Software and hardware update for the C-One

[Schoenfeld]

The C-One is unique with it's architecture until today: The central components can re-configure each other while the machine is running. If you wanted to do this with a traditional computer, you'd have to exchange PCI cards or even the processor while it's turned on. The process took a few seconds, reminding the user of the speed of computers of the 80's. Although the C-One always aimed at resembling computers of that decade, that kind of speed is not acceptable for a current machine. FPGA developer Tobias Gubener has re-written the startup-procedure of the C-One (comparable to the BIOS of a normal PC) from scratch to overcome this.

The new software is called "Newboot" and it's free to every C-One owner. It is not necessary to work on the C-One's hardware, as it's just a flash upgrade. Still, the performance of the new startup is stunning. Instead of the elderly 80's design, the C-One now welcomes you with a graphical menu and almost triple speed. While browsing through the menus, the FPGAs on the board are re-configured a number of times without the user even noticing. With Newboot, the C-One has made the final step to everyday-usability after a development time of five years.

With the FPGA Extender card that's available since yesterday, the C-One even overcomes the limitation of emulating only 8-bit systems. Tobias Gubener has ported Dennis van Weeren's Minimig as a first demonstration of the new capabilities: In addition to VIC-20, C64 and Amstrad CPC, the C-One can now run 32-bit systems like the Amiga. The FPGA capacity of the C-One is increased almost by a factor of five with the extender board! The technical data in short:

    * Cyclone 3 FPGA in 65 nanometer technology
    * 16 MByte Ram with up to 333 MByte per second data rate
    * stereo delta-sigma audio converter
    * two crystals for exact PAL and NTSC clocks
    * high-bandwidth interface to the C-One
    * simple Installation without soldering
    * price: 99,- EUR (*)

New C-One boards are sold with the extender-card pre-installed for 333,- EUR (*). You can find more pictures and information on the website of the C-One.

(*) recommended retail price including German sales tax of 19%. Prices at our retail partners may vary. For mail ordering, shipping may be added.

[weirdami]

normal PC

 :roll:

[InTheSand]

Perhaps it's time to start saving! At NZ$800 excluding whatever extortionate shipping would be charged, it might have to wait a while!

Nice project though, and the extender board addition really opens up the possibilities...

 - Ali

[ferrellsl]

If this could be upgraded to the same specs as the Natami I think I'd get one.  This is such a cool project.

[alexatkin]

So what is imitating what on the C-One?

They mention using a Minimig image for the FPGA but the Minimig uses a REAL 68000 so clearly one of the C-One FPGAs are programmed to be a 68000?

I could never understand the full complexity but it would be interesting to hear of which chip is doing what.  The project itself sadly is far too expensive for my budget.

Is a 68000 pushing the limit of the FPGA or could a 68020 fit in there?  The nature of this project is very curious to me even though its doing on a hardware level what we can more or less already do in emulation.  Its so much more graceful and reliable though.

[Dwyloc]

@alexatkin

As a minimig replacement I would not be interested as I already have a minimig and love its small form factor.

But if the c-One's minimig core was/is expanded to take advantage of the additional memory and additional connectors so I could connect a real hard disk, CD-ROM and floppy drive.  Then it could be a real replacement for our Ageing A1200 Tower and big box Amiga setups.

As such If the CPU emulation runs a descent speed (030/40Mhz or so) then I would not hesitate in buying one at that price to replace my ageing A1200 Tower setup with modern hardware.

With its PCI slot and 2 A1200 clock ports it even sounds like we could add a PCI graphics card and use real A1200 clock port addons like my existing subway USB board.

So what do people think a possible real expanded Amiga replacement to run games and old OS3.X applications that are not compatible with OS4 or morphOS?

[omnicron10]

The new FPGA on the minimig can hold two 68k cores (one for the minimig and one for replacing the PIC functions) and still hold the minimig core and only be at 3/4 capacity.  The other TWO 1k30 and 1k100 FPGAs I believe are not used very much or almost empty.  I would imagine that some more functions like HD/HDFILE support, A1200 clock port (c-one has one), PCI (C-one has one) and some sort of floppy support (maybe not amiga).  The C-one uses compact flash and unlike minimig has cores for other computers that can be chosen via an interface at boot.  It is a lot larger but is almost ATX form factor and uses ATX power.  It also has space for two SID chips and a Commodore 64 cartridge port.  The ATX back plane has RCA audio, VGA, Serial, IEC and a few other ports.  

I also see they have a NTSC core and a PAL core.  They have two time sources for NTSC and PAL.

I had also read that clone-a testing might be done on this setup as well.  I don't know how Jens will choose who gets to beta-test Clone-A but it sounds fun!

The core source has been released as well so if you know how to work with it, you can expand it!

Here is the link to the softcore 68000 that TG made.

http://www.opencores.org/projects.cgi/web/tg68/overview

Tim

[boing4000]

I like to see minimig spreading to other platforms :-)