Who currently owns the rights

[bloodline]

CatHerder wrote:

bloodline wrote:
I think you should actually find out how the amiga works (and no, it's nothing like a C64). Then find out about the technology involved, Minaturising the Amiga Chipset would cost millions! It would be far cheaper to build an emulation on an existing platform. And without any decent market research I can't see where you draw your "profitable" line from.

P.S. you have contradictred yourself ina few comments.

Which comments, feel free to list them - I've been thinking out loud in this thread...

I think you should find out how this antiquated technology works instead of living in a fantasy world. There's nothing earth shattering in an Amiga (not today, sorry). It was "wow amazing" in 1985-1990 but soon as 91 hit, the Amiga was no longer "wow amazing".

All I've seen since 1995 is a bunch of attempts at building PC's and Mac clones that run Amiga emulators. A few faster accelerators here, a few cards allowing you to use PC parts there, etc... No new technology, just a bunch of altering existing PC tech to work with 12 year old Amiga hardware.

You can bash on people all you want Bloodline, including me - fact remains you're wrong about this idea. People are making millions off of realistic products (retro game units), nobody in their right mind is going to invest millions on a computer that is targeted at 10,000 users (that's being generous) world-wide. But smart people will certainly invest a couple million to get a retro gamer out the door that millions of consumers (who couldn't care less what an Amiga is) will scoop up like hotcakes -- all for the games.

But keep up the good trolling.

Since I know what I'm talking about, and I have researched the subject of the custom chip technology myself many years ago (1999), I feel I am well placed to point out the flaws in your idea. BEAUSE the technology is old it means there are very few FABs that can build the chips. Modern chips use a very technology to old one, you can't even use the same gate layouts anymore due to different capacitances! If you read what I'm trying to say, you will realise I have nothing against the idea, but your flaw is in the implementation.

If you see my £250 iPaq running a Beta version of UAE you will see where I'm coming from.

Another problem that crops up is the legal rights to the games... Atari, Nintendo etc, not only made the hardware... they also published the games... this means they can resell them without any legal issues... Commodore published very few Amiga/C64 games, which makes these things much more messy.

I'm not trolling.

[Martyn]

@bloodline

Since I know what I'm talking about, and I have researched the subject of the custom chip technology myself many years ago (1999), I feel I am well placed to point out the flaws in your idea. BEAUSE the technology is old it means there are very few FABs that can build the chips. Modern chips use a very technology to old one, you can't even use the same gate layouts anymore due to different capacitances! If you read what I'm trying to say, you will realise I have nothing against the idea, but your flaw is in the implementation.

I'm not trolling.

No, he's not trolling, he just know what he's talking about.  It is a nice idea, but there are huge technical obsticles preventing it.  It's been explained many times by [CBM engineer] Dave Haynie, so I've just googled to quote him and it actually brought back a post I made on this very subject at the beginning of the year.  You can read it here.

Thanks,
Martyn.

[bloodline]

Cheers Martyn, I thought I was going mad :crazy: :-D

[Samuar]

So, whats the solution?

I am guessing the question is "how do we make a very cheap amiga 'clone'(?) that can be purchased on masse and run old games on TVs etc?"

[bloodline]

Samuar wrote:
So, whats the solution?

I am guessing the question is "how do we make a very cheap amiga 'clone'(?) that can be purchased on masse and run old games on TVs etc?"

If you want to do it, then the best idea is probably to build the whole thing (CPU and all) in an FPGA, with a simple RF tuner + some DACs + a rom (witha kickstart + a simple workbench and ADF loader). Then have a CF or SD slot for ADFs.

Wouldn't be cheap though.

[Samuar]

i presume, that attempting this with an older, less complicated amiga would be easier than with a new model. I.e, a 500 rather than a 1200?

Or is the internal difference between the two only speed?

Samuar

[bloodline]

Samuar wrote:
i presume, that attempting this with an older, less complicated amiga would be easier than with a new model. I.e, a 500 rather than a 1200?

Or is the internal difference between the two only speed?

Samuar

It wouldn't make much difference. THe A1200 has a more advacned Chipset, but that just extends the capibilites of the old chipset rather than adds any new features.

The A1200's CPU is a crippled 68020 which isn't much better than a 68000...

[dbalaski]

At the risk of being called a heretic.
I think one good point brought up in the quotes from Dave Haynie is simple -- assimulate & evolution.  
Whoever owns the rights -- should consider this as a possibly to move the platform forward.

dB

[Dan]

It would be a very Petro thing to do :-P
The problem is that the trademark is owned by a play hide an seek coporate assets outfit.
And the patents and hardwaredesign is owned by Gateway and the games by their respective companies.

BTW didn´t the old Amiga Int under Petro combine lisa, paula and denise into one single chip way back when?
Around the time there was talks about Coldfire.

[dbalaski]

Fogive me not knowing the Petro reference  (remember, I am recently rediscovering my roots  so to speak ) .

It just seems to me that sitting on the Patents and designs is foolish -- every day it is becoming a more depreciated captial asset.
but I am digressing

[bloodline]

dbalaski wrote:
Fogive me not knowing the Petro reference  (remember, I am recently rediscovering my roots  so to speak ) .

It just seems to me that sitting on the Patents and designs is foolish -- every day it is becoming a more depreciated captial asset.
but I am digressing

The Patents have expired and the designs are valueless :-(

[Thellenbow]

@Catherder

I see your point, but you are talking to a lot of techies here and not business people. The buzz word is Mass Marketing. It's like pop music, you only need one hit CD and you can retire. Coming up with a product that aunt Mary will buy is the way to go.

[minator]

If you want to do it, then the best idea is probably to build the whole thing (CPU and all) in an FPGA, with a simple RF tuner + some DACs + a rom (witha kickstart + a simple workbench and ADF loader). Then have a CF or SD slot for ADFs.

FPGA is one way but there are also psudo-custom chips which are existing systems with a customisable block.

Another way might be to use one of the new multicore embedded CPUs (20+ cores per chip), it takes a lot of power to do a good emulation of the chip set so you could break up UAE and run bits of it on each core, it may then be fast enough to run it in software.

Multi-core may not work that well though and requires additional components anyway - and has GPL issues...

Wouldn't be cheap though.

If you wanted to produce a system like this it's going to be expensive anyway, you can't make them cheap to sell unless you produce them in fairly serious volumes and we're talking $2 million + for a 100K unit production run (assuming it's $20 to produce).

Even if you spent $2 millon on chip development that's another $20 per unit but that assumes this would be the only production run.

I think the best way wold be to take an existing System on Chip and modify it to include the Amiga chip set (or parts thereof) as a module, this'll produce modern device with Amiga compatibility.

It's no small undertaking and definately not cheap but there's no reason that it can't be done.

[CatHerder]

Thellenbow wrote:
@Catherder

I see your point, but you are talking to a lot of techies here and not business people. The buzz word is Mass Marketing. It's like pop music, you only need one hit CD and you can retire. Coming up with a product that aunt Mary will buy is the way to go.

Exactly...

I'm saying one thing, and most of the people here are thinking "new Amiga". I'm not talking about a new Amiga. I'm talking about an Amiga RetroGamer or TVGamer. I already know every single game can be licenced without an issue (excluding the ones that have no known IP holder). There is not a game company in the world that would not lisence their old stuff. It's smart business sense.

I couldn't care less what software Commodore or Amiga International owned, it makes no difference. I couldn't care less about productivity software and applications, they don't even factor in to it.

I couldn't care less how an OLD Amiga chip was manufactured - I don't want to make one. I care how it was designed - and if this means simply emulating, or reverse-engineering each chip to come up with a new single chip encompassing the entire Amiga (lets just stick with an A500 for now) so be it. It's not a hard thing to do - this is 18 year old technology we're talking about. Any off-the-shelf integrated RF modulator would work with this, a cost of production of $0.72 per unit, and there's already 3 to pick from that are used in other retro devices.

I couldn't care less about expansions, networking, hard drives, floppy drives, or anything remotely related to a real computer - I want to make hand-held stand-alone game units that contain 10 games. (Or one that has a propritary cartridge slot that allows you to plug in various game sets).

And yes, I do know a bit about manufacturing computer products and I have worked with a few overseas firms getting designs fabricated. (I was head of IT/IS at AST Computers). I also have a pretty solid Amiga background -- I do know what I'm talking about.

I also know that with just liscence agreements from EA alone I could pump out 2 different Amiga TVGamers that had 10 quality games on each one -- I also know that one agreement would get the rights to all Hewson and Epyx titles, and one agreement with Atari would get another eleven game companys IP. I'm not just talking out my arse...

The only thing holding this back is: who owns the IP rights to the Amiga chipsets. That's all I want to know. :-)

[CatHerder]

minator wrote:

If you wanted to produce a system like this it's going to be expensive anyway, you can't make them cheap to sell unless you produce them in fairly serious volumes and we're talking $2 million + for a 100K unit production run (assuming it's $20 to produce).

Even if you spent $2 millon on chip development that's another $20 per unit but that assumes this would be the only production run.

I think the best way wold be to take an existing System on Chip and modify it to include the Amiga chip set (or parts thereof) as a module, this'll produce modern device with Amiga compatibility.

It's no small undertaking and definately not cheap but there's no reason that it can't be done.

I think your numbers are reasonable, but perhaps a little bit high. Need to think "consumer electronic toy" and not "consumer electronic device" -- I'm pretty sure the cost of production for an Amiga GameTV device would be more along the lines of $9.00/ea for 100,000 units, with a cost of development of $1 to $2 million. I beleive you'd recoup your original IP costs in round one of distribution, and would move into a profit phase with the second lot of units (this would probably be a 90 day window), after that it's smooth sailing and money money money.

You need to realise that Wal*Mart alone would distribute 100,000 units to consumers all by itself. That's only one retail channel, with a single delivery point (they do all distribution internally from a centralized warehouse [or 2] on every continent). With careful delivery planning and smart manufacturing cycles this is a no-brainer.

[CatHerder]

bloodline wrote:

Since I know what I'm talking about, and I have researched the subject of the custom chip technology myself many years ago (1999), I feel I am well placed to point out the flaws in your idea. BEAUSE the technology is old it means there are very few FABs that can build the chips. Modern chips use a very technology to old one, you can't even use the same gate layouts anymore due to different capacitances! If you read what I'm trying to say, you will realise I have nothing against the idea, but your flaw is in the implementation.

Why would you want to fabricate chips to old specs? That's just a bad idea. You want the IP from those chips to fabricate new chips using current design parameters. It's not a difficult thing to do. Why would you want to do any of what you mention above is beyond me.

Where did I say "build the old chips" ?? I think you've assumed something I've never intended to do.

I said I want to get the IP from the old chips and make a single new chip that does everything that those chips did with the targeted end result being the ability to run Amiga games on your TV screen for $19.95 per package.