Would you support this project? -please read-

[Kronos]

It will take about 4-5 months to the end product.

HELLOOOOOOOOoooooo

Is there anybody out there ?

Even a a full-fledged and experienced HW-dev-team would take more than that for
a simple mobo, and it would take years for a dedicated hobby-crew.

Honestly, I would say that people like you harrasing companies with nutcase-ideas
are doing much harm for anything "Amiga" (and they are certainly doing nothing good).

[Coder]

@Kronos

C'mon, did he mentioned Amiga Inc. in this? No, so? :-P

Coder

[Kronos]

@Coder

I have absolute 0.0 tolerance for people demanding gigantic
projects to be taken (both SW and HW) without having the slightest clue how much
work it is, what it will cost, and how to get these going.

I have for example no problem with Oli and his CF, even if I have some strong
doubts about it, and I really like stuff like this Nueron, where someone just starts
doing something, and doesn't make the slightest fuss about it until he has something
real to show.

[itix]

- PPC G3 600MHz (We've left ColdFire atm)
- AGP slot
- PCI slots
- 2x SD-RAM slots

If you upgrade SDRAM slots to DDR you could use Marvell's Discovery II chips...
Plus you get an integrated gigabit ethernet ports. It is not custom design chip
but letting a standard chip to handle standard slots is not that bad.

I recall there was a computer using Discovery II chip, but can't remember its name right now 8-)

Marvell

:-D

[patrik]

@AmiDelf:

My thinking is that it wouldnt be much of a difference between this computer and an AmigaOne/Pegasos equipped with a AGP-card containing a Virtua3D chipset.

The graphics core of the Virtua3D chipset found in the Dreamcast is actually a Power VR Series II graphics processor. To give a little hint - the Power VR Series III was used in the Kyro1 and Kyro2 graphic cards.

So if you stuck a Kyro1 or a Kyro2 graphic card in an AmigaOne/Pegasos you have quite the same machine as the one you intended... a bit better performing minus the Zorro slots and Amiga/Atari/C64/etc joyports.


/Patrik

[StarOne]

amigabill wrote:
>I mean, there's a reason why consoles are so
popular. People like custom hardware

Consoles are so popular because people want to play videogames they like, not because the thing is different than a PC computer.

Actually, consoles are populare because of both these reasons. The simplicity of the consoles and not having to mess around with PC-specs and stuff is what makes them so irresistable.  And I know even more people loves the Xbox because it has up-to-date games AND because it can be hacked very easily. You don't HAVE to do anything with the hardware, but you CAN if you WANT to. That's a strong selling point in my opinion.

I don't think I'd buy the PS2 if it was just an alternative to PC, Mac or Amiga. If these consoles were all just alternative computers without any custom sets, I doubt a very few people would care about getting all of them. Even though the amiga was very ahead of it's time when it arrived, the PC didn't have custom chips and the Amiga was more popular. And I don't think it was JUST because it was superiour to the PC and such, but because it was easy to use.  I think computers like the classic Amiga would work perfectly fine today. If it even had a DVD-drive that worked the same way as the classic amiga diskdrive (just pop in the disk and it'll play), with every single DVD having their own startup-sequence like the disks had, then it would be a killer machine. Just like the classic amiga, but with todays technology.

And I know that Sony have the money to create custom chips, but I never said anything about the project being cheap. But if a large company bought up the Amiga brand, and made something like this, I think it would be a huge hit. Computers are popular, consoles have popular. Amiga had all the advantages of both, and I believe many MANY people would be happy to buy something like this.

[Varthall]

AmiDelf wrote:
This Amiga wont be splitting Amiga community at all. It will just follow the path of Commodore. Amiga was a computer, and it still should be.

If it wont split the community, it should be compatible with the existing ppc Amiga mobos, a difficult task as initially you planned to use a different cpu. But as I can see now...

Amiga 5200 specs:
- Virtua3D gfx custom chipset (as seen in Dreamcast)
- PPC G3 600MHz (We've left ColdFire atm)
- Kickstart v4.0
- AGP slot
- PCI slots
- Zorro slots
- 2x SD-RAM slots
- Amiga joystick and mouse ports
- USB 2.0
- USB Amiga keyboard

... it looks like a cross between an A1 and a Pegasos, with the joystick and mouse port integrated (a bit like an integrated catweasel).
Are you planning for an official license by Amiga Inc.,
so that it would run AmigaOS4?

Varthall

[SHADES]

This is just craazy ppl. Ever thought about this??

There is nothing stopping HW makers, designers etc, to make us specific GRAPHICS cards. ATI, NVIDA both sell their GPUs to people. What's stopping someone equivelent to say the people who made Cyberstorm PPC cards to make a Graphics card with ATI 3D or whatever AS well as some sort of CLASSIC hardware implimentation for AGA compatibility or even AAA if they want, if you want and slap it on a nice FAST AGP bus??

Thing is, A1 motherboard is going to be just great, and there's noting stopping development of any manner of cards Specific to AMIGA being developed by whoever!  and doing it on standard PCI or AGP standards!! Even CPU 68/coldfire Emulation cards, whatever!. This is the spirit of AMIGA, being able to put your imagination into relaity, use the PC for what you want it to do. The sky is no longer a limit.

[Stedy]

Good luck, you'll need it!

Have you any idea how long it takes to design a motherboard? For such a system as you proposed, from scratch would take upto 3,000 hours excluding any programmable logic.

The Emotion engine cost Sony, 500 Milllion US Dollars and 2 years to develop. Think you can still design your own chip?

AGP will be obsolete by the end of this year. Take a look at PCI Express, that is the replacement bus for graphics stuff. If you are serious, get some NDAs with IBM and look at the PPC970.

Unless you are going to sell 10,000 units a week, Nvidia or ATI will not talk to you.

Designing the system is maybe 30-40% of the work, the rest is the verification of the system, bear this in mind.

I'm not trying to completely dismiss your idea, just provide an insight into the amount of time and effort it takes to develop cutting edge electronics. I develop cutting edge computer systems for a living, it costs millions to develop such a system, it puts hairs on your chest, as you pull them out of your head in frustration at times.

Still you've got to dream.

Ian

[Wolfe]

You people keep talking about hardware.  The OS will be the core of the machine.  The hardware can be great or not so great, but if the OS sucks it doesn't matter.  Look at winblows!  

Impressive hardware and a crappy OS.

[Jose]

I'd still like to see a cooper equivalent wiich is something that doesn't exist AFAIK...