. Let the new generation take over and have fun debating and replying back and forth until end of time..not me.

I didn't mean to give you a hard time although your information was suspect. I thought your "literally" sentence was funny and continued with it.

Now back to this, I am personally talking to one of the team of FPGA Arcade and he said they literally have it for sale and not in back order stock and they literally will ship it with tracking number.

It looks like it is for sale and shipping but that still doesn't guarantee someone buying one will have it shipped promptly. MikeJ said there are 128 boards. Subtract the 40 boards which were already "in the wild" and that gives about 80. Jim and Laurent have about 70 pre/back orders each so there is not enough for everyone with the last batch. Maybe Mike has more boards already but I wouldn't count on it. The pre-order customers have a good chance of getting a package soon. Hopefully, more will follow soon. Source:

http://www.fpgaarcade.com/punbb/viewtopic.php?id=471

P.S. Looks like the FPGA Arcade board price is 199Euro for the version without composite/SVHS output, 229Euro with.

[matthey]

@danbeaver, mechy
You guys are being a bit harsh on the FPGA hardware. The old Amiga hardware has its nostalgia and advantages which means many will continue to enjoy using it but it will always have its limitations too.

classic Amiga hardware advantages/disadvantages
+ nostalgia of real, old and substantial hardware
+ serviceable and expandable
+ CPU compatibility, performance and features set the standard
+ relatively good HD performance is possible
+ relatively fast RTG and 3D are possible
- it is old and more is failing everyday
- I/O is mostly outdated
- OCS/ECS/AGA and chip memory are slow
- not enough AGA compatible hardware
- Zorro II/III and PCI are relatively slow
- cost is high for good hardware

FPGA Amiga hardware advantages/disadvantages
+ very flexible and upgradable because of FPGA
+ modern I/O
+ RTG (but no 3D yet)
+ fast AGA, chip memory (also expandable >2MB) and custom chips possible
+ fast memory
+ easily degradable for compatibility
+ production can increase to meet demand
+ small and energy efficient
+ standard power supplies and cases possible
- CPU, FPU, MMU performance and availability limited by FPGA cost (improving though)
- SATA and PCIe require a significantly more expensive FPGA (improving though)
- SD/microSD disk performance is unexceptional
- not enough memory for power users

The 1st generation FPGA hardware like the MiniMig was neat but not very useful for most Amiga users because they had better hardware. The 2nd generation FPGA hardware like the FPGA Arcade and Mist are good enough and useful enough to have sitting beside good old Amiga hardware and will upgrade many users with low spec and/or broken Amiga hardware. A 3rd gen FPGA Amiga hardware could be what the Natami tried to do before its time and could become the main Amiga computer for many. It would require more cooperation, investment and standards for it to happen. Nobody is going to throw the old Amiga hardware away though .

[matthey]

Does the FPGA Arcade really come with USB now or is that a future upgrade?  Can the expansion port be stack-able for multiple cards?  When & $ for 060?  Can it boot from USB?

The old FPGA Arcade had PS2 ports but now there seems to be an option for dual USB ports instead. I don't fully understand so I will refer you to this page:

http://www.fpgaarcade.com/news/

Mist seems nice, can it boot from USB?  I think the ram needs to be increased . . .

Mist had proper USB from the beginning which is one of it's strong points. The USB driver and filesystem would have to be in flash (using some kind of MAPROM support for a cold boot) but I don't know if this possible.