Excitement about NatAmi

[Piru]

@Cammy

I'm not surprised at all.

I saw big problems with NatAmi project early on, and IIRC voiced my concerns (in my typically cheerful manner) sometime around June 2008. Even hobby projects deserve proper management.

If the management finds out that someone doesn't fit the role first envisioned there are numerous things to do (encourage the individual to learn about the needed stuff, have the individual take some small projects in which to develop oneself, try find a more suitable task(s) fitting the skill profile etc) before totally kicking someone out. Even if it comes to that, deciding to let someone go completely, it should be done in honest and tactful way. No one deserves to be kicked out without any explanation.

[Piru]

as far as I figure it, they havent asked for anyones money, so they can do whatever the hell they want.

That's no excuse to treat people like dirt.

[Piru]

so why all the sudden piru takes sides with cammy?

Why shouldn't I? What's so sudden about it? Please enlighten me.

if they really treat the people like dirt that doesnt say anything about the quality of their wannabe product actually

No, but it does say much about the project management, and that'll ultimately affect the product quality as well.

[Piru]

The reality is that the board went from 4-layer to 6-layer to add onboard add Gbit-ethernet and USB.  Hence, going from LX to MX has taken longer than originally planned.  A PCI slot was removed and 2 more memory chips were also added...

Why does this remind me of BoXeR?

[Piru]

@Piru
I don't see similarities to the Boxer at all.  The BoXeR looks like a PC board with an fpga to emulate AGA and a connector for a 68k or PPC cpu.  Natami is a re-implimentation of an actual Amiga design with bottlenecks removed and enhancements made where they can be.

Quite obviously I was not talking about technical similarities. What is remarkably similar is the drag generated by the feature creep.

[Piru]

Right now I'm counting about 6 months to add ethernet, USB...which were previously to be optionally supported via PCI...and more memory.  These are the final features from a physical standpoint, everything else is done inside a fpga and "features" can/will be added as implemented.

Assuming there are no bugs in the ever more complicated HW.

For reference, the "MiniMig with AGA" thread will be 2 years old this coming January.  Please don't knock one while praising the other.  There were times when a whole month or two went by without an update from MikeJ.  His board has also been in development a long time but only "discovered" by this community within the last 2 years.

I don't see much feature creep dragging his project.

The goals of creating an "A5000+"-caliber machine are far more complex than simply emulating an A500 with an '0X0 accelerator.

Especially when your goal posts keep moving constantly.

I don't see the situation as having a problem of feature creep but simply the reality of accepting what features a new PC must have to be usable out of the box. Ethernet and USB are standard on any PC, why not on a new Amiga...?

Lack of resources. For instance USB support adds insane amount of extra work. Why? Just because you don't want to use PS/2 like the other projects?

[Piru]

How much effort is adding a PCI USB controller to a board when you've already designed the PCI bus interface? The same goes for ethernet.

Lets see: Total relayout, adding two layers to the board. Quite an effort if you ask me.

And Natami without USB would be a strange beast given that it's meant to be a more up to date classic Amiga, and USB stacks exist for the Amiga already, and most peripherals are USB connected?

Surely it would make more sense to use a PCI USB card.

And bugs? It's an FPGA

Not everything is FPGA on these boards. It's more than easy to add bugs to the board that are not fixable via FPGA patches.

[Piru]

the only things moving is what's in the fpga

So what was this change where USB and ethernet was added on the board?

Perhaps you are a masochist and prefer the 2nd option, but I'll take the 1st - thanks! ;-)

Ah, so who's writing the driver for this USB chip? And ethernet SANA2 driver? Or are these yet another items that will happily get ignored on the software side of the project?

[Piru]

It also helps to have hardware in hand when writing drivers, no?

It is far more helps to have them on PCI card. You can then begin writing the drivers before your HW is even ready.

With custom HW and chips on the board itself there are some challenges to verify that the chip is working properly. You need to write a lot of stuff to actually see that everything pans out. There are many ways you can mess things up when adding network and USB connectors to your board, as AmigaONE owners well know...

[Piru]

Why would anyone want essential features like USB and ethernet relegated to a PCI card?
Not only would it create a nightmare scenario for compatibility, but it would severely limit the options for different form factors.

Fair points there, but I still think modifying (and thus complicating) the design considerably might not be worth the effort.

[Piru]

The developer has announce boards are almost ready for production.

I remember that boards were initially planned to be released summer 2008. What does this "almost ready" mean this time?