Who currently owns the rights

[CatHerder]

bloodline wrote:
-Edit- the Board is of a much higher spec than we would need but would be a great for a tech demo.

Could probably get a cheaper ITX board for a demo.

You can get one with an SIS 2GHz processor and integrated everything for about $70.00 and most measure 5in by 5in.

Here's one as an example.



It's still too much $, but it demonstrates how small a full blown PC can be... one that runs todays applications (including web servers and database servers -- there's even dual CPU Mini-ITX boards out there now). A couple good writeups can be found here: http://www.mini-itx.com/

[Samuar]

Yeah, i've been keeping an eye out on mini-itx for a for years now. I think nano-itx will be ace (squeeze a computer into a 5 1/4 inch drive bay). Its a pity they arent cheaper. But, as a demo to potential investors...

On the other hand, we should consider sticking to the architecture we chose for the final product - if only so that we dont need to code the same things twice. I wish there were more embedded boards that came with TV OUT as standard like the above pictured nano-itx board.

Samuar

[jj]

Dont excuse me of kissing arse, I dont think I have ever spoke to bloodline in a forum, and hardly ever post, and In all my  years of being a member of this site I have never trolled.   I in fact said bloodline was saying things before me, and I was just repoint out what he had said in a less cut throat way. I am finding this dicussion very thought provoking and intersting, which is unusual these days.  If u cant take critisim,and have bad points of your ideas discussed and put down, dont air them on a public forum

CatHerder wrote:

JJ wrote:
I am not arguing or trying to cause an argument, just trying to point out flaws, and possible better , easier, cheaper ways of doing things, it just so happens that bloodline is saying them first, with no tact at all  :-)  :-D  :-D  :-D

Actually, you haven't argued or pointed out a single thing. All you've done is applied your lips to bloodline's ass repeatedly. Seriously. Show me ONE SINGLE THING you've added to this thread.

[Samuar]

I think we have all got past our earlier arguments and/or differences. We seem to be concentrating on making progress on one of the best opportunities for the community in a while.

I think the next question is what do we do next?

Edit:
Suggestions, as always, are greatly appreciated.

[jj]

sorry needed to be said, and long travelling time between work and home lol.......

[Samuar]

I thought I would test the theory out. I've been playing Zool2 on WinUAE for hours - during the week when Half Life 2 has been released.

Jaguar XJ220 and Lotus III: The Ultimate Challenge are also a favourite of mine. Now I just need to find the adf file for Bart Simpson Vs The Space Mutants.  :-D

Samuar

[bloodline]

CatHerder wrote:

bloodline wrote:
-Edit- the Board is of a much higher spec than we would need but would be a great for a tech demo.

Could probably get a cheaper ITX board for a demo.

You can get one with an SIS 2GHz processor and integrated everything for about $70.00 and most measure 5in by 5in.

Here's one as an example.



It's still too much $, but it demonstrates how small a full blown PC can be... one that runs todays applications (including web servers and database servers -- there's even dual CPU Mini-ITX boards out there now). A couple good writeups can be found here: http://www.mini-itx.com/

Yes I have an 800Mhz Mini-ITX... the board has far too much functionality and is too large for what you require.

That Said if you could source the Nano C3 CPU and a cutdown Nothbridge, you might be able to buld a custom board using it.

The Advantage with using C3 is that UAE is already very optimised for the x86 and has a working JIT (not that that is important for old games).
But the Chip power hungry, requires a lot of support chips and it needs active cooling. It would work out to be too expensive in the end.

I prefer the idea of using an Embedded RISC system. I natuarally drife towards the ARM chips because they are so so small and cheap, and use no power at all... but I've been really impressed with the SH-4 spec and feature list.

If money was no object then putting two ARM9 cores on to a single chip with some support features (Audio + Gfx) would be the best idea, get Linux on it. Then optimise UAE to thread across the two CPUs.

[bloodline]

MskoDestny wrote:
I don't think the Dreamcast is powerful enough to emulate the Amiga properly.  It has enough trouble emulating the Genesis which it only does reasonably well when using the PowerVR to do most of the graphics emulation.  This causes glitches in some games and would probably not work as well for the Amiga hardware (the copper makes the kind of raster f/x that screw up these techniques that much easier).  IIRC, the SH-4 doesn't scale much beyond 200MHz (the speed of the SH-4 in the Dreamcast) so I don't think it's a realistic choice here.

Maybe the SH-4 isn't perfect, but UAE is mostly CPU intensive... with careful optimiseation UAE could easilly get A500 speeds... though I'm not sure about sound quality... THat is why I suggest putting two smaller ARM cores on to on chips that would allow much better control of the timing issues and allow at least two parts of the emualtion to run at once... which is closer to the real thing (tm).

Out of curiousity, about how many gates are in the OCS or ECS chipset (not counting the 68k)?

I don't but if you read Dave Haynies post, this says that it's not much. And if you were recreating the functionality of such chips now you could probably get the whole lot on to one FPGA.

[minator]

Maybe the SH-4 isn't perfect, but UAE is mostly CPU intensive... with careful optimiseation UAE could easilly get A500 speeds... though I'm not sure about sound quality...

I've heard more than one report that even a high end PC can't fuly handle UAE (in AGA mode IIRC) so I'm not fully convinced about a CPU based emulator, especially on somthing with as little computing power as an ARM.  Something with a "lockable" cache should do a better job though.  A lockable cache allows you to map all or part of it to a specific area of RAM and use it as a high speed on-chip memory.

If you read Dave Haynies post, this says that it's not much. And if you were recreating the functionality of such chips now you could probably get the whole lot on to one FPGA.

Yes, they go to very high densities these days.
In fact the last Amiga custom chip "Toni" was an FPGA.

--

I'm wondering if there is a market beyond just a $25 toy (which is essentially what we're talking about).

I'm talking about a higher speced machine costing anything up to $100 and sold under the banner of a "retro computer".  The people interesed will be grown up with jobs now so the price isn't a big deal, if sufficiently powerful it could emulate a number of different computers so the market wouldn't just be previous Amiga owners.

[Martyn]

So what you're after IS to resurrect BoXer then?

[bloodline]

minator wrote:

Maybe the SH-4 isn't perfect, but UAE is mostly CPU intensive... with careful optimiseation UAE could easilly get A500 speeds... though I'm not sure about sound quality...

I've heard more than one report that even a high end PC can't fuly handle UAE (in AGA mode IIRC) so I'm not fully convinced about a CPU based emulator, especially on somthing with as little computing power as an ARM.  Something with a "lockable" cache should do a better job though.  A lockable cache allows you to map all or part of it to a specific area of RAM and use it as a high speed on-chip memory.

I suggest you do your own research rather than relying on this information.

A P133 can run UAE almost prefectly, the only problem is the audio which is choppy, I can't run the latest version of UAE on it though as it doesn't have a new enough verion of DirectX. The same PC can fun Fellow (Which only goes up to A500+ spec) without problems.

My 600Mhz Athlon can run WinUAE, perfectly, including sound.

My ARM based PDA runs the Beta of PocketUAE at A500 speed, agains with choppy sound. Once the Emulation is optimised I expect it to run better.

[Dan]

Martyn wrote:
So what you're after IS to resurrect BoXer then?

Coldfire+Atari Falcon compatible DSP+custom chips in FPGA :-P
Amiga,Atari and 68k Mac compatible?

[bloodline]

Dan wrote:

Martyn wrote:
So what you're after IS to resurrect BoXer then?

Coldfire+Atari Falcon compatible DSP+custom chips in FPGA :-P
Amiga,Atari and 68k Mac compatible?

Yeah, but I've already got one of them... and it runs MacOS X and Windows XP too :-P

[seer]

I'm talking about a higher speced machine costing anything up to $100 and sold under the banner of a "retro computer". The people interesed will be grown up with jobs now so the price isn't a big deal, if sufficiently powerful it could emulate a number of different computers so the market wouldn't just be previous Amiga owners.

Something like the C-one you mean but then 16/32 bit Home computers instead of 8 bits.

[Dan]

bloodline wrote:

Dan wrote:

Martyn wrote:
So what you're after IS to resurrect BoXer then?

Coldfire+Atari Falcon compatible DSP+custom chips in FPGA :-P
Amiga,Atari and 68k Mac compatible?

Yeah, but I've already got one of them... and it runs MacOS X and Windows XP too :-P

But that one isn´t as cool :-P
But I too think that the price wouldn´t be worth it. Maybe Catweasel XVII? :lol:

[MskoDestny]

Maybe the SH-4 isn't perfect, but UAE is mostly CPU intensive... with careful optimiseation UAE could easilly get A500 speeds... though I'm not sure about sound quality... THat is why I suggest putting two smaller ARM cores on to on chips that would allow much better control of the timing issues and allow at least two parts of the emualtion to run at once... which is closer to the real thing (tm).

Unless you sacrificed a great deal of accuracy, A500 emulation will never be full speed on an SH-4.  One of the faster ARM chips could probably pull it off (a 400MHz XScale could certainly do it), but in a toy with an end price of $25 dollars I don't think it will work out economically.  You have to assume at least a 100% markup between the distributor and the retailer so that leaves you with no more than $12.50 to cover manufacturing, royalties for the games on thing, and whatever profit you want to come away with.

These little retrogames toys are made in the cheapest way possible.  The system on a chip doesn't even live in a proper IC, just a silicon wafer directly attached to the PCB and covered with a blob of epoxy.  This is probably the only way to get the per-unit cost down to something reasonable, but it does mean someone would have to spend the upfront cost to design an A500 on a chip.  There are companies that will take an FPGA based design in Verilog and produce schematics you can take to a fab for a reasonable price.

I don't but if you read Dave Haynies post, this says that it's not much. And if you were recreating the functionality of such chips now you could probably get the whole lot on to one FPGA.

Oh, I'm sure you could fit the whole thing on an FPGA.  These days they've got FPGAs that have millions of gates and considering that the A1000 was prototyped on a few breadboards using discrete logic chips the OCS chipset has to have considerably fewer gates than that.  I was just wondering if anyone had a numerical estimate so I could guess how big of an FPGA I would need to give it a try.  At some point I'd like to try and recreate the OCS chipset in an FPGA or a few CPLDs just as a hobby project (I have a way to go in digital logic before I can try that, but a guy can dream).