3 more NatAmi's - Yippee!

[commodorejohn]

Boo-yah! I am eagerly looking forward to this.

[commodorejohn]

Yeah, I don't think the 060 is exactly designed to handle 3200+ MB/s They probably went with DDR2 because it's the cheapest and most easily available memory standard these days. On the bright side, with that much bandwidth to go around, I imagine "chip RAM is slow" will be a thing of the past...

[commodorejohn]

What would be awesome is if we could make an FPGA board that replaces all the custom chips by way of piggybacking in a classic Amiga, then from there.

Not really. Anything not on the board itself would still be limited to the original bus speed, which is exactly the same constraint as existing classic Amiga upgrades. The only way to remove that is to do what NatAmi's doing and create a whole new design with a faster bus.

[commodorejohn]

Is there any speculation yet as to what this might cost?

IIRC, they've refused to comment until they're ready to put it in production...

[commodorejohn]

You want an  idea how to stress test your machine, the royal great Natami, have it play FarCry, Crysis, or Fallout 3. Then you will catch my interest, and I will definetly buy. Ubisoft started with Amiga, and with a few kind words they might just try porting it over to your machine (if it is good enough).

Yeah, port Fallout 3 to NatAmi and have people see it demoed as an underpowered PC as opposed to seeing something actually designed for its capabilities? That's a good idea.

I still cannot fathom this mindset that the only true measure of success for an Amigoid project is to be capable of copying everything the mainstream industry is doing. If your goal for such a project is just to become exactly like the industry standard, what the hell is the point? Just don't bother at all.

Don't get me wrong, but to me anything under 2.4 ghz is a total waste of time.

What the hell are you doing here, then?

[commodorejohn]

When the Amgia first came out, it was a top of the line futuristic machine. It was doing things that no other computer could do, that is why we all liked and purchased the Amiga.

Huh. I got into the Amiga long after the fact, when it hadn't been state-of-the-art for years, because I found that it had a clever, well-thought-out design that I respected and wanted to experience.

Actually copying the mainstream industry today is just about what any computer should do.

But if you're just going to copy the mainstream, why bother at all? There are countless x86 PC manufacturers out there who make them better and cheaper than any hobbyist project ever could. There is exactly zero point in trying to best the whole PC-clone industry at its entire purpose.

It would be hard to think up something new for a computer today. I don't want to see a copied little bit faster imitation Amiga coming out, I want to see something come out that could uphold the orginal Amiga, a machine that can take crysis and twirl it around it's space bar. I want new innovation, not copy cat tech.

But if you think it's too hard to innovate, how can you turn around and demand innovation? Or if you don't think it's outside the realm of possibility, why do you think people shouldn't bother and just settle for copying what the rest of the industry is doing?

Apple changed, people cried, then went on with business as usual.

And now they make machines that are merely pretty good but overpriced PCs in fancy cases. Joy. But even now they're still doing their own thing with iOS devices and OSX, not simply copying everything the rest of the industry does.

My question to you is

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING HERE?

THE ORIGINAL AMIGA WAS ABOUT INNOVATION, IT DIDN'T COPY ANY OTHER COMPUTER, IT WAS THE LATEST AND THE BEST, AND I WON'T LET ANY OTHER FAKE, IMMATATING SYSTEM TRY TO STEAL AWAY THE ORIGINAL AMIGA'S LEGACY.

I am here because I value the Amiga for what it is, not because I want a cool name to stick on my x86 clone box. I want to see projects like NatAmi come to fruition because they're trying to improve on the Amiga's substance, not some half-mythic Symbol that I worship.