How about creating a Open AMIGA Consortium?

[HenryCase]

@thread
Minimig is open source, but I don't think NatAmi or CloneA need to be open source for this consortium to work. What the consortium should be about is defining certain tests that ensure the new machines will be compatible with each other and legacy Amiga systems. For the NatAmi and CloneA it would be the responsibility of the creators to make machines that will pass these tests. Some sort of seal of approval could be worked out.

What it SHOULD NOT be about is providing a design template about what future Amiga machines and operating systems should consist of. I like the fact that Minimig and NatAmi are different. I like the fact that OS4 and MorphOS are different. Gives people choice.

Keep the diversity, improve the compatibility.

[HenryCase]

Einstein wrote:

A6000 wrote:

We also need a reverse engineered operating system.

There already is one, what truely is needed is an *evolved* amiga like OS that's also FLOSS, anything else is a disappointment and a proof of "the Amiga curse", sorry, but that's the inconvenient truth  :-)

"Evolved" being the key word there, i.e. it needs to grow from our existing tech.

The OS is second in priority to the hardware IMO, need to draw up hardware tests first.

[HenryCase]

A6000 wrote:
AROS 68k should have all the features of AROS PPC.

NOOOOOOO! Why hold back development of features for AROS PPC that AROS 68k can't handle? There should be a base level of compatibility between the two but the systems don't need to be identical to achieve that.

A6000 wrote:
Programs written for AROS PPC should also run on AROS 68k

What about programs that need to take low level access of a machine? If it's possible to make a program easy to port then the developer should see that as a good thing anyway.

[HenryCase]

A6000 wrote:
It's going to be hard enough to get developers to write for the aros machines without expecting them to create 2 or 3 versions, 68k, PPC, PC, a common os will help

There will be common functions between platforms that will make porting easier, but if a program needs assembly routines to run efficiently I don't think there should be some consortium telling the developers they can't use them. The developers are doing the hard work after all. I am sure developers will want to use common APIs where possible (to make their life easier), you don't need to set rules up for this.

A6000 wrote:
Low level access is fine for Identical hardware platforms, but we won't have Identical platforms.

What's the point of having different platforms if you can't take advantage of their unique features?

[HenryCase]

biggun wrote:
I think we are mixing topics here.
My understanding of the topic was to promote the idea
of an open group of AMIGA HW engineers.

It would be better to work together to create new hardware.

However, the Amiga community has its limits. There are three new Amiga-compatible pieces of hardware being worked on (Minimig, CloneA, NatAmi). We do not have the capacity to support more and more machines, better to form groups to improve existing machines and ensure they have some level of compatibility with each other.

biggun wrote:
This definition of Amiga includes the following machines:

A1000 (OCS)
A500  (OCS)
A600  (OCS)
A2000 (OCS)
A3000 (OCS)
CDTV  (OCS)

A4000 (AGA)
A1200 (AGA)
CD32  (AGA)

MiniMig (OCS)
Natami (SuperAGA)

Where's ECS in that list?

biggun wrote:
The Aone and Pegasos are on the Hardware level not Amigas but PCs.
They are no more AMIGAS as any Dell or MAC is.

In what way? Only in the lack of OCS/ECS/AGA-like functions. The PPC CPU used in both the A1 or Pegasos don't mean they aren't real Amigas, so I hope you weren't referring to this.

[HenryCase]

persia wrote:
Custom chips in 2008 are a profoundly stupid idea.  I can go on the internet and buy high end graphics or sound and be far, far better off.

Yeah, and be like everybody else. Custom chips do have their advantages, and FPGAs make implementing them much easier (than building ASICs). FPGAs are reconfigurable so you can customise the level of acceleration you need for certain functions (if you were running a 3d rendering program, for example, you could load a FPGA core that takes away other acceleration and concentrates only on graphics processing).

smerf wrote:
Shouldn't we ask Amiga Inc. for help on this?

Why? So they could contribute nothing and take their cut of the profits? Hell no!

[HenryCase]

persia wrote:
A custom chip is in you machine forever, if I want to upgrade to the latest Nvidia card it takes 2 minutes to open the case, pop out one card and pop in a new one.

Upgrading an FPGA is even easier, its all done through software.

persia wrote:
There's just no way a few hundred Amiga fans can outdo Nvidia

There isn't anyone seriously aiming to outdo Nvidia or ATI.

persia wrote:
Custom chips just create headache because some joker thinks they can write directly to them and then you can't upgrade because your software breaks.

Any bad changes made to the FPGA can be undone by resetting the Natami.

persia wrote:
There's really two roads here, a modern Amiga inspired by Classic Amigas or a reimplimented retro machine with a tweek here and there. There's a fundamental choice. You need to choice, abandon state of the art or abandon classic except as UAE.

There are more than two roads. Natami is in the middle of the two paths you proposed, being a classic/retro machine with substantial improvements. Probably easiest to think of it as an A5000.

persia wrote:
The sad thing is, no matter what the choice the community will grow smaller, and neither way offers a guarantee of success.

The level of success that Natami enjoys will be dependant on a number of factors, but it's certainly got a lot of interest from within the Amiga community and BBRV are showing an interest in helping out, so it may be sold at a reasonable price for ex-Amiga users to consider.

Sig999 wrote:
I think a consortium of sorts would be a good thing amongst the hardware developers. In a perfect world it could aid development by not having everyone reinvent the same thing... in a realistic world it opens the doors for them to share features - Super AGA takes off? No probs, you can plug this into your whatever other board..... everybody wins.

I agree, sharing the workload benefits everybody.

[HenryCase]

A6000 wrote:
If FPGA's can be reprogrammed 10,000 times or more then our new machines could be in a state of continuous evolution, becoming better every month or so.

Certainly improvements can be made, but it would be better to limit these improvements to applications only, I don't want to keep on going through the process of upgrading my OS. FYI write/erase cycles should not be a problem. The Spartan-3AN, for example, offers 100,000 write/erase cycles. I have no idea what FPGA will be used for the Natami, but I doubt you'd see less than 10,000 write/erase cycles in its specs.

I gave an example earlier in this thread where you could have a custom FPGA core to speed up 3d rendering, and there are many other cases FPGAs could be customised for the benefit of applications.

A6000 wrote:
Even users with no experience in VHDL could try their hand at making small improvements and if they work, submitting them to a library for others to try.

That would be a great outcome of using FPGAs. Best start learning VHDL then A6000. :-D

A6000 wrote:
We may end up with something Nvidia would consider uneconomic to design let alone manufacture.

Absolutely, but understand that FPGAs are not going to be competing with Nvidia (or ATI) GPUs for pure power. As you say, there will be non-commercial applications that will benefit from FPGA-based hardware acceleration. Take a look at this video:
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=8182954424526557863
As you can see a single FPGA makes the hacking app run 80x faster than on a 1.25GHz G4 CPU alone.

A6000 wrote:
FPGA's mean our new machines will not become obsolete, but are FPGA's economically viable in large production runs, think big, be optimistic.

FPGAs aren't as cheap as ASICs in large production runs, but the FPGAs used in Natami shouldn't cost too much.

[HenryCase]

awe4k wrote:
In other words, and in terms of how many efforts could have been put into enhancing Amiga and PC, the Amiga is and was a boat powered by a few people rowing, whilst the PC market is and has been a larger boat powered by a myriad of powerful engines. I fail to see how Commodore could have survived in such an environment no matter how many efforts they would have put into the job.

I see what you're saying, but look at Apple. They didn't have the huge technological lead that the Amiga had when it was launched, and yet they've only just started using Intel CPUs. Think about the advances the Amiga could have made with strongly funded R&D.

awe4k wrote:
I agree that AGA was too little, too late, but one single company could not have done enough and fast enough to catch up with Microsoft, Intel, ATI, and NVidia, all toghether (and this is to name just a few companies). Yes, it could have adopted Linux as standard and that would have rid Commodore of the burden of constantly updating the OS, but there would have been too many giants to fight against for one single company like Commodore.

Linux? Linux was barely out of nappies when Commodore went bankrupt (1994). nVidia didn't have any products on the market at the time, and ATi were no threat. This is before the time the high powered GPU was seen as a standard PC component.

If you really want to know what killed the Commodore Amiga line of computers (other than Commodore's own incompetence), you need to look at the Amiga in the home market and the Amiga in the business/school market.

In the home market, which was much smaller back then, most people used computers for word processing (basic DTP at most), for spreadsheet/accounting software, and to play the odd game or two. The audiovisual and creative opportunities available on the Amiga were not high on Joe Public's agenda, other than for gaming. The most important factor was making sure the kid's schoolwork could be transferred to the school computers and similarly that the report you spent all of last night typing up would load on the computers at work.

The choices made by the business world had a great influence when it came for people to pick a home PC. So why didn't Amigas become popular in the business world?

There's the classic phrase 'Nobody gets fired for buying IBM'. IBM's endorsement of the x86 PCs ensured those companies who had been buying IBM computers for years would see the IBM-compatible PC as a logical path to take. Amiga suffered from an image of being too flashy and unstable for the business world, which a bit of marketing and R&D from Commodore could have fixed. Also the business applications which were popular at the time of the A1000/A500/A2000 weren't ported, Lotus 123 for example. Why switch to a different computer if you can't use your most business critical apps?

Had Commodore not messed everything up they could have won over the business community, and the Amiga's future would have been much brighter.