Phase 5 Digital Products comeback?

[Iggy]

I posed the question as to where they are getting the edge connectors from and they claim to have an overseas company involved. I wonder if Majsta is aware of this or even if he has a source yet.

imagine if they could make one with an fpga core on it. They might have a manufacturer doing a limited run on the connectors but I doubt they will be persuading Motorola to be fabbing a run of '060s .

Theres a lot of interesting stuff going on in the world of Amiga hardware at the moment and everyone should be sharing ideas or at least aiming for a common configuration that eliminates all no-longer available parts.

Apollo + Individual + Phase 5 + Aeon would love to see a future roadmap for these guys!

God I love you guys, such endless optimism.
Even from the guy who's tag sounds like the results from a turn of the millennia rectal exam.:roflmao:

[Iggy]

...but I doubt they will be persuading Motorola to be fabbing a run of '060s...

Since Motorola (or Freescale) isn't around anymore that could be a problem (and you ought to see the prices the new 68020s are commanding - personally it all looks tailored to replacements for legacy military and aerospace applications).
While NXP might not be interested, there are still a far number of '60s around for limited runs.

[Iggy]

who cares about os 4.x and why use a classic for that anyways . There are many reasons why you would use a classic and not a ppc only os .

I use classic hardware for the fun of it, but its not that practical.
PPC hardware has the power to run software with more utility.

But I will admit that a 603e or 604e augmented legacy system doesn't add much.

[Iggy]

Totally agree, I personally have zero interest in anything PPC, especially on a classic.

While I agree with you that PPCs (at least as they exist now) are fairly pointless on the Amiga, the rest of your sentiment has been bugging me since it was posted.
Were we to do nothing but sit here focused on legacy systems, our community would face its continued diminishment.

A GOOD PPC expansion for the Amiga wouldn't rely on something as underpowered as a 603e or 604e cpu or a PC emulating those processors.

For that matter, a better 68K cpu wouldn't be based on something significantly slower than current state of the art silicon (like an fpga).

[Iggy]

the comunity faces revival currently thanks to propositions in what you call "legacy systems" sector. it is ppc focus that led to dimnishment all these years..

Yeah...because there are so many new legacy Amigas entering the market right now, right?

Outside of Jens proposal, what have you got? FPGAs?

Good luck with that.
I have my legacy hardware, but I'm not counting on it evolving too far in the future.

I may buy one of the Vampire2 boards for my A2000, but that is still going to be so much slower than my PPC hardware.

[Iggy]

PPC on classic Amiga is quite expensive way of running ppc datatypes under ClassicOS. It is $800+ mp3 player or slow .jpg viewer .

Yes, I know there is a Quake PPC...

I could get new PPC board for my classic for about $300

 
 I'm not quite sure what you mean by the last line (is it missing an 'if'?), but yes, I agree that its a way to expensive way to expand an Amiga.
 
 One thing I do like about the fpga custom 68K approach is that the cpu doesn't have to be a perfect copy of the 68K cpu (especially the '040 and '60). So of the weirder incompatibilities (like the Zorro III bus and the '040s use of burst) can be ironed out.
 
 And fpgas could always lead to faster ASICs.
 
 PPC are better suited to OS4, MorphOS, Linux and other alternatives.
 
 And I can run quake (or better games) on those systems, or PCs.
 
 I like having alternatives, which is why I don't mind tweaking the sensibilities of the traditionalists.
 
 Its kind of like my being a registered Republican, but not being anywhere near dumb enough to vote for Trump.

[Iggy]

I'm afraid that some bechmarks makes people to wait too much for Vampire performance. My bet is that real life performance is about a 100-120mhz 68060. It woun't be something like 300mhz 68060.

 Sounds about right. Maybe slightly faster, but not by too much.
 Unless the newer fpga is significantly faster than the one they have already shown.
 
 Saying its going to perform like a 300 MHz '060 is about as stupid as the AmigaWorld comments I saw forecasting Tabors performance exceeding a Quad G5.
 
 Things like that give unnaturally high expectations.

[Iggy]

It looks promising. :knuddel:

Well, the 'product list' promises a lot anyway.

"Products

Cyberstorm PPC 604e
Cyberstorm MK3 68060
Cyberstorm MK2 68060
Cyberstorm MK1 68060
Cybervision PPC Permedia 2...
Blizzard 2604e PPC
Blizzard 2060 68060
Blizzard 2040 68040
Blizzard PPC 603e+
Blizzard 1260 68060
Blizzard 1260 II
Blizzard 1240
Blizzard 1240 II
Blizzard 1230
Blizzard 1230 II
Blizzard 1230 III
Blizzard 1230 IV
Blizzard 1220
Blizzard 1200/4/8
Blizzard SCSI Kit
BVision PPC Permedia 2
CyberVision 64 3D
CyberVision 64 Z3
Fastlane Z3
R2 GO MVP TMS320 Z3
G-Rex PCI 3000/4000
G-Rex PCI 4000T
G-Rex PCI 1200"



Hmm, seems to cover real Phase5 hardware, while the facebook page mentions schematics.
If they don't have the original board layouts, schematics won't provide them a lot of clues as to how to build these.

[Iggy]

@kreciu
I'm not sure what that comment had  to do with Phase5.

@Heiroglyph
Obviously a Phase5 PPC board would be retro, and if you (and 'people like you') don't want to move to something better, hey, good luck with that.
But that was the direction things evolved in.

Personally, IF these guys really have the talent to pull this off, eventually I'd like to see a better PPC board with something like a 1.4 GHz cpu.
It would require a lot of rework of the software though.
I'm not sure they are up to it.

As to software, learn to code.

[Iggy]

Well, at least Hyperion are hibernating. They are definitely no option for a successful future. OS4 is pretty much a walking dead and the momentum came back to 68k recently.

Well, there have been developments on the OS4 front.
OpenGL ES support and Warp 3D Nova are pretty impressive.
Add this to the support for Radeon HD video cards and OS4 appears to have leapfrogged MorphOS in terms of video support.

However, all this development has occurred outside of Hyperion.

And everyone is waiting for Hyperion to finish ports to the X5000 and A1222.

This situation is a little foreboding.

[Iggy]

You misunderstood. My comment was in reply to "What do you think A-Eon and Hyperion is doing?". Those companies aren't doing anything I'm interested in.

I think a new production of even the original PPC boards would be great since many people never had access to them and they make great additions to Classic systems.

Better is a relative term. Lately I don't even really use my 2GHz MorphOS machine I picked up for next to nothing. It's technically better in every way compared to my A2000 and A4000, but it gathers dust while my A2000 gets daily use just because it's fun to me.

Each to their own, that was just my answer to "What do you think A-Eon and Hyperion is doing?".

Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Yeah, I'd agree that Hyperion appears to be doing almost nothing right now.
And while I'd like to buy an X5000, that was pretty much ready to go a while ago..
Further, you are right about NG software, there isn't a lot to use.

But A-eon appears to be trying to remedy things.

You know, instead of a new A1200 from Jens, I'd rather have a PCIe X1 plug in Amiga card for the AmigaOne or G5 PCIe Mac. Then we could really incorporate legacy software into the NG base.

[Iggy]

As I said before, it doesn't really matter from a business perspective.

If they can get 060's all the better, but there's also market for better 040 boards and those cards are jumperable for either CPU so they have options.

They could still sell a lot of CPU-less boards and leave that up to the user. Either dig up a used 060 or 040 somewhere or move it from their older CPU card if they have one.

A Cyberstorm PPC for example would be a great upgrade over even a Cyberstorm Mk2 060 with the SCSI module, not to mention the benefits of moving your 040 from an A3640 to it.

We haven't even mentioned the A2000 boards, but that would be a very worthwhile upgrade for most A2000 owners even if they had to source a CPU.

I have an A2000 here, so I'm with you on that.

@warzon

 

amiga scene needs a common ground, a common denominator, and this has  been proven by popularity of certain projects, especially lately.

Not if it means focusing solely on legacy hardware. The limitations of the Amiga chipset can't be overcome without redesign, and no one if trying that yet.

You focus on what you want, I'm supporting multiple alternatives.

[Iggy]

As you may observe exactly that is happening. The so called legacy amiga hardware becomes redesigned removing its limitations. And there are multiple emerging options. As for alternatives i support them too in form of aros. Im rather indifferent to morphos, since i have never used it and im critical towards os4 since i have used it. I dont think we have a duty to support everything thrown at us unregarded the actual preferences.

Of course not, I haven't used Os4, but may get some exposure to it by buying an X5000.
Although I still doubt that will sway me much.

[Iggy]

Perhaps you should though first give it a try under emulation. Especially that you tend to emotionality. Simply to avoid what happened to vox.

WTF DO YOU MEAN BY THAT!:angry:

Just kidding.:hammer:

No, I don't see the point in emulating an Amiga equipped with a PPC card.

And I'm buying the X5000 to run MorphOS, so I'll have a copy of OS4 on hand anyway.

Might as well use it in the best environment I can.

[Iggy]

The images aren't darkened on Facebook.

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Good one. The cards look old, but those boxes were just shipped.
So it is possible that they ordered the connectors.