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Offline agami

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Re: Classic Amiga Hardware Projects for 2014
« on: January 06, 2014, 01:52:48 AM »
Part of me agrees with many of the suggestions my fellow wedge Amiga owners have made: USB, SATA, GFX, CPU+, Audio, etc.

I have been working on making my A1200 a more usable system in the modern world, I have a Blizzard 040 accelerator, an IDEFix for improved IDE HD and multiple devices (slimline DVD/CDRW), a PCMCIA Wi-Fi card, and an Indivision 1200 AGA MK2cr so that I can use a somewhat modern 19" 4:3 LCD monitor. To round-out my A1200 a clock port USB controller, a 16bit sound card, and a graphics card would be favourable. But I have held off on purchasing some of these due to their high cost and limitations.

The problem with adding things to the A1200 is that there are inherent architecture limitations that are a bottleneck for a lot of the extenders; Maximum 2MB chip RAM limits screen resolution/colour depth, single Zorro slot, narrow IO bus means USB, network, IDE are slow, etc. Any and all extender solutions have to be clocked down so that they can operate within the A1200 in a workable manner. That's also where a lot of the cost originates from.

Rather than doing this thing piecemeal and with a crazy assortment of bolt-on extenders I would love something like the BoXeR board. The original BoXeR spec is a bit outdated by today's standards, but the concept is still valid; A melding of the Amiga AGA motherboard with the concepts of the Mediator/G-Rex PCI daughterboards, with some other architectural improvements (reduced bottlenecks). This type of hardware would get me very interested.

NATAMI was an awesome project but the (commercial) issue with NATAMI is that it doesn't provide an option to sell additional kit. A BoXeR-like board allows Amigakit to sell add-on cards.

To be perfectly honest, I am more interested in a BoXeR-like board, an ultimate AmigaOS 3.9 open platform board, than in an A1 X1000 or A1 X2000. It wouldn't be dirt cheap, but I sure as hell would rather have a nice clean slate than build my hobby PC on top of a 22 year old, can fail at any time, expansion limiting, proprietary hardware computer.

Lifting the 68k base to a higher standard will provide a better ecosystem to run the existing applications and could provide an incentive for a kickstarter to get OWB ported to OS 3.9, and would also be a nice board for AROS 68k.
« Last Edit: January 06, 2014, 01:55:49 AM by agami »
---------------AGA Collection---------------
1) Amiga A4000 040 40MHz, Mediator PCI, Voodoo 3 3000, Creative PCI128, Fast Ethernet, Indivision AGA Mk2 CR, DVD/CD-RW, OS 3.9 BB2
2) Amiga A1200 040 25MHz, Indivision AGA Mk2 CR, IDEfix, PCMCIA WiFi, slim slot load DVD/CD-RW, OS 3.9 BB2
3) Amiga CD32 + SX1, OS 3.1
 

Offline agami

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Re: Classic Amiga Hardware Projects for 2014
« Reply #1 on: January 07, 2014, 06:40:42 AM »
Quote from: duga;756478
PSU replacement for A500/600/1200. Standard connector but at least 5 amps or more (no fans).


A1200 desktop chassis replacement:
  • Using external PC-keyboard via Lyra 2-adapter (avoiding the problem with aging keyboards and broken flat cables)
  • Slot for slim fit DVD
  • Slot for VGA/DVI-connector (Indivision AGA)
  • Slot for two USB ports
  • Slot for optional case fan (for those with 040/060)
  • Slots for all existing A1200 ports


With no internal keyboard it should take slightly less space than the standard chassis. Something like http://oldcomputers.net/pics/c128d.jpg or A1000.


and

Quote from: Everblue;756480
What about a run of Amiga desktop cases? A500/A600/A1200 and perhaps C64 as well.


I agree 100%

This would make extending the wedge Amigas a lot easier. And I don't like the tower solutions; I had one in the late '90s / early 2000s and they are overkill.
The price of slim laptop/notebook drives (HDD and optical) is much more affordable these days.
---------------AGA Collection---------------
1) Amiga A4000 040 40MHz, Mediator PCI, Voodoo 3 3000, Creative PCI128, Fast Ethernet, Indivision AGA Mk2 CR, DVD/CD-RW, OS 3.9 BB2
2) Amiga A1200 040 25MHz, Indivision AGA Mk2 CR, IDEfix, PCMCIA WiFi, slim slot load DVD/CD-RW, OS 3.9 BB2
3) Amiga CD32 + SX1, OS 3.1
 

Offline agami

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Re: Classic Amiga Hardware Projects for 2014
« Reply #2 on: January 07, 2014, 06:44:07 AM »
It's kind of ironic; Successive companies have tried to build us "an automobile", when all we really wanted, as it turns out, is "a faster horse".

Viva la m68k!
---------------AGA Collection---------------
1) Amiga A4000 040 40MHz, Mediator PCI, Voodoo 3 3000, Creative PCI128, Fast Ethernet, Indivision AGA Mk2 CR, DVD/CD-RW, OS 3.9 BB2
2) Amiga A1200 040 25MHz, Indivision AGA Mk2 CR, IDEfix, PCMCIA WiFi, slim slot load DVD/CD-RW, OS 3.9 BB2
3) Amiga CD32 + SX1, OS 3.1