NatAmi 68070 design draft

[HenryCase]

@bloodline

AAA never worked. No one will ever know what AAA would have been like or even how it would have worked if C= had ever got it to work.

...and yet there would still be interest in it if it was finished (as close as possible to the design specs) for the Minimig. I don't see that happening, especially now we have SuperAGA, but my point is that those involved in open source development are free to choose the direction they take, you shouldn't dictate to people what they should and shouldn't want to see.

It's fine, but it's not a commercial idea. It's a hobby idea, it's not $20 ASICs and $100 dev boards... it is these claims that irritate me.

Those are the claims made with dream mode:on, everyone knows they are very ambitious goals, but the project would be a success even if we don't reach the pricing goals (as long as the Natami60 is released).

The more complex the design the more worried I get... I never make a project more complex than it has to be to achieve the required task! If the NATAMI is a great AGA clone and runs AGA software really well, but is going to take 20 years to develop... just because of extra feature that 98.4% of the time simply won't be used, then the project has little value!

According to the Natami devs the SuperAGA development period is close to completion (I have even seen it described as complete). No 20 year wait, so no problem here.

What does that mean? Feature compete? Alpha stage, beta phase... RC?!?! People are getting excited based on little information...

According to the devs the SuperAGA is complete enough for them to start designing the Natam60 dev boards, make of that what you will.

Yes, that word that has plagued the Amiga for the past 15 years... Soon...

You don't seem that interested in the Natami, so why worry about how long it takes to complete?

And the crux of my concern... why waste all that dev time and silicon for one or two features...

You misunderstand me, but that's okay as I didn't really elaborate on this point. As I said most of the SuperAGA functions will support new software, but let's take a look at one feature that is being considered that would help all Amiga software, which is the integration of Scale2x support into the hardware. You can read about Scale2x here:
http://scale2x.sourceforge.net/
Here's the discussion from the Natami forums:
http://www.natami.net/knowledge.php?b=2¬e=214

As a hobby project, the price doesn't really matter, the time scales don't matter, protecting the IP doesn't matter (so release the source code), Success doesn't matter... Open the project up let everyone have a play and learn... is any of this true with NATAMI?

The Natami team aren't fully against open sourcing the work they've done, it's just that they want to keep their options open at this stage, which is sensible I think. You can read a discussion about open sourcing Natami here:
http://www.natami.net/knowledge.php?b=2¬e=486

No of course not. I would love a cheap Replacement board for my A1200, based around an FPGA... But nothing I've read or heard about the NATAMI project suggests that it will offer me this.

So your main objection to the Natami is the potential cost, right?

[HenryCase]

@bloodline

We have all wondered what it would be like... but I see my friend's Machine with the latest 9800GX2 Nvidia GFX card on the latest Quad Core Intel CPU... (a system that cost less to put together than An A500 + 1 Meg RAM and HD cost in 1990) and I simply can't get excited about 16 year old technology..

Fair enough. However there are some people who still enjoy coding for classic Amigas, do you understand why they might be excited about the Natami?

Everyone here, the old timers at least will know my views of OpenSource... Why we even have closed source hardware/software in the Amiga community is a mystery to me...

I know that you are a fan of AROS, I was certainly not questioning your belief in open source, my point was geared around the statement you made about Minimig only being a pure classic Amiga clone while, thanks to the power of open source, it can be anything the devs want it to be.

They are not ambitious claims, they are false claims! and they make a joke out of the Amiga and the NATAMI project.

They are not false claims, they are unlikely claims. Let's say I won the lottery on the weekend, I'd probably fund a Natami ASIC. The chances of me winning the lottery are slim, but fingers crossed eh! The dev boards were described as being 'close to A1 prices', don't know where you got that $100 figure from. In any case, the advances in semiconductor fabrication has meant that prices of FPGAs are falling (while processing power increases). In 2-3 years maybe we will be able to buy an FPGA capable of running SuperAGA for around $100?

My use of 20 years was an obvious exaggeration to show my point! Every second longer than needed is a second wasted.

Translation: Every second spent developing features I do not want is a second wasted.

No, it's the weirdoes who are make this project a joke.

What does that matter, either you like the idea of the Natami (beefed up classic Amiga hardware) or you don't. I don't mind if you think of me as a weirdo, I know I've done more than most to keep this project from falling foul to crazy hype, and to misplaced negativity.

[HenryCase]

bloodline wrote:
Want to avoid negativity? Keep it real :-)

I will if you will. :-P

Although there is more I'd like to discuss about the Natami, I think it's best I bow out of this discussion to avoid further damage to the Natami project. Best wishes to everyone, may you all get the German Supermodel of your dreams (baggsy Heidi Klum  ;-) ).